3.
INDEED, I think we may proceed a step further, and reflect that any who like us like us as we are and not as we are not.
The person with the blemishes which are ours, and the weak points which are ours, is the person that those who love us love.
And conversely we may surely admit that (sin excluded) we also love our own beloved without on the whole wanting them to be different.
They are themselves, and this suffices.
We are quite ready to like something superior, but it contents our hearts to love them.
And when once death has stepped in, dividing as it were soul from spirit, the friend that is as one's own soul from one's self, then half those vanished peculiarities put on pathos. We remain actually fond of the blameless oddities, the plain face abides as the one face we prefer.
Now if persons as imperfect as ourselves can secure a permanent place in the affection of their fellows (of which everywhere and always we behold proofs), our "vale of misery" turns to a perennial well of very sweet and refreshing water, and it becomes us to be thankful.
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