Instructed by a
vocation so manifest, Basil began to read more clearly in his own
heart, where, in spite of the sorrows he had borne and of the
troublous uncertainties that lay before him, he found no such
readiness to quit the world. He could approve the wisdom of those
who renounced the flesh, to be rewarded with tranquillity on earth
and eternal happiness hereafter; but his will did not ally itself
with his intellect. Moreover, was it certain, he asked himself, that
all who embraced the religious life were so rewarded? In turning the
pages of Augustine's work, he had come upon a passage which arrested
his eye and perturbed his thought, a passage which seemed clearly to
intimate that the soul's eternal destiny had from the beginning of
things been decided by God, some men being created for bliss, more
for damnation. Basil did not dwell profoundly on this doubt; his
nature inclined not at all to theological scrutiny, nor to spiritual
brooding; but it helped to revive in him the energies which sickness
had abated, and to throw him back on that simple faith, that
Christianity of everyday, in which he had grown up.
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