who resemble them.’  And should you thus be accustomed to train yourself, you will see what shoulders you will get, what nerves, what sinews, instead of mere babblements, and nothing more.  This is the true athlete, the man who trains himself to deal with such semblances as these.  Great is the struggle, divine the deed; it is for kingdom, for freedom, for tranquillity, for peace.  Think on God; call upon Him as thine aid and champion, as sailors call on the Great Twin Brethren in the storm.  And indeed what storm is greater than that which rises from powerful semblances that dash reason out of its course?  What indeed but semblance is a storm itself?  Since, come now, remove the fear of death, and bring as many thunders and lightnings as thou wilt, and thou shalt know how great is the tranquillity and calm in that reason which is the ruling faculty of the soul.  But should you once be worsted, and say that you will conquer hereafter, and then the same again and again, know that thus your condition will be vile and weak, so that at the last you will not even know that you are doing wrong, but you will even begin to provide excuses for your sin; and then you will confirm the truth of that saying of Hesiod,—­

     “‘The man that procrastinates struggles ever with ruin.’”

Even so!  So early did a heathen moralist learn the solemn fact that “only this once” ends in “there is no harm in it.”  Well does Mr. Coventry Patmore sing:—­

     “How easy to keep free from sin;
        How hard that freedom to recall;
      For awful truth it is that men
        Forget the heaven from which they fall.”

In another place Epictetus warns us, however, not to be too easily discouraged in our attempts after good;—­and, above all, never to despair.  “In the schools of the wrestling master, when a boy falls he is bidden to get up again, and to go on wrestling day by day till he has acquired strength; and we must do the same, and not be like those poor wretches who after one failure suffer themselves to be swept along as by a torrent.  You need but will” he says, “and it is done; but if you relax your efforts, you will be ruined; for ruin and recovery are both from within.—­And what will you gain by all this?  You will gain modesty for inpudence, purity for vileness, moderation for drunkenness.  If you think there are any better ends than these, then by all means go on in sin, for you are beyond the power of any god to save.”

But Epictetus is particularly in earnest about warning us that to profess these principles and talk about them is one thing—­to act up to them quite another.  He draws a humorous picture of an inconsistent and unreal philosopher, who—­after eloquently proving that nothing is good but what pertains to virtue, and nothing evil but what pertains to vice, and that all other things are indifferent—­goes to sea.  A storm comes on, and the masts creak,