"Alas! I am not fighting at all; I am only letting things go."

"You are fighting more than you know, I suspect, for you are
enduring, and that patiently. Suppose Jesus were to knock at the
door now, and it was locked; suppose you knew it was he, and there
was no one in the room to open it for him; suppose you were as weak
as you are now, and seemed to care as little about him or anything
else: what would you do?"

Leopold looked half amazed, as if wondering what his friend could be
driving at with such a question.

"What else could I do but get up and open it?" he said.

"Would you not be tempted to lie still and wait till some one came."

"No."

"Would you not say in your heart, 'The Lord knows I am very weak,
and I should catch cold, and the exertion would make me cough
dreadfully, and he won't mind if I lie still?'"

"That I wouldn't! What should I care what came to me? What would it
matter so long as I got one look at him! Besides, if he didn't want
me to get up, he wouldn't knock."

"But suppose you knew that the moment you turned the key you would
drop down, and when the Lord came in you would not see him."