Conversion goes slowly. As Franz Baader rightly observes, one has to walk back by the same road he came out on earlier. It is easy to become impatient: if it cannot happen at once, one may just as well let it go, begin tomorrow, and enjoy today; this is the temptation. — Is this not the meaning of the words: to take God's kingdom by force—?
This is why we are told to work out our salvation in fear and trembling, for it is not finished or completed; backsliding is a possibility. — No doubt it was in part this unrest which drove people to seek so zealously to become martyrs, in order to make the test as brief and momentarily intense as possible, a test which is always easier to endure than a prolonged one.
June 13, 1836
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