/ '

GROWTH IN HOLINESS;

OR, THE

'ywpe** <tf tf{* $IW^1|i|[**

BY

FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, D.D.,

Author of "All for Jesus," Etc., Etc.

Occurramus omnes in unitatem fidei, et agnitionis
Filii Dei, in virum perfectuui, in mensurani, setatia
»)l(.'iiitii(linis Cluisti.

Veritatem facientes in charitate, crescamus in illo
per omnia, qui est caput, Christus.— ad epuesios.

With the Approbation of the Most Rev, Archbishop of Baltimore.

JOHN MURPHY COMPANY,
Publishers.

BALTIMORE, MD. : NEW YORK :

44 W. Baltimore Street. 70 Fifth Avenue.

6X2^

TO

MY BLESSED PRINCE AND PATBON.

SAINT RAPHAEL,

ONE OF THE SEVEN WHO STAND ALWAYS BEFORE GO£

GLORIOUS, BENIGNANT, BEAUTIFUL,

THE FIGURE OF HIS PROVIDENCE,

PHYSICIAN, GUIDE, AND JOY OF SOULS,

COMPANION OF WAYFARING MORTALS,

AND ANGEL OF THEIR VICISSITUDES,

BT WHOM

THE TENDERNESS OF THE FATHER, THE HEALING OF IIIJs. SO^

AND THE GLADNESS OF THE HOLY GHOST,

ARE MINISTERED TO WANDERING MEN

WITH THE EFFICACIOUS POWER OF AN ANGELIC SPIRI1

AND THE COMPASSIONATE. PATHETIC LOVE

OF A KINDLY HUMAN HEART.

fiiE Oratory. IiOMDom,
Fkast of St. Ra*<uxl.

MDCCOLV

(*>

NteiiiBO

PREFATORY EPISTLE

REV. WILLIAM ANTONY HUTCHISON

PRIEST OP THE LONDON ORATORY.

My dear Father Antony,

In a walk by the sea-shore at Lancing four years ago, 1 gave
some reasons why I should not publish anything on the spiri-
tual life until a given date. That date is past, and here is my
book. I have little to say in the way of preface, and that little
shall be in the shape of a letter to you, because it will be a
memento of our mutual affection which will give both of us
pleasure; for it will recall the eventful nine years which we
have now spent together, and which it has pleased God should
be equal to a long life for their various trials and almost roman-
tic vicissitudes.

There are two objects for which books may be written, and
which must materially affect their style. One is to produce a
oertain impression on the reader while he reads : the other, to
put before him things to remember, and in such a way as he
will best remember them. The present work is written for the
latter object, and consequently with as much brevity as clear-
ness would allow, and as much compression as the breadth
of the subject and its peculiar liability to be misunderstood,
would safely permit.

(*)

Xll PREFACE.

I dare not presume that there will not be many contradio
tions to so large a volume, in which every sentence, and fre-
quently each clause of a sentence, is a judgment on matters
about which all pious Catholics have a more or less formed
opinion. But so generous a measure of indulgence has been
dealt to me before, that I cannot persuade myself it will now be
altogether withdrawn, especially as the book will not be found
to contain one intentional word or unfavorable criticism either
of men or things. This is my only boast. For the rest, I have
done no more than try to harmonize the ancient and modern
spirituality of the Church, with somewhat perhaps of a propen-
sion to the first, and to put it before English Catholics in an
English shape, translated into native thought and feeling, as
well as language.

Much of the material of the book has fully observed the Hora-
tian precept of Nonum prematur in annum, and the rest has been
nine years growing. But it is a very easy thing for a man to
go wrong in spiritual theology, and to stray into the shadow of
condemned propositions. It will not therefore be conceitedly
making much of a little thing, if I say that I retract beforehand
in the amplest and most unqualified manner anything, whether
of thought or of expression, which may be uncongenial, not
only to the decisions of the Holy See, but also to the approved
teaching of our Religious Orders and Theological Schools.
May God be with my work where it speaks the mind of Hia
Church without exaggeration and with sincerity!

Ever, my dear Father Antony,

Affectionately yours,

Fred. W. Fabkr.

The Oratory. London.
FeartofSt. Ilugh 1854.

Quin etiam juniores, quanquam theologicis htens imbuti, talent
debent reverentiam senioribus iis, quibus vita cum scientia concor-
dat, ut vrx propter aliquas novas suasiones quantumcumque appa-
rent^ pertinux unquam feratur cito contra determinationes eorun-
dem assertio. Virtus quippe, qualem babebant genitam ex multia
experientiis, l^nge* certius arte judicat et operator.

Per paucam instructionem intellects, in scientiis praesertim divi-
ng causantur nonnunquam errores in eis, qui 6e totos devotioni
tradiderunt, dum voluerunt plus sapere, quam sibi satis erat.

Gerson.

Consultius nibil fieri a nobis potest quam ut nostras semper
opiniones et voluntates, linguas pennasque aptemus ei disciplinse,
que in universali viget Ecclesia eo aevo, quo nos summi providentia
numinis collocavit

Thomas sinus.

Noli eos imitari, qui nullum legendi ordinem servant; sed quod
forte occurrerit, quodque casu repererint, legere gaudent: quibus
nibil sapit, nisi quod novum est, et inauditum. Consulta enim, et
Vetera omnia, quantum libet utilir, fastidiunt. Tanta instabilitas
procul a te cit: ipsa enim non promovet, sed dispergit spiritumj et
perieulose laborat, qui hoc morbo vitiatus est.

Dacbiahoi.

(Iffi)

CONTENTS

-■at. tun

I. True Signs op Progress in the Spiritual Life. 17

II. Presumption and Discouragement 27

iii. how to make the most of our slgns of

Progress 41

IV. The Spirit in which we serve God 53

V. What Holds us Back 67

VI. External Conduct 81

VII. The Ruling Passion 95

VIII. Our Normal State 108

IX. Patience 130

X. Human Respect 150

XI. Mortification our True Perseverance. . 163

XII. The Human Spirit 185

XIII. The Human Spirit Defeated ... 206

XIV. Spiritual Idleness . 224

XV. Prayer 243

XVI. Temptations 277

(xv)

XVI CONTENTS.

CHAP. PA«

XVII. Scruples '. .. 298

XVIII. The Office of Spiritual Director 324

XIX. Abiding Sorrow for Sin 350

XX. The Right View of our Faults 367

XXI. The Irreligious and the Elect 382

XXII. The True Idea of Devotion 397

XXIII. The Right Use of Spiritual Favors . 423

XXIV. Distractions and their Remedies. . * 453

XXV. Lukewarmness 469

XXVI. Fervor , 480

XXVII. Discrwiow 488

GROWTH IN HOLINESS,

CHAPTER I.

TRUE SIGNS OF PROGRESS IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.

The spiritual life is made up of contradictions. Thii
Is only another way of saying that human nature is fallen
One of the greatest contradictions, and practically one of
the most difficult to be managed, is that in spirituality it
is very important we should know a great deal about our-
selves, and at the same time equally important that we
should think very little about ourselves; and it is not
easy to reconcile these things. I mention i-his difficulty
at the outset, inasmuch as we shall have in the course of
this treatise to look very much into ourselves, and conse-
quently we run the risk at the same time of thinking very
much of ourselves ; and this last might do us more harm
than the first would do us good.

No knowledge in the world can be more interesting to
us than to know how we stand with God. Every thing
depends upon it. It is the science of sciences to us, more
than the knowledge of good and evil which tempted Adam
and Eve so violently. If we are well with God, all is well
2* b (17 )

18 TRUE SIGNS OF PROGRESS

with us, though the thickest darkness of adversity bo
round about. If we are not well with Him, nothing is
well with us, though the best and brightest of earth be at
our feet. It is natural that we should desire to know if
we are making progress in the spiritual life ; neither is
there anything wrong, or even imperfect, in the desire,
provided it be not inordinate. It would be an immense
consolation to us, if we should have reason to suppose we
were advancing; and if, on the contrary, we had grounds
for suspecting something was amiss, there would at least
be a sense of safety and security in the feeling that at all
events we were not going on in the dark about the matter
which concerns us more nearly and dearly than anything
else. Love likes to know that it is accepted and recipro-
cated ; and in the case of God especially, that it i3 not
rejected as it deserves to be ; and fear is equally anxious
for the same knowledge because of the eternal interests
which are concerned in it.

But however much we may desire it, we cannot have
anything like an accurate knowledge of our progress in
the spiritual life; and that for reasons on God's side as
well as on our own. On His side, because it is His way
to conceal His work ; and on ours, because self-love exag-
gerates the little good we do. We do not even know for
certain whether we are in a state of grace, or as Scripture
expresses it, whether we deserve love or hatred. For we
have each of us a cavern of secret sins about us ; and as
the Inspired Writer warns us, we must not be without
fear even of forgiven sin.

There are wrong ways of trying to gain this knowledge
which the impatient heart seeks so anxiously. All desires
become inordinate in the long run, if they are not sharply

IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 19

Bebooled and tightly kept under ; and it is when they be-
come inordinate that they hit with such fatal ingenuity
upon wrong ways of satisfying themselves. One of these
wrong ways is pressing our directors to tell us their judg-
ment about us, which they are naturally very reluctant
to do, both because they shrink from apparent pretension
to supernatural gifts, such as the discernment of spirits,
and because they are aware that such knowledge is hardly
ever good for us to have. Then, when this artifice proves
unsuccessful, we take arbitrary and artificial marks of our
own, as children run sticks into the sand to time the tide
by; and, as might be expected, we select wrongly where
we had no right to select at all ; and having made a mis-
take, we are obstinate in it, and as is usual with men, the
more obstinate in proportion as we are more mistaken ;
and so the end of it all is delusion. And even when we
do not seek to know our own interior state by one of these
wrong methods, we do what is equally wrong, by disquiet-
ing ourselves constantly upon the subject, which is nothing
less than a forfeiting of blessings and graces nearly every
jour in the day.

But in truth as it is with the hour of our death, so it
is with our growth in grace. It is in every way not good
for us that we should have any certain or exact know-
ledge about it. It is as much as ever we can do to keep
ourselves humble, even when our faults are open and
glaring, and any good there may be in us so little as to
be almost invisible. What then would it be if we were
truly growing in grace, and making rapid strides in the
love of God ? Surely the less we know, the easier it will
be to keep humble. Moreover, the absence of such exacu
knowledge renders us more supple and obedient, both to

10 TRUE SIGNS OF PROGRESS

the inspirations of the Holy Ghost within us, and to the
suggestions of our spiritual directors without us. Just aa
it is ignorance of their maladies which makes the sick so
amenable to their physicians, so it is with our ignorance
of our proficiency in the spiritual life. And how much
of this proficiency depends on this twofold obedience to
inspirations and direction ! Furthermore, the very un-
certainty is itself a perpetual stimulus to greater genero-
sity towards God. For the worst of all excessive self-
inspection is, that the good grows and swells as we look
at it, and because we look at it; and hence, a man whose
eye is always turned inward on his own heart, has, for the
most part, a strangely exaggerated notion of the amount
of what he is doing for God. Whereas it is the very dis-
proportion between the greatness of what God has done
for us, and the spirit of Fatherly love in which He has
done it, and the littleness of what we do for God, and the
spirit of niggardliness in which we do it, that makes us
crave to love Him more, and to work for Him more self-
denyingly. Hence I conclude that it would not be for
our own best interests to know exactly, and for certain,
how far we had got on the road to perfection

Nevertheless a certain amount of knowledge of our state
is possible, desirable, and even necessary, so long as it be
desired moderately, and sought for rightly. We need
consolation in so difficult and doubtful a battle ; and we
are not yet sufficiently detached not to find an especial
consolation in the knowledge of the operations of grace
within our souls. We cannot be much given to prayer
without obtaining more or less insight into God's dealings
with us ; and indeed if we do not know the graces which
3od is giving us, we shall not know how to correspond

IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 21

to them. So that some amount of such knowledge is ab-
solutely necessary to our carrying on the Christian warfare
at all ; and the lawful ways of acquiring it are prayer, ex-
amination of conscience, and the spontaneous admonitions
of our spiritual director.

This is enough to say about the knowledge of our own
spiritual state. It is a very difficult and dangerous sub-
ject. The less of such knowledge we can do with the
better ; because it is so hard to seek it rightly, or to use
it moderately. Still it cannot be dispensed with altoge-
ther, though its importance varies with the spiritual con-
dition of the individual.

Thus it is important for us to put before ourselves
clearly the particular condition of the spiritual life which
we are now concerned with. Persons are what is called
converted; that is, they are turned to God and commence
a new life. They do penance for their sins : they abjure
certain false maxims which they held : they feel differently
towards God and Jesus Christ : they commit themselves
to certain practices of mortification : they pledge them-
selves to certain devotional observances; and they put
themselves under the obedience of spiritual direction.
Then they have their first fervours. They are helped by
a supernatural promptitude in all that concerns the service
of God, by sensible sweetness in prayer, by joy in the
sacraments, by a new taste for penance and humiliation,
and a facility in meditation, and often a cessation, partial
or entire, of temptation. These first fervours may last
weeks, or months, or a year or two even ; and then their
work is done. We have corresponded to them more or
less faithfully. They have had their own experiences,
peculiarities, symptoms, difficulties. They have a parti-

22 TRUE SIGNS OP PROGRESS

cular genius of their own, and need a direction which is
suitable for them, and is not suitable for anything else.
Now they have passed away, and are out of our reach.
We shall meet them again at the judgment-seat, and not
before.

But where have they left us ? At the commencement
of a new stage in the spiritual life, a very trying and a
very critical time. The mere passing away of fervours,
which were never meant for anything more than a tempo-
rary dispensation, leaves us immersed in an uncomfortable
feeling of lukewarmness. The characteristics of our
present state are that we seem to be left more to ourselves
than we were. Grace appears to do less for us. Old
natural character comes up, when the fervours that over-
laid it are gone out, and begins to tell again with amazing
vivacity. We felt as if we were more thrown upon the
manliness and honesty of our own purposes and wills, and
were, at least less sensibly, buoyed up by the various
apparatus of the supernatural life. Our prayers become
drier. The ground we are digging is stiffer and stonier.
The work seems less attractive in proportion as it grows
more solid. Perfection does not feel so easy, and penance
unbearable. Now is the time for courage, now is the trial
of our real worth. We are beginning to travel the cen-
tral regions of the spiritual life? and they are, on the
whole, tracts of wilderness. Here it is that so many turn
back, and are thrown aside by God as frustrate saints and
broken vocations. The soul I am addressing has come to
this point, and is toiling on, burnt by the sun and wind,
ankle deep in the sand, filled with despair from the infre-
quency of the water-springs, querulous for the want of

IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 23

tool quiet shade, and greatly inclined to sit down and
give the matter up as hopeless.

For the love of God do not sit down ! It is all over
with you if you do. If I only knew, you say, that I waa
getting on, if I could really believe I was making any
way at all, I would force my weary limbs to advance!
Two are better than one, saith Scripture ; so let us toil on
together for awhile, and talk of our helps and hindrances.
We are not saints, you know. Perhaps we are not aiming
at saints' heights; and if we are not, then we must not
take saints' liberties. The lessons we want must be
sober, and safe, and low. Anyhow we must neither turn
back nor sit down.

Are we getting on ? There is not a well or a palm to
measure by; there is only sand and an horizon. Courage!
here are five signs. If we have one of them, it is well ;
if two, better; if three, better still; if four, capital; if
all the five, glorious.

1. If we are discontented with our present state, what-
ever it may be, and want to be something better and
higher, we have great reason to be thankful to God. For
such discontent is one of His best gifts, and a great sign
that we are really making progress in the spiritual life
But we must remember that our dissatisfaction with our-
selves must be of such a nature as to increase our humi-
lity, and not such as to cause disquietude of mind or
uneasiness in our devotional exercises. It must be made
up of a rather impatient desire to advance in holiness,
combined with gratitude for past graces, confidence for
future ones, and a keen, indignant feeling of how much
more grace we have received than we have corresponded to.

2. Again, strange as it may sound, it is a sign of our

24 TRUE SIGNS OF PROGRESS

growth if we are always making new beginnings and fresh
starts. The great St. Antony made perfection consist in
it. Yet this is often ignorantly made a motive of discou-
ragement, from persons confounding fresh starts in the
ievout life with the incessant risings and relapsings of
habitual sinners. Neither must we confound these con-
tinual fresh beginnings with the fickleness which so often
leads to dissipation, and keeps us back in our heavenward
path. For these new starts seen something higher, and
therefore for the most part something arduous ; whereas
fickleness is tired of the yoke, and seeks ease and change.
Neither again do these beginnings consist -in changing our
spiritual books, or our penances, or our methods of prayer,
much less our directors. But they consist in two things
chiefly : first, a renewal of our intention for the glory of
Grod; and secondly, a revival of our fervour.

3. It is also a sign of progress in the spiritual life, when
we have some definite thing in view : for instance, if we
are trying to acquire the habit of some particular virtue,
or to conquer some besetting infirmity, or to accustom
ourselves to a certain penance. All this is a test of ear-
nestness, and also a token of the vigour of divine grace
within us. Whereas if we are attacking no particular
part of the enemy's line, it is hardly a battle ; and if we
are shooting without an aim, what can come of it but
smoke and noise ? It is not likely we are advancing, if,
as people speak, we are going on in a general way, without
distinctly selecting an end to reach, and actively forcing
our way to the end we have thus consciously selected.

4. But it is a still greater sign that we are making
progress, if we have a strong feeling on our minds that
God wants something particular from us. We are some'

IN THE SPIRITUAL IIFE. 25

times aware that the Holy Spirit is drawing us in one
direction rather than in another, that He desires some
fault to be removed, or some pious work to be undertaken.
This is called by spiritual writers an attraction. Some
have one persevering attraction all their lives long. With
others it is constantly changing. With many it is so
indistinct that they only realize it now and then ; and
not a few seem to be without any such special drawing at
all.* It implies of course an active self-knowledge, as
well as a quiet inward eye of prayer ; and it is a great
gift, because of the immense facilities which it gives for
the practice of perfection ; for it almost resembles a spe-
cial revelation. To feel then, with all sober reverence,
this drawing of the Holy Ghost, is a sign that we are
making progress. Yet it must be carefully remembered
that no one should be disquieted because of the absence
of such a feeling. It is neither universal nor indis-
pensable.

5. I will venture also to add that an increased general
desire of being more perfect is not altogether without its
value as a sign of progress : and that, in spite of what I
have said of the importance of having a definite object in
view. I do not think we esteem this general desire of
perfection sufficiently. Of course we must not stop at it
nor be satisfied with it. It is only given us to go on with.
Still, when we consider how worldly most good Christians
are, and their amazing blindness to the interests of Jesus,

* It was remarked by Mother de Blonay, that those who are des-
tined by God to spend great part of their lives in religious superior-
• ships, are, for the most part, without any peculiar attraction. Because
it is a " universal spirit" which the Holy Ghost desires to form in
luch souls.

3

26 TRUE SIGNS OF PROGRESS, ETC.

and their almost incredible impenetrability by super,
natural principles, we must see that this desire of holiness
is from God, and a great gift, and that much which is of
surpassing consequence is implied in it. God be praised
for every soul in the world which is so fortunate as to
possess it ! It is almost inconsistent with lukewarmness ;
and this is no slight recommendation in itself: and al-
though there is much beyond it and much above it, yet
it is indispensable both to what is beyond and what is
above. Nevertheless we must not be blind to its dangers.
All supernatural desires, which we simply enjoy without
practically corresponding to them, leave us in a worse
state than they found us. In order to be safe we must
proceed without delay to embody the desire in some act
or other, prayer, penance, or zealous deed : yet not pre-
cipitately, or without counsel.

Here then are five fairly probable signs of progress,
and none of them so far above our heads as to be un
practical to the lowest of us. I do not mean to say that
the existence of these signs implies that all is as it ought
to be in our spiritual life ; but that it shows we are alive,
advancing, and in the way of grace : and the possession
of any one of these signs is something unspeakably more
precious than the best and highest gift earth can give.
I repeat, if we have one of these signs it is well ; if two,
better; if three, better still; if four, capital; if all five,
glorious. Now see! we have made a little way. We
are further into the wilderness; and if as footsore «v
ever, at least a trifle less fainthearted.

PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT, 27

CHAPTER II.

PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT.

You will see by the last chapter that I have made a
sort of map of the spiritual life in my own mind. I
have divided it into three regions of very unequal extent,
and of very diversified interest. First, there comes the
region of beginnings, a wonderful time, so wonderful
that nobody realizes how wonderful it is, till they are out
of it, and can look back on it. Then stretches a vast
extent of wilderness, full of temptation, struggle, and
fatigue, a place of work and suflfering, with angels, good
and bad, winging their way in every direction, the roads
hard to find and slippery underfoot, and Jesus with the
Cross meeting us at every turn. This is four or five
times the length of the first region. Then comes a
region of beautiful, wooded, watered, yet rocky moun-
tains, lovely yet savage too, liable to terrific tempests and
to those sudden overcastings of bright nature, which
characterize mountainous districts. This last is the land
of high prayer, of brave self-crucifixions, of mystical
trials, and of heights of superhuman detachment and
abjection, whose rarefied atmosphere only chosen souls
cm breathe.

I have joined myself to a soul who is out of the region
of beginnings, and has just entered on the great central
wilderness, whose long plains of weary sand join the
verdant fields of the beginners with the woody mountains
of the long-tried and w ell-mortified souls. God calls

28 PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT.

some to Himself in their first fervours, others mature in
grace on the mountain heights. But more die in the
wilderness, some at one point of the pilgrimage, some at
another. Of course there is only one good time for each
of us to die; and that is the exact hour at which God
wills that death should find us. But as the great body
of devout men die while they are crossing the central
wilderness, it is this wilderness of which I wish to speak :
the wilderness of long, patient perseverance in the hum-
bling practices of solid virtue.

Persons who are aiming ever so little at perfection are
the choice portion of Grod's creation, and are dear to Him
as the apple of His eye. Hence everything that con-
cerns them is of consequence. Thus it was important
that they should have some signs furnished them, by
means of which they could estimate with some probability
the progress they are making in the spiritual life But
they often mistake for signs of progress things which
taken by themselves do not tell either way; and thus
they fall into delusions which take them into bye-paths,
tire them out, and then bring them back again into the
road miles behind where they were, when they first
wandered. These false signs will form the subject of
this chapter. The consideration of them is of the more
importance, inasmuch as it brings us across a great many
facts about the spiritual life which it exceedingly concerns
us to know. •

The soul then at this sti ge of its journey is beset by
two opposite temptations. Sometimes it is attacked by
one, sometimes by another, according to different moods
of mind and diversities of character. These temptations
are discouragement and piesumption; and our chief

PRESUMPTION. AND DISCOURAGEMENT 29

business at this point is to be upon our guard against
these two things.

Discouragement is an inclination to give up all attempts
after the devout life, in consequence of the difficulties by
which it is beset, and\ our already numerous failures in it.
We lose heart j and partly in ill-temper, partly in real
doubt of our own ability to persevere, we first grow
querulous and peevish with God, and then relax in our
efforts to mortify ourselves and to please Him. It is like
the sin of despair, although it is not truly any sin at all.
It is a sort of shadow of despair ; and it will lead us into
numberless venial sins the first half-hour we give way to
it. What it shows is that we trusted too much to our
own strength, and had a higher opinion of ourselves than
we were at all warranted in having. If we had been
truly humble, we should have been surprised we did not
do worse, instead of being disappointed we did not do
better. Many souls are called to perfection, and fail,
through the sole and single mischief of discouragement.

Meanwhile persons trying to be spiritual are peculiarly
liable to discouragement, because of their great sensitive-
ness. Their attention is riveted to a degree in which it
never was before on two things, minute duties and observ-
ances, and exterior motives ; and both these things ren-
der them uncommonly sensitive. Conscience, acted upon
by the Holy Ghost, becomes so fine and delicate that it
feels the jar of little infirmities, that never seemed intir-
mities before ; and not only is its perception of sia quick-
ened, but the sense of pain which «iq infliota ?s koeter.
The difficulty and the hiddenness of the work ia svhich
they are engaged augments still more* thij sen:*iu;veues8,
especially as they are so far from r*cewng >^b!« support
3*

80 PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT.

from those around them, that they must rather make
their account to be called enthusiastic and indiscreet, sin-
gular and affected, by those even who are good people,
but have the incalculable ill-luck to be good in their own
way, not in God's way. Moreover early piety is never
wise. How should it be, since experience alone can make
it wise ? The world complains of the mistakes of begin-
ners in religion, not seeing that they only make these
mistakes because they are not yet quite so unworldly and
anti-worldly, as please God they will be by and by. One
of these mistakes is that they exaggerate their own faults,
and this at once leads to discouragement. Besides that,
they are working to high models, Jesus and the Saints ;
and when they have done their best, and what is for them
really well, it must be so terribly below what they aimed
at that they can hardly help being disappointed. What
is more trying to spirits and temper than to be invariably
playing a losing game ? And what else can a man do
who has made up his mind to be like his Crucifix ?

But the upshot of all this discouragement is that i*
Tenders us languid and unjoyous ; just the two worsv
things that could happen to us, because they make any
thing heroic simply impossible. If a man has tight hold
of his adversary in a wrestling match, and is suddenly
seized with languor, all is over with him ; for the victory
depended on the play of his muscles and the firmness
of his hold. A victorious army can beat a vanquished
army of twice its numbers, because the joy of victory is
such a moral power. Thus to be languid and unjoyous,
and that so early in the day, is quite fatal to us ; and it
is in these two things that the bane of discouragement
consists

PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT. 31

As to presumption I believe it is much less common
than discouragement. A man must be a fool to be pre-
sumptuous in religion. Nevertheless we can be very
foolish when we least expect it. St. Theresa says humi-
lity is the first requisite for those who wish to lead an
ordinarily good life ; but that courage is the first requi-
site for those who aim at any degree of perfection. Now
presumption is never very far from courage ; and hence
we must be upon our guard against it. We may fall into
it in many different ways ; and I will mention some of
them. There is a proverb that the first blow is half th«
battle. I do not think it holds in spiritual matters ; and
the reason I do not think so is that such a number of
persons are called to devotion and an interior life, who
break down and abandon it. The fault was not in the
first blow. It was vigorous enough, loving enough, hum
ble enough. The fault was later on; it was either that
they got tired of mortification, or that they fell into a
common superstition about grace, and when it did not
come true, they were disgusted. This superstition con-
sists in imagining that grace is to work like a charm,
almost without the concurrence of our own wills. A man
will not get up at his proper time in the morning. He
says he cannot ; which is absurd, for there is no physical
power holding him down in his bed. The fact is he will
not; he does not choose to do it; the virtue of it or the
obedience of it is not worth the pain of it. He pleads
that over night he made a resolution to get up next morn-
ing, and asked the souls in Purgatory to get him up. The
morning comes ; the air is cold ; meditation is uninterest-
ing; sleep is pleasant. No souls have come from Pur-
gatory to pull him out of bed, draw his curtains, light his

32 PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT.

fire, and the rest. It is not therefore his affair. He has
done his part. He finished it all last night : hut grace
has not worked. What can he do ? This is only a pic-
ture of a thousand other things. Multitudes who would
have been nigh to saints remain nigh to sinners from this
singular superstition about grace. What we want is not
grace; it is will. We have already a thousand times
more grace than we correspond to. God is never wanting
on His side. It is the manly persistent will which is
wanting on ours.

But to return. The first blow is not half the battle
in the devout life. But we think it is. We become im-
patient with the extreme and mysterious slowness of God's
movements, and we think the work begun is as good as
the work ended ; and knowing what the saints have done,
when after long austerities they had consummated their
union with God, so far as on earth may be, we presume,
and imitate them in the letter, without discerning the
spirit. Or again we mistake the vigour of Divine Grace
for the fortitude of our own will ; and so we turn against
God some special accession of supernatural strength which
He has compassionately vouchsafed to us. Experience
has not yet shown us by how many defeats each spiritual
victory is gained. We shall find that out presently ) for
it is a grand fountain of humility. Moreover there is a
peculiar pleasure and an exalting sense of power which
for a long time sensibly accompanies co-operation with
grace. We bring it with us out of our first fervours, and
it does not go away all at once when they do. And we
mistake this for acquired habits of solid virtue. Or we
dwell on our own good works, and then a mist rises out
of them and we see them double. Or injudicious friends

PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT. 33

praise us and remark how devout we have grown of late,
and think they are doing us a kindness while they are
thus overthrowing the work of God in our souls. All
these causes lead us into presumption, and presumption
into indiscreet excesses, and indiscreet excesses into self-
trust, and self-trust into an inevitable reaction against the
interior life altogether.

Neither must we forget to note, though it belongs
rather to a treatise on the Beginnings of the Spiritual
Life, that in the earlier stages of our course, and espe-
cially in the remains of our first fervours, there are some
things which greatly resemble what we read of in
advanced saints. The fact is, we are only just settling
into our normal state. God has hitherto been doing far
Jaore than it is His will to do for a continuance. Our
beginnings are sometimes almost as supernatural as our
endings may be. We are not to expect that the long
interval between the two will be so. We must part com-
pany now with a great deal of sensible sweetness, with
many secret manifestations of God, and fervent aspira-
tions, which have sometimes perhaps made us fancy that
we should soon be saints. Now this likeness of our
beginnings to certain features of more advanced states
entices us occasionally into a secret presumption. We
have no idea how heavy the mere pressure of time will
be upon us hereafter, nor how long the road really is,
though the mountains look so near. Without one addi-
tional duty, without one new temptation, nay I will put
it more strongly still, with fewer duties and fewer tempta-
tions the mere continuance of going against our natural
inclinations, which is implied in the service of God, is a
drag upon us more fatiguing and more depressing than
c

34 PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT

we could have conceived beforehand- Perseverance la
the greatest of trials, the heaviest of burdens, the most
crushing of crosses.

These two dangers of discouragement and presumption
lead us into opposite mistakes with regard to our spiritual
progress. Hence it is of consequence to be on our guard
against certain symptoms which discouragement will take
as proofs we are not advancing, and presumption as proofs
we are greatly advancing, when in reality, taken by them-
selves, they tell neither way. I proceed to consider five
of these uncertain signs of progress : and to look at each
of them under the double aspect of presumption and
discouragement.

1. After watching ourselves for a time, we perceive
that we either do or do not conquer some besetting fault.
We presume upon this. But let us consider. It may
be no real proof of progress, for our temptations ma^
from many causes happen to be weaker at that particular
time. The devil by his natural subtilty may foresee that
we shall thus examine ourselves, and thus rest upon the
result of our examination ; and wishing to inspire us with
false confidence, which is always fine weather for his cam-
paign, Ls may draw off his forces and leave us in tempo-
rary peace. Or again our faults may be changing from
some change in our exterior life, or from the force of
years, or any other cause. That our faults do change is
certain, and these changes give birth to some of the most
remarkable phenomena of the spiritual life. Or again,
from some little infidelity to grace, the sensitiveness and
delicacy of our conscience may be in punishment a little
dulled ; and hence we may be less conscious of our falls.
Is there any one who has not experienced this punish-

PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT. 35

merit ? Hence there is no ground for presumption simply
in our perceiving that we have fallen less often into some
besetting fault. But then there is also no reason for
discouragement because we happen of late to have fallen
oftener. We must go on taking observations for a long
time before we can safely begin to draw inferences from
them. It may be, for many reasons, that we are more
conscious of our falls just now than we were before. Or
God may allow us to fall in order to keep us humble, or
to conceal from us the progress we may be making in
some other direction. Or it may be that our great enemy
has made a dead set against us in that particular respect.
We may be actually supporting a charge, not merely
marching through a difficult country. We do not know
enough about ourselves to be reasonably discouraged then
by this first sign.

2. We presume or are disheartened in proportion as
we have or have not sensible sweetness in our religious
exercises. But presumption should remember that this
sensible sweetness arises very often from physical causes,
from good health, fine weather or high spirits, and even
when it is an operation of grace it is sometimes a testi-
mony of infirmity, and a mark of spiritual infancy. It is
the bait of God's condescension to tempt us on, when we
have not sufficient solid virtue to distinguish between
Him and His gifts, and to serve Him for His own sake,
not for theirs. It is a bait to be eagerly seized, for it
brings forth solid fruits. Yet it is God's gift, not our pro-
gress. At the same time it is very unreasonable to be
discouraged by the absence of this sensible sweetness.
For it is a gift, not a virtue; and God gives it to whom
He wills, and when He wills, and in what measure He

36 PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT.

wills. Nay, His very withholding it is sometimes a
favour; for it is meant to raise the soul to a higher state
to ennoble its love, and to increase its occasions of merit-
ing. Even if it is a chastisement it may be a favour.
People very often insist on giving way to low spirits
because the\ are sure that such or such a symptom in
their spiritual life is a divine punishment. Truly a
spiritual mm, when he is peevish, is the most unreason-
able of all complainants. I cannot see anything disheart-
ening in being punished by God. On the contrary, when
He punishes He does not ignore us ; and His ignoring
us would be the really terrible thing. And when He
punishes, it is a father's punishment, and the hardness of
the blow and the number of the stripes are in truth but
measures of the affectionateness of the punishment.
Never let us wish God to put off His punishments. It is
a wish He might easily grant, and for which we should
pay dearly in the end. God is interested in us and full
of merciful purposes, when He condescends to chastise
us. While one hand wields the rod, the other is filled
with special graces, which we shall receive when nature
has been sufficiently hurt and mortified.

3. Another experience which we are in the habit of
making too much of, is our finding or our not finding
mental pra}rer and meditation grow easier. For medita-
tion is in itself ordinarily so difficult that anything like
an increased facility in it presently awakens presumptuous
feelings. But we should recollect that the habit of
prayer is a different thing from the grace of prayer; and
meditation is such a discursive method of prayer that it
is quite easy to form a habit of it without its going at all
deeply into us, or affecting our interior life. Instances

PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT. 37

of this come across us continually in the shape of men
who never miss their morning medi ation, yet seem to bo
none the better for it, do not lead more mortified lives, or
vanquish their dominant passion, or govern their tongues,
or become more recollected. Not but that the habit of
prayer is an excellent thing; only it is not the gift of
prayer, and we are apt to exaggerate its importance from
confounding it with the gift. It may also happen at any
particular time that the subjects of our meditations may
be easier to us, as being more suitable to our genius.
The different times of the ecclesiastical year may bring
this about. It may be Christmas, or Lent, or Corpus
Christi. For some can meditate easily on the Passion
who cannot meditate at all on the Infancy ; and some
find rest and devotion in the Gospel Narratives and
Parables who can make nothing of our Lord's Mysteries.
Or our bodily health may be better, our sleep sounder,
or our circumstances more cheerful, or the excitement of
some great feast, coming or gone, may be still upon us
and help us. All this is against our presuming simply
because for the while meditation goes on more swim-
mingly and smoothly. At the same time we have no
reason to be discouraged if meditation so far from growing
easier seems to become impossible to us. It is a long
work to gain facility in mental prayer, and it is acquired
much more by mortification than it is by habit; and our
progress in mortifications, while it must be steady and
unsparing, must also be gradual and cautious, erring
rather on the side of too little than too much, because of
our wretched cowardice. Moreover, as I shall have to
show in the sequel, dry meditations are often the most
profitable, and of course it is just the dryness that makes
4

88 PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT.

the difficulty. And, to put it at the wcrst, there is not
necessarily the least venial sin in want of readiness at
prayer ; and surely it is a great thing for us at this stage,
and remembering old times, that God's grace keeps us
from offending Him. It is not a sign of a low estate to
be immensely joyful at the mere absence of sin. There
are better things in store for us; but God grant that as
we force our way we may never lose the simplicity of that
satisfaction ! I will not allow that we have always a
right to be discouraged even by our sins, but I am sure
we ought not to be discouraged by anything which is
short of sin.

4. We are often apt to philosophize on the phenomena
of our temptations, and to be elated or cast down by
what we fancy we observe in that region. But even if
the sky look cloudless and serene, we have no warrant to
be elated. Our temptations may at any particular time
be fewer in number, as I have observed before. They
may also be of a less attractive character, in consequence
of some change in our outward circumstances. Or our
minds may be full of some interesting occupation which
completely possesses them and so distracts them from the
temptations, without there being anything meritorious or
supernatural in it. It is sometimes true that the world
helps us as well as hinders us by its multifarious distrac-
tions. They prevent much sin, though they spoil much
recollection. It is this which makes solitude so danger-
ous except to tried virtue. But suppose a very tempest
of temptations is raging round us ; discouragement would
be as unreasonable in this case as presumption in the
other. The very vehemence of the temptations is a sign
of the devil's anger ; and he is far too sensible to be angry

PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT. 39

for nothing. When the Bible speaks of his being angry,
it is added that it is because his time is short. We must
have provoked him by the way in which we have hung
on to God, or by the marks of special love which God
has made to shine upon us, and which Satan may be
able to see more clearly than ourselves. If the tempta-
tions frighten us rather by their obstinacy and long con-
tinuance, as if they were determined not to leave us until
they had got a fall out of us, we must be on our guard
indeed, but with joy and thanksgiving. For the very
continuance of the temptation is a proof that so far at
least it has not been consented to. The dog goes on
barking, says St. Francis of Sales, because he has not
been let in. Furthermore, which may be the result of
Satan's natural sagacity and foresight, an access of new
and unusual temptations is often a sign that a season of
reculiar grace is at hand. Therefore, with Jacob, we
must wrestle till the dawn.

5. At different seasons we feel the effect of the sacra-
ments more or less decidedly. Certainly there are times
when it almost seems as if the sacraments were going to
destroy faith, so palpably do we see and hear and taste
and touch and handle and realize grace. This is especially
true both of confession and communion. Nevertheless
there is no room for presumption here. The grace of
the sacraments is not our merit; and the sensible effect
of them may often be apparent, and yet its being sensible
arise actually from other causes, physical or mental. Or
God may see that we are unusually weak and so may
give us an unusual grace, and make it sensible in order
to inspirit the lower part of our soul more effectually.
Yet if the sacraments become insipid, losing what little

40 PRESUMPTION AND DISCOURAGEMENT.

sensible savour they had to our souls before, we must
not be discouraged as if some evil were befalling us. It
is no proof that we are not receiving in abundant measure
the solid grace of the sacraments. The saints have ex-
perienced similar things, even after they had become
saints. And, moreover, though this perhaps is taking
you a little too near the mountains, bare faith is by far
the grandest of all spiritual exercises.

Perhaps you will say that this is an unsatisfactory
chapter : all negatives. But have you not got far enough
to see that inward peace is the great thing you want ?
and nothing so effectually secures that, as the wise and
skilful handling of these two temptations, presumption
and discouragement. Besides, if it was a great thing to
know what are signs of progress, it is far from a little
thing to know what are not signs, especially when thej
pretend to be.

HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF, ETC. 41

CHAPTER III.

HOW CO MAKE THE MOST OP OUR SIGNS OS PROGRESS

I must now suppose the soul of my pilgrim to have
some or all of the signs of progress enumerated in the
first chapter. It cannot be content with merely contem-
plating them ; it must set to work to cultivate them : and
how is this to be done ? This is the question to which
the present chapter must furnish an answer. But a
word of general advice at the outset. At this early stage
of the devout life we must be careful not to take too
much upon ourselves, not to fly too high, not to promise
God great austerities, nor burden ourselves with nume-
rous practices. We must not be cowardly and faint-
hearted ; but we must be moderate and discreet. To be
gentle with ourselves is not necessarily to be indulgent
to ourselves. The punishment that is not too much for
a man would kill or maim a child.

In the spiritual life there are generally particular aids
of grace or means of grace appropriated to particular
epochs; and just as this epoch has its own dangers, pre-
sumption and discouragement, so it has its two aids or
means, recollection and fidelity; and its great work at
present is to get used to these two things. In our be-
ginnings, while our first fervours were burning in our
hearts, we hardly felt the need or realized the importance
of these things. They came of themselves. Impulses
of grace did it all ; and the generosity of young love
4*

42 HOW TO MAKE THE MOST Of

supplied for a great deal of painful and dry self-discipline.
Thus we were recollected without feeling it,. and faithful
without knowing it. But those days are passed away.

Many books have been written upon recollection, of
more paragraphs than I must use words. To put it
quite shortly, recollection is a double attention which
we pay first to God and secondly to ourselves ; and with-
out vehemence or straining, yet not without some painful
effort, it must be as unintermitting as possible. The
necessity of it is so great that nothing in the whole of
the spiritual life, love excepted, is more necessary. We
cannot otherwise acquire the habit of walking constantly
m the presence of God; nor can we without it steer
safely through the multitude of occasions of venial sin
which surround us all day long. The whispered inspira-
tions of the Holy Ghost pass away unheard and un-
heeded. Temptations surprise us and overthrew us ; and
prayer itself is nothing but a time of more nian usual
distractions because the time out of prayer is not spent
in recollection. The very act by which we apply our
attention to prayer does little more than empty our minds
of our duties, so as to give more room for distractions
than we had while hand and head and heart were in the
occupations of daily life.

This habit of recollection is only to be acquired by
degrees. There is no royal road to it. We must make
the occasional practice of silence one of our mortifica-
tions, if we can do so without singularity or ostentation ;
and seeing that for the most part we all talk more in con-
versation than others would wish us to do, it would not
be hard to mortify ourselves in this way. We should
also watch jealously any eagerness to hear news, and to

OUR SIGNS OP PROGRESS. 43

know what is going on in the great world around us.
Until we feel the presence of God habitually and can
revert to Him easily, it is astonishing with what readi-
ness other subjects can pre-occupy and engross us; and it
is just this which we cannot afford to let them do. News-
papers keep not a few back from perfection. Visiting the
Blessed Sacrament daily is another means of acquiring
recollection. We feel the visit long after it is over. It
makes a silence in our hearts and wraps an atmosphere
around us, which rebuke the busy spirit of the world.
The practice of retaining some spiritual flower, maxim
or resolution, from our morning's meditation, in order to
supply us with matter for ejaculatory prayer during the
day, is a great help to the same end. Bodily mortifica-
tion is a still greater, especially the custody of the senses,
when we can practise it unnoticed. But the greatest
help of all is to act slowly. Eagerness, anxiety, Meli-
oration, precipitancy, these are all fatal to recollection.
_jet us do everything leisurely, measuredly and slowly,
and we shall soon become recollected, and mortified as
well. Nature likes to have much to do, and to run from
one thing to another; and grace is just the opposite of
this.

I do not know a better picture of recollection than
Fenelon's description of grace, which he sent to a person
who was just going into a convent. "God would have
you wise, not with your own wisdom, but with His. He
will make you wise, not by causing you to make many
reflections, b'lt on the contrary by" destroying all the un-
quiet reflections of your false wisdom. When you shall
no longer act from natural vivacity, you will be wise with-
out your own wisdom. The movements of grace are

44 HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OP

simply ingenuous, infantine. Impetuous nature thinks
much and speaks much. Grace thinks little and says
little, because it is simple, peaceable, and inwardly re-
collected. It accommodates itself to different charac-
ters. It makes itself all to all. It has no form nor con-
sistence of its own ; for it is wedded to nothing ; but
takes all the shapes of the people it desires to edify. It
measures itself, humbles itself, and is pliable. It does
not speak to others according to its own fulness, but ac-
cording to their present needs. It lets itself be rebuked
and corrected. Above all things, it holds its tongue, and
never says anything to its neighbour which he is not able
to bear : whereas nature lets itself evaporate in the heat
of inconsiderate zeal." *

The peculiar rewards which recollection brings with U
bIiow how appropriate a grace it is to this particular epocli
of the spiritual life. The difficulties of prayer are more
easily surmounted, and some of its more dangerous delu-
sions avoided. It seems also to prevail more with God
when it is offered from a recollected heart, and the
answers come quicker and more abundantly. Sweetness
and sensible devotion once more revisit the soul along
with the peace in which recollection plunges it; and lib-
erty of spirit, arising from the detachment from all earthly
things, which is gradually the consequence of recollection,
enables us to fly, rather than to walk, along the path of
perfection.

Without recollection, this liberty of spirit becomes mere
license and dissipation, and our spiritual life nothing but
* presumptuous imitation of the freedoms which the saints
have purchased by years of heroic self-restraint and dis-
interested love. How many fall into this pitfall, whence
* Lettres, tome v., p. 398

OtR SIGNS OF PROGRESS. 45

they are drawn out only to go down into Egypt as bonds-
men ! For recollection is itself a holy captivity, to which
we are unwilling to submit; but from which we only free
ourselves to meet a worse and harder slavery. Vanity
and cowardice are equally the sworn foes of recollection ;
for to vanity it is always unfolding pictures of self which
are anything but flattering, and cowardice is perpetually
annoyed by its loud calls to reform and mortification, which
grow more irksome the longer they are delayed.

In a word, at this season of our pilgrimage, external
things, though a necessary probation, are a trial almost
above our grace to bear. They begin by engaging, pos-
sessing, pre-occupying us ; and no sooner are our minds
completely filled by them, than they beguile our hearts,
and entice us into a thousand human attachments, which,
however spiritual their pretexts may be, are nothing
more than a veritable slavery. The mind and heart thus
•ubdued, nothing is wanting but the third and last pro-
cess of corrupting us, which is accomplished by dissipa-
tion, sensuality, and the maxims of the world. We may
be sure then that without recollection we shall make no
progress.

Fidelity is the other great aid of this epoch of the spi-
ritual life. What is meant by it is this. Even although
we may not be living under a rule of life, still as a matter
of fact the duties and devotions of one day very much
resemble those of another. It is practically as if we
promised God certain things, and a particular round of
religious observances : so much so that conscience re-
proaches us whenever we causelessly intermit any of them.
Thus these daily observances come to be a kind of condi-
tion of our perseverance. They acquire a sort of sanctity,

46 HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OP

and become the ordinary channels by which God pourc
His grace into our souls. The tempter sees all this, and
estimates this daily perseverance at its just value. He
puts forth all his strength to throw us out of it, and
makes us fretful and irregular. He makes it feel heavy
to us as a weight of lead. Or he represents it to us as a
dangerous formality. Or he reminds us that we are not
bound to it either by obedience or by vow. Or he con-
trives that we should read something that was meant for
scrupulous persons, and mistakenly apply it to ourselves.
Or he makes us fancy that such regularity is not good for
our health. Any pretext will do, so long as he can allure
us into unfaithfulness, either to the movements of grace,
or to our routine of spiritual exercises. His anxiety to
make us unfaithful is the token to us of the paramoun
importance of fidelity.

The legitimate decay of our first fervours, when their
time was accomplished, has naturally thrown us more
upon ourselves. This is an anxious thing, though it was
always intended, and must have come sooner or later.
But one consequence of it is that it has become more
necessary than ever for us to wear a yoke of some kind,
ind to learn what ascetical writers call the spirit of capti-
vity. This is of great value to us, as it makes all our
conquests and acquisitions real, and preserves them for
us. Moreover, we stand in need of cheerfulness to face
the long outstretching desert that lies before us; and
nothing keeps alive in us a holy joy more effectually than
fidelity to grace and our appointed observances. The
sense of wretchedness which follows frequent or habitual
laxity, drives us tc seek consolation from creatures, and
to re-enter the world that we may have the pleasure of

OUR S1GNI. OF PROGRESS. 47

forgetting ourselves thew awhile, and hiding ourselves
from the merciful persecution of exciting grace. Besides
which, the formation of virtuous habits is interrupted by
our unfaithfulness, and this weakens our whole position,
and makes our future harder, while actual ground also it
lost by the intermission. In a word, fidelity is the ra\*
material of perseverance ; and to perceive this, is to sec
that its importance cannot be exaggerated.

These then are for the present our two guardian angels,
recollection or a constant peaceful attention to God ana
the issues of our own hearts, and fidelity, as well to the
inspirations of grace as to the daily practices which coun-
sel, obedience or our own choice have caused us gradually
to bind upon ourselves. Bearing this in mind, I come to
a direct answer to my question, what are we to do in order
to cultivate the signs of progress which we perceive in
ourselves ? I will make five recommendations.

1. Let us at once do something more for God than we
are doing at present. Let us examine what we actually
do, and see what it amounts to, and how far it exacts any
effort from us. Let us think whether we could not bear
more, and yet not faint beneath the burden. Can we add
anything, without much hardship ? I put this last ques-
tion, because I am sure that just now it is the safe course
to pursue. We shall be all the more heroic for it in the
end. There is no heroism like discretion. Watch the
Church canonizing a saint, and you will see how this idea
haunts her and pursues her. But whatever we add, how-
ever trifling it may be, should be something to be se-
riously persevered in. It must not be a novena, or s,
month's prayer, but something solid. And do not l*t -as

18 HOW TO MAKE MOST OF

be hasty in deciding that we cannot afford to do more at
present. Be cautious ; but be generous as well.

2. There is however something which we can infallibly
do ) and that is, put a more interior spirit into what we

ctually do. Some men are so shocked by the sight of
any wanton waste in housekeeping, that quite apart from
all mercenary considerations, it makes them downright
melancholy. We may well be sorrowful in the spiritual
world to see the waste of good words and works for the
mere want of an interior spirit and a supernatural inten-
tion. Men are sowing good seed on rocks all the day
long. Alas that it should be so ! For, with a little pains,
how easy it seems to aim each of our actions to the greater
glory of God, and inwardly to unite our will to His in
all we plan or do or suffer. The difference between an
action with this interior intention and without it may
almost be called infinite ; and the results of the practice
to our souls in the way of holiness are immense. The
results of prayer and mortification are not to be compared
with those of an interior spirit. Of course time is re-
quired to mature them. They do not manifest themselves
in a day. Nothing is less revolutionary than the spiritual
life. Its changes are constitutional, imperceptible and
slow. We must not imagine we shall find ourselves saints
when we have practised this interior spirit for a month.
But we may be quite sure that if we persevere, some-
thing great will come of it.

3. Another way of cultivating the signs of progress
which we perceive in ourselves is to pray for a greater
desire of perfection. I repeat what I said before, that
we do not value this mere desire at its proper price. If
we did, we should make more use of it ; for we always

OUR SIGNS OF PROGRESS 49

Use what we esteem. It is in reality praying against
worldliness, accustoming ourselves to unworldly standards
and ideas, and destroying the old influence which the
corrupt maxims of the world are still hiddenly exercising
over our hearts. It conveys to us a much truer and more
reverential appreciation of the majesty of God, of the
lovingness of grace, and of the incomparable pre-eminence
of all spiritual things. It is true that we seldom fulfil
what we desire ; for it is as of old, the spirit is willing,
but the flesh is weak. Nevertheless what we do accom-
plish beam some proportion to what we desire, and espe*
cially to tLe vehemence of our desire. These are great
reasons for fostering this supernatural desire the most we
can. Rodriguez' treatise on the value to be set on spiritual
things is in my judgment the most excellent part of his
most precious book.

4. It is of importance also not to allow ourselves to rest
J any pursuit except the service of God. By resting I
Jiean feeling at home, reposing on what we do, forgetting
it is a mere means even when we do not err so far as to
mistake it for an end, being contented with what we are,
not pushing on, nor being conscious that we are fighting
a battle and climbing a hill. Nothing can excuse the
neglect of the duties of the position in life which God
has conferred upon us. All is delusive where these are
not attended to and made much of. They are as it were
private sacraments to each one of us. They are our
chief, often our sole, way of becoming saints. But while
we perform them with all the peaceful diligence which the
presence of God inspires, we must jealously realize that
they are means, not ends, subordinate and subservient to
tiie great work of our souls. No amount of externa]
5 »

60 HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF

work, not the unsleeping universal heroism of a Sfc Vin-
cent of Paul, can make up for the want of attention to
our own souls, such as resting in our external work would
imply. Hence we should be jealous of any great pleasure
in our pursuits, even when they are works of Christian
mercy and love. It is always a pleasure to do good; yet
it must be watched, moderated, and kept in check, or it
will do us a mischief before we are aware. The thought
of eternity is a good help to this. It brings down the
pride of external work, and takes the brightness and
colour out of our successes ; and this is well, for such
brightness and colour are nothing more than the reflection
of ourselves and our own activity.

5. There are also practices of humility peculiar to this
stage of the devout life, which we must not omit to notice.
We must not wish to forget our sins and give ourselves
up to the exclusive consideration of the immensity of
(rod's love. It is too soon for that yet. Indeed, in the
sense in which we are often inclined to take it, the time
for it will never come at all on this side the grave. We
should be filled continually with wondering thankfulness
that we, of all men, should have been so visited by God,
and so deluged with his choicest grace. It must almost
try our faith that being what we are, God should have
been to us what He has been. 0 blessed incredulity! 0
happy soul, that has to fight against this modest unbelief!
We must not be anxious about the heights we are likely
to reach in the spiritual life. It is a subject on which we
ought never to exercise our thoughts at all. Whatever
grace God may intend to give us, He has already given
us far more than we have corresponded to. Let us live
in inis thought, and make a hermitage of it for ourselves

OUR SIGNS OP PROGRESS. 51

We nwy desire as much as we please, so Jong as we do
not calculate or contemplate. Humility must give a cha-
racter to our very pursuit of virtue. It must not be dis
quieting or inordinate. Virtue itself is a means, not an
end; for virtue is not God, nor union with God. Do not
think this admonition strange. It is one that was con-
stantly in the mouth of St. Francis of Sales. We are so
bad that we can make even our pursuit of virtue a hin-
drance to our love of God. To sit quietly among our
own faults and meannesses, and to feel that there is our
place, is no slight thing. When Job sat down upon the
dunghill, he was to the eye of God a pleasant picture,
because he was expressing the feelings and the humility
of a creature in the presence and under the hand of his
Creator. Pursue virtue earnestly, but not eagerly. Do
not waste time by continually going back to measure the
ground you have travelled over. Do not be exacting to
yourself; for that will infallibly lead first to hurry, and
then to ill temper, and then to a forgetfulness of your own
badness, and then to a doubt of God's goodness. Be
slow. I shall have to say this a hundred times; because
there is not a difficulty or a danger of the spiritual life in
which it is not necessary advice. Last of all it belongs
to our present humility on no account to desire any super-
natural things to happen to us, such as voices at prayer,
visions, and the like. A person who desires such things
may become a prey to dreadful delusions at any moment;
and even if God really vouchsafed such gifts, they wouiu
be accompanied with great danger to our unpractijad and
not yet thoroughly mortified souls. We should probably
wrest them to our own destruction. Yet it is not an
nu<?o^amon temptation at this crisis. If St Therus&

52 OUR SIGNS OF PROGRESS.

thought it well to pray that God would lead her by the
common way, how necessary must such common guidance
be to us ! Still, I would hardly advise that we should
pray for it; lest the very prayer should fill our heads with
perilous conceits. There is no weakness or folly, which
need even surprise us in self-love.

In these five ways we may correspond to the graces
which God has already given us, and cultivate those fair
fresh promises of growth in holiness which He has allowed
us to exhibit in our souls. But I will not leave the sub-
ject of progress, without putting before you an extract
which Orlandini gives us from the papers of the Jesuit,
Peter Faber, the- companion of St. Ignatius. It is a
common mistake, says Orlandini, for men aiming at per-
fection to pay more attention to their daily falls than to
the further pursuit of virtue and progress in spirituality.
Of this Faber used often to complain, saying that it seemed
as if people took a greater pleasure in studying the art of
mistaking and falling, than that of acquiring the beauty
of virtue. He called this a fraud in the spiritual life.
For although it is a virtue to avoid vice, yet to be always
contemplating and deploring our sins, keeps the soul down
from higher and better things, and retards its holy impe-
tuosity whereby it attempts great works and rapidly climbs
heights of virtue, which are of themselves fatal to the
vices we less wisely try to diminish by this perpetual in-
spection and review of self.

THE SPIRIT _N WHICH WE SERVE GOD

CHAPTER IV.

THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SERVE GOD.

Theory is not much without practice ; yet without a
good theory practice for the most part is not itself worth
much, for it is neither fruitful nor enduring. If this is
true in most things, it is especially so in the spiritual
life. Now God is to us very much what we are to Him.
With the innocent Thou shalt be innocent, and with the
perverse Thou shalt be perverted. Having then observed
in ourselves certain signs of progress, been put upon our
guard against certain pretended signs, and seen what we
can do to cultivate the promise we have observed, it is de-
sirable that we should clearly understand in what spirit it
is that we commit ourselves to God, and pledge ourselves
to serve Him. A clear idea is a great help to us, and
consistency is no slight part of perseverance. Let us
then thoroughly understand what we are about, what we
are promising, what sort of a life it will lead to, and what
God may reasonably expect of us after our own voluntary
professions.

What I have to show then in this chapter is that with-
out liberty of spirit we can never be perfect, that there
is no true or safe liberty of spirit which does not follow
as a consequence from the spirit in which we serve God,
and hence that the only right spirit in which to serve
Him is one of self-sacrifice and generosity. When we
have mastered this chapter and turned it into practice,
5*

54 THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SERVE GOD,

we are already miles beyond where we were before.
People never go far enough, unless they start with a clear
view of how far they ought to go.

I will begin with the spirit in which most men serve
God.

There are many difficulties in life. Some men have
more, some less. But the most fearful of all no one can
get rid of, namely, that of having to deal with God. To
have to deal with God is a necessity as awful as it is in
dubitable and unavoidable. Contrast His reality with oui
untruth, His power with our weakness, His law with oui
disobedience. Enumerate His known perfections, remem
bering that there is no great or small with Him becauso
of His immensity and completeness. Analyze His tre-
mendous sanctity, and meditate separately on every
element of it, its awful minuteness, its unbearable
purity, its unspeakable sensitiveness, its terrific jealousy.
On our side there is a multitudinous fertility, day and
night, of thought, word, work, omission and intention :
on His side, the noting of all this, the stern requisition
of an invariably pure intention, the strict account, the
severity of the punishment, the eternity of the doom, and
the infallible inevitableness of it all.

His court in heaven we could not see and live, be-
cause of its radiant purity. The strong angels tremble
and are shaken ; our Lady is all abased ; and the Sacred
Heart of our Lord Himself is flooded with reverential
fear.

Along the line of Sacred History there gleam like
lights the dreadful chastisements which God has inflicted
on venial sins. Moses, and David, the man of God whom
the lion slew and Oza who upheld the swaying Ars —

THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SERVE GOD. • ft3

these examples are overwhelming disclosures of the sanc-
tity of God ; and the notable thing is7 that what seems to
anger God in these faults is the want of wholeness of
heart with Him. Let us look at our past lives by this
light, and have we not cause to tremble ; or even at our
present practice, and have we a right to be without fear '/
What a thought for us that He knows at this moment
how we are to stand to all eternity, what pains we are to
endure, or what bliss we shall enjoy. It is enough to
take away our breath to know that this is known, even
chough we still are free. Surely nothing can be con-
ceived more awful than having to deal with God.

What then follows from this ? Undoubtedly nothing
less than these five simple truths.

1. That His service is our most important, if not our
sole, work. This is so obvious that it requires only to
be stated. Time and words would alike be wasted in

he attempt to prove it. Yet alas ! even spiritual persons
need to be reminded of this elementary truth. Let us
subject ourselves to a brief examination upon it. Aro
we thoroughly convinced it is true ? Has our past life
shown proof of it ? Is our present life modelled upon it ?
Are we taking pains that our future life shall be so ?
What is the result when we compare our worldly promp-
titude and industry with our preference of the service of
God over all other things ? Are we in any way on the
look-out for His greater glory or our own greater union
with Him ? Is it plain at first sight that we have no
object or pursuit so engrossing and so decidedly paramount
as the service of God ?

2. That the Spirit in which ws serve Him should be
entirely without reserve. Need I prove this ? What if

56 THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SERVE UOD.

to be reserved ? Can there be reserves with God ? Cau
His sovereignty be limited, or our love of Him ever reach
the measure of enough ? But have we no reserve with
Him now? Is there really no corner of our heart over
which He is not absolute Lord ? Does He ask of us
freely what He wills, and do we do our best to give Him
all He asks ? Have we no implicit bargain or condition
with Him that He is only to go so far with us and no
further ? Is our outward life utterly and unconditionally
dependent on Him ? And if it is, is the kingdom of our
inward intentions reposing peaceably beneath His un-
questioned sceptre ?

3. That our ruling passion should be horror of sin,
even venial sin, and unworthy imperfections. Now do
we so much as know what this feeling means ? When
we read of it in spiritual books, does it not sound to u?
like an unreal exaggeration ? Have we even heartily
prayed for an increased hatred of sin ? Are there not
many evils which afflict us far more keenly ? Are we at-
tracted to Gethsemane, and to the mysterious vision of
our Master crushed, like the grapes in a wine-press,
beneath the mental horror of the world's sins? Until
we know something of this horror of sin, supernatural
principles can hardly be said to have taken possession of
our minds.

4. That we should avoid, as if it were sacrilege, any
slovenliness in our dealings with God. Surely the terror
of His majesty, as well as the immensity of His love,
should make this one of our fundamental axioms. There
is a personal contempt about slovenliness which makes it
perfectly horrible to couple even the idea of it with God.
It is far more truly a practical atheism, than many gross

THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SER 7E GOD. 57

Bins into which the vehemence cf our guilty passions may
betray us. Yet how do matters stand with our medita-
tion, vocal prayer, mass, confession, and communion?
And if it be so with our directly spiritual duties, what
shall be said of those occupations of our calling out of
which we are to work our salvation, and which can only
be sanctified by extreme purity of intention ?

5. That the only one fact of any especial importance
to us is whether we are honestly serving God or not.
Shall we be saved or not! The whole of life's solem-
nity and seriousness resolves itself into that one over-
whelming doubt. We should have nothing so much at
heart as this. Nay rather we should have nothing at
heart but this. How dead to self we should soon become
under the shadow of this universal, life-long question !
Yet how does the case really stand ? A little wrong, a
trifling injustice, an insulting word, a piquing of our self-
love and personal vanity, stirs us more effectually and
interests us more really than the chances of being lost or
saved. And yet we are aiming at a devout life ! And
yet we dream that we are serving God !

It is plain, without speaking of high thing: or of fer-
vent devotions, that merely to carry out in the service
of God these five self-evident truths, we must serve Him
in a spirit of generosity and self-sacrifice. But the spirit
of generosity may be looked at in two ways; as it exists
in our own hearts, and as it actually inspires our conduct
We are thinking of it just now in the first point of view.
Its victory over our external actions is a work of time and
combat. It will not only be long before it is achieved,
but in point of fact it never will be achieved to the extent
which we ourselves see to be possible. What I want to

58 THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SERVE GOD.

impress upon you is that even as a theory it is of immense
utility. Unless we see clearly what it is to be generous
with God, and have steadfastly determined to be so, there
is no likelihood that the slightest degree of generosity will
actuate our external conduct. What we want in our
present position is that we shall not consciously at
least have any reserves with God, that we shall set no
definable bounds either to our love of Him or to our
sacrifice for Him, that we shall not fix our eye on any
imaginary point of future perfection and say that when
we are arrived at that we shall be content, that as we
read or hear of the states and stages of the spiritual life
and the practices of courageous mortification, we shall
never feel of any of them that it will never be a practical
matter to us. You see I am putting it all in the nega-
tive. I am not saying you shall positively determine at
some future time to do this or to suffer that. I should
not wish it. I am only saying you must not exclude as
impossible or impracticable any amount of perfection.
You must have no reserve. You have nothing to do
with the future. You have to follow the present grace,
and then the grace which shall present itself next, and
then the grace after that, and so on, till God draws you
to a nearness to Himself which it would frighten you now
even to picture to yourself. You must abandon yourself
to grace and follow its lead. But unless you see the
reasonableness of this, and make up your mind to it
steadily beforehand, you are quite sure not to do it. This
is what I mean by having a good theory of generosity.
If you have not the theory now, you will never have the
practice hereafter.

Undeniable as the common sense of this may be, cor

THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SERVE GOD. 59

rupt nature will often plead eloquently against it. Con-
sequently this theory must not be merely a loving instinct
in the heart or an habitual resolution in the will. You
must verify it as an intellectual conviction. You must
have persuaded yourself of it. If not, when temptation
comes, you will tremble from head to foot with indecision,
and end by fainting. It is well, therefore, to make it a
frequent subject of meditation. You must accustom
yourself to true views about the Gospel. You must see
that, all through, it is a religion of suffering, of mortifi-
cation, of self-sacrifice, of consuming love, of self-forget-
ting zeal, of self-crucifying unio^, in a word, it is the
religion of the Cross and the Crwcified. You must get
well into you the truth so unpalatable to nature that self-
denial is of its essence, and that it must be daily self-
denial, not only that we may be perfect, but even that
we may be our dear Lord's disciples.

In truth, Jesus is our model, of whom the Holy Ghost
bade the apostle say that He pleased not Himself. Fix
your eyes on this Divine Exemplar; familiarize yourself
with the mysteries of His Sacred Humanity, until the
spirit of them passes into you. Learn the secret of His
Infancy, of His eighteen years Hidden Life, of His three
years Ministry, of His week's Passion, of His forty days
of Risen Life. Where is there any self? Is it not all
sacrifice in detail ? Is not all unreserved generosity for
the glory of His Father, and the perishing souls of men ?
This unreservedness is the grand characteristic of the
Incarnation. Look at His Passion. Take His Divinity
for the first point of your meditation on it. How did He
use it ? He restrained it from consoling Him ; He let it
itrengthen Him that He might suffer more, even beyond

60 THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SERVE GOD.

the ordinary limits of human endurance ; it was all the
while actually giving physical strength and vigour to His
executioners to torment Him with, and its concurrence
was the weight and the force of the burning lash. Then
look at His soul. In it He foresaw His passion all His
life long, so that it was a fear and a suffering of three-
and-thirty years. Gethsemane was, as it were, the cruci-
fixion of His Soul, as Calvary was of His Body ; and all
through the Passion His Soul was pierced by woes and
humiliations which have never been surpassed or equalled
for continuity, variety, and keenness. Then cast an eye
upon His Sacred Body. Nothing is held back. Heart,
Hands, Feet, Eyes, Mouth, Back, Heart, all have their
own torture, all contribute their own peculiar agony to
the grand Redeeming Sacrifice. His Blood is shed quite
wastefully, over the olive roots of Gethsemane, on the
pavement of Jerusalem, into the braided thongs and toe
knotted lashes, all along the way of the Cross, up Cal-
vary, and on the holy wood of the Cross, and it is sbed
until the emptied Heart has not another drop to give.
Wow compare all this with our own mean reserve and
half-heartedness ! Towards God what scanty prayers,
what careless examens, what heartless confessions, what
cold communions, what human respect, what grievous
sins ! Towards our neighbours, how selfish in action, how
unkind in word, how censorious in thought! Towards
ourselves, how indulgent, how conceited, what pampering
of our body, what worship of our will !

The great lesson of the Crucifix is whole-heartedness
with God, the spirit of joyous abandonment and generous
sacrifice. We may get a clearer idea of it if we look at
it from another point of view. We are quite oapabii* of

THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SERVE GOD. 61

ronceiving a man, a saint he could not be, exempt from
ftll actual sin, and observing to the full all the command-
ments in tlie letter, and yet without generosity to God.
Lt is. of course, a theological impossibility ; but wc are
capable of conceiving it This sinless man might, with-
out breaking any commandment, be occasionally dull-
hearted with God, grudging Him heroic service and
counsels which did not oblige. He might be sometimes
inclined to bargain with God, and to think he had now
done quite as much as was discreet. Now and then he
might give way to the feeling that his obedient life was
irksome, because of the unwearied and unremitting sacri-
fice which it entailed. At intervals he might even have
tits of lukewarmness, in matters plainly short of sin. He
might look on Jesus without any glow of enthusiasm,
and his acts of love might up to a certain point be remiss.
Hi this is possibly and imaginably consistent with entire
smlessness. Yet what is the disposition of this unsinning
monster, but the portrait of a devil, or something very
like it? And why, except for the absence of all gene-
rosity with God? It is just this which stamps, not the
unchristian, but the anti-christian character upon it.

Of a truth there has been a pure creature, who has
b^en exempt from every shade of sin ; and yet, if we may
pay so, sinlessness is not her highest prerogative, even
independent of the Divine Maternity. Cast an eye over
her sixty-three years, and you will see what is meant by
generosity towards God and unreservedness with Him.
Her first act of love and use of reason at the very moment
cf the Immaculate Conception was an entire and joyous
surrender of herself to God, and it was never retracted
for sa much as an instant through all those years. The
6

62 THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SERVE GOD

thought never crossed her of being aught else than all for
God. So when she made her vow of virginity, as the
most perfect offering to the infinite sanctity of God, she
sacrificed apparently the one object which was nearest and
dearest to every Jewish maiden's heart, even the hope of
being the Mother of the Messias. Then again when she
consented, in obedience to those who had a right to com-
mand her consent, to espouse St. Joseph, what an utter
abandonment of self it was ! Even her consent to the
Incarnation, and her acceptance of the dignity of Mother
of God, were acts of generosity, not only because of the
unequalled suffering they involved, but also because of
the violence she was called upon to do to her deep humi-
lity. Her presentation of Jesus in the temple, and her
acceptance of Simeon's prophecy, were equally examples
of her self-forgetting generosity with God. Amidst all
the trials of the Sacred Infancy she called for no miracles
to alleviate her cares. In the Holy House of Nazareth
her life was nothing else than a perpetual oblation of
Jesus and of herself to God. Her poverty was perfect ;
neither did she seek for spiritual consolations, but was
contented with the almost unbroken silence of her Divine
Son, when she longed for Him to speak. She parted
with Him unselfishly when He went upon His three
years' ministry, which, even when she followed Him, af
least broke up and rendered desultory her intercourse
with Him. She consented to His Passion, and co-ope-
rated with Him in all its steps. She spent fifteen years
of resigned desolation upon earth, when He had ascended,
and like a magnet had almost drawn her Immaculate
Heart up to heaven with His own. She gave Him away
to the Eternal Father in the Asceosioji, *fc<! without a

THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SERVE GOD. 63

«urmur took John for Jesus. How wonderful must her
detachment have been, who could detach herself even from
the presence of our dearest Lord, and which had nothing,
not even Himself, that it did not generously abandon to
the will of God !

Such is the spirit in which, according to our measure
and degree, we must resolve, by the help of His grace, to
serve Almighty God; and among the many reasons why
this should be so, I must notice one, because it belongs
to our present reflections. We have heard much of liberty
of spirit, and we have read that without it we can never
reach perfection. Every one agrees in saying great things
about liberty of spirit, and in desiring it for himself. But
few have any clear notion of what they themselves mean
by liberty of spirit : and for the most part, when they sup-
pose they are exercising that liberty, they are in reality
only making free with God and their religious duties in
a way which will be sharply visited on them at last.
Liberty of spirit does not then consist in being free from
a rule of life, and not having set duties for set times, nor
in changeableness with devotions, pious books and the
like, nor in the absence of self-accusation when we neglect
any of our exercises, nor in not making a scruple of what
other good people make a scruple, nor in being off-hand
and careless with the details of our actions on the ground
that God looks at the heart, nor in addressing hot words
to God, and courting His merciful caresses, when we are
taking no sort of pains to mortify ourselves and keep our
passions undsr. All this is slovenliness and impertinence,
not Christian liberty of spirit. Yet how many do we see
who by slightly and unconsciously degrading God in their
own ideas, and then making themselves very much at

64 THE SPIRIT TN WHICH WE SERVE GOD

home with His service, imagine that they are enjoying
the breadth and room and invigorating air of liberty,
when they are all the while debauching the very princi-
ples of reverence and religiousness in their own minds, and
are drinking venial sin, as thirsty beasts drink water I

If, however, it is not easy always to recognize liberty
of spirit, and to distinguish it from rudeness, irreverence,
or an unscrupulous self trust, the difficulty is very much
narrowed by reflecting that in most cases we can tell what
is not liberty of spirit. For no one can by any possibility
have a true liberty of spirit, who is not serving God in
a spirit of generosity. Now it is easy for us to know
whether we are doing or trying to do this or not ; and ii
the answer be in the negative, then we may be infallibly
certain that anything about us which looks like liberty of
spirit is in reality something else, and probably some-
thing highly undesirable. It is a help to us then to know
so much as this, that if we have not generosity, we have
not liberty.* The one answers to the other. Or at least
without generosity there can be no liberty, though irom
interior trials there may at particular seasons be generosity
without liberty.

The spirit of Jesus is a spirit of liberty. Scripture has
passed it into a Christian proverb, that where the spirit
of God is, there is liberty. When first it came into the
world, it was a spirit of liberty from the bondage of tear
and dark superstition which had reigned over the heathen,
from the narrowness and doubt and grovelling appetites
of the Greek and Roman unbelievers, and from the slavery
of ceremonial and positive precept which had schooled the

* I am not speaking of liberty in the theological or metaphysical
*enge; but of liberty of spirit, a characteristic of Christian piety.

THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SERVE GOD. 65

Jews for our Saviour's coming. It 13 a spirit of liberty
Because it is a law of love, not because it is love only, but
because it is a law also, and a law of love. It is liberty
because of the munificent superabundance of the Great
Sacrifice, and, above all other reasons, because Jesus is
God.

Hence we might naturally infer that the same liberty
would penetrate into our most intimate relations with our
Lord, and give a character to every phase of the spiritual
.ife. And such is in truth the case. For Christian
liberty consists in freedom from sin, as degrading to our
nature and destructive of self-respect, as in itself full of
wretchedness, as the most grinding of tyrannies, and
tbove all as an offence against an infinitely good God
It consists in freedom from the penalties of sin, such as
God's anger, hell, and an evil death But it is also free-
dom from worldliness, that is, from a heart set on the
world, from a mind full of it, from low views, and from
that series of successive disappointments which befall
every man who finds comfort in the world. It is a free-
dom from slavery to other men; for it makes persecution
nothing more to us than a means of meriting, and calumny
x sweet likeness to Jesus, while it begins the work which
is only to end with the last breath we draw, deliverance
from human respect. But most of all, liberty of spirit
is freedom from self; for how shall the freedman of
Christ sink to be the slave of self? To be free from
littleness, from self-love, from secret meanness, and from
the haunting of our own shame, this is to be free indeed,
and there is no other freedom which deserves the name.

in one word then, liberty of spirit consists not at arl
in being more free with God or less anxious in the dis-
6* E

66 THE SPIRIT IN WHICH WE SER FE GOD.

charge of our spiritual duties, but in this single thing,
detachment from creatures. Liberty and detachment
are one and the same thing. He is free who is detached,
and he only. And it is plain that no one can be detached,
who is not generous also ; for generosity consists in de«
taching ourselves, always at cost and with pain, from
creatures for the sake of the Creator.

Oh that we were all made free with this heavenly free«
dom ! For there is nothing to which the glory of a free
soul can be compared but the worshipful magnificence of
God Himself. The soul detached stands on a height and
breathes the air of heaven. Creation lies far below it,
like a speck in space. Angels and saints are its co".rt
and purity its atmosphere. Jesus is its brother, its com-
panion, and its likeness. Its will is always done, beoau.se
it is always with the will of God ; so that in this sense
it is omnipotent as He is. Its wisdom is supernatural,
and unintelligible to earthly minds. Its peace is endless,
profound and above the reach of foes. Its joy is abso-
lutely in the unspeakably joyous life of God, and in
nothing short of it. 0 how wonderful is the dignity of
those who have been ransomed by the Precious Blooa of
Jesus, and so sweetly justified by His victorious Kesur-
rection ! The heavens are not so high as is their liberty,
nor the sea so deep, nor the plains of earth so wide
Poverty cannot soil it, grief eannct f^dden it, death can-
not end it. 0 beyond all words that an over-full heart
can utter, blessed, thrice blessed be God, for the freedom
wherewith Christ hath made us free t

WHAT HOLDS US BACK. 6'

CHAPTER V.

WHAT HOLDS US BACK

It seems now as if we had got our course clearly laid
down, and had received our instructions as to the spirit in
which we should serve God. We are fairly out of har-
bour, but how is it that we are not making way? We
Bee others around us in full course, but no breeze is fill-
ing our sails. Whether it is that we are still under the
influence of the shore, or whether it be that something
else is in fault, it is clear that we are not catching the
wind. Such is the common complaint ef many souls at
this period. Something holds them back j and they do
not all at once see what it is. Our business now is to
discover these secret obstacles, and see how to deal with
them.

Our first step must be to examine the symptoms which
betray that all is not right with us. First of all we expe-
rience a want of power in resisting temptations, in going
through with our penances, and in being faithful to our
devotional observances. Then we feel a want of elasti-
city in surprises which come upon us, in changes, in
trials of temper, in the management of exterior duties,
and the reconciliation of them with devotion and the
interior life. Moreover we are conscious of a certain defi-
ciency of inward light. Our examinations of conscience
become hazy and dim. An inclination to scruple an«j
littleness grows upon us, and we seem to lose the sight of
God which we bad before, and which, imperfect as it was,

68 WHAT HOLDS US BACK.

was a true illumination. There is a vagueness about out
spintnal combat, which we feel requires more definiteness
as well as more vigour. And added to all this, a sort ot
drowsy laziness is creeping over us like the oppression
rf a dream.

Something is wrong, it is clear; the question is, what?
Here are three wants, power, elasticity, and inward light,
*o be accounted for. They arise from various causes.
Partly they are the result of the attention we have been
almost obliged to pay to ourselves and the interior expe-
diences of our souls in these early stages of the spiritual
life. Self-inspection is always dangerous even when it is
necessary ; and consequently it is never to be practised
Without its proper accompanying antidote. Self-knowledge
its both a grace and a necessity and a blessing ; yet none
ot these things prevent its being a danger also. The
dagger is in its leading us to unreality, sensitiveness,
atfeetation, and that which is the most disgusting of vices
in the spiritual life, sentimentality. It may be also that
we have not exercised faith sufficiently, and this may
account for the three wants in question. We have gone
by feeling, or by sweetness, or by impulse, rather than
by faith; and hence we have mistaken God's gifts for
God, and have accustomed our eyes to so strong an arti-
ficial light that we cannot see in the soft twilight which
belongs to the Christian life. Or we have not been suffi-
ciently solicitous to keep ourselves in harmony with the
spirit of the Church, neglecting certain devotions, or
lightly esteeming them, such as confraternities, scapulars,
indulgences, nud the like. Or we have not looked suffi-
ciently out of ourselves to the objects of faith, but have
res*ed on self-im^ri/vement too exclusively and too

WHAT HOLDS US BACK. 69

anxiously ; and devotion never can neglect doctrine with-
out paying dearly for it in the end. There is nothing
Satan can clog our wheels with more effectually than an
untheological devotion. Or again our lii-take may have
arisen from our neglecting external works of mercy and
edification, and our not being r.o scrupulously careful aa
we should be in our intercourse with others.

From all this we are led to conclude that our secret
obstacles consist of three mistakes in our ioterior life,
and two in our exterior. The present chapter shall
consider the first three, and the next chapters the fourth
and fifth of these mistakes.

1. It is not impossible that what is holding us back is
defective devotion to our Blessed Lady. Without this
devotion an interior life is impossible,' for an interior life
is one wholly conformed to tbe will of God ; and our
Blessed Laiiy is especially His will. She is the solidity
of devotioa. Yet this is not always sufficiently kept in
mind. Beginners are often so busy with the metaphysics
of the spiritual life that they do not attribute sufficient
Importance to this devotion. I will mention some of the
jonsi'ierations which they do not seem to lay to heart.
Devotion to the Mother of our Lord is not an ornament
of the Catholic system, a prettiness, a superfluity, or even
a help, out of many, which we may or may not use It
is an integral part of Christianity. A religion is not,
strictly speaking, Christian without it. It would be a
different religion from the one God has revealed. Our
luady is a distinct ordinance of God, and a special means
of grace, the importance of which is best tested by the
intelligent wrath of the evil one against it and the instinc-
tive hatred which heresy bears to it. She is the neck of

70 WHAT HOLDS US BACK.

the mystical body, uniting, therefore, all the members with
their Head, and thus being the channel and dispensing
instrument of all graces. The devotion to her is the true
imitation of Jesus \ for, next to the glory of His Father, it
was the devotion nearest and dearest to His Sacred Heart.
It is a peculiarly solid devotion, because it is perpetually
occupied with the hatred of sin and the acquisition of
substantial virtues. To neglect it is to despise God, for
she is His ordinance, and to wound Jesus, because she is
His Mother. God Himself has placed her in the Church
as a distinct power; and hence she is operative, and a
fountain of miracles, and a part of our religion which we
can in nowise put in abeyance. Spirituality must be
orthodox. This is self-evident. Now doctrine could not
be orthodox which pretermitted the office and preroga-
tives of the Mother of God ; so neither can spirituality
be orthodox, if it be distinct or separable from a just de-
votion to her, and a devotion generous as well as just.
Indeed a mistake in doctrine is doubly dangerous when it
is worked up into the spiritual life. It poisons every-
thing, and there is no mischief which may not be pre-
dicted of the unfortunate soul which is the subject of it.
If then you have the symptoms of something wrong,
something retarding you, look first of all if your devotion
to our Blessed Lady is all it ought to be, in kind ani
degree, in faith and in trust, in love and in loyalty. Per-
fection is under her peculiar patronage, because it is one
of her special prerogatives, as queen of the Saints.

2. It may be that you are wanting in devotion to the
Sacred Humanity of Jesus and His mysteries. Even
this is possible, and not so uncommon as we could wish
to beiieve it. Yet who could doubt that the devotion

WHAT HOLDS US BACK.

which may not leave us on the highest heights of con tern
plation, is quite indispensable in the states of the spiritual
life which we are considering? It must interpenetrate
every part of the Christian life ; and being a Christian
means this, if it means anything. Christ is the Chris-
tian's way, the Christian's truth, and the Christian's life.
To lead a holy life is to be the Spouse of the Incarnate
Word; and therefore the love of the Incarnate Word is
the very neart of holiness. The love of the Sacred
Humanity is of three kinds ; one represents our interior
affections towaids our Lord, another the proofs of the
sincerity and solidity of those affections, and another the
operations which Jesus Himself causes in the souls that
are sufficiently well disposed. They are called, respec-
tively, Affective, Effective, and Passive Love.

Affective love of our dear Lord consists in an intense
desire of His glory, in a joyous complacency in the suc-
cess of his interests, and in an affectionate beautiful sorrow
at the view of sin. It leads us to pour out our whole
souls in confidence before Him, to complain of our cold-
ness and imperfections, to put before Him our pains,
wearinesses, disgusts and trials, and to abandon all to Him
with a quiet and childlike indifference.

Effective love makes us the living images of Jesus,
representing in our own lives His states, His mysteries,
and His virtues. We bear His image outwatdly by con-
tinual mortification, by diminishing and narrowing our
bodily comforts, by regulating our senses, by cutting
down the extravagant requisitions of the world and soci-
ety, by a jealous moderation of innocent affections and
pleasures, and a perpetual repression of all vanity and
conceit. Our interior life is conformed to Jesus by lib-

72 WHAT HOLDS US BACK.

erty of spirit, which means detachment from creatures
and conformity to His will. Our external actions have
His character stamped upon them, when we act as His
members, and all our actions are done in dependence upon
Him, and according to His movement.

Passive love I speak of, rather that we may learn to
thirst for what one day may be ours, than that it is, ordi-
narily speaking, to be looked for at this stage of the spi-
ritual life. It is cheering to see how close, please God,
we may one day be to Jesus even before we die. His
first operation in this supernatural state is to wound our
souls with love, so that we lose our taste for everything
which is not Him or His. It is as if a new nature were
given us, so little in harmony with the wretched world
around us, that we languish and pine, as out of our proper
element. Then He deepens the wound, and makes all
our thoughts, affections, words and works to be imbued
with His love, until we are unable to do anything but
seek after Him, like the Spouse in the Canticles. Every
love is renounced but His, every idea effaced from our
minds but of Him, and everything which is out of rela-
tion to Him drops from our remembrance as though it
had never been. So that He possesses our soul altoge-
ther, and it is not so much we who live as He who lives
in us. Then He sets us all on fire with resistless love,
and makes us break out into actions of heroic charity and
supernatural union with Him, while all the time He so
deepens in us the sense of our own vileness and nothing-
ness that we do nothing but deplore the meanness of our
service and the dulness of our hearts. And lastly He
throws us into a state of purifying suffering, and fastens
on our shoulders the perpetual cross, when we seek for

WHAT HOLDS US BACK. 78

nothing but to suffer more, and shrink fr;.m nothing but
to suffer less. So He strips us of ourselves, and makes
us wholly His. But all this is a long way on. Look
up and strain your eyes. I do not know that you will
so much as see the mountain tops where all this will be
found. But good cheer ! it is something to know that
those fair heights are really there.

It is inconceivable what advantages we derive from
these exercises of love of the Incarnate Word. The
heart detaches itself from creatures ; self-love burns down
and goes out \ imperfections are corrected ; the soul is
filled with the spirit of Jesus, and advances with giant
strides along the paths of perfection. See then, if you
are catching no wind in your sails, whether your love of
our Lord's adorable Person and Sacred Humanity is all
it ought to be, all He meant and all He asks, or at least
whether you are distinctly cultivating it, and doing your
best daily to make it grow.

3. The third deficiency, and I am inclined to suppose
it by far the most common, may be a want of filial feel-
ing towards God. I wish I could be very cle^r, as well
as very strong, about this, because so very much depends
upon it. If our view of God is not uniformly and
habitually that of a Father, the very fountains of piety
will be corrupted within us. We shall incur the woe of
which the prophet speaks ; our sweet will be bitter, and
our bitter sweet.

Our position towards God is that of creatures. See
what is involved in this. We belong absolutely to Him.
We have no rights but those which He compassionately
cnooses to secure to us by covenant. Our life is at the
mercy of providence, and providence is not a mere course
7

74 WHAT FOLDS US BACK.

of external events, but the significant will of Thres
DWine Persons, One God. Our condition in the next
life is known to Him already ; and we on our part know
that more grace than He is obliged to give is necessary
for us, although we know of an infallible certainty that
He will give it us, if we choose to correspond to what
we have. Yet this last consideration cannot wholly allay
the nervousness which the view of our position naturally
causes us. Reflection on the attributes of God, His
omniscience, omnipotence, immensity and ineffable holi-
ness, is not calculated to diminish this feeling. Never-
theless the conviction that the spirit of adoration, the
temper of worship, the instinct of religiousness, reside
simply in our always feeling, speaking, and acting towards
trod as creatures, that is, as beings who have no indepen-
dent existence but have been called out of nothing by
Him, is in reality so far from projecting a gloomy shadow
over us, or exciting an internal disquietude, that the more
seriously these truths are received into the soul, and the
more unreservedly the sovereignty of God is acknowledged
by us, the more tranquillizing, supernaturally tranquillia-
ing, will their effect be found.

Yet this does not appear on the surface, nor until the
mind has become habituated to, and imbued with, reli-
gious thought. .We are tempted to look at God in almost
any light rather than that of a Father, as well because
of our own helplessness, as His overpowering immensity
and omnipotence. Yet our spiritual life depends entirely
on the view we take of God. If we look at Him as our
Master, then His service is our task, and the ideas of
reward and punishment will pervade all we do. If wa
regard Him as our King, surely we must be crushed by

WHAT HOLDS US BACK. 76

the indubitable rights of His unquestionable despotism,
and nothing more tender than an abstraction of dutiful
loyalty may we dare to cherish in our hearts. If we look
at Him as our Judge, the thunders of His vengeance
deafen us, the awful minuteness of His indictment strikes
us dumb, and the splendour of His intolerable sanctity
blinds us. If we consider Him exclusively, in any one
of these lights, or in all of them, it is plain our service
of him will take its character from our views. Hardness,
dryness, untempered fear, and a consciousness of our be-
ing unable to stand upon our rights, will necessarily make
us cowardly and mean, cringing and mercenary, querulous,
and as disrespectful as we dare to be.

But we may even look at Him as our Creator, and yet
be wrong. For it is possible to consider a Creator to be
an independent and eternally self-existing Being, who for
His own good pleasure, as First Cause, has called crea-
tures out of nothing, and cares as little for them as He is
beholden to them. Yet it seems to me as if to be a
Creator implies the being a Father too. The very will
of creation is surely a stupendous act of paternal tender-
B#«9. Thus God is not only our Father and our Creator
also, but He is our Father because He is our Creator. A
rational creature, to be a creature, must be a son also.
W<? bring with us out of our primal nothingness the filial
tie Creation ranges itself rather under goodness than
under power or wisdom. So that if I knew no more of
God than that He was my Creator, I ought to feel that
He was my Father also. Qui plasmasti me miserere
mei : Thou who formedst me have mercy on me, was the
lifelong prayer of the penitent of the desert. There wa*

76 WHAT HOLDS US BACK.

a sort of right, or a sound of right, in the very appella-
tion, which endeared it to her lowliness and timidity.

However this may be, there is no truth more certain
than that God is our Father; and that all that is most
tender and most gentle in all paternity on earth is but the
merest shadow of the boundless sweetness and affectiou-
ateness of His paternity in heaven. The beauty and
consolation of this idea surpasses words. It destroys the
sense of loneliness in the world, and puts a new colour on
chastisement and affliction. It calls consolation out of
the very sense of weakness, enables us to trust God for
the problems we cannot solve, and binds us by a sense
of most dear relationship to all our fellow-men. The
idea enters into, and becomes the master thought of even
all our spiritual actions. In sin, we remember it; in
aiming at perfection we lean upon it; in temptations we
feed upon it; in suffering we enjoy it. He is our Father
in the ordinary events of life, in protection from a thou-
sand evils which He never lets us feel, in answers to
prayer, in blessing those we love, and in forbearance with
ourselves, forbearance with a degree of coldness and
incorrigibleness which is almost incredible, even to our-
selves.

He is our Father not nominally only, but really also.
As I said, the tie comes out of creation. The Creator
has a marvellous and mysterious sensible love for His
creatures, with which no earthly affection can compare
for indulgence or for tenderness. Moreover He has been
pleased to make our interests identical with His ; and He
has so created us in His likeness and image as that we
should reflect even His Divine Majesty. But he is our
Father also by covenant; and as He ever effects what He

WHAT HOLDS US BACK. 77

promises, this new paternity is as real as the other. And
beyond all ties of nature, grace and glory, by which He
calls us children, He is our Father in a way we can never
fully know, in that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ.

Out of this filial feeling towards our heavenly Father
comes ease of conscience as to past sin. We can trust
Him, in sweet confidence, even with the unutterable de-
cision of our eternal doom. We enjoy liberty of spirit
in indifferent actions, mingled with an intense desire to
serve Him which our filial love inspires. Out of it
come also a sweet forgetfulness of self, enjoyment in
prayer, patience in doubts, calmness in difficulties, light-
heartedness in trials, and an uncomplaining contentment
in desolation. We worship Him for his own blessed
{sake, because He is our most dear Father. Happy sun-
shine of this thought ! it falls upon our souls with triple
beam, more trust in God, more freedom with God, more
generosity with God !

1 have dwelt upon this, because it is of paramount
importance that we should be thoroughly imbued with the
true spirit of the Gospel ) and the missing of it so fre-
quently as men do, is partly owing to their not remem-
bering every hour of the day that our Blessed Lord is
God, and partly to their mixing some other idea of God
with that of Father, and allowing the harsher element to
preponderate. The spirit of the Gospel is tenderness;
and these three wants I have been examining, of devotion
to our Lady, of devotion to the Sacred Humanity, and
of filial feelings towards God, are at once effects of want
of <,endernes. and causes of the continued want. This is
the great occult hindrance. With your chivalrous desire
7*

78 WHAT HOLDS US BACK

for perfection, your disgust with the world, and youi
appreciation of high things, you expect to be making
progress, and are disappointed. I have already asked you
to examine yourselves, and see whether you are not want
ing in devotion to our Blessed Lady, to our dear Lord's
Sacred Humanity, and to the ever-blessed Paternity of
God. Now let me put it in another shape. The want
of these three things means in reality the want of tender-
ness, though it means other things as well. But the
absence of tenderness in religion is often of itself enough
to stay man's growth in holiness. It is worth while,
therefore, to say something on this head. A man may be
in a certain sense religious : he may fear God, hate sin,
be strictly conscientious, and honestly desire to save his
soul. All these are most excellent things. But you
cannot say that the saints were men of this sort. They
had about them a sweetness, a softness, a delicacy, a gen-
tleness, an affectionateness, nay, I will dare to say, a
poetry, which gave quite a different character to their
devotion. They were living images of Jesus. This, in
Dur far inferior measure and degree, we also must strive
to be, if we would grow in holiness.

By tenderness is not meant a mere impressionableness,
soft-heartedness, or a facility of tears. These are as often
marks of cowardice, laziness, and a want of resolute will
and earnestness. True tenderness begins in various ways.
Its progress is marked by a sorrow for sin, without think-
ing of its punishment, by what I have elsewhere called a
touchiness about the interests of Jesus, by childlike doci-
lity to our superiors and spiritual directors, by mortifying
ourselves and not feeling it a yoke, by never thinking of
Btopping short at precej^ts without going on to counsels,

WHAT HOLDS US BACK. 79

i,Dd by a very faint, incipient, and as yet scarcely discern-
ible, appetite for humiliations. According as it is formed
in our souls, all the characteristics of sanctity gather to
it, and group themselves round it. For love is a greater
safeguard against sin than fear, and tenderness renders
our conversion to God more entire by making it more
easy. It especially attracts Jesus, whose spirit it is, and
who will not be outdone in His own peculiar sweetness.
Without this tenderness there can be no growth; and
while it renders duty more easy, and consequently the
performance of duty more perfect, it instils into us the
especially Christianlike instincts, such as love of suffering,
silence under injustice, a thirst for humiliations, and the
like. Moreover, it deepens sorrow for sin into a contrition
which is worth more to the penitent soul than any gift
that can be named. Look at the phenomena of the In-
carnation, what were they? Helplessness, unnecessary
and unobliged suffering, sacrifice, abasement, continual
defeat, no assertion of rights, carelessness of success, and
most pathetic wrongs. And what is our response to all
these things, but the temper which is expressed by that
one word tenderness ?

The Sacred Infancy teaches us tenderness ; the Pas-
sion tenderness ; the Blessed Sacrament tenderness ; the
Sacred Heart tenderness. But look at the common life
of Jesus among men, and you will see more clearly what
this tenderness is like. There is first the tenderness of
our Lord's outward deportment. The narrative of Palm
Sunday is an instance of it. Also His way with His
disciples, His way with sinners, and His way with those
in affliction or grief who threw themselves in His road.
He quenched not the smoking flax nor broke the bruised
reed. This was a complete picture of Him. There was

80 WHAT HOLDS US BACK.

tenderness in His very looks, as when He looked on the
rich young man and loved him ; and St. Peter was con-
verted by a look. His whole conversation was imbued
with tenderness. The tone of His parables, the absence
of terrors in His sermons, and the abyss of forgiveness
which His teaching opens out, all exemplify this. He
is no less tender in His answer to questions, as when He
was accused of being possessed, and when He was struck
on the Face. His very reprimands were steeped in ten-
derness; witness the woman taken in adultery, James
and John, and the Samaritan, and Judas; nor was His
zeal less tender, as was evidenced when He rebuked the
brothers who would fain have called down fire from heaven
upon the Samaritan villagers, and also by the sweet meek-
ness of His divine indignation when He cleared the
temple.

Now if our Lord is our model, and if His spirit be
ours, it is plain that a Christianlike tenderness must
make a deep impression upon our spiritual life ; and in-
deed give it its principal tone and character. Without
tenderness we can never have that spirit of generosity in
which we saw that we must serve God. It is as neces-
sary to our interior life, or our relation with God, as it is
to our exterior life or relation with others ; and there is
one gift of the Holy Ghost, namely piety, whose special
office it is to confer this tenderness.

If then the secret obstacles of which you complain
concern your interior life, and arise from defects in your
devotional feelings and exercises, cultivate these three
Jevotions, to our Blessed Lady, to the Sacred Humanity
of Jesus, and to the Paternity of God, and great result
will follow. Put yourself right in these three things*
ind the sails will no longer idly flap against the mast.

EXTERNAL CONDUCT. 81

CHAPTER VI.

EXTERNAL CONDUCT.

1 hinted in the last chapter that one reason why we
felt ourselves hindered by some secret obstacles was that
we had neglected our external conduct, and had not been
careful to apply the principles of-, the spiritual life to our
intercourse with others. It is to be wished we could
always remember the importance of this. But there is
a more especial necessity for us to bear it scrupulously in
mind in the earlier stages of the devout life. For a be-
ginner has great temptations to esteem very lightly his
external conduct. He has recently been learning for the
first time the importance of pure intention, habitual re-
collection, and the supremacy of an interior life. Mode-
ration is difficult to human nature; and what is novel
never gives fair play to what is old and familiar. Hence,
though no one would dare to put it into words, a beginner
filled with the true but to him fresh thought that the
interior life is far superior to the exterior, thinks the
latter positively worthless, or even regards it as a tempta-
tion. The esteem of the one unfortunately breeds in him
a disesteem of the other, especially as a person who has
only recently begun to be thoroughly religious is always
very much troubled with an inclination to entertain con-
temptuous feelings about persons and things. Contempt
is the most universal temptation of beginnings. To be
a man m* one idea is an easy thing, and there is a look

82 EXTERNAL CONDUCT.

of chivalry about it which helps the delusion. When a
beginner preaches a crusade against anything, we may
always suspect delusion. The spirit of a reformer is the
contradictory of the ascetical spirit. A crusade against
ourselves may be well enough, though better not even
that, until we have learned to subdue ourselves. But te
attack other men's faults is to do the devil's work for
him ; to do God's work is to attack our own.

How different is the wisdom of St. Ignatius ! When
we practise particular examen of conscience, he would
have us choose for the first object of our holy persecution,
not the fault which troubles us most or seems of the
greatest magnitude, but the one which most anno}'S our
neighbour and gives him disedification. This must be
our model.

Now let us think how it is that beginners, for I may
almost say we are but beginners in spirituality, though
what may be technically called our beginnings are past, —
how it is for the most part that they offend those around
them and bring devotion into discredit and disrepute. I
would not be harsh, as the world is, in speaking of these
faults, for with what difficulties are they not surrounded,
what enormous allowances are they not privileged to
claim, and what an immense thing it is that they should
thus be working heart and soul for God at all ! Besides
which it is the old leaven of the world to which they be-
longed, not their new principles, which are to blame for
what is ungraceful or amiss in their behaviour.

They offend then by indiscretion, not observing the
proprieties of time, place, age, person and circumstances ;
by inconsistency, because their conduct must appear such
to those who cannot discern in t,hen> *lw> iutero^ tw

EXTERNAL CONDUCT. 83

which they arc waging; by irritability, far less probably
than what the most unkindly critic would forgive if he
saw the inward soreness and the weariness of spirit which
strife and temptation cause ; by singularity, because it -Is
not easy for a man at once to take up with a new set of
painciples and always apply them correctly and gracefully
to the claims of conflicting duties ; and finally by what
is in truth no fault of his, but scandal taken rather than
given, because the maxims of the Gospel are so rudely
ancongenial with the maxims of the world.

We must therefore persuade ourselves that it is very
important to our spiritual progress and interior holiness
that we should take great pains in our intercourse with
others, in order that we may be to them the good odour
of Christ. Negligence on this point is the reason why
many fail in their attempts after perfection ; and while
they are looking within for the cause of their ill-success,
the true reason of it is to be found all the while in their
external conduct.

Now there is a wrong as well as a right in every spiri-
tual question. There is a wrong way of trying to edify
people, as well as a right one ; and we will consider the
wrong one first. We must never attempt to edify others
by any sacrifice of principle, to show, for example, how
free we are from bigotry, or how independent of forms
and ceremonies, or what liberty of spirit we have regard-
ing the observance of certain positive precepts. This is
only saying that we must not do evil that good may come.
Yet there is no slight temptation to a man, especially if
he has a little fit of unusual discretion upon him, to show
others at some expense of strict principle that our holy
religion is not so harsh and cruel as it seems to be to the

84 EXTERNAL CONDUCT.

votaries of the world. The attempt moreover is always
as unsuccessful as it is wrong.

We must never do anything in order to edify others,
for the express purpose of edifying, which we should not
have done except to edify them, and in the doing of which
the motive of edification is supreme, if not solitary. Edi-
fication must never be our first thought. The evangelical
rule is to let our light shine before men that they may
see our good works, and glorify our Father who is in
heaven. We must take great pains not to disedifyj but
it would be very dangerous to take great pains to edify.
The two things are very different, although they are often
confounded : and you will not unfrequently meet with
souls whom self-love has so gnawed and corrupted that
their perfect restoration would be little less than a mira-
cle, and the mischief of which is to be traced to a wrong
theory of the duty of giving edification. Look out to
God, love His glory, hate yourself, and be simple, and
you will shine, fortunately without knowing it, or think-
ing of it, with a Christlike splendour wherever you go,
and whatever you do.

We must not make unseasonable allusions to religion,
or irritate by misplaced solemnity. An inward aspiration
or momentary elevation of the soul to God, will often do
more, even for others, than the bearing of an open testi-
mony, which principle does not require, and at which
offence will almost inevitably be taken. There is a silence
which edifies without angering ; though I admit that the
practice of it is far from easy. Probably we practise it
most successfully when we realize it least, but act out of
a heart which is in union with God. A man is annoyed
with sacred things when they are unseasonably forced

EXTERNA! CONDUCT. 85

npon him; and thus even a well-meaning importunity
may be a source of sin.

But if a wrong theory of edification, not only causes us
to make many false steps in our external conduct, but
also injures and sometimes positively devastates cur souls,
what shall be said of a wrong theory of fraternal correc-
tion ? 0 how much scandal and disedification to others,
how much overweening self-importance to themselves, has
resulted from men holding a wrong theory about this
most difficult of duties and most obscure of obligations !
We must bear in mind that there are very few, who, by
standing or advancement, are in any way called upon to
correct their brethren, fewer still who are competent to
do it sweetly and wisely, and none whose holiness is not
tried to the uttermost by its perfect discharge. While,
on the other hand, those who have rashly assumed to
themselves this delicate responsibility have not only sinned
themselves by disobedience, disrespect, conceit, bitterness,
assumption and exaggeration, but have caused sin in
others, and made the things of God an offence to them,
and a stumbling-block in their road. Hence, before we
attempt fraternal correction, we should be quite sure that
we have a vocation to it, and we should have made quite
sure of it by the judgment of others as well as our own j
and when we are clear of the vocation, we must still pre-
face our correction with prayer and deliberation. It may
be added, that to correct our brother for the sake of edify-
ing a third person, is a practice which can hardly ever
fail of producing unpleasant consequences : and it can only
be said not to injure our humility, because it is rather a
proof that we have no humility to injure. In the present
stage of the spiritual life, then, little more need be said
8

86 EXTERNAL CONDUCT.

of the obligation of fraternal correction than that it exists.
Further on, God will charge us with it, and we shall know
how to use it. Should it by chance become a duty now
only let us fear it and think twice, and He will help us if
the rest.

These, then, are ways in which we must beware 0/
trying to edify our neighbour. Let us now see how w •■■
ought to edify him. This must be in two ways : by ths
mortification of Jesus, and by the sweetness of Jesus.
And first, by the mortification of Jesus. Silence under
unjust rebukes, abstinence from rash and peremptory
judgments, and not standing out in an ill-natured and
pedantic way for our rights, obliging others unselfishly
and with pains and trouble to ourselves, and not exagge-
rating in an obstinate and foolish manner unessential
points where all men have a right to their liberty ; these
are the ways by which we should practise the mortifica
tion of Jesus in our intercourse with others; and inde
pendent of the edification we shall give thereby, the amount
of interior perfection which we shall attain by these prac-
tices is beyond all calculation. For there is hardly a corrupt
inclination, a secret pride, or a fold of self-love which they
will not search and purify.

But we must also edify others by the sweetness of
Jesus. A soft answer turneth away wrath, saith Scrip-
ture. Kind and gentle words, such as those of our dear
Lord, are an apostolate in themselves. Whereas clever
sharp words, such as we have often a strict right to use,
are continually doing the devil's work for him, and
damaging the souls of others, while they are inflicting no
slight wounds upon our own. Our manner, too, must be
full of unction, and be of itself a means to attract men

EXTERNAL CONDUCT. $1

fco us, and make them love the spirit which animates us.
Coldness, absence of interest, an assumption of superiority
for some unexpressed reasons, or even an obviousness of
condescension, are not unfrequentlj to be found in pious
persons. They have not yet mastered the spirit that is in
them so as to use it gracefully, or they do not appreciate
the delicacy and universality of its tenderness. They
have not a true picture of Jesus in their minds ; and thus
they can hardly exhibit Him at all in their outward con-
duct. Our very looks must be brought into subjection
to grace. The more earnestly we are striving to form
Jesus in our hearts, the more will His sweetness transpire
through our features without our knowing it. Except in
times of great physical pain, and that does not always
prevent it, the inward peace and harmony of the soul
reflect themselves discernibly upon the countenance. It
has been observed that in the Gospel of St. Mark, written
at the dictation of St. Peter, there are frequent allusions
to our Lord's look and gestures; and the story of the
young man who had not the heart to give up his money,
and St. Peter's own conversion, show what the sweetness
of our Saviour's look could do. This sweetness is also
practised when we praise all the good we can detect in
others, even where it is mingled with what is not so. A
man who praises freely, yet not extravagantly, is always
influential in conversation, and can use his influence for
the cause of God. A critical spirit, on the contrary ;
amuses by its smartness, or frightens by its malignity,
but it neither softens, attracts, persuades, or rules. The
practice of putting favourable interpretations upon dubious
actions is another exercise of this Christ-like sweetness.
They must not bo forced or unnatural, much less must

88 EXTERNAL CONDUCT.

they excuse positive sin ; but short of this, there is ample
scope for this kindly practice ; and you will never prac-
tise it without having done some missionary work for the
glory of God, although you know it not. We must also
beware of looks, manner, and especially of a certain silence,
by which we make others feel that we are inwardly cen-
suring them. Nothing is more irritating than this.
When sin makes the saints silent, there is a sorrowful
sweetness in their silence, as if they were grieving for the
offender's sake, and were striving to love him in spite of
his sin. This censorious silence, so little like the sweet-
ness of Jesus, causes others to bristle up and put them-
selves inwardly in an attitude of defence, and so it drives
out the little grace that was actually in them, and hardens
their hearts against the admission of more. Such a silence
is in fact the most pointed fraternal correction, and no one
has a right to exercise it who has not ascertained his right
according to the methods already stated, to correct his bro
ther. And even then, it is the most dangerous way of
discharging a most dangerous obligation.

It belongs also to the sweetness of Jesus, that we
should not allow our piety or devotion to be inconvenient
to others. When St. Jane Frances first put herself under
the direction of St. Francis of Sales, her servants used
to say that Madame's old director made her pray once or
twice a day, and all the world was incommoded by it, but
her new director makes her pray all day long, and yet no
one is inconvenienced. A little management surely would
be sufficient to contrive that neither communions nor
prayers should disturb the least family arrangement, 01
exact one tittle of self-denial from others. Not that thev
should grudge it, unhappy souls ! but that it belougs to

EXTERNAL CONDUCT. 89

the sweetness of the spiritual life that we should not
ask it.

Thus it is that our intercourse with others should at
once sanctify ourselves and edify them by the double ex-
ercise of the mortification and sweetness of Jesus. But
it must have occurred to us that at this stage of our
career, our intercourse with others resolves itself mainly
into government of the tongue. I do not know which of
these two things is the most astonishing, the -unexpected
importance of the place assigned to this duty in Holy
Scripture, or the utter unconcern which even good men
often feel about it. Unless a man takes the Concordance,
and looks out in the Bible all the passages which have
reference to this subject, from Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus
to St. James, he will have no idea of the amount of
teaching which it contains on this head, nor the actual
quantity of that single volume which it engrosses. Still
less will he realize the strength of what inspiration
teaches. It is not consistent with the brevity at which I
am aiming to enter at length into the subject. It is
enough to suggest to each one this single question, Is the
amount of scrupulous attention which I am paying to the
government of my tongue at all proportioned to that tre-
mendous truth revealed through St. James, that if I do
not bridle my tongue, all my religion is in vain ? The
answer can hardly fail to be both frightening and
humbling.

But how is this government of the tongue to be prac-
tised ? The very detailing of the evils will, impliedly at
least, suggest the redemies. Listen to an hour of con-
versation in any Christian company. How much of it
turns, almost of necessity as it would seem, on the action?

a*

90 EXTERNAL CONDUCT.

and characters of others ! The meaning of judging others
appears to be this : the judgment-seat of our Divine
Lord is as it were already set up on the earth. But it is
empty. It is waiting for Him. We, meanwhile, un-
mannerly and unbidden, keep ascending the steps, en-
throning ourselves upon His seat, and anticipating and
mimicking His judgment of our brethren. To put it in
this way brings home to us the wretchedness of what we
are doing. It will also surely assist us in endeavouring
to cleanse our conversation of so much unnecessary can-
vassing of the motives and actions of others. Yet for
the most part we have gone far along our road in devo-
tion and done ourselves many an irreparable mischief, be-
fore we bestow half the carefulness on the government of
our tongue, which it not only deserves, but imperiously
requires

The first effect off spirituality on our minds is to
sharpen our critical turn. We have new measures to
measure with and new light to see by, and the charac-
ters of our neighbours get the disadvantage of our fresh
powers of observation. Make this the subject of your
particular examen, and you will be surprised to find how
numerous are your falls. Indeed it is difficult to exag-
gerate either the facility, the multitude, or the fatal effects
of the sin which all this talking about others leads to,
even with the best and kindliest of intentions. At the
end of our examen, our resolutions on the subject must
be very minute, and our falls must be visited, quietly but
determinedly, with some voluntary punishment each
time.

It would be impossible to speak of all the ways in
which the attention of spiritual persons at this stage

EXTERNAL CONDUCT. 91

Bhould be turned upon their external conduct. As I
have said, self-introversion is full of dangers, and even
the amount of inward attention to self which is neces-
sary is full of dangers. Besides, a beginner cannot pos-
sibly, even if it were desirable, occupy himself wholly
with the interior life, unless by an unusual attraction of
the Holy Ghost. The very attempt would make him
morbid, unreasonable, and unhappy. In most cases
therefore it were much to be desired that persons in the
early stages of the spiritual life should have some exter-
nal religious work to do, in order that they be at once
busied for God and called off from such a self-inspection
as might by its excess end in some spiritual disease, and
perhaps bodily ailment as well.

All persons, for instance, can make much more of their
worldly calling than they have done hitherto by putting
a supernatural intention into it. They can join confra-
ternities, provided they do not allow themselves to be
overloaded with vocal prayers. Most men can give alms ;
but to turn their alms to the temporal necessities of others
into alms to their own spiritual necessities as well, they
must give till they feel the giving, till it touches, nips,
hurts. Without this, where is the sacrifice ? Many also
can give time, talent and pains themselves to the works
of mercy, which their pastors or others set on foot around
them. Time and pains are worth as much as money to
the objects of your charity • they are worth ten times as
much considered as spiritual blessings to yourself. But,
do not be in a hurry, and do not act without counsel;
but allow yourself to be guided to some good work, in
which you can take an abiding interest, and which will
suit your spirit, means, and inclination.

92 EXTERNAL CONDUCT.

It is surely an obvious mistake for persons to start on
a spiritual course as if they were going to be hermits
It is to confound an interior with a solitary life. Theif
fight is to be in the world's common ways, and theif
business with its engrossing and multifarious interests,
and their trials are to be in no slight measure from their
fellow-men. They must therefore make allowance and
arrangements for all this. It must enter into their cal-
culations. It must influence thsir decisions. True it is
that at the moment of conversion as in the state of con-
templation, we realize nothing but God and our own soul.
It is a blessed gift this singleness of vision, blessed at its
own time and in its own place. It is one of our begin-
nings which is so like our endings. But it is not to be
our ordinary or normal state of things.

Yet how many there are who make this mistake !
They are beginning a devout life. They are determined
to be all for God, and they project a plan or system for
their future spiritual life. They legislate for mental
prayer, for examen of conscience, for confession and com-
munion, for particular devotions, and for mortifications.
Everything is laid out with the greatest accuracy, the
estimate accepted, the plans approved. Yet no mention
of their intercourse with others, or their duties towards
others, or mercy for others finds a place ! As if this
were either not to be at all, or were to have no connec-
tion with the spiritual life, or were so easy and obvious
to arrange as not to be worth forethought ! This must
surely be a mistake, and its influence cannot but be
widely and enduringly felt in our future course. What
is all very well for Camaldoli can hardly be the thing for
Change or Piccadilly.

EXTERNAL CONDUCT. 93

I would even venture to recommend something to give
the mind a more decidedly external direction at this
period of the spiritual life. For, to tell men so soon as
this to throw themselves out of themselves upon God as
the object of faith and love, would not only be unpracti-
cal, because premature, but would lead probably to a
want of proper self-government and so to delusions. I
would recommend that our favourite devotion should be
prayers for the conversion of sinners, with oblations, re-
parations, communions, and the like, all turned iu that
direction. God is always working with unusual energy
in some portion of the Church, and is waiting there
ready with an uncommon profusion of graces, until we
co-operate with Him by our intercessions. Devotion to
the conversion of sinners, when and where God pleases,
is full of the thought of God, and falls in with all thi
fundamental ideas upon which our own interior life is
organized. Hence, to take but a selfish view of the
matter, its appropriateness at this period of the spiritual
life.

Nevertheless, if a man feels no attraction to this devo-
tion, he need not be cast down as if he lacked something
indispensable to a spiritual life. Such a zeal is so de-
sirable that men have been led into disheartening exag-
gerations about it. But I remember that Da Ponte in
his Spiritual Guide says that, while in the highest states
of perfection such a zeal is always found, nevertheless
there are very good people whose memory of their own
sins is so vivid, and their timid vigilance about their own
souls so engrossing, that they are utterly without zeal for
the souls of others. And Richard of St. Victor, in his
Preparation for Contemplation, states that, the case is

H EXTERNAL CONDUCT.

not an infrequent one of souls poor in spirit, rejoicing in
hope, fervent in charity, and eminent in works of sanc-
tity, who yet are quite tepid and almost lazy (valde
tepidse ac desides) in their zeal for souls. This doctrine
will serve for some of us as a weapon against discourage-
ment, and for others as a caution against temerarious
judgments. Both Richard of St. Victor and Da Ponte
belong to the unexaggerating school of spiritual writers.

THE RULTNG PASSION. 96

CHAPTER VII.

THE RULING PASSION.

We come now to the last of the five secret obstacles
which we accused of hindering our progress, and prevent-
ing our making way with the favourable breezes of the
Holy Spirit. It may be said to belong to our interior as
well as our exterior life ; though it is chiefly in the exte-
rior that we have to combat it. Every one who is well
read in old-fashioned spiritual books remembers the dis-
tinguished place which the remora always occupied in
them. This was a certain mysterious and mischievous
little fish, who by fastening itself to a huge ship in full
sail could bring it to a dead stand-still. Our belief in
the laws of mechanics and of natural history are unfor-
tunately fatal to the remora : would that anything might
turn up which would be equally fatal to the ruling pas-
sion, of which this hidden and almost omnipotent little
fish was the figure ! But alas ! while we may safely
expunge the remora from our catalogue of fishes, thi
ruling passion still remains a subject for continual ana
weary legislation and police on the part of those who
desire to grow in holiness.

It seems an exaggeration to say that every man in the
world has a decidedly ruling passion; and the best writers
do not go so far. It is however undeniably true that
almost all men have such a passion ; and the fact of its
being hidden from them is no proof to the contrary; foi

96 THE RULING PASSION.

it is its Dature to conceal itself. While it exists in the
soul, dominant and unattacked, its influence may be called
universal. It forms the motive for apparently contradict-
ing actions and gives a tone and colour to the whole life.
It is the cause of at least two-thirds of a man's sins. The
other passions are obliged to acknowledge its empire; and
as domination, not mere sin, is the object of its ambition,
it will actually help us in combating our other passions;
by so doing, it extends its tyranny, and moreover creates
a diversion in favour of itself. Other passions blind us
to our sins. But the ruling passion' is not content with
this. It goes so far as to make our vices look like vir-
tues. Hence it is a direct road to final impenitence. It
55 this which gives the fearful character to the ruling
passion. It is with our souls, as it is with a ship, when
the current is stronger than the wind. She keeps setting
upon the rocks, and if she cannot get her anchors to hold,
she is lost. Nay, it is worse with the soul, whose means
of safety are less ; for there is no such thing as an an-
chorage in the spiritual life.

Now if this be true, few subjects can be more interest-
ing to an earnest man than this of the ruling passion; for
no obstacle to progress is more common, or more secret,
and therefore none more dangerous. But let us under-
stand at the outset that it would be untrue to say that
there could be no progress in the spiritual life until the
ruling passion is vanquished. Perfection will hardly
attain this entire victory after years of manly perseve-
rance. But it is true that there can be no progress until
an active war is being waged against it. Hence this war
is a duty which brooks no delay.

Here then is one of the most important businesses of

THE RULING PASSION- 97

our lives, to discover what is our ruling passion ; and it
is as difficult as it is importaut, because of the secrecy in
which that artful passion invariably wraps itself. There
are, however, two methods, either of which pursued
honestly and for a sufficiently long time, will probably
bring us to the knowledge we desire.

The daily practice of self-examination soon furnishes
os with very numerous observations regarding ourselves.
It is not however safe to draw any practical inferences
from them, until time and vigilance have verified them
under different circumstances and perhaps even opposite
temptations. We shall then come at last to perceive that
there is one passion within us more conformable than any
other to our whole natural temperament, one which, taken
by itself, expresses far more of our entire character than
any other. We shall find that such a passion as this is
further characterized by our feeling a peculiar repugnance
to combat it, and when accused of it by others, we shall
probably answer that while we acknowledge we have many
aults, yet certainly we cannot charge ourselves with this.
Moreover this passion is found to have an extraordinary
power of instantaneously kindling our other passions, and
of strangely making its appearance in almost all our
thoughts and plans, as self-love perceptibly does with at
le&st half mankind. While it makes a livelier impression
upon our interior life than any other passion, it also causes
the greater number of the disorders which disgrace oui
external couduct. The majority of our falls, and all our
greatest falls, are attributable to it, while it habitually
exposes us to the greatest dangers aud the most frequent
occasions of sin, and thus has more lasting and trouble-
some oonsequeiL3es than any other of our passions, bad
9 a

98 THE RULING PASSION.

and ruinous as they may be. It takes some time to find
out all this. But we may be sure that any passion, of
which all or the greater number of these things are true,
is in reality our ruling passion, a principle of spiritual
death within our souls.

The other method of discovering our ruling passion
necessarily resembles the first in many respects, and fixes
its attention upon the same symptoms; but it is easier
because it does not imply so universal or so incessant a
watchfulness. Perhaps because it is easier, it is less suc-
cessful, or is longer at least in attaining success. Some
writers of ascetical theology recommend the one, and some
the other. This second method then consists of waiting
for any unusual joy or sadness which stirs our soul with-
out an obvious reason, and to enquire whence either of
these emotions arises. Even if there should be an appj
rent cause, the joy or the sadness may be so dispropou
tioned to it as to lead us to suspect some additional hidden
cause ; and the probability is that it lies in some satisfac-
tion or displeasure of our ruling passion. We must be
strangely unobservant of ourselves if we have not expe-
rienced these vicissitudes of high and low spirits, for
which there was not sufficient on the surface of our lives
to account; and whatever be the result of our examina-
tion of them, we may be quite sure such phenomena are
never without an important bearing on our spiritual life.

Then, again, we go to confession more or less frequently;
and certain venial sins and faulty imperfections form the
matter of our self-accusations. Particular faults are per-
petually recurring. It is even a subject of annoyance to
us that the matter of our confessions does not vary more
than it does. They arc always turning on three or fon»

THE RULING PASSION. 99

faults. Now when we have satisfied oursebes deliberately
what the^e three or four things are, we are naturally in
proportion to our earnestness led to examine them, to see
from what roots they spring, and what circumstances de-
velope them. Almost always it will be found that they
come from one common root; and the discovery of this
common root will be the discovery of our ruling passkn.
A fault which is both an abundant and a persisting source
of venial sins can hardly be anything less than our ruling
passion.

Again, there is a kind of low spirits which differ from
the sadness spoken of before. There are times when
everything seems to come to an end. We are tired of
strictness. Prayer weighs upon us as intolerably heavy.
Spiritual reading inspires disgust. We feel reckless about
temptation, and even the habitual fear of sin has so com-
pletely ceased to be sensible, that it appears as if we could
fall at any moment. The thought of God does not arouse
us as it has been wont to do. Care for souls and loyal
zeal for the Church are sentiments so passed from us that
we have almost forgotten what they are like, just as men
in winter cannot clothe the landscape in verdure and
foliage, and imagine it as it was in summer, so as to
satisfy themselves. We yearn for the sights and sounda
of worldliness as if they would be a relief; and our heart
leaps up at any consolation which has not to do with
spiritual things. Our very associations have faded out
from us, and anything like a habit of godliness to all
appearance has dropped away as though it had never
been. An intense weariness comes over us, and a nausea
for spirituality, which makes us ill-tempered with God,
rather than afraid of offending Him. The misery of thesfl

1 00 THE RULING PASSION.

fits of low-spiiits can hardly be exaggerated. Can thr
danger of them be exaggerated either ? For they are
accompanied, not so much with sadness, which is more or
less softening, as with irritability, which is no home for
grace, but rather a proximate preparation for all kinds of
venial siu. It is of God's sheer mercy if the evil is
stayed even there. Miserably unhinged and unfitted for
the task as we are, then, we must even in our wretched-
ness attempt some kind of self-examination, and question
ourselves as to the cause of this dismal oppression. It
has none of the marks of a divine subtraction of sensible
sweetness. Its features are not like those of a passive
purgation of spirit, as mystical theologians call them. It
is an operation, possibly diabolical, but most probaoly
entirely human. If we can arrive at the cause, the pro-
bability is that we have discovered our ruling passion It
is too fundamental a mischief, to come from anything
short of it. Persons of soft and effeminate character, sen-
sitive and sentimental, loving bodily comforts, not rvac-
tising any regular mortifications, and careful of tHei*
eating, drinking, and sleeping, are peculiarly liable to
these spiritual visitations of waking nightmare. In other
words, to be attacked by them is a symptom, though not
an infallible one, that our ruling passion is sensual' ty,
which almost rivals self-love both for its universality and ita
successful artifices to disguise itself and appear other thaD
it is. How many are there whose apparent enjoyment
in religion, together with their mild views of moral
theology, their familiarity with God, their comfortable
intimacy with our Blessed Lady, their aspirations of dis-
interested love, their depreciation of mere dry precept
and hard conscientiousness, their facility in making saints

THE RULING PASSION. 101

words and feelings their own, — all come, though the}
little think it, from the luxurious refinements of modern
ease, and a secret ruling passion of sensuality !

Thus this second method of discovering our ruling
passion is not so much a continuous examination of our
whole conduct, as a waiting for, and seizing upon, certain
salient points of it, as those which are likely beforehand
to be developments of this dominant inclination. But
hidden as its presence and influence are, there are certain
things of almost daily occurrence in which this serpent,
in spite of itself, discloses its operations. It mixes with
all our sins, no matter against what virtue or command-
ment. It is the feature which all our sins will be found
to have in common. Self-love in one man, sensuality in
another, vanity in a third, ambition in a fourth, or in a
fifth that most unconquerable of monsters, simple indo-
lence. So, too, we often resist temptations, without
supernatural motives, and as it would seem, without call-
ing grace to our aid. Or, to speak more accurately,
suggestions of evil that in some moods would be tempta-
tions to us, in other moods have no such magnetic
character, and hence they fall off from us harmlessly,
like spent arrows off a shield. It is often our ruling
passion which is our shield. It distracts us from the
pleasures offered to us, or it turns them aside as inter-
fering with some deeper scheme of its own. We are pre-
occupied men, who do not see and hear. We do not
notice these temptations, so that strictly they never
become temptations at all.

There are some persons who are so strongly persuaded
tfhat everything about them is as it ought to be, that they
are prepared to defend themselves on all poin ts, and as a

Q*

1^2 THE RULING PASSION.

matter of fact do so. These are few in number, because
the blindness of self-love, though universal, is seldom
total. Still, such specimens are to be met with and
studied ) for there is much in them, which, doing no good
to themselves, is a capital warning to others. To these,
what I am now going to say will not apply. But men,
who are satisfied that their conduct is not uniformly and
on all points defensible, will find that there arc certain
points on which they invariably defend themselves, cer-
tain points on which they are morbidly sensitive. The
soreness discloses the ruling passion. This is almost an
infallible method of detection. Separate the circum-
stances, the conversation, the excitement, whatever it may
be, see on what subject you defend yourself in all manner
of circumstances, hot or cool, taken by surprise or with
deliberation, and you may be sure that the subject indi-
cates the ruling passion : though, of course, a good many
symptoms must be observed, as the same symptom may
point to vanity or to self-love, to sensuality or to indolence
While we are conducting these all-important investiga
tions, we must remember likewise to take our director
into our council. We are very blind in matters which
concern ourselves, even when we have to do with mere
external interests. Still more are we blind in things
pertaining to self-correction. And when we consider the
peculiar characteristic of the ruling passion that it passes
vice off for virtue, we have additional reasons for dis-
trusting our own solitary judgment in the matter. Hence
it is that a director frequently discovers a penitent's
ruling passion, before the penitent has discovered it him-
self. But under any circumstances we must consult him
He must help us in the search. He must approve the

THE RULING PASSION. 103

discovery. He must guide us in the warfare which we
must forthwith wage against our domestic enemy.

It does not come within the scope or brevity of this
treatise to urge persuasive motives for a scrupulous and
almost frightened attention to this subject of the ruling
passion. My object is, as you know, merely to describe
symptoms and to suggest means. But so much must be
said. They who have not a ruling passion are very few
in number ; and they who have can have no more im-
portant or pressing affair than the discovery of it and the
warfare against it. Saul was ruined, and Solomon fell
for the want of this. The lost vocation of Judas was the
work of his ruling passion, which had coexisted, remem-
ber, with all the immense graces implied in his having
had a true vocation to that unequalled apostolic office ;
and that his vocation was true is, by some theologians,
considered to be of faith, because of our Lord's words, I
have elected you. The punishment of not seeing the
promised land, under which Moses ended his days, was
the work of his ruling passion, which he had come so
near to utterly vanquishing, that whereas by nature he
was the hastiest of men, by grace he became what the
Holy Spirit calls him, the meekest of men. Other por-
tions then of the spiritual life may have superior attrac-
tions to this, others may seem to urge us more swiftly
along our road, or give at once a more supernatural turn
to our character. But none can compete in urgency and
importance with this duty of overcoming our ruling
passion. You must stop at this. You can never think of
leaving such a fortress untaken in your rear God will
go no further. His current of graces will cease flowing
upon you. It will be by nature and by temperament

104 THE RULING PASSION.

that you are advancing, not by grace. With you or with,
out you, He will sit down before that citadel, and when
He has waited long enough for you to see the error and
to come back and to cast up your entrenchments against
it, and you do not come, He will in the awful language
of Scripture give you over to your own desires, and leave
the field, and you will wander on, in your own strength,
and along your own road, till you fall fainting and die by
the way, and they that come after shall see you and say,
Lo ! another frustrate saint, another broken instrument,
another lost vocation !

The dryness then of this duty must not repel us. nor
its difficulties discourage us. We must consider them
we J, but our hearts must not sink at the consideration.
Th3 greatest difficulty is that of discovering this ruliug
pansion. To a brave man that should be half the battle;
ami we have already considered the methods by which
thst knowledge may in ordinary cases be attained. The
blhidness this passion causes both as to itself and other
sins is an outwork as strong as the fort itself; and its
pretence of virtuous indignation against the other
pasiions is but the dust it raises and flings into our eyes,
as we advance to the attack. The treachery of our own
he&rts, willing to acknowledge any passion to be our
ruling passion rather than the one which really is so, is a
domestic enemy that must be strictly watched, lest in the
vevy heat of the assault it play us false. But I have seen
many overcome these difficulties with a little manly
effort. They have got so far without a check, and with-
out a wound. The difficulty I fear still remains to be
considered, the difficulty which has been so fatal to many,
and continues to be fatal to numbers of soils daily.

THE RULING PASSION. 105

It is the cowardice and pusillanimity which lead us to
believe that we never shall really overcome our ruling
passion. At first men try to persuade themselves that
there is a great deal of unreality and exaggeration in
what is said on this subject, and that far too much stress
is laid upon its importance and success. Now be it ob-
served I lay no stress upon the success of our warfare,
but only on the importance of our being really at war.
Not that success is not to be looked for at last, and that
it is an immense gain. But I lay the stress on the war-
fare, not on the victory. Presently a series of defects
and a complete check of their spiritual progress lead n en
to see that the matter was not exaggerated ; indeed t) ey
feel that the difficulties of the work have been estinv ted
too cheaply. They are then inclined to despair of the
whole matter, and to abandon the task as useless. They
fall into low spirits from being continually beaten, u*itil
they are as pusillanimous as cowed children. Every
defeat is a loss of moral power and so leads to d( feat
again. The very means which we are urged to adopt 'ook
fearful to us, and we have not the heart to adopt th >m,
and use them with that unshrinking firmness whicl . is
necessary. But, are we prepared to abandon the spiritual
life altogether, and not to aim at perfection ? If not, we
must be up and doing. Delay is making matters less
hopeful every hour. What is hard now, may soon become
impossible.

The means which we must adopt are certainly of a
painful kind. We could hardly expect it to be otherwise
in expelling such an enemy. Cutting, burning, and lying
Wakeful, what else can do us any good ? The first means
is to repress instantaneously the very first movements of

106 THE RULING PASSION.

what we have now discovered to be our ruling passion
We must not wait till they gain strength, or bring delec-
tation with them and so become downright temptations.
But we must cut them down at once ; and this work is
endless and continual. There is no resting over it or
sleeping at it. Secondly, we must take great pains to
foresee and avoid the occasions of this ruling passion.
We must legislate for this, spend time upon it, and shape
our daily life accordingly, so far as the relative duties of
our station will permit us to do so. Thirdly, our strict-
ness with ourselves on this subject must be persevering
and intermitting. An interval will let all go at once, and
we shall almost have to begin over again. And fourthly,
as I have said before, we must penance ourselves for each
wilful carelessness and guilty fall, and our penances must
be such as will make us feel them and fear them. They
must go to the quick, if it be but an instant.

All this is not very encouraging, it must be admitted.
But nothing is insurmountable to him who loves God.
Beware of the delusion into which Satan will try to lead
you. It is that of believing all this pains about our ruling
passion a work fit only for saints, and belonging to the
higher stages of the spiritual life. This is one of the
devil's choice axioms in almost everything. A wise man
will distrust it whenever he hears it. So far is it from
being true in the present case, that it would be more true
to say that until this work has advanced a good way to-
wards its completion, the soul never can enter the higher
stages of the spiritual life at all. It is an indispensable
work. It must be done ; and moreover it must be done
now. It is true that some of the hardest work of the
spiritual life comes early on. This is an instance of it

THE RULING PASSION. 107

Let nothing mislead you. Prayer is tempting, and liberty
of spirit is inviting. There is a dignity about austerity,
which allures even while it appals. The love of humilia-
tions is attractive to the enthusiastic heart, and a first
taste of calumny makes us thirst for more, as one savour
of bitterness gives us an appetite, while much of it clogs
us with sickliness. But let nothing draw you off either
to the right hand or the left. There is your ruling passion.
That is the work ; there is your vocation ; there is your
grace, and at present not elsewhere. Visions and raptures,
miracles and mortifications, and the bright lights of con-
templation, will not succeed in moving us one step on-
wards, unless we are the while keeping up a tedious run-
ning fight with our ruling passion. I have seen many
men who have brought their ruling passion into very
tolerable subjection : I never saw one yet whose ruling
passion was indolence, and who had made any satisfactory
progress in bringing the incorrigible unresisting rebel be-
neath the sway of grace. Yet I do not say that even tlivX
enemy is invincible.

U/8 OUR NORMAL STATJB.

CHAPTER VIII.

OUR NORMAL STATE.

Everything in the world seems to have a peculiai
beginning and a peculiar ending, with a normal state be-
tween them ; and it is always this normal state which
gives the truest character of a thing; for it expresses its
nature and ruling idea. Yet the phenomena of the spi-
ritual life appear to be of a different kind. It seems at
first sight as if the spiritual life could have no normal
stab;, except the being a perpetual dissatisfied progress,
whose highest mark would always be a disappointment,
as felling so far below even reasonable and legitimate ex-
pec tution.

The greater part of its time and attention is taken up
with mere preliminaries. What with means, vigilances,
reparations, commandments, prohibitions and warnings,
aim jst the whole of a spiritual book is occupied with
stuuying the chart, rather than starting us on our voyage.
Th* last chapter of many books gets no further than a
falv launch. Then it seems as if we never did get into a
fixai state, such as we could call normal or habitual.
What follows no rule can give no rule ; how then can it
be normal ? Fallen nature cannot go to Grod either in a
groove or down an inclined plane, any more than men
can march through an embarrassed country or fight &
battle on mathematical lines.

OtJIl NORMAL STATE. 109

Moreover, the experiences of the saints are nothing
more than a continually shifting scene of vicissitudes, and
alternations of bright and dark, which baffle all induction,
bo various, perplexing, unruly and contradicting are they.
Even as a panorama gradually unfolded, the spiritual life
has no apparent unity, completeness, or dramatic comple
tion. As a journey it is up-hill; and its paths, therefore,
like all mountain-tracks, devious, winding, and seemingly
capricious. Hence there is no feeling of working up to a
table-land, where we may hope to try other sinews, and enjoy
the level.

Yet for all this the spiritual life has a kind of normal
state ; and we shall find the knowledge of it a help to
us. It consists in a perpetual interchange of three dis-
positions, sometimes succeeding each other, and reigning
in fcjrns, sometimes two of them occupying the throne
at once, and sometimes all three at the same time exer-
cising their influence conjoined. These three dispositions
are struggle, fatigue, and rest ; and each of them requires
an attendant satellite to give them light in the night-time
of their revolutions. Struggle requires patience. Fatigue
must be proof against human respect. Rest must lean
upon mortification, for nowhere else can she safely Bleep.
So I have now in this chapter to describe these three dis-
positions which make up our normal state ; and in the three
following chapters to consider patience, human respect, and
mortification.

1. I must speak first of struggle. There seems theo-
retically to be no difficulty in this idea; yet practically
it is not an easy one to realize. If the tradition of the
Universal Church is harmonious and conclusive on any
one point concerning the spiritual life, it is that it is a
10

110 OUR NORMAL STATE:

struggle, strife, combat, battle, warfare, whichever word
you may choose. No one doubts it. A man would be
out of his senses who should doubt it. Reason proves it,
authority proves it, experience proves it. Yet see what
an awkward practical question for each one of us rises
out of this universal admission. At any moment we may
turn round upon ourselves and say, Is my religious life a
struggle ? Do I feel it to be so ? What am I struggling
against? Do I see my enemy? Do I feel the weight
of his opposition ? If my life is not sensibly a fight, can
it be a spiritual life at all ? Or rather am I not in one
of the common delusions of easy devotion and im mortified
effeminacy ? If I am not fighting, I am conquered ; and
surely I can hardly be fighting, and not know it. These
are very serious questions to ask ourselves, and we ought
to be frightened if at any time we cannot obtain satisfac-
tory answers to them. A good frightening! what an
excellent thing it is now and then in the spiritual life !
Yet in these times it seems as if we were all to be inva-
lids in holiness; for spiritual direction expends its efforts
in producing a composing silence round about our sick-
beds, as if the great thing was not to awake us; and the
little table near has a tiny homoeopathic opiate for each
devout scruple as it rises, to lay it to sleep again, as if it
were not true that these scruples are often, like the irrita-
bility of a patient, signs of returning strength. Is simple
convalescence from mortal sin to be the model holiness of
the nineteenth century, at least for luckless souls living in
the world ?

Oh, how one comes to love this great huge London,
when God has thrown us into it as our vineyard ! The
monster ! it looks so unmanageable, and it is positively

OUR NORMAL STATE. Ill

so awfully wicked, so hopelessly magnificent, so heretically
wise and proud after its own fashion. Yet after a fashion
it is good also. Such a multitudinous remnant who have
never bowed the knee to Baal, such numbers seeking
their way to the light, such hearts grace-touched, so much
secret holiness, such supernatural lives, such loyalty,
mercy, sacrifice, sweetness, greatness ! St. Vincent Fer-
rer preached in its streets, and Father Colombiere in its
mews. Do not keep down what is good in it, only be-
cause it is trying to be higher. Help people to be saints.
Not all who ask for help really wish it, when it comes to
be painful. But some do. Raise ten souls to detachment
from creatures, and to close union with God, and what
will happen to this monster city? Who can tell ? Monster
as it is, it is not altogether unamiable. It means well
often, even when it is cruel. Well-meaning persons are
unavoidably cruel. Yet it is often as helpless and as de-
serving of compassion as it is of wrath and malediction.
Poor Babylon ! would she might have a blessing from her
unknown God, and that grace might find its way even into
her Areopagus !

But what does our struggle consist of? Mostly of five
things ; and if there were time for it, we might write a
chapter on each of them. First, there is positive fighting.
You see I am letting you off easily, for some would say
that the Christian life is always a fight, ever an actual
battle ; and that doctrine, sought to be verified in your
practice, might often be very discouraging. I call it a
struggle, and I make positive fighting only one part of it.
Secondly, there is taking pains, such as pitching tents,
cleaning arms, gathering fuel, cooking rations, recon-
n^itering Thirdly, there are forced marches. If I ask

112 OUR NORMAL STATE.

you whether you are fighting, and you answer, No, but 1
am footsore, I shall be quite content, and will not tease
you any more. I do not even object to an occasional
bivouac; it all comes into my large and generous sense
)f the word warfare. Fourthly, there is a definite enemy.
By this I do not mean that you must always know your
enemy when you see him. A vice may come and play
the spy in the clothes of a dead virtue. But you must
have an enemy in view, and know what you are about
with him. To invade the world, and then look round for
an enemy, is not the business-like thing I understand by
the spiritual combat. Fifthly, there must be an almost
continual sensible strain upon you, whichever of your
military duties you may be performiag. If you feel no
differently on your battle-field from what you used to feel
in the hay-field, you will not come up to my mark. TVese
are the five things of which our struggle consists.

But you will ask, what are the enemies against whom
I have to struggle ? Seven ; and the natural historj of
each of them might occupy a little treatise by itself. We
must now despatch them with a few words. First, we
have to fight against sin, not only with actual temptations
in times when they press us hard, but at all times vrith
the habits which old sins have wound so tightly and so
fearfully round us, and with the weakness which is a con-
sequence of our past defeats. The reason why men are
fo often surprised into grave sins is not always to be found
in the vehemence of the temptation, and their want of
attention to it at the time; but in their want of attention
to the general moral weakness which past and even for-
given sin has left behind it.

Secondly, we must struggle with temptations, and we

OtJR NORMAL St ATE. 113

niU3t struggle with them with amazing courage, not as
foes whose lines we have to break, and then the country
will be clear before us, but as foes who will thicken as we
advance. The weakest come first, at least if we except
those which tried to hinder our giving ourselves up to God
at the first. The stronger come next.. The robustness
of our temptations seems to be in proportion to our growth
in grace. The choicest are kept to the last. We shall
one day have to give battle to the pretorians, to the devil's
bodyguard ; and probably it will be when we are lying,
white and weak, on a death-bed. We must bear this in
mind about temptations, else we shall make too much of
our victories, and be disheartened by the smallness of
their results. No victory that we gain is worth anything
to the victories we have yet to gain. Still, a victory is
always a victory.

Our third enemies are our trials ; and our trials, like
our temptations, grow as we advance. We are forcing
our way into a moie difficult country. We see evil where
we did not see it before. Thus we have more things to
avoid than formerly. We are attempting greater things,
and climbing higher hills. All this has its encouraging
side. But then in proportion to the greatness and the
height, so is the difficulty. Then holiness has a whole
brood of trials and troubles of its own, the like to which
do not exist in the free-living, easy-mannered, fair-spoken
world. Its interior trials are enough of themselves to
keep a stout saint occupied all his life long. Scaramelli
wrote an entire treatise on them. Some men have more,
some less. What is necessary to remember is that wa
have not faced our worst yet. We must not cry victory
when the battle is in truth but just begun.
10* a

114 OUB NORMAL STATE.

Fourthly, we have to struggle against the changes of
our own faults. After all, there is something very com
fortable in a habit, when once the labour of acquiring it
has been surmounted. We have got into a particular
way, and it is a trouble to be put out of it. Improve-
ments in tools only make them more awkward at first to
old workmen. David felt so little at ease in Saul's armour,
that he went back to his shepherd's dress and his favour-
ite old sling. So it is with ourselves. We get into a
certain way with ourselves, a certain hatred of ourselves,
and a certain severity with ourselves. It was hard to
get used to it ; but we did so at last, and now do pretty
well. Then by age or outward circumstances, or through
some interior crisis, our faults change, and we have a new
warfare to learn. Moreover, these changes of our faults
are often imperceptible at the time. We are not conscious
of what is going on. And as our characters sometimes
turn right round, we may go on neglecting something
which we ought to observe, and observing something we
may now safely neglect ; nay, we may even be playing
the game of some new passion, while we think we are
mortifying old ones. This is a perplexity. It annoys
and distracts us in our struggle, even if it does nothing
more. We must be prepared for it.

Teasing imperfections are our fifth enemy. The war-
fare against them is neither dangerous nor dignified ; but
wearing, harassing, and annoying. Certain infirmities
seem at times to be endowed with a supernatural vitality,
and will not be put down even by our most earnest and
persevering efforts. Habits of carelessness in saying office
or rosary, slight immortifications at meals, the use of par-
ticular expressions, matters connected with external com-

OUR NORMAL STATE. 115

posure and recollection, are all instances of this at times.
It seems vexatious that we should be in bondage to sucb
very little things, and it is a trial both of faith and tem-
per. But God sometimes allows that we should entirely
miss our aim when striking at them, in order that our
devotion may be hidden from the eyes of others, who
might wither it by praise, or that we ourselves should
bear about a thorn in the flesh, as the apostle did, to keep
us humble, and make us truly despise ourselves. Per-
haps grace is often saved under the shadow of an imper-
fection; and there are many imperfections which are more
obvious and humiliating than really guilty or unworthy
in the sight of God. Under any circumstances, the tire-
some struggle with our imperfections will not end, even
with Extreme Unction. It will cease only with our
breath, only when we are actually laid to rest in the
bosom of our indulgent and heavenly Father.

The sixth object with which we have to struggle is the
subtraction of divine light and sensible aid, whether it
come upon us as a purifying trial or as a chastisement for
unfaithfulness. This is like Jacob's struggle when he
wrestled with God ) or rather it is a wrestling with God,
self, and the evil one, all at once. For no sooner does
God withdraw His sensible assistance from us than the
devil attacks us with renewed violence, and we ourselves
give way to wounded self-love and to despondency. It is
with us as with the Israelites in Egypt : we have mora
bricks to make, and the straw not found us as of old. At
least it seems so. Yet God is with us when we know it
not. We could not so much as hold on, if He were not
so. But it is hard to realize this with a sheer and simple
faith, when sensation and sentiment are quite the other

1 16 OUR NORMAL STATE.

way. Mercifully this struggle is not perpetual. It comes
and goes; and if we could get ourselves to look on it
beforehand as a significant visitation of mysterious love,
we should be able to bear up against it more gently and
more manfully than we do. Ordinarily we weary our-
selves by too much of violent effort, and then lie helpless
and supine in a kind of petulant despair. Losing our
temper with God is a more common thing in the spiritual
life than many men suppose. It dashes back to eartb
many a rising prayer, and vitiates many a brave mortifi
cation. Happy they who can wrestle with God in uncom-
plaining prayer, in self-collected reverence, and yet by
His grace with the vigorous will to have the better of
Him.

This brings me to the seventh enemy with whom we
have to struggle. It is familiarity ; and familiarity espe-
cially with three things, prayer, sacraments, and tempta-
tions. As I have said before, to have relations with God
is a very fearful thing. To love God is a bold and ardu-
ous thing. It was of His compassion that He made that
to be of precept which was in itself so unspeakable a
privilege. Yet it is hard to love warmly and tenderly,
and to love reverently as well. Hence it is that, with so
many, familiarity fastens upon love, and blights it.
Familiarity in prayer consists of meditating without pre-
paring, of using words without weighing them, of slouch-
ing postures, of indeliberate epithets, of peevish complaint,
and of lightly making the petitions of saints our own.
All this is an intolerable familiarity with the great ma-
jesty of God. It grows upon us. Use brings slovenli-
ness, and slovenliness makes us profane. Familiarity
with the sacraments consists in going to confession with

OUR NORMAL STATE. 11?

a very cursory examination, and a mere flying act of con-
trition, making no thanksgiving afterwards and setting
no store by our penance ; as if we were privileged people,
and were entitled to take liberties with the Precious
Blood. With the Blessed Eucharist it consists of fre-
quent Communion without leave, or forcing leave, or
making no preparation, or careless thanksgiving, as if
forsooth our whole life were to be considered adequate
preparation and adequate thanksgiving, and that it shows
liberty of spirit to be on such free and easy terms with
the Adorable Sacrament. Familiarity with temptations
is to lose our horror of their defiling character, to be
remiss and dilatory in repelling them, to feel our loathing
of them diminish, not to be sufficiently afraid of them,
and to take for granted that we are so established in any
particular virtue that our falling is out of all question.
These familiarities grow upon us like the insidious
approaches of sleep. We feel an increasing reluctance to
throw them off and shake them from us. It will not be
so much the thoughts of hell and purgatory, wholesome
as they are, which will keep us right, as frequent medi-
tation on the adorable attributes of God. Oh if our flesh
were but alway pierced with the arrows of holy fear, how
much more angelic would our lives become !

2. Such is our struggle, and such the seven principal
enemies with whom we have to contend. The second
disposition in which I make our normal state to reside is
fatigue. This is something more than the pleasant feel-
ing of being tired. Indeed if there is pleasure iu it
sometime, it is far more often a weary and oppressive
pain. For the fatigue of which I speak is caused by the
struggle which we have just been considering. It consists

118 OUR NORMAL STATE.

first of faintness, which the mere continuity of the combat
superinduces; secondly, of disgust, a loathing for all
sacred things ; thirdly, of irritability, not only from fre-
quent defeat, but from the harassing nature of the war-
fare ; fourthly, of low spirits, especially when the arm cf
grace is less sensibly upholding us; and fifthly, of a
feeling of the impossibility of persevering, which is not
despair, because we do not cease our efforts, only we make
them with the mere force of the grace -assisted will, not
with the hope and energy of the heart. This fatigue ma)
obviously be felt during a battle as well as after it : and
as we may both offend God, and also do very foolish
things injurious to our own interests, under the heavy
hand of this fatigue, it is important for us to get a clear
idea of it, and to investigate its causes.

These causes are seven in number, and each of them
is accompanied by its own peculiar trials, dangers, and
temptations. The first cause is the constant opposition
to nature which the spiritual life implies. I am not
speaking so much of voluntary mortification, though that
also must be taken into the account. But everything we
do in the spiritual life is contrary to the will and propen-
sions of our corrupt nature. There is no pleasure to
which we dare yield an unlimited assent. There is no
spiritual enjoyment which is not more or less suffering to
poor nature. What a joy is prayer; yet to nature morti-
fication even is less irksome than prayer. Our tastes,
wishes, inclinations, instincts, what we seek and what we
ehun, are all more or less thwarted by the effort to be
holy. When nature offers us any assistance, we doubt
her and suspect her intentions, and when we use the
force she supplies, we do it in a harsh, ungraceful manner

OUR NORMAL STATE. 119

towards her. Her very activity, which is tht making of
bo many of us, we regard almost as an enemy, hurrying
as as it does out of the calm presence of God, and into
endless indiscretions. The custody of the senses, even
■uch an amount of it as is an absolute duty, is a bondage
which nature is ill able to bear. In a word, in propor-
tion as grace takes possession of us, we grow out of sym-
pathy with our own very nature, and in some respects
with the outward creation generally. This becomes
visible to the eye when it reaches the point which it does
often attain in saints and extatic persons. Their illnesses,
sufferings, and apparently unnatural valetudinarian states
are simply the result of the supernatural and mystical
character of their lives. As mystical theologians teach,
the nutritive, nervous, and cerebral systems are ail
deranged by the entire possession which grace has taken
of the soul, especially in those whose lives are contem-
plative and interior. But this begins in a slight measure,
as soon as we commence the spiritual life in good earnest,
anu it must obviously produce fatigue. The mere rowing
against the stream perpetually must make us stiff and
tired. And not only can there be no peace with nature,
but, except in an extasy, no truce either ; and from what
the saints tell us, it appears that nature takes a terrific
vengeance on them for their extasies, when they are

Another cause of fatigue is in the uncertainty in which
temptation so often leaves us, as to whether we have con-
sented or not. To walk blindfold or to find our way in
the dark is in itself a tiring thing. Clear light mitigate9
fatigue. But when we are uncertain whether we havi
offended God or not, whether buch or such an action was

120 OUR NORMAL STATE.

against our vows or resolutions, we lose our elasticily.
If we have really conquered, we have no sense of victory
to buoy us up ; and if we were vanquished, we should be
better able to face the disaster manfully, if there was no
doubt about it. But as a mile's walk with the sun in
our faces or the dust in our eyes is longer than ten with-
out such annoyances, so is it with this uncertainty which
temptation casts over us in spite, as it goes away. It
tires and unnerves us.

A third cause of fatigue is to be found in the daily
monotonous renewal of the combat. Sameness is weari-
some in itself. This is in great measure the wretched-
ness of imprisonment, however comfortable and roomy
our dungeon may be. The sun shines in at our window,
the morning breeze comes there, and the little birds sing
without ; and for a moment our waking thoughts do not
realize where we are or what we have to encounter. But
when we are fully aware that we have another day before
us of unchequered monotonous confinement, the soul
sinks within us, forlorn and weary, even after long hours
of refreshing sleep. So it is in the spiritual life. Is it
to be always combat ? Is the pressure never to be taken
off? Is the strain never to be relaxed? Is the hold
never to be let go ? And when we are obliged to answer
ourselves with the simple Never, this hourly renewal of
the old, old strife, becomes almost insupportable. Take
any one besetting infirmity, for instance want of govern-
ment of the tongue, or unworthy pleasure in eating and
drinking, how jaded and disgusted we become long before
we have made any sensible impression upon the strength
of the evil habit !

A fourth cause of fatigue is in the little progress wo

OUR NORMAL STATE. 121

make in a long time. Success hinders fatigue. The
excitement carries us on, and supplies fresh forces to
nature, enabling her to draw on the secret funds of her
constitution, which, otherwise, nothing but the death-
struggle would have brought out. On the contrary, de-
feat is akin to lassitude. Besides this, slow walking is
more tiring than fast. Men hurry up and down a short
quarter-deck, because a funeral pace makes them low-
spirited and footsore. These are all types of what the
spirit feels. Our small progress deprives us of all natural
encouragement. For our minds must be thoroughly satu-
rated with supernatural principles, always to realize that
one evil thought repelled, one angry humour smartly
chastised, one base envy well warred down, one thorough
Deo gratias in a piece of ill-luck, may be really hundreds
of leagues of progress ; and each of them worth more
than the whole world to us, as something which pleases
God, and which God alone has enabled us to do. Un-
fortunately we usually realize our supernatural principles
most when we feel fatigue least; and it is for this reason
thai our slow progress is so wearisome. A calm at sea
is fatiguing, even though no physical effort is called for
on our part. To scale Parnassus in the face of a blus-
tering wind and a drenching rain is less tiring than to
rock idly and helplessly for a day in the Gulf of Corinth,
with beauty enough in sight to feed mind and eye fof
weeks.

The universality of the vigilance which is required in
the spiritual life is a fifth source of fatigue. We have
not only to be always on the alert, but our watchfulness
has such a wide extent of ground to cover. Everything
else in the spiritual life we can concentrate, except our
11

122 OUR NORMAL STATE.

vigilance; ai,d that we cannot concentrate. The nearest
approach to it is the practice of particular examen of
conscience, quite one of the most helpful and operative
practices of the spiritual life. But that is not in reality
bo much a concentration of our vigilance, as that the
fixing our attention very earnestly on one fault helps to
keep us awake, and makes our eyes quick to see anything
stir and our ears sharp for the slightest sound. And who
will say that particular examen is not fatiguing in itself?
He is a happy man who keeps to it without missing, for
as much as one single moon. Truly vigilance is a tiring
thing in itself: what then must it be, when we add to it
universality and uninterruptedness ? Yet such is the
vigilance the world, the flesh, and the devil exact from
us continually. Liberty of spirit is a mighty boon. It
dispenses with many things. But woe be to him who
dreams that it dispenses him from watchfulness !

A sixth cause of fatigue is iu the mere wear and tear
of duration. A light work will tire, if it is sufficiently
prolonged ; and the work of the spiritual life is simply
unending, and the pressure of it continuous. It is true
that this fatigue is easier to bear than some of the others,
because there is something consoling in the thought that
we have persevered so far. Nevertheless it forms one of
the difficulties of perseverance. For while we feel fa-
tigued at the present moment, the future presents us with
no other prospect. A life-long vista of work stretches
before us: long or short as it may please God; still
always work. There is no retiring on a pension or half-
pay from the military service of the spiritual life.

Seventhly, fatigue is generated by fatigue itself. We
get tired of being tired. And this produces a sort of
torpor most dangerous to the soul. We become indiffe-

OUR NORMAL STATE. 123

rent to things We grow callous to the feeling of oui
own unworthiness, to the horror of sin, to the gloriou?
desirableness of God and of union with Hiin. We are
like a broken musical instrument. We give no sound
when we are fingered. There is something in this state
analogous to the swept and garnished heart of which our
Saviour speaks, into which seven devils might easily
enter, worse than the first who had been ejected from it.
The only safety in this kind of fatigue is more occupa-
tion. We must burden still more the already overbur-
dened spirit. This remedy requires faith. Nothing but
snow itself will draw the frost out of the bitten limbs of
the sealer of the Antarctic. It is a cruel cure, but a
specific. So it is with this tiring of being tired. If you
do not load it more, even to making it restless, angry,
rebellious, if you will, — in a short time you will be on
the brink of seriously throwing up the service of God
altogether.

These are our seven fatigues ; and I am almost afraid
of what I have written. I fear lest it should discourage
you. Alas ! it is not the truest kindness to throw a false
rose-coloured light over the harsh and rocky portions of
the spiritual landscape. Man must not represent as
wholly ease, what God has made in part most difficult.
But you must remember, this is only one side of the pic-
ture, and the dark side. I have had to dwell upon it
here, because this was the place for it 3 and I have put it
at the worst, for I have assumed throughout that God
uniformly subtracted sensible sweetness and interior con-
solation from you all the while. Yet this is hardly ever
so, perhaps never, and certainly never with any souls to
whom he has not first given immense gifts of courage,
fortitude and endurance, or a peculiar attraction to walk

124 OUR NORMAL STATE.

by faith only. When I come to the chapter on Spiritual
Idleness, I shall show you how to avoid the dangers with
which this fatigue is fraught. Meanwhile 1 will say ne
more than this, first, that the spiritual joys of holiness fai
more than counterbalance its fatigue, and secondly, that
whatever you do, I counsel you not to rush from the mo-
mentary and apparent dulness and uninterestingness of
the things of God to seek refuge and consolation in crea-
tures. The consequences of such a step are dreadful.
I had almost said irremediable. But I have seen things
which show that it is not quite irremediable. I hope no
mistake of any kind in the spiritual life is irremediable.
The case of a tepid religious has been quoted as such.
But we know that even such cases are curable, because
they have been cured. And what can be incurablc\ if
they are not ?

3. The third disposition which makes up our normal
state is Rest, seemingly the very opposite of the Fatigue
of which I have just spoken. But we must not imagino
this rest to consist either in a cessation from struggle, or
a deliverance from fatigue. This is contrary to the idea
of the spiritual life. The rest of which I speak is a truer
rest, a higher rest, a rest of altogether a different kind
It has these five characteristics. First, it is supernatural-
Tired nature cannot supply it. It were no rest at all if
it came from any fountain short of heaven. If it comes
from any human heart, it can only be from the Sacred
Heart of God made Man. Secondly, it lasts but for a
little while at a time. It comes and goes like an angel's
visitation. Yet, thirdly, brief as its visit is, its effects
are lasting. It refreshes and animates us in a way which
no earthly consolation can even imitate, much less rival.
It is food in the strength of which we can go all the way

OUR NORMAL STATE. 125

to the mountain of God. Fourthly, it is very peace-
ful. It produces no excitement. It moves away none
of our existing devotions or spiritual exercises. It is no
disturbing force to our vocation, no overruling impulse to
our discretion. And last of all, it unites us to God : and
what is that union but a participation of His eternal tran-
quillity, a foretaste of the Sabbath in His paternal lap
for evermore ?

In trying to draw out for you the varieties of thid
welcome and beautiful rest, I must caution you not to be
CNst down if I make it consist in things which seem far
abjve your present attainments. The fact is that these
hijjh things are begun in you. It may still be with them
th iir day of small beginnings. Nevertheless they are
be^un ; and with them comes the gift of rest, to increase
a* they increase, but to be from the very first a substan-
tia I gift of our compassionate Father who is in heaven.

This divine rest consists first in detachment from
cr> itures. As we grow in holiness our attachments to
en atures weaken, and those that remain riveted are ri-
vev^.d in God. It is not that sanctity lies in unfeelingness.
L<>' k at St. Francis of Sales stretched on the floor of the
roo'n where his mother has just died, and sobbing as if
hi> heart was broken. Strong angels look at the pros-
tone saint without upbraiding ; for his grief is a human
bMiness rather than a human weakness. Not for a
hioment, said he, in all that tempest of grief was his
will removed one line's breadth from the sweet sovereign
will of God. All that is irregular, earthly and inordinate
in our attachments fades out. Nay, we are sensibly con-
scious to ourselves of an actual decay of all strong feel-
ings, of whatevci kind, in our heart3. And the absence
11*

126 Otlft NORMAL STATE.

nf these is rest; for strong earthly feelings are a
tyranny.

Secondly, we have now no worldly end in view; and
thus there is nothing proximate to disquiet us. What
success can we have to look forward to ? Is it a point
in riches we would fain reach ? Or a summit on which
an ambitious imagination has often placed us in our day-
dreams ? Or a scheme that we are burning to realize ?
Such things belong not to the spiritual. They know
nothing of them ; except that they have been burned by
them in former times. They have scathed them, and
passed on. Not even works of mercy now can be ends
of themselves, ends in which to rest. They are but
stepping-stones we lay down for God's glory and His
angels to pass over the earth and bless its misery. There
may be rest in straining to a supernatural end, or the
very strain may be more welcome than the most luxurious
rest. But there can be no rest for those who are straining
after a worldly end, blameless even if perchance it be.

Thirdly, holiness brings us rest, because it delivers us
even from spiritual ambition, in any of its various forms.
As I have already said, the inordinate pursuit of virtue
is itself a vice, and the anxious desire to be speedily rid
of all our imperfections is a delusion of self-love. To
desire supernatural favours is almost a sin; to ask fo*
supernatural tokens is nearly always an indiscretion
Present grace is not only the field of our labour ; it i»
also the haven of our rest. We must trust God and be
childlike with Him even in our spiritual progress. We
must make a bed of our vileness and a pillow of our im-
perfections ; and nothing can soil us while humility is out
rest. Ambition is not the less wrong, nor greediness the
less repulsive, because they are spiritual. When God

OUR NORMAL STATE.

127

feeds us witi His hand, is that a time for eagerness?
When Spiritual ambition is mortified, no'«into indifference,
but into patience, prayer, and calm hope, then there is
rest.

One consequence of all these dispositions is a readiness
to die; and this is in itself a fourth source of rest. What
is there to keep us ? Why should we linger on ? Dare
we pray with St. Martin to stay ind work if we are ne-
cessary to God's people ? Are we so foolish as to dream
we have a mission, which is to delay us like Mary after
the Ascension, or the Evangelist St. John till the first
century was run out ? When we are going a journey,
and are not ready, we are all bustle and heat. Prepara-
tions have to be made, our last orders given, and our
farewells said. But when all is done, and it is not time
yet, we sit down and rest. The rooms do not look like
home, because we are going, and our attachments are
packed up, like the works, merits, and forgiven sins of a
dying man. If we have any feeling besides that of rest,
it is rather impatience. But in a spiritual man impatience
to die would be no trifling im mortification. Consequently
the readiness to die, without impatience, is rest. The
contented animal that stretches itself in the shade of the
noonday field does not rest with greater sensible enjoy-
ment than the immortal soul that is bravely de'ached
from mortal things.

It belongs to our nature to incline to rest in ends, and
not in means. This opens out to us a fifth source of rest.
For everything is an end, no matter how transient, if
only it be referred to God. Indeed it is an end in a sense
in which no merely earthly thing can be so ; for it parti-
cipates in the end of all ends and ultimate rest of all
things, God himself. Hence our very struggle is rest,

128 Otm, NORMAL STATE.

our very fatigue rest; for they are both made up of count
less things each of which is in itself a resting-place anc
an end. Has not every one felt at times, only too rarely,
the joy steal over him that he has no wish or will before
Mm ? Nothing is unfulfilled, because God is everywhere.
He feels for God and has found Him; and so he has
nothing to seek, nothing to desire. Possible evils are al-
lowed to present themselves to his imagination, only that
he may realize more utterly the gladness of his complete
indifference to them. He is at rest. Earth has hold of
none of his heart-strings. The whole world is full of ends
to him. He can lie down anywhere; for everything is a
U)d, because he refers all things to God. If this kind of
rr.st would sometimes last a little longer — but God knows
b*st. Even the wish would break the deliciousness of
fc'u it heavenly rest.

Humility furnishes us with a sixth source of rest. And
this in two ways. First of all, it makes us contented,
contented with our infirmities, though not contented with
ourselves. God forbid this last should ever be ! Thus
it makes us unanxious, ungrasping, childlike, and calm ;
and there is rest in the very sound of all those words.
Secondly, it brings us rest in another way. For it not
only subdues us by keeping us down in the sense of our
Dwn nothingness, but it exhilarates us by pouring the
pj.re light of grace around us and making us feel how
entirely we owe everthing to God. Did any one ever see
a humble man with an unquiet heart? Except when
some storm of grief or loss swept over him, never!
Humility is rest, sweet rest and safe, and which leaves no
reproaches or misgivings behind, and it is a rest withirj
the reach of the lowest of us.

There is a seventh source of rest, of which it is hard

OUR NORMAL STATE. 129

to speak, because words cannot tell it. They only stand
for signs, which give some idea of it. It is the rest
which comes from the bare thought of God, or rather
which is itself the bare thought of God. Sometimes, in
a beautiful climate, we come upon a scene, which by its
surpassing beauty so satisfies mind, heart and senses, that
we sit entranced, taking it in without understanding it,
and resting in the simple enjoyment of the sight. Thus
for a while a man may sit amid the folds of Etna, be-
neath a shady tree, on the marvellous mountain-shelf of
Taormina, and look out upon the scene. Everything thv<t
wood and water, rock and mountain, dazzling sky aud
translucent air can do, with the grand spirit of old history
brooding over all, is there. It cannot be analyzed or os.-
plained. We are taken in the nets of a beauty which
masters us; and the sheer thought of it is a joy without
thought for hours. This is a poor way of typifying the
rest which is in the glorious, overshadowing thought of
God. It is a self-sufficing rest, not only because Hi is
almighty, all-holy and all-wise, nor because He is our 0(vn
near and fatherly God, but simply and sheerly because He
is God. Words will make it no clearer. God give? it
to us sometimes and we know it; and seen through it,
brighter than Sicilian air, more limpid than Arethusa's
fountain, our struggle and fatigue look fair and delectable
in that heavenly medium. But in whatever measure
God visits us with this sort of light, true it is that such
is the normal state of our spiritual life, — struggle and
fatigue, and not only after these but also during these,
there remaineth a sabbath for the people of God : for they
rest in the languors of love here, till their rest deepens
into His eternal bosom hereafter.
I

130 PATIENCE.

CHAPTER IX.

PATIENCE.

The three dispositions which compose the normal state
of the spiritual life, struggle, fatigue, and rest, are each
of them beset with a darkness and difficulty of their own,
requiring attendant virtues to enlighten them. Struggle
obviously requires patience; fatigue is only safely endured
when singleness of purpose secures us from human respect;
and rest is in need of courageous mortification. In this
chapter, therefore, we must speak of patience.

Is it not true that we do not ordinarily appreciate the
importance of this virtue in the spiritual life ? We readily
admit the importance of prayer, examen, mortification,
and spiritual reading, as means of holy living, and as
forming a necessary portion of the ascetical exercises of
each day ; but it is to be doubted whether we allow its
proper place to the exercise of patience. I am speaking
especially to persons living in the world ; and whose holi-
ness consequently is of a more hidden character than that
of religious, external circumstances concentrating it within,
and not providing it with the almost hourly beautiful de-
velopments in which it would display itself with graceful
freedom in conventual life. I say that the holiness of a
holy person in the world is of a more hidden character
than that of a religious; and it would seem at first sight
as if this gave the secular the advantage. God forbid !
[f external circumstances make holiness in the world

PATIENCE. 131

more hidden, and so form it into an interior spirit, th«
religious enjoys the inestimable privilege of obedience,
which is a continual supernatural pressure upon the soul,
training it in the most delicate interior spirit, and for the
absence of which nothing else can compensate, and which
is unlike any obedience a secular can pay to his director.
But I make much of the fact, which both experience and
the published lives of holy persons attest, that the holi-
ness of a person in the world is more hidden ; because it
has sometimes been the fashion to write spiritual books
in a strain of hyperbole and exaggeration, quite alien to
the calm discretion and sober moderation which is need-
ful in handling such matters, and the upshot of which is
to represent all holiness to be in the cloister, and all the
world beside a reprobate mass. Besides being unsound
doctrine, the exaggeration is foolish in every way, and
leads infallibly to a low standard of monastic perfection ;
just as in the days of Tronson, worldly priests tried to
put the whole burden of sacerdotal perfection upon reli-
gious, in order that their own lives might be more easy
and more free.

There is hardly any subject in the spiritual life more
unfairly dealt with than this ; yet if we refer to older
writers, especially the three great Jesuit ascetics, Platus,
Alvarez de Paz, and Da Ponte, there is no portion of spi-
ritual theology in which the principles are more clearly
laid down than here. Monastic perfection is something
far higher than any which can be aimed at in the world.
Yet if we were to tell a nun that certain practices of per-
fection, which as a matter of fact are practised by secu-
lars, were only fit for the convent, we should at once

132 PATIENCE.

lower her standard of her own obligations ; and it would
be much if nature did not get the better of grace, and
cause her to settle down in a level of life no higher than
that of holy seculars in society. So, if we represent the
perfection attainable by a secular priest as the property
of a religious, we injure at once both the religious and
the secular, by lowering their standards. The religious
recognizes in the portrait of a perfect secular the picture
of a perfect monk, and the secular does not recognize
himself at all. And, as Tronson shrewdly remarks, all
this is the more mischievous because spiritual writers
have often observed that, while it is a sign of a relaxed
religious order to run down perfection in the world and
among the secular clergy, because of the obvious conse-
quences to the order itself of allowing this doctrine, the
secular clergy, " far from testifying/' I am using Tron-
sou's words, "this esteem of their own vocation, are often
th»* first to combat it. If you do not believe me, make
the experiment yourselves. Put forward an ecclesiastical
ma*im which tends to establish you (he is speaking to
secular priests) in perfection, whether it concerns detach-
ment from the world, or the flight from worldlmess, or
th* condemnation of the world's maxims, to which eccle-
siastics are more particularly and more strictly obliged,
and you will see that ecclesiastics themselves will be the
first to oppose you; so that they who ought tu defend
these truths, and who are engaged by their state to main-
tain them with the utmost vigour, are those who will con-
test them with the greatest heat and vehemence. See
what we are come to!" * The same principles are laid

* Entretiens, tome ii., p. 11.

PATIENCE. 133

down by Alvarez de Paz,* by Da Ponte,f and by Pla-
tus.J This last writer says that the Church is made up
of three orders, laymen, religious, and clerics ; and he says
of this last, that " it has all the disadvantages, without
the advantages of the other two states. For clerics have
the same obligation of attaining perfection which reli-
gious have, and without doubt even a greater one, because
of the excellence of their ministry, the divinity of the
sacraments, and the government of souls. Yet they have
not the helps which religious have, nor the influx of a
richer grace. " All these writers, with the exception of
Tronson, were Jesuits : I quote one more, also a Jesuit,
as spiritual theology has been one of their man)' excel-
lences, and their writers are generally the most clear
and defined, uniting science with their unction. It is
F. Surin.§ He says of the condition of a secular priest
that his " state demands all the purity of life of religious
and of solitaries ; and the priest would delude himself
extremely, who, to excuse the little care he takes to aim
at the highest sanctity (la plus haute saintete), when any
one speaks to him of a point of perfection, such as recol-
lection, prayer, mortification, and zeal for the glory of
God, should say that that is good for a Carthusian, a Ca-

* De Vita Spirituali, 1. ii., Pars v. de Statu Clericali.

f De Perfectione Ecclesiasticorum, being the first of the seven
tracts of the fourth vol. de Perfectione.

J De Bono Status Religiosi, lib. i., cap. xxxvii. Comparatio status
religiosi cum ordine clericorum simplicium. See also "Walter Hilton,
the English Carthusian's Treatise to a Devout Man of Secular Estate,
teaching him how to lead a spiritual life therein. London, 1659, neat
the little north door of St. Paul's.

§ Lettres Spirituelles. Lett. xiv.

12

184 PATIENCE.

puchin, or a Jesuit, but that for himself he does not aim
so high."

But in truth these great Jesuit ascetics were not in
any way departing from the spiritual tradition of the
more ancient doctors. They have not got beyond the
grand light of the Church, St. Thomas, the angel of th-a
schools ; and he professes to give us the tradition of Am-
brose, Chrysostom, and the older fathers. He who de-
fended the religious state and its perfection in his won-
derful tract on Perfection says, " If then a religious is
unordained, as is the case with lay brothers, it is manifest
that the pre-eminence of order excels as to dignity. For
by holy orders a man is deputed to the most dignified
ministries, to serve Christ in the Sacrament of the altar.
For this a greater interior sanctity is required than even
the religious state demands ; for as Dionysius says,* the
monastic order ought to follow the sacerdotal orders, and
after their imitation ascend to divine things. Hence,
other things being equal, a cleric in holy orders, when he
does anything contrary to sanctity, sins more gravely
than a religious who is not in holy orders, although the
lay religious is bound to regular observances, and the
clerk is not."f

I have dwelt upon this, because unless we have our
first principles clear on the subject of perfection in and
out of the religious state, nearly everything that is said

* In cap vi. Bccles. Hierarch.

f Ad quod (the priesthood, diaconate and subdiaconate) requiritut
major sanctitas interior quam requirat etiam religionis statue. Quia,
eicut Dionysius dicit, Monasticns ordo debet sequi sacerdotales ordines,
et ad eorum imitationem ad divina ascendere. (Secunda Secundse.
Quaest. clxxxiv. Art. viii., in which he undertakes to show that a
religiuuB is more perfect than an archdeacon.)

PATIENCE. 135

is capable of being taken the wrong way j and it has much
to do with the subject of patience. For what I want to
say is that while obedience, community life, exact ob-
servance of primitive rule, fidelity to the original spirit
of the canonized founder, and above all the practice of
evangelical poverty, put the perfection of religious far
above the reach of seculars in kind, there can be no
question or comparison between them at all as to degree.
A person may have a higher degree of a lower hind of
perfection than another. Theologians say that probably
some saints on earth have loved God more than some
angels in heaven. This illustrates my meaning ; for no
one will say that an angel in heaven is not higher in kind
than a saint upon earth. Thus a man in the world may
attain a higher degree of perfection in his kind than a
certain religious may have attained in the cloister in his
kind ) and so have corresponded more faithfully to grace,
and be more acceptable to God. To deny this seems to
be a simple confusion of principles. Men who dispute
about it must be using words in two different senses. The
thing itself is surely self-evident. Is there any one who
would rather be a very ordinary religious than a very holy
secular ? *

* St. Thomas may be said to have exhausted the subject of the
comparative states of perfection in the last seven questions of the
Secunda Secundae. Spiritual books are mostly written by religious,
and for the use of religious. Hence it is that St. Thomas's doctrine
on the perfection of the Secular Clergy is so often, not misrepre-
sented, but simply pretermitted ; although the non-recognition of it,
injurious as it is to the best interests of the clergy, is almost equally
so to the religious as lowering their standard of monaetic perfection.
A religious who is a priest has an obligation to a double perfection ;
yet loosely- written books sometimes refer what belongs to his sacer-
dotal perfection to the obligations of his monastic state. The prac*

136 PATIENCE.

Furthermore, what obedience is to religious (not all
that it is, but the functions it performs), that patience is
to seculars. Independently of its directly supernatural
virtue, obedience sanctifies the religious for four reasons
principally : because it comes from without, because the
religious has no control over its requirements, because he
must be ready at all moments, and because it involves the
giving up of his own will and way. Now all these four
offices patience discharges in its measure to the secular.
The circumstances which exact its exercise come upon us
from without; we have no control over them; they may
come upon us at all moments ; and they always involve
the sacrifice or the mortification of our own will and way.
I do not say that patience equals religious obedience; but
that it is itself the obedience of seculars. It is necessary
to their perfection. What obedience is to the higher and
different perfection of monks and nuns, that patience is to
the indubitably lower, yet genuine perfection of men in
the world.

A few words must be said of all the four exercises of
patience, patience with others, patience with self, patience
with our director, and patience with God.

We may say that, partly from our own badness and
partly from theirs, all mankind, far and near, kindred and
strangers, are a trial to our patience in some way or other.
If those who are above us exercise our patience, our na-
tural inclination is immediately to revolt, and we are quite
as much kept in subordination by human respect, by fear
and the consequence to our own interests, as by the real

tice of evangelical poverty is a height unapproachable by seculars,
t,o say coining of the sanctification of vowed obedience. The
superiority of the religious state over the secular is immeasurable
but, I repeat, the difference is one of kind, not of degree.

PATIENCE. 137

grace of patience. Even when we obey ws take tin bloom
off our obedience by a sulky manner, or by a sullen word
or a downcast look, or a complaint to others, or a general
reproachful sadness of demeanour by which we manage t<?
make superiors unhappy and disquieted, and to show them
what an exercise of authority they are putting forward
when they constrain us to what we do not like. The
sanctifying power of half our life is lost by this single
ungracefulness. If the trial of our patience comes from
those below us, we sometimes proudly exhibit our sense
of their inferiority. We crush them by a reprimand, or
wither them by a look, or sting them with coldness. If
the trial comes from our equals, how often do we offend
by rudeness, abruptness, unkindliness, and a want of mu-
tual respect ! When we are engaged with others in any
kind of work, or are constantly in society with others, our
patience is often exercised. We encounter stupid, pas-
sionate or importunate people ; and we do not look at
each of these meetings as a gift from God, who is going
to watch how we behave and visit us accordingly. Almost
every circumstance in life has a manner, time, place and
degree, by which it tries our patience ; and it is not too
much to say, especially in the earlier stages of the devout
fife, that this exercise does more for us than fast or disci-
pline j and that when we can go through with it for love
of the sweetness of Jesus, we are not far from interior
holiness.

The blessings which result from this practice in the
interior life are manifold. The English spirit of always
standing up for our rights is fatal to perfection. It is
the opposite of that charity of which the apostle says,
that it seeks not its own. Now this spirit is admirably
12*

138 PATIENCE.

mortified by the exercise of patience. It involves also a
continual practice of the presence of God; for we may
be come upon at any moment for an almost heroic dis-
play of good temper. And it is a short road to unself-
ishness; for nothing is left to self. All that seems to
belong most intimately to self, to be self's private pro-
perty, such as time, home, and rest, are invaded by these
continual trials of patience. The family is full of such
opportunities, and the sanctity of marriage abounds with
them. It may be added, for it is no slight thing, that
there is not a spiritual exercise less open to delusion than
is this, though the subtle, disheartening Gruillore fills
three whole chapters with them.

In truth there are certain admonitions which are neces-
sary concerning this exercise of patience with others. It
is a practice which requires a long apprenticeship, so that
it is in itself an exercise of patience. To be impatient
because they are not patient is no uncommon exhibition
in spiritual persons. Progress in the acquirement of
this virtue is not easily perceived, as in the substantial
self-denial there is often much inward trouble and heat
Hence we must take comfort and go on making efforts
It is a matter in which every effort is in reality an ad-
vance. There are also particular times when we must be
very cautious not to be irritable and impatient. After
long prayer, great sweetness in meditation, or an unusu
ally fervent communion, or, indeed, any spiritual effort,
we are extremely liable to lose our temper, partly through
a law of our physical constitution, and partly because
the devil wants to repair the losses we have just made
him suffer. We must be content, therefore, at first with
inaterial patience, irritable patience. We must not be

PATIENCE. 139

vexed or cast dowi. about it. Something better will
come of it presently. It is well to accuse ourselves of
the slightest fault against patience at confession, to make
frequent acts of contrition about it during the day, and
to cast many a loving look at our Crucifix, that touching
emblem of the patience of God. Strange to say, not-
withstanding God is impassible, there is something pe-
culiarly Godlike in the virtue of patience. If it is true
of any one grace, beside charity, it is true of patience,
that it is the beauty of holiness.

But if it is a hard thing to be patient with others, how
much harder is it to be patient with ourselves ! Indeed,
so much is this branch of the virtue neglected that we
seem almost to think its opposite a merit, as if impatience
with self were a heroism or a meritorious mortification.
There is a vast difference between hatred of self and im-
patience with self. The more of the first we have the
better, and the less of the last. Once let us surmount
the difficulty of being patient with ourselves and the road
to perfection lies clear and unobstructed before us.

But what do we mean by impatience with self? Fret-
ting under temptations, and mistaking their real nature,
and their real value also. — In actual sin being more
vexed at the lowering of our own self-esteem than being
grieved at God's dishonour. — In being surprised and
irritated at our own want of self-control because of our
subjection to unworthy habits. — Being depressed because
we experience lively movements of anger or give way to
fits of sadness, even where, as is possible, there is no sin,
either in the one or the other. — Being annoyed with our
own want of sensible devotion, as if it was at all in oui
Dwn power, and as if patience in dryness was not ;ust the

140 PATIENCE.

very way to earn sweetness and spiritual consolation. —
Being disquieted because we do not find the remedies we
have applied to our faults act as we expected, forgetting
that they need time, and that we often put secret obsta-
cles in the way. To these symptoms we may add a sort
of querulousness about the want of spiritual progress, as
if we were to be saints in a month.

All these dangerous symptoms of impatience with self
come from one or other of four causes, and it is there we
must seek them, and kill them in the nest, before they
are able to fly. Verily they are birds of prey to our spi-
ritual life. The first cause is self-love, which is unable
to brook the disappointment of not seeing ourselves in
times of trial come out beautiful, erect and admirable.
The second is want of humility, which causes us not to
appreciate our own real meanness, or to comprehend the
.incapacitating effects of our past sins. The third is the
absence of a true estimate of the huge difficulties of the
spiritual life, and therefore of the necessity of an utter
divorce with the world and a formal abjuration of its
maxims, before we can really give ourselves to God. The
fourth is an obstinate disinclination to walk by faith.
We fret under it. We want, nature wants, self-love
wants, everything in short, except faith itself, wants, —
to see, to know, to be sure, to reason, to ascertain that
success is inevitable.

To be patient with self is au. almost incalculable
blessing, and the shortest road to improvement, as well
as the quickest means by which an interior spirit can be
formed within us, short of that immediate touch of God
which makes some souls interior all at once. It breeds
considerateness and softness of manner towards others

PATIENCE. 141

It disinclines us to censoriousness, because of the abiding
sense of our own imperfections. It quickens our percep-
tion of utterest dependence on God and grace, and pro-
duces at the same time evenness of temper and equality
of spirits, because it is at once an effort, and yet a quiet
sustained effort. It is a constant source of acts of the
mrv't genuine humility. In a word, by it we act upon
self from without, as if we were not self, but self's
master, or self's guardian angel. And when this is done
in the exterior life as well as the interior, what remains
in order to perfection ?

There are various means by which we may cultivate
this patience with ourselves. Frequent meditation on
our own nothingness is a great help to it; and an especial
dwelling upon any meanness and vileness and deceit of ")ur
past lives, the reconsideration of which can be attei ded
with no danger because of the intrinsic disgust and cut-
ting shame which the details of such meanness a>»<ike
within us. When we hear of some great crime, we may
consider that we might have done it ourselves, or periaps
worse, were it not for grace. We must be careful als* • at
confession, and in preparing for it, not to mistake *elf-
vexation for real contrition : and then we may persevere
in asking for patience in a special way after communion.
We must try, it is very hard, but time wins its way
through hard things, to rejoice in all encounters which
show us our need of grace, and the possibility of dreadful
sins which we always carry about with us. Neither must
we be in a hurry to forget past sin, and to force our way
into the sunshine. If God gives us quite a depressing
sense of sin, let us cherish it and stagger on beneath the
burden. Blessed is any weight, however overwhelming,

142 PATIENCE.

which God has been so good as fasten with His own hand
upon our shoulders. In a word, patience with self is
almost a condition of spiritual progress ; and St. Cathe-
rine of Genoa is its patron saint.

From patience with self we must pass to patience with
our director. Patience with superiors is of the essence
of religious obedience ; and a director is something like
a superior without the overawing insignia of authority;
but our obedience to him is and ought to be limited, and
we may transfer it elsewhere any day without sin, if not
without indiscretion.

Now we have first of all to subject our understanding
to our director, and this in many ways and under many
diiferent circumstances. He often differs from us in our
own view of ourselves, and puts a low price upon what we
think rare and precious. He keeps us back when we are
for bounding forward, and he spurs us on when we wish
to sit down and rest, and admire the view which we have
now climbed high enough to see. He persists that some-
thing we make much of is a delusion, and he will not
agree with us as to what is really our ruling passion. He
changes our line, and we think he is making a serious
mistake with us, and while we are detailing to him some
supposed inspiration, he looks cold and distracted, and as
if he wished we would go away. There is surely ample
room for the understanding to practise patience here.

The subjection of our will is not less trying. He
thwarts our desires and gives us no reason but his own
will, so that there are many things we repent we ever
asked him. He refuses us austerities and extra-commu-
nions, neither will he confer with us as often as we wish,
or for as long time as our own self-love deems reasonable

PATIENCE. 148

for persons of such importance to the Church as we are. •
He will not let us read the books we like to read, and he
is provokingly slow in making up his mind on questions
we have laid before him. When self-will has patiently
gone through this, will it be far from being tamed into
Christian docility ?

We must be patient also with him when he is evi-
dently mortifying us. This is not so hard, because it is
more direct. He mortifies us by refusing us consolations,
by giving us absolution without a word, when we have
expected a conference, and are full of words which we
want to pour out, and yet to let it seem as if he drew
them out. He mortifies us by sending us to communion
without absolution, and otherwise ridiculing our scruples,
by speaking harshly to us with manifest exaggeration, and
by keeping us under monotonous mortifications which
have long ceased to be mortifications, till we are almost
wearied out, in other words, till they have become morti-
fications again, and of a better and more killing kind.

But it is a harder task to be patient with him when we
are in doubt, half suspecting he is mortifying us, and yet
not being quite sure whether it is not laziness or indiffer-
ence. This takes place when he seems, almost studiously,
to take no interest in us, and treats us as an annoyance
to him, or when he contradicts, interrupts, or appears
purposely to misunderstand us. At other times he says
he quite forgets our case, and bids us repeat it, and looks
as if he were making no effort to listen even then.
Another while he contradicts himself, counter-orders
things, and gives opposite advice different weeks. Then
he hints he would have us leave him, and when we refuse,
pubmits to keep us with a languid and inattentive air.

144 PATIENCE.

But he may try our patience harder still. He may be
and often is, plainly in fault. Impatience, discourtesy,
and irritability, are always faults, whatever amount of
extenuation may be pleaded in their behalf. He may be
guilty of occasional acts of substantial unkindness, and at
times he may be destitute of the grace to bear with our
weaknesses and to sympathize with our sorrows. Oppor-
tunities may offer when it becomes a duty on his part to
make exertions and to take trouble for us, and he refuses
to do so. Or he may visit us hastily with the fatal pun-
ishment of leaving us to direct ourselves, because we have
been surprised into taking ourselves in hand, when we
thought him listless and forgetful, and all the while he
was praying and saying mass for us. In all this he is
clearly wrong, and yet we must have patience with him.
And if direction were altogether a supernatural thing,
patience would be easier, because it would be dignified.
But with the great bulk both of penitents and directors,
direction is, and ought to be, and ought never to pretend
not to be, almost as much natural as supernatural.

We have still to speak of patience with God. The
very word sounds strange. Let it not breed familiar or
irreverent thoughts. It is a very serious question, and
must be approached with the profoundest respect, remem-
bering of what an infinite majesty and unfathomable con-
descension it is of which with all abasement we are ven-
turing to speak. Again and again I have said, it is an
awful thing to have dealings with Almighty God. His
favours are our fears. And yet let us think of this with
the intensest filial and confiding love. Oh that we could
always speak reverently of Him whom we do far more
than either fear or love, whom we worship as our God !

PATIENCE. 146

God condescends to try our patience, who are dutst and
ashes, in various ways; and some of them are peculiar
or belong chiefly, to the spiritual life. His ordinary
providence, therefore, the ways of His justice, and the
darkness of His decrees, do not now concern us : His
majesty is adorable, His glory inscrutable in them all.
In the spiritual life He vouchsafes to try our patience
first of all by His slowness. Slowness is the grand
characteristic of the Creator as seen by the side of His
creatures. Were it not for His slowless, where should
we have been long since ? We forget this, when His
slowness makes us impatient. He is slow ; we are swift
and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and
He has been from eternity. Thus grace for the most
part acts slowly, and mortification is as long as levelling
a mountain, and prayer as the growth of an old oak. He
works by little and by little, and sweetly and strongly He
compasses His ends, but with a slowness which tries our
faith, because it is so great a mystery. We must fasten
upon this attribute of God in our growth in holiness. It
must be at once our worship and our exemplar. There
is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness
of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not
disquiet them.

He tries us also by His hiddenness and by the impe-
netrable obscurity in which He shrouds almost all His
supernatural processes, both in the sacraments and out of
them. As the Bible says, He is a God who conceals
Himself. If we could see Him, so we say, 0 then cheer-
fully would we follow Him ! 0 were we but sure it was
He ! But we cannot see Him. Often He could not show
Himself to us, if He would. That is, His mercy could
13 K

146 PATIENCE.

not, for the sight would slay us. Darknesu is good for us
when light would blind us. But look over the exercises,
the trials, the temptations, and the vicissitudes of the
spiritual life, and what a gain it seems as if it would be
to us, could we only see Him ! It is not so. It is best
as it is. The enigma is our life. We must be patient
with it. Sometimes He condescends to look mutable and
fickle. He lets the moon amid the driving clouds of night
be His emblem. He entices us into a road, and then
leaves us just where it branches into two. He shows His
face and then He hides it. We see it for a moment, and
it is gone before we have caught the expression of it. Or
the light so pleased us, we did not look at the dark objects
it was meant to enlighten. Why does He interweave His
bright and dark with us so perpetually? Sometimes He
puzzles us as to His will. He lets half words fall into
our hearts. He sends us what look like leadings, and are
not so. He feigns, as our Lord did when He made as if
He would pass the boat that stormy night on the water.
He lets us think that He has contradicted Himself, He
who is eternal truth, unchangeable simplicity. He looks
as though He were entrapping us, getting us to commit
ourselves to Him, and then reproaching us, and going
away as if we had offended Him, or changing his mien
and throwing us into prison and making slaves of us, as
if in contempt of our generosity, as if our best were an
insult to Him, as it would be but for the infiniteness of
His amazing compassion. One while He is the most in-
dulgent of fathers, another while the least forbearing of
masters : now the most patieut of teachers, and again the
sharpest of critics : here the most gracious of sovereigns,
there the most exacting of despots : now almost a plain

PATIENCE. 147

t;ff to our human hearts, and again the most vindictive
of persecutors. Look as Thou wilt, most gracious Lord !
nothing of Thee will we believe but that Thou art an in-
finitely good God, in Thy wrath remembering mercy, and
as unchangeably a Father as Thou art eternally a God !

His chastisements also try our patience. Not only be-
cause they are never really light; for He never punishes
in vain ; but because they are unexpected, and seem in-
consistent with what we have heard, and look dispropor-
tionate to such little failings. For if He caressed us when
we greatly sinned, and forgave us even when we longed
to be chastised, why for a trifling infidelity or an almost
natural defect does the slow, heavy, regular lash endure
so long ? Does He forget we are creatures made of clay,
and that if He does not mind, He will break us ? Any
chastisement which seems out of keeping with His usual
dispensations tries our patience and is specially hard to
bear. In the matter of answers to prayer we are equally
bewildered. If He does not answer, faith faints. If He
does, the answer is like Himself, it is slow and obscure
and a riddle. Sometimes it is as if He answered in anger
and took us at our word in a strange way for a Father.
At last He abandons us. At all events there would be no
bewilderment here, were we not told that this is precisely
the hour of His especial and sustaining grace. Strange !
for it is like a mountain falling on our hearts. It wrung
a cry even from the silence-loving Heart of our ever-
blessed Saviour on the Cross.

Shall I say then, be patient with God ? Better say,
Let us worship as heretofore ; for is He not still God ?

There are various ways in which we offend against
this sublime exercise of patience. The first is by petu-

148 PATIENCE.

lance in prayer, bold words of complaint, as if God had
injured us, or as if He liked them, and that it was for
every one to dare to be with Him as Job was of old, and
to pour out his heart in those bitter burning words,
whereby God mysteriously acknowledged that he had
justified himself. Or our impatience may show itself in
an indiscreet and inordinate pursuit of virtue, a greedi-
ness for graces, and a wounded vanity from venial imper-
fections. It makes us capricious and fickle. We give
up prayer, because the answer lingers. We weary of
sacraments because of their monotony. We shift our
spiritual exercises, because they have not wrought mira-
cles. We abandon medicines because health has not fol-
lowed instantaneously. All infidelity is impatience with
God. Thus we mar our mortifications by it. We begin
them on impulse ; we practise them without sobriety ; and
we leave them off because we are grown tepid and do not
like the pain. So in the same manner a good work sug-
gests itself: we cast up to heaven one ejaculation, far
more full of self-will than of pure zeal; and we begin
the work forthwith without prayer or counsel or delibera-
tion. What wonder we leave it half done ? Is not the
land round about us all full of these follies of impulse,
impatience and conceit, which we ourselves have set up
amid the mute wonder of pitying angels ? We give our-
selves vocations, and then charge them again. We con-
fer missions on ourselves, tyrannize over ourselves by
multiplying our responsibilities, and send ourselves on
embassies to the very end of the earth. We can hardly
relieve sorrow or allay distress, but there is some impa-
tience in it. We pray God daily not to lead us into temp
taticn, yet we are daily placing ourselves in dangerous oc*

PATIENCE. 149

oasions which we have reached almost out of breath, leav-
ing Him far behind, who will not be hasten 3d on His way.
But what are the remedies for this ? "We must study
God. We must drink of the spirit of His ways. We
must love God, ardently, intensely, to the death. But
we must fear Him also, with a fear unutterable, abasing,
perpetual. Fear must beat in our blood, and quiver in
our limbs, and many a time tongue-tie us and throw us
down. 0 how we shall love God, when we fear Him
thus ! Magnificent fear ! thou art a gift of the Holy
Ghost ! We must wait for God, long, meekly, in the
wind and wet, in the thunder and the lightning, in the
cold and the dark. "Wait, and He will come. He never
comes to those who do not wait. He does not go their
road. When He comes, go with Him, but go slowly,
fall a little behind; when He quickens His pace, be sure
of it, before you quicken yours. But when He slackens,
slacken at once. And do not be slow only, but silent,
vary silent, for He is God.

13*

160 HUMAN RESPECT.

CHAPTER X.

HUMAN RESPECT.

To give ourselves up to the spiritual life is to put our*
selves out of harmony with the world around us. We
make a discord even with much that is amiable and affec-
tionate, and with which, as natural virtue, we cannot be
altogether without sympathy. We live in a different
world, have different interests and speak a different lan-
guage, and the two worlds will not mingle. Grace holds
us in one world, nature draws us down again into the
other. This is the secret of the immense power which
human respect has over us; and of the three dispositions
which compose the normal state of the spiritual life,
fatigue is the one which lays us most open to its attacks.
We are weary of interior things and weakened by long
combat, and a vigorous charge from an enemy who gets
close to us under friendly colours is more than for the
most part we can withstand. The good spirit, then, which
should be the faithful satellite of our fatigue, is the pre-
sence of God, or singleness of purpose, or simp-j^ty, but
which I prefer to designate merely the absence of human
respect, because no word seems so exactly to describe this
spirit as the negative appellation in question.

There is much to be said of human respect. It is a
fault most keenly felt by spiritual persons, and compara-
tively little felt by others. It is more like an atmosphere
than anything else, and can hardly be caught and

HUMAN RESPECT. 151

punished in distinct acts. Yet it is a thing of which
there can be no doubt. We have an infallible conscious-
ness of it. It gives undeniable evidences of its own ex-
istence. It destroys all liberty, and becomes the positive
tyrant of a man's life. Yet if we look well into it,
nothing can be more stupid than our submission to it.
For we set little or no value on the separate opinions of
individuals; and when the judgment is in our favour, it
can do us no good, neither, unless true, can it afford us
any rational pleasure. Indeed, its power is altogether in
the prospect, and not in the present possession. Yet it
is a most universal, and must be dealt with as one of the
most inconvenient facts of the spiritual life. Look at a
person who is completely under its domination. Watch
him in society and public life, or in the bosom of
his family, or in the intimacies of friendship, or at con-
fession and in conference with his director, or even with
God in prayer, or in utter solitude* It is as if the omni-
presence of God was spunged out all round him, and that
some other powerful eye was fixed upon him, ruling him
with a power like that of the solar light, and causing in
him at all times an almost preternatural uneasiness.

It is not difficult to see the evils of this miserable
world-presence, this spirit which gathers all mankind up
into an eye, and throws its portentous fascination upon
our souls. It causes men to be false and insincere in
their mutual relations, and to act inconsiderately with
others. It destroys all generous enthusiasm either for
charity or penance. It puts a man under the despotism
of ridicule, which becomes a kind of false god to him.
It is the contradictory of perfection, and while it is in
force, renders it impossible ; for it is always drawing ua

152 HUMAN RESPECT.

off from God to creatures. A brood of sins of omission
follow it wherever it goes, sprung from shame and the
fear of ridicule, and another brood of sins of commission,
from the desire to please. In process of time, and the
process is not slow, it establishes itself as an habitual
distraction in prayer and meditation ; and as to examina-
tion of conscience, it almost seems to supply food to the
voracity of human respect.

It is as miserable as it is evil. The bondage of Car
thusian austerity would be easier to bear. No slavery is
more degraded and unhappy,. What a misery to be
ashamed of our duties and our principles ! What a misery
that every action should have a flaw in it, and a blight
upon it ! What a misery to lose at last, as we must ine-
vitably do, the very thing for which all our sacrifices have
been made, the respect of others ! Misery of miseries,
thus to lose even respect for self! Religion, which ought
to be our peace, becomes our torment. The very sacra-
ments have a feeling of incompleteness about them, as if
we did not, as we do not, use them rightly; and our com-
munication with our director, which should be medicinal,
is poisoned by this spirit. Surely we must try to get to
the bottom of the matter, and to study the various phases
of this disease of pious souls. A general wish to please,
a laying ourselves out in particular subject matters in
order to please, building castles in the air and imagining
heroic acts, reflecting on the praise bestowed upon us, and
giving way to low spirits when dispraised, — these are all
manifestations of this horrible human respect.

Human respect, however, is not so much a particular
fault, as a whole world of faults. It is the death of all
religion. We shall never have an adequate horror of it

HUMAN RESPECT. 153

until we admit that these hard words are no exaggeration.
Let us therefore look at the place which it occupies in the
grand struggle between good and evil. First of all, let
us trace its rise; for this is a difficult problem, considering
how in detail we all disbelieve in each other. The espe-
cial task of Christians is the realization of the invisible
world. They have different standards of right and wrong
from the votaries of earth. They live inextricably mixed
up with the children of the world, as men using the same
language with different meanings, and the confusion and
apparent deceit grow worse every day, and the world, the
owner of the territory or its lessee, more and more angry,
and inclined, in spite of its theory of haughty toleration,
to persecute those who thus wilfully put themselves at
variance with the public peace. Men feel that religious
people are right, and on that very account they will not
look the fact in the face, and realize it. They feel it,
because they feel that they are not irresponsible. Yet
they chafe at the judgments of God, and His incessant
interference; at the quiet way in which He gives His
judgments, and takes His own time to execute His ver-
dicts. So, not being able to do without the judicial power,
they consolidate God from Three Divine Persons into a
function, a cause, a pantheistic fluid, or a mechanical force,
and transfer the judicial power to mankind in a body.
This seems to be the account of human respect in the
mind. Men in all generations fret under God's judicial
power. It seems as if, because of this fretfulness, it were
one of the most unutterable of His compassions that He
should have confided his ultimate judicial rights to our
Lord as Man, and that in virtue of the Sacred Humanity
He should be our judge. Looked at in a human point

154 HUMAN RESPECT.

of view, inen's transfer of the judicial power to themselves
may be said to have worked admirably. Social comfort,
a standard of endurable morals, and generally what n\aj
be called for the moment live-ableness, have come of it.
It causes a certain amount of individual unhappin^as,
because its police is harsh and rough, and the procedures
of its court unkindly, and of the Draconian school. But
men have a compensation for this in its giving over to
them, utterly unquestioned, the whole region of thought
Under the administration of God, thoughts were acts, nnd
were tried and found guilty as such. They furnished the
most abundant materials for its tribunals, and were ust
what caused His jurisdiction to press so heavily upon the
soul. Now all this is free. Calumny, detraction, »ash
judgments, spiteful criticism, — they make us win*--* as
they visit our outward acts ; but we may be as base hi we
please in thought, and yet walk through human cmrts
with proud eye, and head erect.

No wonder that when once human respect had taken
its place among the powers of the world, it should cause
especial desolation in the religious mind, and become a
worse evil and a greater misery there than elsewhere.
For it is itself a sort of spurious counterfeit religion. For
what is religiousness but the sensible presence of God,
and religion the worship of Him ? In religion, the pre-
sence of God is our atmosphere. Sacraments, and prayer,
and mortification, and all the exercises of the spiritual
life are so many appointments, not only for realizing it,
but for substantially introducing it both into body and
soul. The respiration of our soul depends upon it. It
producer a certain kind of character, a type of its own
sort and easily recognized, a supernatural character which

HUMAN RESPECT. 1*^6

inspires other men with awe, love, hatred, or contempt,
according to the different points of view from which they
look at it. To the pure-minded, it is the greatest possible
amount of happiness on earth; for it infuses into us a
certain marvellous unreasoning instinct for another world,
as being faith's sight of Him who is invisible. Yet it is
hardly conscious what, it is it sees. Now is not human
respect, in its own way, a simple copy and caricature of
all this ? A something which undertakes to perform for
the world every function which the presence of God per-
forms for the enlightened soul ? It is in fact a mental
paganism.

It is this similarity to a false religion which makes
human respect so peculiarly dangerous. It does not
alarm us by any grossness. On the contrary it forces sin
into concealment. Not that this is any real boon to the
best interests of men, for certain of the deadliest sins
thrive best under cover. It confuses the boundaries be-
tween public opinion and itself, and pretends an alliance
with prudence and discretion. This is a stratagem to be
guarded against. For public opinion is within limits a
legitimate power; and the man who because he was de-
vout, should lay it down as a principle that he would
never respect public opinion or be swayed by it, would be
paving the way for the triumphs of delusion. Nothing
can be more alien to the moderation of the Church.
There is avast difference between what my fellow-citizens
expect of me and show beforehand that they expect and
give reasons for expecting, and the criticism they may
pass upon my actions and my doing them rather with
reference to that criticism than to the wish of God
Moreover, human respect unsupernaturalizes actions

166 HUMAN RESPECT.

which are good in substance. It kills the nerve of the
intention ; but it gives us no such smart warning as the
nerve of a tooth does in dying. Tt is like a worm in a
nut ; it eats away the kernel of our motive, and lets the
fruit hang as fairly from the tree as ever Religion is so
much a matter of motives that this amounts to destroy-
ing it altogether, and as human respect introduces a
directly wrong motive in lieu of the right one, it destroys
spirituality in the most fatal way. Thus it is one of the
completest instruments, which corrupt nature puts into
the devil's hands and at his disposal for the destruction
of souls. What can be more hateful than this, and what
moro odious in the sight of God ? A caricature is al-
ways odious, and it is odious in proportion to the beauty
and dignity of what it caricatures ; and as we have seen,
human respect is a caricature of the presence and judicial
power of God.

Few are aware until they honestly turn to God, how
completely they are the slaves of this vice. Then they
wake up to a sense of it, and see how it is in their blood,
as if it were their life and their identity, an inexplicable
unconquerable vital thing. Its rise is a mystery, for
which we can only invent a theory. No one can tell for
sure how it rose, or when, or why ; it has been like an
exhalation from corrupt humanity, the spreading of a
silent pestilence that has no external symptoms. There
is not a class of society which it has not mastered, no
corner of private life that it has not invaded, no convent
cell but its air is freighted with the poisonous influence.
It rivals, what theologians call the pluri-presence of Satan.
Its strength is so great that it can get the better of God's
commandments and of the precepts of His Church, nay.

HUMAN RESPECT. 167

of a man's own will, which last conquest even grace and
penance find it difficult to achieve. It appears to increase
with civilization, and with the extension of all means of
locomotion and publicity. In modern society men syste-
matize it, acknowledge it as a power, uphold its claims,
and punish those who refuse submission. God is an ex-
king amongst us, legitimate perhaps but deposed. It is
much if we build Him in His own kingdom a house made
with hands that He may dwell therein, and keep Him-
self within-doors. Surely if the evil one has not preter-
naturally helped human respect, he has at least concen-
trated his energies on its spread and success. He is
never more a prince than when he stoops to be the mis-
sionary of human respect.

Look into your own soul, and see how far this power
has brought you into subjection. Is there a nook in your
whole being, wherein you can sit down unmolested and
breathe fresh air ? Is there any exercise however spiri-
tual, any occupation however sacred, any duty however
solemn, over which the attractive influence of human re-
Bpect is not being exercised ? Have you any sanctuary,
the inside of which it has never seen ? When you have
thought it conquered, how often has it risen up again, as
if defeat refreshed it like sleep ? Does it not follow you
as your shadow, as a perpetual black spot in the sweet
sunshine ? Yet how long is it since you turned to God,
and became spiritual ? How many Lents and Months of
Mary have you passed, how many sacraments received,
how many indulgences gained ? And yet this human re-
spect so active, so robust, so unwearied, so ubiquitous?
Can there be any question nearer your heart than what
concerns the remedies for this evil r
14

L58 HUMAN RESPECT.

The Church provides remedies for us in two ways : in
her general system, and in her dealing with individual
souls. She begins by boldly pronouncing a sentence of
excommunication against the world, ignores its judgments
in her own subject-matter of religion, and proclaims its
friendship nothing less than a declaration of war against
God. She gives her children different standards of right
and wrong from the world, and an opposite rule of con-
duct. All her positive precepts and her obligations of
outward profession of faith are so many protests against
human respect, and she canonizes just those men who
have been heroes in their contempt for it. The world feels
and understands the significance of these things, and shows
it by anger, exhibiting all the quick jealousy of a conscious
usurper.

But of far greater efficacy are the remedies which she
administers to single souls in the confessional and in spi-
ritual direction. The world dreads the secret power of
that benign, cogent, and unreported tribunal. First of
all, the practice of the Presence of God is pitted against
this universal human respect. We are taught how to
act slowly, and to unite all our actions to God by a pure
intention. We are bidden to take this fault as the sub-
ject of our particular examination of conscience, to pray
earnestly against it, and to be full about our falls when
we accuse ourselves in confession. Even in indifferent
things we are recommended to adopt that line of conduct
which tells most against human respect, were it only for
the sake of mortification. This is often the rationale of
the seemingly absurd and childish mortifications imposed
in religious houses. For human respect is but a veiled
worship of self, which we seem to transfer to the world,

HUMAN RESPECT. 159

because self is even to us so small an object. And what-
ever kills this worship of self, as such mortifications do,
is a blow to human respect. In casting out devils, the
saints have often delighted to use puerile means ; so also
may we cast this devil out of ourselves. Once let our
souls be possessed by a timid, child-like devotion to the
Eye of God, eternal and unsleeping, and human respect
will die away and disappear, as the autumnal leaves waste
in the rain, and enrich the soil for the coming spring.

But the great thing is to understand our real position
in the world and relation to it. This knowledge is a per-
fect fortress against human respect, which is one of the
chief causes of failure in aiming at perfection. Let us
then try to ascertain how pious people stand to the world,
and the world to them.

When we give ourselves up to God, we deliberately
commit ourselves to live a supernatural life. Now what
does a supernatural life mean ? It means giving up this
life altogether, as seeing we cannot have both worlds.
Altogether ! I hear you say. Yes ! altogether. For
how would you have me qualify it ? Not that we shall
not be a thousand times happier and sunnier even in this
life ; but it is from out the other life that the sunshine
and happiness will come. This life must go, and alto-
gether. There is no smoothing the word down. A super-
natural life means that we do not make sin the limit of
our freedom, but that we draw the line much nearer home,
by the evangelical counsels. It means mortification, and
mortification is the inflicting of voluntary punishment od
ourselves, as if passing sentence on ourselves and exe-
cuting it before the day of wrath. We put other interests,
other loves, other enjoyments, in the place of those of the

160 Human respect.

world. A conviction of our own weakness is the ground
work of all our actions, and we lean our whole weight ou
supernatural aids and sacramental assistances, as depend-
ing solely upon* them. To a certain extent we even become
unsocial by silence, or solitude, or penance, or seeming ec-
centricity, or vocation. In a word, we deliberately become
members of a minority, knowing we shall suffer for it.

Now, realizing this significancy of the spiritual life,
what is the view the world will naturally take of us and
how will it feel towards us? The world, half uncon-
sciously, believes in its own infallibility. Hence it is first
of all surprised and then irritated with our venturing to
act on different principles from itself. Such a line of
action denies the world's supremacy, and contradicts its
narrow code of prudence and discretion. Our conduct is
therefore a reflection on the world, as if God had outlawed
it, which He has. Its fashions, its sects, its pursuits, its
struggles, its tyranny and its conceits are to us no better
than a self-important, grandiloquent puerility. Meanwhile,
though we ignore the world, the world cannot ignore us,
for we are a fact, intruding on its domain and interfering
with its hypothesis. We ignore the world, and ignoring
is the policy of the extremes of weakness and strength.
In our case it is of both, natural weakness, supernatural
strength.

What sort of treatment then must we expect at the
world's hands? It will have its phases and varieties ac-
cording to circumstances. But on the whole we must
expect as follows. If we succeed in what we undertake
for God, or have influence, or convert persons, or take any
high line, or reproach others by our examples, we must
make our account to be hated. We shall be feared, and

HUMAN RESPECT. 161

with an angry fear, when men see we have a view and go
on a principle, which they do not; and they fear it be
cause they prognosticate our success. Men will fear us
also, when they think we are working for God in secret,
and they cannot find out how, and this they call Jesuitism,
a holy and a good word to ears wise and true ! They will
moreover suspect us of all manner of strange misdemean-
ours. They can hardly help it; for the disproportion of
means to ends in supernatural conduct is ever a teazing,
baffling problem to the carnal mind. They will blame us;
for blame is easy; and we swerve from men's usual stan-
dard of praise. Moreover, condemnation of us is safe; for
even so-called moderate men on our own side throw us
Dverboard. With them indiscretion means provoking the
world, and not being friends with that whose friendship
the Holy Ghost tells us is enmity with God. We shall
be misunderstood, because even those who would naturally
take a good-natured view of us cannot see what we see.
They have no grasp of our principle o so they often
think they have got logical proof or our inconsistency.
Besides which, we cannot even give a good account of our-
selves. We must expect also, hard as we must strive to
hinder it, to be more or less at variance with flesh and
blood. Vocations, devotions and penances have a sad
though inculpable liability to disturb family peace. Pa-
rents are slow to give in to God, even long after children
are come to years of ripe discretion. For instance, if a
son marries, he will have liberty, because the world bids
it; if he enters orders or religion, he will not, because
only the Church bids it then. Yet they are good people,
and religious in their way; why should not we be like
them ? So they think, and others say. We cannot see
things in their light, and they cannot see things in ours
14*

162 HUMAN RESPECT.

Now to something of this kind, more or less, we com-
mitted ourselves when we took up the spiritual life in
earnest. We knew what we were about. From that
hour we parted company with the world, nevermore to
do aught but fly from it as a plague, or face it as a foe.
Human respect, therefore, must henceforth be for us either
an impossibility, or an inconsistency, or a sin. What
have we to do with giving or taking the world's respect,
which we have bound ourselves eternally to disrespect?
Enough for us that we have taken ourselves out of the
world's hands, and out of our own, and put ourselves into
the Hands of God, and we have felt those hands, 0 happy
we 1 gently but firmly close over u.«, and hold us fast.

MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE 163

CHAPTER XL

MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE.

The true idea of mortification is, that it is the love of
Jesus, urged into that shape partly in imitation of Him,
partly to express its own vehemence, and partly to secure,
by an instinct of self-preservation, its own perseverance.
There can be no true or enduring love without it, for a
certain amount of it is requisite in order to avoid sin and
to keep the commandments. Neither without it is there
any respectable perseverance in the spiritual life. The
rest which forms part of the normal state of the spiritual
life is not safe without it, because of the propension of
nature to seek repose in natural ways when supernatural
are no longer open to it. Mortification is both interior
and exterior; and of course the superior excellence of the
interior is beyond question. But if there is one doctrine
more important than another on this subject, it is that
there can be no interior mortification without exterior;
and this last must come first. In a word, to be spiritual,
bodily mortification is indispensable.

Some have spoken as if bodily mortification were less
necessary in modern times than it was before, and conse
quently that the recommendations of spiritual writers
under this head are to be taken with considerable abate-
ment. If this means that a less degree of exterior morti-
fication is necessary for holiness now than was necessary
for past ages of the Church, nothing can be more untrue,

164 MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE.

and it comes up to the verge of condemned propositions
If it means that increased valetudinarianism and the uni-
versality of nervous diseases, combiued with other causes,
discreetly point to a change in the kind of mortifications,
the proposition may be assented to, with jealousy, however,
and wary limitations. The Lenten Indults of the Church
may be taken as an illustration.

But this false doctrine is so deep in the minds of many
that it is necessary to combat it before we proceed fur-
ther. The degree of mortification and its idea must re-
main the same in all ages of the Church : for penance is
an abiding mark of the Church. To do penance because
the kingdom of heaven is at hand is the especial work of a
justified soul. To get grace, to keep it and to multiply
it, penance is necessary at every step. And when we say
that holiness is a note of the Catholic Church, we show
forth the necessity of mortification ; for the one implies
the other, the first includes the last. The heroic exer-
cise of penance must be proved to the satisfaction of the
Church before she will proceed to the canonization of a
saint ; and the quite recent beatification of Paul of the
Cross and Marianna of (xesu show how completely unal-
tered the mind of the Church remains on this point.
Marianna's life is nothing but one unbroken series of the
most startling austerities, which make us shudder from
the inventive cruelty which they display. The life of
St. Rose of Lima, by the side of this other American Vir-
gin, looks soft and comfortable and easy. It seems as if
Paul were raised up to alarm the stagnant eighteenth
century, and to renew before the eyes of men the austeri-
ties of St. Benedict, St. Bruno, St. Romuald, or St. Peter
Damiau. He reanimated the old severe monastic spirit,

MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERAN JE. j fi5

in contempt of all modern usages and mitigations, and
for a hundred years his children have trodden in their
father's steps with undecaying fervour. The existence
and primitive vigour of the austere Passionists is one of
the greatest consolations of the Church in these effemi-
nate days.

We must remember also that, according to the teaching
of Scripture, it is quite a mistake to regard, as some
unthinkingly do, the practice of mortification as a counsel
of perfection, and a work of supererogation.

When carried to a certain degree, or when expressed in
certain ways, it is doubtless so. But mortification in
itself, and to a certain degree and under given circum-
stances, is of precept and necessary to salvation. This is
not only true of the self-inflicted pains which are some-
times of obligation in order to overcome vehement temp-
tations, or of those various mortifications which are need-
ful in order to avoid sin. But a definite amount of fasting
and abstinence, irrespective of the temptations or circum-
stances of individuals, is imposed by the Church on all
her children under pain of eternal damnation. This ex-
presses the idea of penance for its own sake, and the
necessity of it as one of the functions of the Church, as
a soul-saving institute. When, therefore, men say that
they do not practise mortification, but leave it to those
who wish to be saints, they may on being questioned show
that they are sound in doctrine, and do not mean the error
which their words, strictly taken, imply ; but we may be
sure that the very use of such loose language is a proof
that a real error about mortification is deeply imbedded
in their minds.

Indeed, modern luxury and effeminacy, which are often

16G MORTIFICATION OUR TRDE PERSEVERANCE.

pleaded as arguments for an abatement of mortification,
may just as well be called forward to maintain the oppo-
site view. For if it be a special office of the Church to
bear witness against the world, her witness must especially
be borne against the reigning vices of the world; and
therefore in these days, against effeminacy, the worship
of comfort and the extravagances of luxury. I believe,
if this unhappy land is ever to be converted, of which
there are many hopes and no signs, it will be by some
religious order or orders who shall exhibit to a degraded
and vicious people the vision of evangelical poverty in its
sternest perfection. The land that has forsaken Christ
must gather to the Baptist first, and be attracted to the
Jordan by the simplicity of supernatural strictness, and
antique austerity. Other things oan do much, intellect,
learning, eloquence, the beauties of Catholic charity, the
sweet influences of a purified literature, the studiousness
of a simple and apostolic preaching. But the great work,
if the great work is in the counsels of God, I much think
is a triumph in this land reserved only for evangelical
poverty. Not poverty in the grotesque attire of mediaeval
practice, once hallowed, but which would repel men now
and invite contempt, because of certain developments
separable from its real self, and at present unseasonable ;
but the beautiful poverty of the apostles and first ages of
the Church, with the common garb and bright clean face
and hands of evangelical austerity.*

If the Church has to witness always against the reign-
ing vices of the world, each soul has likewise, if not to
witness, at least to defend itself, against them. And how
shall it defend itself against the worship of bodily com-
* St. Matthew, vi. 16.

MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE. 167

forts, except bv depriving itself of them ? Changeable
as the world is, it is unchanging too. The world, the
flesh, and the devil, are practically the same in all ages :
and so, practically, mortification has the same offices to
perform. Whether we consider the soul in the struggles
of its conversion, in the progress of its illumination, or in
its variously perfect degrees of union with God, we shall
find that bodily mortifications have their own place, and
their proper work to do, and are literally indispensable.

But let us look for a moment at the various objections
urged against this. First we are told that the health of
the world is not what it is, and that if there is an equal,
or even greater longevity, the normal state of health is
more uniformly valetudinarian, and that if inflammatory
attacks are less frequent, nervous complaints on the other
hand are more prevalent, and that the relaxation of
church discipline on the subject shows her appreciation of
these facts. All this is true, and doubtless many most
important deductions are to be drawn from it. Still I
maintain, it is more concerned with the kind of mortifi-
cation than the degree. The conduct of the Church in
the mitigation of fasting is as wise as the conduct of Leo
XII. was marked with the usual practical sagacity of the
Holy See, when he caused the possibilities of the old ob-
servance of Lent to be medically investigated. Moreover
the plea of health, while it is always to be listened to, is
to be listened to with suspicion. We must always be
jealous of the side on which nature and self are serving
as volunteers. Great then as we must admit the conse-
quences of a state of valetudinarianism to be on the spiri-
tual life, a general and plenary dispensation from corporal
austerities is not one of them j and we must remembei

168 MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE.

also that our forefathers, who troubled their heads little
enough about their nerves, and had no tea to drink, were
accustomed to hear from Father Baker, who only gave
utterance to the old mystical tradition, that a state of
robust health was positively a disqualification for the
higher stages of the spiritual life.

A second objection, and one sometimes urged in be-
half of priests and religious, is that modern hard work
is a substitute for ancient penance. The fewness of the
clergy and the multitude of souls have certainly brought
upon the ecclesiastics of this generation an overwhelming
pressure of work ; and it is true of them, as it always has
been of religious orders engaged in the apostolate, that
the measure of bodily austerity to be exacted of them is
very different from that which we expect from contempla-
tives and solitaries. I do not say therefore that this ob-
jection expresses no truth, but only that it will not bear
all the weight men put upon it. Certain kinds of penance
are incompatible with hard work ) while at the same time
the excessive exterior propensities which hard work gives
us are so perilous to the soul that certain other kinds of
penance are all the more necessary to correct this disturb-
ing force. All great missionaries, Segneri and Pinamonti,
Leonard of Port Maurice and Paul of the Cross, have
worn instruments of penance. The penalities of life, as
Da Ponte calls them, are doubtless an excellent penance
when endured with an interior spirit, and worth far more
than a hundred self-inflicted pains. Yet he who maintains
that the endurance of the former is a dispensation from
the infliction of the latter, will find himself out of har-
mony with the whole stream of approved spiritual teach-
ing in the Church ; and the brevity of his perseverance

MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE. 169

in the interior life will soon show both himself and others
the completeness of his delusion. Without bodily
penance", zealous apostolic work hardens the heart far
more than it sanctifies it.

A third class of objectors tells us to be content with
the trials God sends us, which are neither few nor light.
If they told us that the gay suffering and graceful wel-
come of these dispensations were of infinitely greater price
than the sting of the discipline or the twinge of the cate-
nella, most true and most important would the lesson be,
and to many a hot-hearted spiritual suckling quite indis-
pensable. Youth, when it is strong and well and is full
of fervour and bathing in devotional sweetness, finds
almost a physical pleasure in tormenting its flesh and
pinching its redundant health. There is little merit in
this, as there is little difficulty and less discretion. And
at all times one blow from God is worth a million from
ourselves. But the objectors fall into that mistake of
exaggeration which runs through so many spiritual books
Because A is more important than B, they jump to the
conclusion that B is of no importance at all. Because
the mortifications which God sends us are more efficacious
and less delusive, if rightly taken, than the mortifications
we inflict upon ourselves, it does not follow but that these
last are, not only an important, but even an indispensable
element in the spiritual life. We may answer them
briefly as follows. Yes ! the best of all penances is to
take in the spirit of interior compunction the mortifica-
tions which the wise and affectionate course of God's
fatherly providence brings upon us ; but unless we have
practised ourselves in the generous habit of voluntary
penances, the chances are very much indeed against our
15

170 MORTIFIOATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE.

forming this interior spirit of penance, and therefore of
getting the full profit out of the involuntary trials Goq
sends us.

Besides these objections there is another one latent in
many minds, which should be noticed. Our present
habits of life and thought lead to an obvious want of
sympathy with contemplation. It has no public results
on which we can look complacently, or which we can
parade boastfully. Everything seems waste which is not
visible ; and all is disappointment which is not plain suc-
cess. It is supernatural principles especially which are
at a discount in modern days. Now it is easy to see how
this want of sympathy with contemplation leads to a mis-
appreciation of austerity. They are connected with each
other, and both enter deeply into the region of super-
natural operations. To think lightly of either is to be
out of harmony with the mind of the Church, and to in-
jure our own soul, whatever may be its vocation, by nar-
rowing the range of its supernatural vision.

From all these considerations it may warrantably be
concluded that there is nothing in modern times to dis-
pense us either from the obligation or the counsel of
bodily mortification, that on the contrary there is much
in modern habits to enforce the obligation and to urge
the counsel, and that all the modifications, to which the
actual circumstances of modern life point, concern them-
selves wholly with the kind of mortification and not at all
with the degree.

Something remains to be said on the uses of mortifi-
cation. These are ten in number and all of them de-
serving a serious consideration. Its first use is to tame
the body and bring its rebellious passions under tho Jon-

MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE. 171

trol of grace and of our superior will. Full half the
obstacles to a spiritual life are from the body, and the
treacherous succour which its senses give to our baser
passions. These must be, I do not say altogether re-
moved, but effectually crippled, before we can hope to
make much progress. We never find in any one a real
arnestness of mind or seriousness of spirit, where honest
attempts are not being made to keep the body in subjec-
tion. The reason why men are religious under sorrow
and not at other times is that they do not practise bodily
mortification, whereas sorrow afflicts and rebukes the
flesh, and so for the time performs the functions of mor-
tification. Sorrow acts on the soul through the body as
much as through the mind.

The second use is to increase the range of our spiritual
vision. Sensitiveness of conscience is one of the greatest
gifts which God gives us in order to a spiritual life. The
things of God, says the apostle, can only be spiritually
discerned. The process of our purification by grace
depends on our increasing clearness of vision as to what
is faulty and imperfect. From the discernment of mortal
sin we come to that of venial sin, from venial sin to
imperfections, from imperfections to less perfect ways of
doing perfect things, and from that to a delicate percep-
tion of the almost invisible infidelities which grieve the
Holy Spirit within us. And if bodily mortification isr
not the sole means by which this sensitiveness of con-
science is obtained, it is one of the chief, as well from its
own intrinsic method of operation, as from its power to
impetrate the gift from God.

This brings me to the third use of mortifications of all
kinds, which is to obtain power with God. Suffering

172 MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE.

easily becomes power in the things of God. The price
He sets upon it is shown by the fact that the world was
redeemed by suffering, and that suffering gives their palm
to the martyrs and their crown to the confessors. The
gift of miracles follows hard upon austerity. When we
complain that we have no power with God, that our pray-
ers remain unanswered, that our efforts to root out some
besetting sin are unavailing, and that we give way to
temptations and to surprises of temper or loquacity, it is
for the most part because we are not leading mortified
lives. It is in this that mortification so amply repays us
for the pain it gives. For not only is it an immense
gain to have power with God, but the obvious connection
between the mortification and the power enables us not so
much to believe in supernatural things as to handle them
with our very hands and feel their weight. Indeed even
a temptation may come from this If, then, for the sake
of our own spiritual growth and the interest we feel in
the glory of God, the triumph of the faith, and the salva-
tion of souls near and dear to us, we desire to obtain
power with God, we must habitually and consistently
practise mortification.

Its fourth use is to intensify our love. It is of the
nature of love to thrive on no food so well as on the evi-
dence of its own vigour; and nothing testifies to us so
securely our love of God, as the infliction of voluntary
austerities upon ourselves : and while it manifests our
love, it augments it also. Pain, too, of itself prepares
the heart for the emotions of love by softening it and
making it childlike. And where the object loved and
contemplated is one of sorrow and suffering, as Jesus is,
love impels us more or less vehemently to imitation. Do

MORTIFICATION OUR TRtJE PERSEVERANCE. 173

we complain that our love of our dear Lord is slackening?
Forthwith let us mortify ourselves in something, and the
smouldering embers will break into a bright flame. As
sure as power follows mortification, so also does love.

Its fifth use is to make us unworldly, and to inundate
us with spiritual joy. Nothing is in itself so unworldly
as mortification, because it is the killing of everything
the world most prizes and cherishes. It breaks off all
the inordinate attachments to creatures which we may
nave formed, and it hinders us from embarrassing our-
selves with new ties ; for mortification is found by expe-
rience to be so difficult that we dread to increase the
breadth of the region over which we are compelled to
extend it. And what is each new attachment but a fresh
horde of savages to be brought painfully beneath control?
As to spiritual joy, it flows like a tide into some empty
place. In proportion, therefore, as our hearts are void of
earthly attachments, and an attachment may be defined
to be an affection which is not a duty, in the same pro-
portion are they capable of enjoying the sweetness of God.
Hence it is that mortified persons, when discreet, are
always mirthful. The heart is lightened, because the
burden of the body is taken off it Nothing can make uf
unworldly but mortification. Have we never seen person*
clouded round with sorrow so deep and dark, that we
approached it reverently as we would a sanctuary, and
yet it had not made the sufferer unworldly ? That blessed
office is the monopoly of mortification.

Its sixth use is to hinder our making a great mistake,

which is the leaving the Via Purgativa too soon. This

is perhaps the chiefest danger in the whole of the spiritual

life. Many try to go so fast when they first begin, that they

15*

174 MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE.

lose their breath, and give up the race altogether; and
even if they do not, they cannot leave behind what they
wish to leave, before the appointed time. They are like
men running wildly to outstrip their own shadow. It
cannot be. Nature wants to be out of her noviciate.
Meditation would fain be thrust up into Affective Prayer,
and the captivity of little things longs to expatiate in
.iberty of spirit. The bruised flesh asks to be let alone,
and interior mortification requests to be allowed its primi-
tive vagueness and to remain undefined. Weekly Com-
munion gravitates to daily, and the soul a little tired of
looking after itself, inclines to convert the world. If
there is difficult navigation anywhere in the spiritual life,
it is here. See ! the reefs are strewn with wrecks, and
the waves wash up at every tide the bodies of half-made
saints, of broken heroes, and frustrated vocations. No
harm comes of keeping long in the lower parts of the
spiritual life. All possible evil may come of mounting
too quickly. An evil when it is mortified first looks dead.
It feigns death, as beetles do. If it succeeds in deceiving
us, and we pass on, we shall rue it bitterly. It is oialy
the old story : look well to your foundations, dig them
deep and build broad, and plan your building magnifi-
cently large, as if you were a prince. Mortification, of all
things, helps us to do this. Its difficulty brings out our
WBakness. One while clumsy, another while cowardly,
we are content to be kept down, when daily failures are
telling us what would happen on the giddy heights above
us. But how long shall the Via Purgativa last? Who
can tell ? It depends upon fervour. Any how, we must
count it by years, not by months.

The seventh use of mortification is to be found in its

MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE. 175

connection with prayer. How many complaints are we
daily hearing of the difficulties of mental prayer ! Yet
how few are seeking the gift of prayer by the single
means which can succeed, namely, mortification ! If we
do not mortify ourselves, why complain ? Listen to this
vision, whioh Da Ponte relates as having happened to a
person whom he knew. He gives it at length in the
third tract of his Spiritual Guide. God showed this
person the state of a tepid and idle soul, which is given
to prayer, without mortification. She saw in the middle
of a wide plain a very deep and strong foundation, white
as ivory, about which a fair, ruddy youth of admirable
beauty was walking. He called her to him, and said,
I am the son of a powerful king, and I have laid this
foundation that I might build a palace for you to dwell
in, and to receive me whenever I come to visit you, which
I shall do frequently, provided you always have a room
ready for me, and open as soon as I knock. In time,
however, I shall come and live entirely with you, and you
will be delighted to have me for a daily guest. Judge,
however, from the magnitude of this foundation what the
edifice is to be. Meanwhile I will build, and you must
bring me all the materials. The lady began to be sore
amazed and afflicted, for she deemed it impossible that
she should of herself bring all the requisite materials.
The young man, however, said, Do not be afraid; you
will be quite able to do it. Begin to bring something at
once, and I will help you. So she began to look about
for something, but presently stopped and fixed her eyes
on the young man, whose beauty delighted and refreshed
her. Yet she took no pains to please him. She feared
him very much, when she saw that he was watching her.

176 MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE

Nevertheless she did not blush at her disobedience
While she was thus loitering, she saw that the foundation
was being gradually covered with dust and straws by the
wind, and sometimes such whirlwinds of dust arose that
she could not see the foundation at all. Sometimes floods
of rain covered the whole with mud, which gradually
spread over them, and caused a rank vegetation of weeds
to sprout up. At last, nothing of the foundation re-
mained but the spot which the young man's feet covered,
and at last a sudden whirlwind covered him, and the
foundation disappeared from her sight beneath a heap of
filth. The lady was very much afflicted to find herself
alone, especially as she was soon surrounded by ruinous
heaps of lime, sand, and stone. She bewailed her
tepidity and idleness, but believing that the young man
was still hidden in some of the cavities of the foundation,
she cried out in a loud voice, Sir ! I am coming : I am
bringing materials : I pray you come forth to the build-
ing ) for I am deeply penitent for my sloth and delay.
While she was in these dispositions, the vision was thus
interpreted to her. The foundation signifies faith and
the habits of other virtues which Christ infuses into the
soul at baptism, desiring to build upon them a fair edifice
of lofty perfection, provided the soul co-operates with Him
by bringing the necessary materials, observance cf the
divine precepts and counsels, which by the aid of the
same Lord, it can do. But the soul is often so delighted
with meditating on the mysteries of Christ, that it
becomes tepid and idle in the imitation and obedience of
Him, and through this inattention and slovenliness, the
habits of virtue are gradually obscured by venial sins,
and the eyes of the soul so dimmed that they cannot see

MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE. 1?7

oui Lord. In punishment of this sloth He sometimes
allows the soul to fall into a mortal sin, which stains and
destroys everything. Then by the mercy of God it re-
pents, finds the 3tones of contrition, the lime of confession,
and the sands of satisfaction all around it, and calls on
Jesus with a loud voice to pardon the sin and to begin
the building, for the second time.

The eighth use of mortification is to give depth and
strength to our sanctity, just as gymnastic exercises give
us muscle and play of strength. This is connected with
what was said a while ago of not trying to get out of the
Via Purgativa too quickly. When Simeon Stylites first
began to stand upon his column, so Theodoret tells us,
he heard a voice in his sleep which said to him, Arise
and dig ! He seemed to dig for a time, and then ceased,
when the voice said to him, Dig deeper! Four times he
dug, four times he rested, and four times the voice cried,
Dig deeper ! After that it said, Now build without toil !
There can surely be no doubt but that the digging was
the humbling toil of mortification. There is such a thing
as a thin meagre piety, a religious sentimentality, which
cannot go beyond the beauty of taste or the pathos of a
ceremonial, a devotion for the sunshine but not for the
storm ; and the fault of the lank crazy edifice that is
raised by it is the absence of mortification in its original
construction.

The ninth use of mortification concerns bodily austeri-
ties. Without exterior mortification it is idle to expect
that we shall ever attain the higher grace of interior mor-
tification. It is the greatest of delusions to suppose we
Dan mortify judgment and will, if we do not mortify our
body also. Interior mortification is certainly the higher:

M

178 MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE.

yet in some sense exterior is harder. It is harder because
it comes first, and has to be exercised when we have as
yet scarcely any empire over ourselves. It is harder be-
cause it is more sensible. It is harder because our victo-
ries are at best mean to look at, and our defeats palpable
and discouraging. It is harder because habit helps us
less. If our bodily penances are rare, each one has all
the difficulties of a new beginning. If they are frequent,
they fall on unhealed wounds. Whereas with interior
mortification the victories always look dignified, and the
defeats are surrounded by such a host of extenuating cir-
cumstances as veils their disgrace. We must remember
that throughout our spiritual life we have our body for
our companion, and none but a very few privileged saints
have ever quite subdued it. Moreover, body has to be
saved as well as soul, and so it is not true that, in devo-
tion, exterior things are only a means to interior. They
have, beside that instrumental character, an import and
significancy of their own. There have always been two
classes of heresies with regard to spiritual theology ; and
I cannot think of one heresy which has not come either
from a disunion of the interior and the exterior, or a
dwelling on one of them to the neglect and depression of
the other. I tremble when people speak much of inte-
rior mortification, it sounds so like a confession that they
are leading comfortable lives. On the other hand, when
men exaggerate the importance of bodily austerities, the
chances are either that they do not practise them at all,
jt that, practising them, they rest in them with compla-
cency, and so are fakirs, not Christians, having no spiritual
life which can deserve the name.

The tenth and last use of mortification is, that it is a

MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE. 179

most excellent school for the queenly virtue of discretion
The truly mortified man will as little think of not listen-
ing to discretion, as he would think of listening to
cowardice. Discretion is a habit of hitting a mark, and
there must be a supernatural truth in the eye, and a
supernatural steadiness in the hand, in order to attain
this. Mortification is the grand subject-matter of these
trials of discretion : and the virtue will show itself in obe-
dience, humility, self-distrust, perseverance, and detach-
ment from the penances themselves. This was the trial
to which the bishops put Simeon Stylites. They sent a
messenger to bid him come down from his pillar. If he
hesitated, they should know that his extraordinary voca-
tion was not from God. But the words were hardly out
of the messenger's mouth, than he put one foot down from
his column. In his docility they recognized the call of
God, and bade him stay.

The details of mortification belong rather to the direc-
tion of particular souls. Each one requires a legislation
for himself. There seems however to be a consent among
spiritual writers that while pleasures, passions, and pains,
are the three great fields of mortification, a certain ordei
ought to be observed in our application to them. Plea-
sures should be mortified first, passions next, and pains be
undertaken last. They do not mean by this that there
are three distinct and successive classes of penances, and
that we must practise one till we are out of the other,
any more than writers when they divide mental prayer
into twelve or fifteen states mean that we go out of one
into another, as if they were separate rooms. All that
is meant is, that upon the whole a certain order is to be
observed, and upon the whole one object to be sought at
a certain time rather than another one.

ISO MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE IERSEVERANCE.

Mortifications are divided into exterior and interior
Of the exterior there are five principal classes. First
afflictive penances, such as fasting, discipline, hair shirt,
catenella, cold, and wakefulness. Of these the one which
most requires jealousy is that which concerns loss of sleep,
and next to it the bearing of cold. For the results of these
to the health may be and often are permanent. And
generally of all these penances, two things may be ob-
served, first that no one should ever take them out of his
own head, without counsel and obedience ; and secondly,
that perseverance in them is of far greater moment than
either quantity or quality. It has often been noticed that
when a person becomes spiritual, one of the very last in-
firmities which leaves him is an im mortified pleasure in
eating and drinking. There is something wonderfully
humbling in this : and we must pay particular attention
to it, trying to mortify ourselves in something at every
meal, and not to eat between meal-times. It ought to be
a mortification in itself to read what Brillat-Savarin has
cleverly said, as Descuret quotes him in his Medicine des
Passions, that there are four classes of men given to
gluttony, the financiers, the physicians, the literary, and
the devout; the financiers for the sake of ostentation, the
physicians by seduction, the literary by way of distraction,
and the devout by way of compensation !

The second class of exterior mortifications consists in
the custody of the senses, in order to rebuke levity and
curiosity, and in these singularity and affectation should
be guarded against. Under the third class falls the patient
bearing of illness and pain, and especially the acceptation
of death in the spirit of penance. Under the fourth class
oome fatiguing and self-denying works for the good of our

MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE. 181

neighbour, or the relief of the poor, or the exaltation of
the faith ; and under the fifth, all that is penal in the
common tasks and daily vicissitudes of life, the obligation
of work, the inconveniences of poverty, the weather, and
like things, all which may become meritorious by being
endured in an interior spirit of penance, and united to our
Lord's endurance of them in His Thirty-three years.
Under the head of interior mortifications comes first
f all the mortification of our own judgment, or razionale,
as St. Philip called it. Can there be a harder task in
the whole of the spiritual* life ? If you ask me how it ia
to be done, I answer, — the words are easy, not so the
practice — Distrust your own opinion, and acquire the
habit of surrendering it in doubtful things. In matters
about which you are clear, speak modestly and then be
silent. Try never to have an opinion contrary to that of
your natural and immediate superiors. Let their presence
be the death of your own views. With your equals try
to agree in matters of no moment, and above all, have no
wish to be listened to. Judge favourably of all things,
and be ingenuous in giving them a kindly turn. Con-
demn nothing either in the general or the particular; but
make all things over to the judgment of God, When
reason and virtue oblige you to speak, do so with such
gentleness and want of emphasis that you may seem
rather to despise than value your own opinion.

Mortifications of the will form another class. The
tongues of others fill a third to overflowing. Spiritual de-
solations are a fourth, and horrible temptations, specially
allowed by God, a fifth. All these have their own symp-
toms and require their own method of treatment which it
would be out of place here to investigate. There is
16

182 MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE.

little left for the work of sanctification to do, when out
will is conformed to the Will of God, and endures humbly
and sweetly the adverse wills of others. The strife of
tongues is a mortification from which few can hope to
escape, especially if they are either endeavouring to do
good to others or aiming at a high sanctity for themselves.
It was one of the ingredients in our Saviour's chalice, and
was considered by the psalmist as so afflictive that he
prayed God to hide him from it beneath the shadow of
His wings. Spiritual desolations, so hard to bear, give
both courage and humility to our relations with God,
while unusual and obstinate temptations purify the soul,
as in a very crucible, from all remains of earthly dross.

But if mortification has its difficulties, it has its dangers
also. Many mortifications are preceded by vain-glory,
who blows the trumpet before them. Other mortifications
she accompanies ; and some even receive from her all their
life, animation and perseverance. It is as if this evil
spirit had a standing commission from her master, When-
ever a soul is about to practise a mortification there be thou
also ! The remedy for this is to put all our mortifications
under obedience. It is difficult then for either vain-glory,
ostentation, singularity, affectation, wilfulness, or indiscre-
tion to fasten upon our penances and corrode their precious
inward life. And they are the six chief dangers of mor-
tification. Neither must we forget to be on our guard
against a superstitious idea of the value of pain growing
up in our minds alongside of our austerities. Many mor-
tifications remain mortifications when the pain of them haa
passed away; and the value of them depends upon the
intensity of the supernatural intention that was in them,
not on the amount of physical pain or bodily discomfort

MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE. 1 83

Mortification is a putting something to death and the pas-
sion that is dead already is more mortified than one that
is only dying, and yet the last feels pain, while the first
is past all feeling. It is astonishing how many are un-
consciously deceived by this superstitious notion of the
value of the mere pain ; not that it is without value ; but
it is not the gem ; it is only the setting of it. It is this
error which has given so much vogue outside the Church,
and sometimes also to unwary persons in it, to the delu-
sion of thinking that perfection consists in always doing
what we dislike, which implies that our affections and
passions will never be brought to like the things of God
or be in harmony with grace. Thus you hear of persons
having a scruple whether they ought to be kind to others
because they have so much sensible pleasure in it, or
visiting the poor for the same reason, or following a
peculiar bent of devotion. Some even impose it as a
rule upon the souls they guide. In almost every instance
with as much absurdity as indiscretion. In the only sense
in which sound mysticism would allow of such a maxim,
it would require a special and clearly-marked vocation,
and it would be as rare as the call to make St. Theresa's
and St. Andrew Avellino's vows, always to do what was
most perfect. Yet the Church stopped at those vows when
she was called upon to canonize the saints, and would not
proceed till evidence was given her of a special operation
of the Holy Ghost. No one ever became a saint, or any-
thing like one, by ceasing to cultivate the sweeter parts
of his character or his natural virtues, because the doing
so was so great a pleasure. Yet Jansenism thought that
the secret of perfection lay in this single charm. It
is a most odious and uncatholic idea of asceticism-

184 MORTIFICATION OUR TRUE PERSEVERANCE.

To the difficulties and dangers of mortification we must
add a word on its delusions. It is a fertile subject. Guil-
lor£, who has treated of the subject at length and with
his usual severity, sums it all up by describing the four
classes of persons who are most subject to these delusions.
The first class embraces those who have always led an in-
nocent life, and on that account easily dispense themselves
from austerities ; and not being drawn to them themselves,
they make no attempt to draw others that way. They do
not see why they should maltreat a body which is so little
rebellious, and inflict on it such constant pain when it
teases them with but an occasional disturbance. The
second class contains those, who, though their lives have
been far from innocent, are nevertheless from softness of
temperament disinclined to austerities. They can hardly
believe that anything, which is so far above their cow-
ardice, as this persecution of self, can be necessary and
indispensable. Useful they are willing to admit it to be,
but surely not necessary ; for in that case where should
they be ? And are their intellectual views of perfection,
or their sentimental aspirations after it, to end in smoke ?
The third class comprises those who have greatly offended
God, and therefore think they must set no bounds to theii
austerities. Hence they go beyond the limits of sage
reason on the one side, and the inspirations of grace on
the other. The fourth class numbers men of fiery zeal
and hot-tempered enthusiasm, whose peace is in war and
their rest in struggle, and who satisfy nature by the chas-
tisement of their bodies. But when the blood runs o?
the face grows pale, they are miserably deceived if :hej
consider that to be a true spiritual mortification, which
has only been the rude satisfaction of a natural and 1m
pulsive passion.

THE HUMAN SPIRIT. 135

CHAPTER XII.

THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

The three normal dispositions of the spiritual life
require patience, mortification, and the absence of human
respect, in order rightly to perforin the functions allotted
them, and to avoid the dangers which beset them. But
there are also three evil spirits which haunt the disposi-
tions in question. Not that each disposition has exactly
its one bad angel, and is not troubled by the other two )
but on the whole, the disposition of struggle is liable to
the attacks of what may be called the human spirit, fatigue
to spiritual idleness, and rest to the neglect of prayer, or
the unpraying spirit. We have, therefore, now to consider
these three things, the human spirit, spiritual idleness
and prayer.

The kingdom of darkness, the power and wiliness of
Satan, the multitude of his subordinate ministers, the
ceaselessness of their open or hidden warfare against the
servants of God, cannot be too often the subject of our
most grave meditations, as well as the object of our hum-
blest fears and most prayerful vigilance. Still, it were to
be wished that men's views of this agency of Satan were
always kept within the due limits of sane tneology. They
not unfrequently run into something like Manicbeism,
and at least give us an idea of Almighty God which has
drifted widely from that which Scripture teaches. We
forget that the devil is only one of three enemies against
X6*

186 THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

tvhom at baptism we vowed to do battle, and thus we
transfer to him all the phenomena which belong rather to
the flesh and the world. The same secret vanity which
leads us to a superstitious view of grace, as a talisman
which is to act without the co-operation of our own reso-
lute will, is the source of these erroneous views of the
devil's agency. It breaks the shame of our falls to believe
that in every instance we have wrestled and been thrown
by an evil angel of tremendous power, and not that
through cowardice, effeminacy and self-love we have sim-
ply given in to the suggestions of our own irresolute will.
Nay, in certain temptations men will allow themselves to
be almost passive, from this horrible doctrine about the
devil. Were they logical, they would soon come to be-
lieve the blasphemy of the necessity of sin. What their
view really amounts to is this, that man is a certain orga-
nized reasonable instrument, who is possessed by the devil,
and that God comes and tries to establish a counter-pos-
session by means of faith, grace, and sacraments, and that
man has little to do with the matter except to consent to
be the battle-field of the two spiritual powers. Every one
shudders when it is put into these words. But follow a
soul, who has got this wrong idea, into the whole region
of temptations and scruples, and you will see what mis-
takes it makes and what misfortunes it encounters, a.id
how at last, to use St. Bernard's figure, it needs no devil
to tempt it, because it is a devil to itself.*

* The same doctrine is also taught very strongly by Father de
Condren, General of the French Oratory. See his life by F. Ame-
lote, p. 177, xiv. Of course this side of the question must not ba
exaggerated any more than the other. The doctrine of the person-
ality and influence of the devil is peculiarly needed just now in ordei
So meet the Sadduceism of the day, as has been remarked by Dr.

THE HUMAN SPIRIT. 187

It is necessary, therefore, at this poin., that I should
ask my readers to remember, what theology teaches them,
that there is such a thing as a definite human spirit, the
spirit of man, and of fallen man, and that it has ways
And operations of its own which exercise a very material
influence over the whole of our spiritual life. What is
usually taught about it may be briefly stated as follows.
There are three spirits with which men have to do, the
Divine, the diabolical, and the human. This last is a
definite and distinct spirit of itself; and consists of the
inclinations of our fallen nature when not allied to either
of the other spirits. So that the mischief which it causes
in the spiritual life is chiefly of a negative character, inas-
much as it leads us to act from purely natural motives
and in a purely natural way, apart from grace. It is
known by its always gravitating, independent of any
satanical impulsion, to peace, comfort, ease, liberty, and
making ample provision for the body. In a word, it is to
good persons, what the spirits of the world and the devil
are to bad people, incessantly acting upon them even when
gross temptations would have no effect. It vitiates what
they do, without making it wholly evil.

Brownson in his Spirit-flapper. Even Bayle in his Dictionnaire
(Art. Plotinus) says to Christians, Prove to your adversaries the ex-
istence of evil spirits, and you -will soon see them forced to grant you
all your dogmas. Mais prouvez-leur Texistence des mauvais esprits,
et vous les verrez hientot forces de vous accorder tous vos dogmas.
The blasphemy of Voltaire on the subject is too well known to need
repeating here. Frederick Schlegel well said that history waa
nothing more than "an incessant struggle of nations and indivi-
duals against invisible powers." Father Ravignan remarked justly
and pithily of the devils of the nineteenth century, Their master-
piece has been to get themselves denied by the age. Leur chef
d'oeuvre, Messieurs, e'est de s'Stre fait nier par ce si&cle.

188 THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

The various ways in which this human spirit developes
itself in the spiritual life are deserving of especial study.
It often causes hot feelings to be mistaken for visitations
of the Holy Ghost. Hence it is that determinations
taken in moments of exaltation and excitement are so
little to be depended on. The words of God in the soul
effect what they say. The Divine Voice may have uttered
but a single sound, one little word, but the work is done.
It is safe to build upon it the edifice of years. Judge
then what awful consequences follow when the mere effer-
vescence of the human spirit is mistaken for the fire of
divine inspiration ! We commit ourselves to a line of
action, or to a grave step in life, or even to a vow from
which we cannot easily be dispensed, on the strength of a
mere natural excitement. We may have put ourselves
*nto a condition in which unusual aids of grace are requi-
site in order to' avoid sin, and what we dream was God's
covenant to give us those graces, was nothing more than
a palpitation of the heart, and a bounding of the blood.
Many are the great beginnings which are undertaken in
the human spirit, and as many and as great the ruins
which remain

But it is not only in our commencements that the
agency of the human spirit is to be remarked. In the
shape of self-love it creeps into works well begun, and
destroys their purity and saps their strength. Or it comes
upon good and singleminded intentions, and warps them
from their first direction, and makes them useless for any
supernatural purpose. Then when we find that something
has gone wrong, the same human spirit makes us eager
and anxious to set matters right and to renew our fervour
in its own way. Consequectly, as a means to this end,

THE HUMAN SPIRIT. 189

we undertake austerities on a mere physical impulse, and
out of a humour of natural self-revenge. A tendency to
talk about ourselves, and to speak of our spiritual state,
and to let others know what we are feeling and experi-
encing, is another operation of the human spirit, which
does the devil's work for him without his having thf
trouble of interfering.

But the human spirit can do more than give us an im-
pulse towards good, it can furnish a certain amount of
facility in doing it. Elihu thought the Holy Ghost moved
him to reprove Job, and his spirit gave him no little depth
and eloquence in his reproofs. Cardinal Bona says that
when a spiritual man finds himself filled with great light,
he must not be too quick in concluding that it is the work
of grace.* It may come, he says, just as well from the
natural vivacity of his disposition, or from the mere habit
of meditating on the truths of religion, and the habit of
meditation is a very different thing from the grace and
gift of it, or it may come from a simple intellectual spe-
culation on natural and divine things. Hence it is that
often in the midst of such light our will remains dry and
cold, and destitute of all the unction of the Holy Ghost.
We do not judge a tree by its branches and flowers, but
by its fruits; so we judge of these interior lights by the

* The criteria of Cardinal Bona, by which he distinguishes the
human spirit from the diabolical, have attracted the notice of M. de
Mirville in his first MSmoire on Pneumatologie, and he has pro-
mised to consider them at length, and in connection with Catholio
theology, in his second MSmoire. Nous Gtudierons aussi la veritable
nature de cet ennemi domestique appele" la chair, ennemi que le
cardinal Bona ne craint pas de ranger dans la classe-des Esprits.
Nous tacherous tout a lafois de bien d6finir le vrai r61e de ces agent?
psychologiqueo et physiologiques, dans les ph6nomenes magnetiques,
ct de voir s'ils peuvent jamais y remplacer l'assistanco d'un Esprit
Stranger. Prem. Mem. p. 81. 3me Edition.

190 THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

good worts which they produce. If we examine these
lights narrowly we shall often find some one little dark
streak in them, something, it may be, contrary to pru-
dence or alien to the principles of Christian perfection.
A dash of levity is an illustration of this : for levity is
an especial sign of the human spirit. Richard of St.
Victor says that when we are impelled to do any good
work easily and with a certain feeling of levity, that levity
)ught to make us fear that our impulsion is rather from
the flesh than from the Spirit, especially if it is accom-
panied by anything agreeable to nature. In like manner
the joy with which we are attracted to anything ought to
be suspected, if it be mingled with warmth or impatience ;
for the Holy Spirit is moderate, patient, tranquil, and the
movements He excites are conformable to what He is in
Himself.

Another mark of the human spirit is to be found in the
self-annoyance or disgust which arises in us at the view
of o»r own faults, which we shall have especially to con-
sider hereafter. It casts us down also because of the
defects of our good works or the ill success of earnest
efforts. We wish all to be square and neat; and there
are some dispositions which are more tried by the absence
of finish and completeness in their works than by an
actual sin. There is an obstinate attachment to devo-
tional practices, because we fancy they have done us
good, which looks like supernatural perseverance, and yet
is in truth nothing but the pertinacity of the human spirit.
If sometimes our inward life is inundated with a gushing
variety of good thoughts and zealous projects, it is for the
most part to be attributed to the human spirit. The Holy
Spirit inundates us slowly, noiselessly, and with simplicity,

THE HUMAN SPIRIT. 191

.ike the flooding of low-lying grounds by an oozing river.
One thing at a time, and all things in order, such are the
characteristics for the most part of divine operations.
Unevenness and fluctuation of spirits is another human
operation, which need never be mistaken for divine. The
same also may be said of a delusion which leads us to
fancy that self-respect requires such or such a course of
action in us. I am not saying that where there is such a
motive there is always sin, but that the action is purely
human, and must be content to take its chance as such.
It must not be disappointed if no blessing goes along with
it, and it is not allowed to enjoy the rights and immuni-
ties of evangelical prudence. Nothing is so completely
left to itself and to its own unassisted efforts by provi-
dence as human prudence, and the reason is obvious. It
is, as far as it goes, an attempt on man's part to do with-
out God, and to walk alone in his own wisdom. Yet how
the- world admires this human prudence, and the gravity
of look and the solemnity of manner and the measured-
ness of words which are mostly its attendant gifts. 0
man ! you are not truly prudent, because you are pomp-
ous, because you do not commit yourself to good people,
or because your eye is grave, and your demeanour fleeor-
ous, and your words flow as if they were worth i silver
crown a-piecej but you are prudent because your eye is
calmly fixed on God, and your heart whole with Him, and
your gait slow lest you should leave Him behind. Human
prudence will earn you human respect. Will that bread
satisfy you ? You did not come into the world in order
that you might go to your grave an unoffending and un-
productive man ! God wants something more of you than
that you should be unoffending ; and alas ! to be unpro-

192 THE HUMAN fePIRJT.

diictive is a capital offence against Him and souls. Yet
with how many Christians is this unoffending non-produc-
tion their very summum bonum. " To be ever safe is to
be ever feeble j" if ever the spirit of evangelical prudenco
spoke plainly, it spoke in that golden apophthegm.

The spirit of unnecessary recreations, the spirit of
mix^d intentions, the spirit of dispensations, the spirit
of little immortifications practised under the pretext that
we do not mean them to be habitual, the spirit which
makes us speak lightly and with a false prudence about
the enthusiasm of our first fervours in religion, all these
are developments of the human spirit. And those pecu-
liar developments, which show themselves most in each
one of us, are those which fit themselves most readily to
our natural temperament and disposition. It is to this
quarter, therefore, that we must look most steadily, and
prepare most carefully; for it is there that this "ignoble"
spirit, as Scaramelli calls it, will invade us.

But the worst artifice of the human spirit is when it
comes upon us in the disguise of virtue. We have a
natural aptitude for some particular virtue, and we mis-
take that facility for grace, and so become deluded. The
worst, says Scaramelli, is when this injurious spirit tra-
vesties some virtue, and makes us seem in our own eyes
different from what we really are. For, as Richard of St
Victor says, the nature of man contains within itself a natu-
ral disposition to certain virtues, in the pursuit of which
it meets with fewer impediments than in the pursuit of
others ; and on the other hand, every man has in himself
a peculiar inaptitude and repugnance to the practice of
particular virtues. Hence it comes to pass, very often,
that a certain promptitude in doing good looks like devo

THE HUMAN SPIRIT. 193

rton, and is not really so, but arises from natural inclina-
tion. From this doctrine, that great mystic infers that
the thoughts, words, works, and affections of imperfect
persons, ordinarily proceed from this low natural princi-
ple, and are consequently to be attributed to the human
spirit.

Scaramelli proceeds to give cases in illustration of this
doctrine. Beginners in devotion, and other imperfect per-
sons, are often to be found, who will run here and there all
day long in works of mercy, who are all ingenuity in devis-
ing plans, and all hands in carrying them into execution.
You would believe them to be very portraits of charity and
zeal. Yet if you could penetrate into their hearts, you
would find that all these anxieties and promptitudes are
operations of nature, not of grace, arising in great mea-
sure, if not altogether, from an ardent and unquiet tem-
per, which could not live if it were not always embar-
rassed with a thousand occupations. Another person you
will find who is quiet and peaceable, and does not even
resent an injury. It is as if he did not know how to be
angry. You would believe him to be a very model of
meekness. Yet if you diligently scrutinized his apparent
imperturbability, you would see that it was not grace
which moderated and refrained his natural character, but
that he was of a cold, heavy, and phlegmatic disposition.
Again, you will meet with persons who are full of tender-
ness in prayer, and continually bursting into tears. You
would suppose the manna of heaven was being rained
upor them by angelic hands. But put these tears into
the balance of the sanctuary, and it will soon be evident
that grace has the least share in them. They are legiti-
mately claimed by a sanguine, tender, and affectionate
17 N

194 THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

nature, whose imagination is vividly acted upon by any
lovely or pitiful object. So others are to be met with
who are so attentive at prayer, that they can pass entire
hours in it without distraction. Your first thought ia
that they have arrived at a profound and habitual recol-
lection, and perhaps a high degree of contemplation. But
you will be mistaken. This attention may not only
come from a heavenly light which fixes the mind on a
divine object, but also from a strong imagination, or a
profoundly melancholy temperament, and a certain fixed-
ness which nails the mind to the objects on which it is
meditating.

But let us look at ourselves. On some days we feel
an extraordinary fervour, and a great deal of spiritual
consolation ; and so we believe ourselves to be full of God.
But, alas ! our poor soul deceives itself : this great conso-
lation is but a work of nature. Some good fortune has
befallen us, or some piece of happy news arrived, by
which our sensitive appetite is dilated, and filled with
cheerfulness and natural delectation. With this a slight
amount of devotion is combined, which gives a tinge of
spirituality to the whole mind. So that the fervour is
nothing better than natural high spirits coloured with
devotion. We can soon test the truth of this. Let
something happen to displease us, and the consolation is
gone like lightning, the fervour cooled in an instant, and
our mind hard to be lifted to God. Alas, that it should
be so easy to confound the impulses that come from God
with those that nature gives, and to take the human spirit
for the divine ! Poor we ! how shall we blush at the
tribunal of God, when we find our actions which we
believed to be the pure silver of supernatural virtues, to

THE HUMAN SPIRIT. 195

be only the worthless scoria of natural actions, or a drossy
compound of nature and grace, where two thirds are
nature, to one-third grace. So says Isaias, Argentum
tuum versum est in scoriam, vinum tuum mixtum est
aqua.* All these sweetnesses which spring from natural
cheerfulness, or quickness of perception, dr mere habits
of meditation, explain why it is that people can feel so
much, advance so little, and fall back so often.

The corrosive power of this human spirit is shown by
the way in which it causes natural temperament to mingle
with and mar our good. Thus the zeal of a choleric man
becomes bitter. A melancholy man ungraceful in his
charity, and a cheerful man unrecollected in his prayers.
But let us listen to Scaramelli commenting on that sweet-
est and most persuasive of mystics, Richard of St. Victor,
if St. Bernard will not be angry at my calling him so.
It is to be remembered that the human spirit mixes itself
with the works of the most devout people, who are in the
habit of regulating their actions with no slight perfection.
Although this ignoble spirit has not the power utterly to
spoil them, it nevertheless corrupts them to a certain
extent, and lowers their perfection. Thus if a spiritual
man is of an irritable disposition, he experiences in his zeal
a certain bitterness and natural perturbation. If he is
phlegmatic, he is remiss in correcting. If he is melan-
choly, his charity wants benignity. If he is high-spirited,
his virtues are diluted by dissipation. In a word, as the
liquor from the bottle of skin tastes of the skin, so the
virtues taste of the natural disposition of the man in whom
they dwell. Let every man, therefore, beware of the spirit
that sleeps in his own bosom.
*L22.

196 THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

First of all, this human spirit is a most malignant
spirit j for under the pretence of serving God, it is always
seeking itself and its own natural satisfactions. And in
the next place it is a most subtle spirit, which is always
gliding like smooth oil into all our actions. Huge mor-
tification is required to fight it well, and to beat it. On
this matter, St. Bernard quotes the saying of the Wise
Man, that he who overcomes himself is more to be esteemed
than he who takes a city ; for nature can take a city, but
grace alone can take self. Let every one reflect, adds
our author, that the greatest enemy of persons advanced
in spirituality is neither the devil, nor the world, nor the
flesh ; for these three adversaries have either been already
overcome, or are actually being combated. Their greatest
enemy is the human spirit, which is the ally of self-love )
and it cannot be overcome except by an incessant mortifi-
cation of the will.

To this authority I would add that of Cardinal Bona ;
and I will paraphrase the passage in which he speaks of
the human spirit, and compares it with the devil. Man
has no more pernicious enemy than his own spirit; for
it is full of deceits, artifices, and disguises. It is incon-
stant. It takes different shapes. It is curious, unquiet,
the enemy of its own repose, and a lover of novelty. The
imagination produces nothing deformed or monstrous,
with which it will not occupy itself. There is nothing
unruly,, vain and ridiculous, which it is not capable of
embracing. Sometimes it appears altogether subject to
the Spirit of God, sometimes enslaved to the spirit of
Satan ; and it never abides long in one stay. As it is full
of artifices, it assumes different forms with a most sur-
prising industry and a marvellous subtilty, so as to hide

THE HUMAN SPIRIT. 197

as Kma <*)ta7cinence and interests under the pretexts of
the glory of God and of perfection. Under these captious
:ippearances it is nevertheless very far indeed from seek-
ing the glory of God or loving perfection. For it seeks
itself jn everything and loves itself excessively. It posi-
tively adores itself, and turning aside from their true end
fchings the most holy, by a horrible sacrilege it refers
them to itself. It is on this account that a man must
far more distrust himself, and stand on his guard against
himself, than against Satan. For no power external to
ourselves is able to hurt us, unless we give him the hand
at first, furnish him with arms when he begins the atttack,
and inwardly acquiesce in his designs and enterprises. Of
a truth many enemies push us to our ruin. The world
pushes us thither: Satan pushes us : other men push us;
but no one pushes us so violently and so dangerously as
we push ourselves.

St. Bernard, in his eighty-fifth sermon on the Canti-
cles, writes as follows : Every one is his own enemy.
Man urges and precipitates himself into evil in such a
way, that if he would only keep his own hands from sui-
cide, he need fear the violence of no one else. Who can
harm you, says St. Peter, if you have no desire except to
do good ? Your own consent to evil is the only hand
which can wound and kill you. If when the devil sug-
gests evil to you, or the world invites you to it, you with-
hold your consent, no misfortune can befall you. The
devil may push you, but he cannot throw you down, if
you refuse him your consent. How plain it is, then, that
mark is his own principal and most dangerous enemy !

I still dwell on this all-important subject, and at the
risk of some little repetition, I will ask you to examine
17*

198 THE nUMAN SPIRIT

with ine the marks by which Cardinal Bona distinguishes
the human spirit, as we have already done those of Scava-
melli and Richard of St. Victor.

First of all, he says, there are persons so touched w*th
the remembrance of their sins, and the meditation of the
Bufferings of Christ, that they shed an abundance of tears,
and are suddenly filled with a profound sentiment of com-
punction. This disposition leads them to chastise them-
selves with rude disciplines and macerations of the flesh.
Others are touched in a lively way by the consideration
of the joys of heaven, and they all at once go into an
extasy. Yet specious as these effects are, they do not
come from the Spirit of God, but from the love of self,
from the liveliness and application with which the soul
has apprehended its objects, and from the natural change
which a sudden and extraordinary emotion causes. This
is easily seen when the impetuosity and ardour of this
emotion is arrested; for then such persons not only re-
lapse into a state of coldness and dryness, but evey fall
back into their old passions and vices. On the contrary,
the true movements and impressions of the Spirit of God
have nothing vain or unprofitable for the conversion of
souls, but at once effect great things. Hence we must
conclude that the discernment of spirits in these matters
is very difficult. For we often attribute to the Spirit of
God, and often also to the spirit of the devil, that which
really comes only from the dispositions and impression?
of nature. Every one, therefore, ought carefully to exa-
mine his heart, so that he may not be deceived by his
own spirit, which St. Gregory calls a spirit of pride. Now
no one can examine and discuss what passes in himself,
unless he prepares for God a dwelling in his soul by

THE HUMAN SPIRIT. 199

chasing away every kind of presumption, and keeping
himself down in distrust of self, and a sincere humility
For, as the holy pope excellently says, no one can become
the abode of God's Spirit, who has not first emptied him-
self of his own ; for the Spirit of God rests only in humble
minds, in quiet consciences, and in hearts which tremble
at His words.

Secondly, it sometimes happens that we begin a work
truly for God and for His glory. But inasmuch as
nature is always secretly seeking itself, insensibly and
without our perceiving it we forget the good pleasure of
God in the progress of the work which we have begun,
and instead of regarding attentively His glory and His
will, we let ourselves go about seeking our own conve-
nience and satisfaction. We find this out in the following
way. If God arrests the success or completion of our
work by any illness or accident, at once we are troubled
and disquieted ; and such a sadness and perturbation of
our interior peace take possession of us, that it is as
much as ever we can do to acquiesce in the Divine Will.
There are few persons who are thoroughly aware of the
malignity of that natural inclination which is at the bot-
tom of all self-seeking, because it is so subtle and hidden.
The very fact that good is in a -jertain sense conformable
to our natural desires, causes us easily to lean towards
ourselves. So that even in the intentions which seem to
us the most pure and the most according to the will of
God, we often seek ourselves, drawing rather to what suits
our own inclination than what is precisely the most for
the glory of God.

A similar defect may be observed in our love of mor-
tification, especially when it is too ardent. For many

200 THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

mortify their senses, restrain their affections, punish their
bodies, and abstain from pleasures, with an appearanc
of virtue and zeal, who do all this in reality to be seen
of men, or to give their own minds a satisfaction in which
self-love seeks itself with all the address and artifice of
which it is capable. For he who is impelled only by the
instinct of grace, always desires to be hidden. Nature
as invariably seeks to display itself. Yet even those who
are really full of supernatural and divine lights are not
exempt from this fault, in consequence of their frequent
insensible returns upon self, and the views of self which
are continually opening upon them, like landscapes seen
through sudden openings in a wood, just at times when
they ought to be most exclusively occupied with God.

Thirdly, it is very certain that we have need of the
grace of God to pray and do good works as we ought.
But it is certain also that we can do virtuous actions
from a human motive, from self-love, or from servile fear.
We have moreover so little light in ourselves that we
cannot clearly distinguish on what principle we act, whe-
ther it be divine or human. In truth we wish to raise
our heart to God, and to disengage it from these returns
upon self which are so full of imperfections. But some-
times this desire arises from a subtle and secret interest
which we do not perceive. For we may desire to be
stripped of our self-love by another self-love. We can
desire and love humility through pride. Without ques-
tion there is in our actions and interior dispositions a per-
petual circle and incessant return of ourselves upon our-
selves, which is almost imperceptible. There always re-
mains in our heart a root of self-love which is extremely
fine, subtle and volatile, and which is unknown to us.
So that we are sometimes very far from guiding ourselves

THE HUMAN SPIRIT. 201

by reasons altogether divine and motives purely disinte-
rested, at the very moment when we think we are doing
so the most completely. Job's comforters are examples
of this. Pure and true love of God, disengaged from all
consideration of self, is extremely rare and exceedingly
difficult. If men could hide themselves from the eyes
of God and from the eyes of the world, there are very
few indeed who would do good, and very few who would
abstain from evil.

Fourthly, when we tease and worry ourselves, and are
as it were in despair about our spiritual progress after we
have fallen, all these dispositions come only from a secret
self-confidence and pride. For he who is truly humble is
never astonished at his falls. He knows that man is so
feeble he can do nothing without the assistance of God.
So that he asks the divine aid, detesting his sin with a
heart at once tranquil and contrite ; and rising from his
fall with courage and diligence, he renews his course with
fresh fervour.

It is also a mark of the human spirit to attach itself to
its exercises and functions, however good and holy, to such
a degree that when superiors withdraw us from them and
apply us to others, we indulge in murmurs and com-
plaints, and imagine that we can never reach the perfec-
tion befitting our state, as if not to allow us always to do
what we like were depriving us of the necessary means
to attain perfection. For the pain which we feel under
these circumstances does not come really from the fact
that the things we have been forced to abandon were more
suitable and efficacious for our perfection, but because we
rested in them and leaned upon them with a vicious
affection, and were complacently enjoying therein our own
interest and satisfaction rather than the glory of God

202 THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

Nature loves what is beautiful, what is good, what is per-
fect, and seeks to be pleasing and attractive to itself in
these things. Hence it conies to pass that it hates every-
thing that is defective in its enterprises and designs, and
even in its most spiritual works : insomuch that these
defects, as has been said before, torment and disquiet it,
which is a sign that the love of the good and the perfect,
however specious it seemed, was only the produce of
nature.

Fifthly, the human spirit instigates men who are
learned and desirous of becoming more so, to learn the
science of divine and supernatural things, partly to give
them consideration from others, and partly to satisfy their
suriosity. From this eagerness to appear learned in high
matters proceed many rare, magnificent and subtle dis-
courses whose only fruit is to tickle the ears, not to save
the souls, of others. Hence also those writings of philo-
sophers who treat of virtue in a pompous style, without
spirit and without life, filling the soul with distractions,
and dissipating it in an infinity of speculations and ideas,
and without the least gift of inflaming it with love of
God. Works which emanate from the natural capacity
of the mind, and in the production of which grace has
had no share, may doubtless contain an abundance of good
things, but the fruit of them is very small. They are
like the apostle's sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.
Whereas the words which are animated by the Spirit of
God, although they have nothing lofty or elevated in
themselves, nay on the contrary are far from anything of
the sort, bring forth in their simplicity abundant fruit.
The human spirit on the other hand is accustomed to dis-
tribute itself readily among external things, aud to plume
itself on the multitude and variety of its fine thought*,

THE HUMAN SPIRIT. 203

ttnd this causes it to swerve from the unity which is so
desirable and so necessary.

Sixthly, in matters relating to virtue the prudence of
the flesh is the inseparable companion of the human
spirit. This is the reason why so many content them-
selves with mediocrity in the spiritual life, without as-
piring to a perfect state. They measure everything by
themselves and by their own weakness, and not by the
power and efficacy of the grace of God. They fear suffer-
ing and contempt, and ardently love riches, honours and
bodily comforts, and to these things they refer all they
do, or say, or think. They wish to make an enjoyment
of themselves, as if they were their own ultimate end;
and forming an idol of themselves, they pay it the wor-
ship which is due to God. They let their soul be
charmed by the enchantments of the world, and sell it as
a slave to the goods of this present life.

As charity never seeks its own interests, so blind self
love seeks no interests but its own. And the power of
this pernicious love over the soul is at once so malignant
and so penetrating, that it not only mingles with temporal
and earthly things, but even with heavenly and spiritual
things, infecting with its venom the love of prayer, the
usage of the sacraments, and the exercise of virtues.
Even in these things men seek for praise and the reputa
tion of sanctity, or secretly hope to obtain from God cer-
tain lights and spiritual luxuries and joys of soul, which
only make them soft and vain. This venom of self-love
taints even our works of penance ; for frequently after a
fall a sinner is touched with extreme sorrow, and chastises
his body fiercely, not because of the offence against God,
but because of the note of infamy which he has himself
incurred, or through the fear of losing his reputation

204 THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

amongst men, or at least because he wishes to seem inno-
cent in his own eyes. Yet as no solid peace is to be
found among the perishable things of this life, there is so
much inconstancy in a man's love of himself, that he is
incessantly changing his affections and pleasures, and
knows neither what he wishes nor what he is doing.
Sometimes he lets himself be rashly buoyed up by hope ;
sometimes he falls into despair; sometimes he breaks out
into a vain joy; sometimes he is out of his depth in sad-
ness. There is neither moderation nor measure in his con-
duct, and instead of being in a mean, he is always in ex-
tremes. He resembles a vessel, tossed hither and thither
uncertainly on the waves, and at last striking on a rock,
and becoming a miserable wreck. For as our Saviour has
taught us, He that loves his own soul shall lose it. Now
all that is said of the human spirit must be referred to
this pernicious self-love ; for it is the exciting cause of
all the merely natural movements of the soul.

It is plain that Scaramelli and Bona drew from a single
source, that that source was Richard of St. Victor, and that
he spoke the spiritual tradition of his day, on a subject
about which, more than almost any other in the spiritual
life, it is needful to have clear and decided views.

You may ask how we are to test this human spirit, and
how we are to rectify it. I answer briefly, that we may
test it in two ways and rectify it in two ways. Our first
test must be whether we will or will not allow ourselves
to be despoiled of our habits and practices by obedience.
The second is whether a virtue is accompanied in us by its
congruous virtues, which in the order of the Holy Spirit
it would be, and is not an isolated and exceptional thing.
The first means of rectifying it is to redirect our intention
to the glory of God, even when in act we are obliged to

THE HUMAN SPIRIT. 205

abstain from what we desire ; and the second means is to
strive to put grace by degrees in the place of all other prin
ciples of action. But more of this in the next chapter.

We must remember that to be in a state of grace and
to act from a principle of grace are two very different things
To act from a principle of grace is to make the pleasure of
God the sole motive of our actions, to the exclusion of all
mere natural motives ; and to learn to know God more and
more is the means towards the accomplishment of this mag-
nificent end. In such a work as this, there can be nc
rapidity, no vehemence, nothing sudden, nothing revolu-
tionary. Grace must occupy as fast as it destroys ; it must
fill the void as it creates it. The aborigines must waste in
the presence of the white man ; but it must be a waste, not
an extermination, else the wild beasts will be down upon the
settlements. Some men turn away from this slow superna-
tural life, because they weary of the yoke which is never off
their necks; and some because they are persuaded such a life
is impossible to man. Yet the saints and the saintlike
lived it, and were at large and at ease in it. Why not we ?
The state of grace seeks God and all other things in Him :
the principle of grace seeks God and nothing else but Him.
The state of grace is satisfied with clearness from sin : the
principle of grace is ever forcing its way upwards to divine
union. The state of grace has calm and storm alternately :
the principle of grace, if it oscillates at all, oscillates like
the needle, in fidelity to its centre. In the beginning it
is hard, yet with many consolations. Its progress is like
the dawning of day. Its end is the eternal sunrise. Why
are there so few that live it? Because so few have
Faith. "Thy truths, 0 Lord, are diminished from among
the children of men/'
18

208 THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED

CHAPTER XIII.

THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED.

If we are willing to take the authority of St. Bernard
and Richard of St. Victor, of Cardinal Bona and Scara-
melli, we must suppose that the devil is guiltless of by
far the greater part of the sins of good people, and that
even temptation is far less exclusively his domain than
we are often in the habit of considering it. We must
not, however, push this doctrine too far, nor extend it
beyond the limits, surely wide enough, within which ap-
proved writers confine it. Nevertheless, admitted even
so far, we shall find if we have hitherto neglected it, that
it is a doctrine full of practical results to us in the
spiritual life. It gives us quite a different idea of our
warfare. It throws a hew light on scruples. It makes
us change our tactics against temptation ', and above all,
it facilitates the practices of humility and self-distrust.
When we refer everything to the devil, and he is in our
thoughts and on our lips at every moment, we may be
sure that we are as yet but on the threshold of the
spiritual life, and have but a shallow knowledge either
of it or of ourselves. There is hardly any point of
spirituality which has suffered more from the customary
exaggerations of men than this one of the devil's share
in our temptations antf our falls. Verily, he may truly
claim the lion's share with most of men, and his office
with holy people is both constant and arduous ; so that
he may well allow to his ally the human spirit its own
unfortunate and independent prerogatives.

THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED. 207

But we have not done with the human spirit yot. In
this chapter I wish to speak of one of its most common
developments, and then of the means by which the human
spirit generally may be brought into subjection.

The development, of which I am about to speak, is
touchiness about our reputation, a disease most fatal to
the spiritual life, and yet one to which spiritual men are
subject to a strange and unexpected degree. It is a
perfect cankerworm to an interior spirit, and one of the
most prolific causes of lukewarmness. Earth may be an
unhappy place ; but it is not the pressure of God's provi-
dence which causes most of the unhappiness, nor the
roarings of the devil going about seeking whom he may
devour. It is the human spirit operating in quarrels,
coldness, conceit, rivalry, envy, strife, jealousies, misun-
derstandings, and an exaggerated idea of little slights and
wrongs. Now the suffering of all these things, and it is
very acute, comes from fretfulness about our reputation.
The excessive care of our reputation is naturally a beset-
ting sin of times whose spirit of publicity does really
make a Christian duty of the preservation of our good
name.

But let us consider what this fretfulness brings in its
train. It is obviously quite inconsistent with interior
peace, which is the soul of the spiritual life. For how
can we be at peace if we make ourselves responsible for
what is not in our own power, but escapes from us on ail
sides ? It breeds an exaggerated idea of our own import-
ance, and so destroys humility. It causes suspiciousness,
and so kills simplicity. It is a daily source of irritability,
and so ruins charity. It is the crowned king of distrac-
tions, and so draws off our attention from God and eternal

208 THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED.

things. Yet see what folly it is I For if we get what
we wish, what does it amount to in nine cases out of ten,
but being better thought of than we deeerve, looking
differently to man's eye and to God's eye ? And surely
in reality we are what we are in the judgment of God,
and we are nothing more. Thus, of all unreal satisfac-
tions the preservation for the moment of our reputation is
at once the most unfruitful, the most anxious and the
most precarious. The only decent pretence for such a
jealousy is that we may not lose the means of serving
God ; and to act with a single eye to His good pleasure
would be a safer and more successful rule of conduct,
than to put our reputation out to nurse with the thousand
tongues of men. Hence it was that saints, who were
silent under all other calumnies, would not for the most
part rest quiet under the imputation of heresy.

Everything which is corrective of the human spirit in
general, is a remedy for this touchiness about our reputa-
tion. But there are some remedies for it as a peculiar
disease of itself. Special prayer for that end is obvious ;
and the same may be said of making it the subject of our
particular examen, to find out how much we really offend
in this matter. But the principal remedy of all is to
keep our eye steadily fixed on the beautiful and potent
example of our Blessed Lord in this very respect. As to
His reputation as a teacher of doctrine, He was called a
fool,* and the questions of Caiaphas express the publio
opinion about Him. As to His morals, He was called
seditious, drunkard, and glutton. f As to His truth, Ha
was esteemed a heretic and a Samaritan,! and was openly
accused of witchcraft; § and when condemned to death

* John x. f Luke vii. % John viii. g Mark iu.

TfiE UUMAN SMRlT DEFEATED. 201

He made no defence. The lives of the saints hardl)
seem wonderful, when we have well studied the excessive
humiliations of Jesus with regard to His reputation.
Even to those who are far from saints it may be given by
God to know the sweetness of calumny, when we feeJ
ourselves sinking out of man's sight into the divine deeps
of our Saviour's dear and awful Passion.

We must now proceed to examine the ways in which
we are to combat the human spirit. And here it is of
importance that we should put clearly before ourselves
once more the position which we occupy in the spiritual
life, inasmuch as the human spirit, though the enemy of
every man born into the world, is especially the plague
of the spiritual man. Who and where are we then ?

There are many Christians who seem to go no further
than a hatred of mortal sin. We are not supposed to
belong to them. There are others who strive conscien-
tiously to avoid venial sin. We are not contented even
with this. We are drawn to love, to love God and to
love perfection, and to have no reserves with God. As
to whether we shall be saints or not, our mind never
rests on the subject. We should fling the thought off
from us as a miserable temptation. All we see clearly
before us is the resolution to have no reserves with God,
and then to leave all else to Him. This attraction grew
upon us, and now we have little doubt it is from God
For a time we had little or no sensible fear of God,
because sensible love was so strong, but the fear is return-
ing, without disquietude. We seldom thought of hell;
and the thought of it hardly affects us now. We some-
times caught ourselves making acts of love when we
intended to make acts of contrition. We were curiously
18*

210 THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED

Attracted towards the sacraments, as if they were magnets,
and we found it a great trial to leave prayer for our daily
duties. Indeed, we are only beginning to find out now
that the relative duties of our station in life are almost an
eighth sacrament. We began to care very little for man's
judgment of us, and we saw it was wise to be really
obedient to our directors.

It was plain that, however much of this was natural,
much also was supernatural. These dispositions amounted
to a vocation, and this vocation was a gift which we might
compare with creation or with baptism, without doing
them dishonour. To correspond to it was plainly a
primary duty • but we made up our minds that it would
cost us something to do this. Paradise was not mean'
for cowards. And so we began.

And what were our beginnings like ? All day long
we had a sensible heat of Divine Love in our hearts. We
desired to do great things, very great things, foolishly
great things, for God. We believed we should never
grow tired of spiritual exercises. We were impatient to
be saints, and we undervalued the grace of perseverance.
We were continually wondering at the beauty of Jesus,
and wanted to stand still and look at it, while we were
wearied and fatigued by our ordinary actions and relative
duties. 0 happy days ! Days of power, that passed,
but left their fruits behind them !

Sometimes we were tempted to undervalue them. But
we soon saw how stupid it was to esteem lightly any of
God's gifts, because some day they would hand us on fee
others. We knew that these first fervours were a spiritual
childhood; but nevertheless that God meant something
by them We felt that they were burning, felling, and

THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED 21\

clearing a great deal of the past, ploughing he present,
and sowing for the future. We knew they would never
return, that the saints had had them, and that they were
a shelter from the world, just when its hot suns would
have withered our souls aud stricken them with barren-
ness. We were not, however, blind to the dangers of
these fervours. We knew it would be dangerous to fall
too much in love with sensible sweetness. We might
become censorious. We might neglect the duties of our
state. We might trust too much to self, and not be suffi-
ciently dependent upon grace. We might take rash vows,
or choose a state of life, or make some great change, in a
beat. We knew also that some day there would be a
reaction, and we could not tell what shape it might take.
Hence we made some effort, but not so much as we might
have done, to mortify self-love, to be cheerful when we
fell, to be frightened of ourselves, to be open with our
director, not to read high books, or to attempt out-of-the-
way methods of prayer, to avoid singularity, not to argue
about religion, or to talk of spirituality, and to have a
special devotion to the silence of Jesus.

So at last we left the nurse's arms and tottered about
the floor, often asking to be taken back again, not seldom
with our little heads broken against hard tables and in-
convenient chairs. Our strong good will for perfection
remained, though the foresight of its difficulties was much
less confused. We began to discern the difference between
lourage and presumption, and we saw that courage was
always accompanied with a clear view and a keen sense
of our own nothingness. We began to acquire some so-
lidity in devotion, by sticking for a year or more to th<i
acquisition of a single virtue, or the extirpation of a single

212 THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED

fault. We became more recollected, without knowing it,
and without seeming so. We grew modestly timid of
adopting too many practices and committing ourselves to
too many vocal prayers, scapulars, confraternities, and the
like. We saw the importance of gentleness, because the
practice of so many other virtues is involved in it, because
it is by far the most powerful interior motive-power, and
because our Lord proposes it to us in a special way. Yet
in practising this gentleness, we studiously mortified natu-
ral tendernesses, perceiving that they wound the jealousy
of God, and make the heart effeminate and incapable of
grace. There was a day, it was a day of revolution, when
we ceased making general resolutions, and only made par-
ticular ones. We cultivated the spirit of faith, for it
dawned upon us that it was a gift capable of increase by
culture. We learned prayer, as boys learn a lesson, and
never minded its being for the time actually a hot-bed of
new imperfections. We were careful not to make a show
of being spiritual. We began to dislike our ruling passion
and instinctively to strike blows at it whenever we had the
opportunity. We were tolerably patient with the slowness
of our own progress, and attended to our present grace.
We became more and more reverently devoted to the Sa-
cred Humanity; and while somehow caring less about
lights, flowers and epithets, we were conscious of a won-
derfully grave and business-like confidence in our dearest
Lady.

Through all this we felt great sensible sweetness almost
continuously, were unconscious of much progress, were
/Ireadfully tempted to self-trust, and were periodically
liable to spiritual panics. Still the work was all right as
far as it went. All it had to do now was to wear. This

THE HX'MAN SPIRIT DEFEATED. 213

IB the one question in all spiritual things, How will it
wear ? Alas ! the world and cloister ! how choked up
they both are with worn-out and shabby spiritualities, and
never a Jew to go round to buy them !

But did all this go smoothly ? Did we make no mis-
takes after all ? 0 far from smoothly, and plenty of mis-
takes ! 0 so many heart-aches, doubts, panics, wearinesses,
and waywardnesses ! First of all we did not, though we
meant it, give ourselves up unreservedly to God. We
kept back some attachments that were not sinful, some
things which we thought our circumstances admitted of.
We struck a balance between prudence and principle, and
forgot that concession and dispensation are for the later,
not the earlier stages, of the spiritual life. We adopted
fresh practices and strictnesses, egged on by self-love, not
the simple view of God's will, and we did not remember
that we ought to consult and investigate our purity of in-
tention as much in adopting a strictness, as in asking a
dispensation. We permitted ourselves in little laxities,
with regard to the custody of the senses, dress, talking,
bodily fatigue, health, and such matters. We gave way
to discouragements, because of our faults, our increased
self-knowledge, our multiplied temptations, our inability
to keep our own resolutions, and the subtraction of spi-
ritual sweetness. Then, losing our hearts in this discou.
ragement, we presently lost our heads, and fell into ah
manner of scruples, from not distinguishing between
temptation and consent, from secret tenacity of our own
opinions, from an excessive fear of God's justice and a
want of confidence in His mercy, from a morbid desire
of avoiding semblances of sin and from an indiscreet
austerity, solitude, and sacrifice Df recreation. Heart and

214 THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED.

head gone, spirits went next. We gave way to an inex-
plicable sadness, and were sorely tempted to change our
lives, to discontinue our strictnesses, to talk of our sor-
rows, and to seek worldly consolations. Had we done any
one of these four things, we might have been lost. The
sadness did us a great mischief as it was; it drove us into
self-introversion. We lost sight of the grand Objects cf
faith, and went into an excess with our examinations of
conscience ', and then to extricate ourselves from this, we
plunged into too many designs, and had too many irons
in the fire, and were inordinately disappointed when our
good works did not succeed. There was altogether a want
of childlike abandonment, both of our exterior plans, and
of our interior conduct, into the hands of Providence.
We wished to attempt to convert others before we had a
right to distract ourselves from ourselves. Even perfec-
tion in the world must have a noviciate of looking after
itself, as well as perfection in monasteries. However, we
determined to set all right by talking very disparagingly
of ourselves, and so made the worst mistake of all, and
lost the few ounces of humility which we had so painfully
scraped together. For it turned out in the end to be con-
ceit which made us abuse ourselves. The upshot of it all
was that we allowed ourselves to be too much engrossed
with the metaphysics of the spiritual life and its exclu-
sively interior things, so as to be drawn off from a loving
attention to the sacraments, to Jesus and to God. How-
ever, mistakes, like other things, have their day ; and we
can afford now not only to glean wisdom from our blun-
ders, but amusement also.

But we have not done yet. The ugliest part is still tc
be confessed. These mistakes only concerned ourselves

THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED. 215

There were others which concerned our neighbours. 0
what dis-edification both given and taken ! There were
scandals given to others aiming at perfection, scandals
taken from others aiming at it, and scandals taken by the
world. How unlovely did we make the work of God ap-
pear ! We talked about religion, and so illustrated by
our words the inconsistency of our practice ; and doubt-
less, as beginners always do, we talked above our state,
and from books rather than experience. We adopted
uncommon devotions, which looked still less inviting
when exhibited together with our unhumble, unmortified,
unobligi-og manners. We were impatient of contradic-
tion, weary with prayer, irritable with penance, as per-
sons accustomed to have it all their own way with their
favourite spiritual books. We envied the spiritual ad-
vancement of others, took up with self-willed austerities
which interfered with domestic arrangements, unneces-
sarily provoked the opposition of relatives, and disturbed
the comfort of others. The duties of our station were
performed in a precipitate, perfunctory, and ungraceful
manner. We did not praise oth >rs with simplicity, be-
cause we were dissatisfied with them, and did not realize
that God's leadings are numberless, and that others may
not have our light. There was a bitterness in our zeal
which was shown both in words and manner, and we were
often inclined to threaten men with the judgments of
God. We were censorious, and given to preach and
moralize ; and if we tried to avoid this fault we fell into
an opposite one, and gave way too easily, when others
for their own convenience wished us to suspend our
ttrictnesses

The world treated us unjustly certainly. Yet we did

216 THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED.

the same in our turn to other spiritual persons. "We
misunderstood them, when we were complaining of being
misunderstood ourselves. We did not remember in their
case how many faults may consist with the beginnings
of real piety. We ought to have known from our own
experience lhat they were in all probability fighting a
good fight with those very faults which were offending
us, or that God was leaving them without aid in those
particular respects for their humiliation and trial; and
when all this ought to have been in our own minds, we
sat by and allowed worldly people ill-naturedly to exag.
gerate these faults.

In our own case the harsh judgments of the world had
much truth in them. They ought to have taught us les-
sons of humility. They were probably far less true,
when they were doing injustice to others. They should
have been moreover warnings to us when we were un-
consciously becoming lukewarm. We might have ac-
cepted them as chastisements to us for our judgments of
others. And at the worst we should have remembered
Jesus, and been sweet-mannered. At all events here we
are, having learned thus much from it all, that there are
two spirits which effectually hinder all advance in the
spiritual life, one is the spirit of taking scandal, and the
other is the fidgety desire to give edification. For they
both of them deny the five essential principles of the
spiritual life, the law of charity which believes all things,
the attention to self, the temper of concealment, the care-
lessness of men's judgments, and the practice of the
presence of God. In these five ways they destroy the
interior life by a daily noxious infusion of mixed pusil-
lanimity and pride.

And with all these miseries and mistakes we are not

THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED. 217

shipwrecked ? No ! that could hardly be to those who
love Mary. And now with all this experience, and at this
particular point of our growth in holiness, we are face to
face with this enemy, the human spirit, seeking about for
weapons wherewith to combat it.

The first one must be what spiritual writers often call
the spirit of captivity. Grace is the opposite of nature )
nature everywhere cries liberty, grace cries captivity; and
without a resolute good will to take ourselves captive, we
shall never beat down the human spirit. The spirit of
captivity consists, as an eminent mystical writer tells us,
sometimes in submission to a written rule, parcelling out
our daily actions so far as ovir state of life will allow,
sometimes in subjection to our director, even against our
own judgment, and without feints or wiles, sometimes in
conformity to the law of Providence, especially where it
thwarts and mortifies our natural liveliness and inclina-
tions, and sometimes also in submission to that attraction
of the Holy Spirit which is to many of us like a special
revelation. There is also a captivity to frequently recur-
ring, though not daily or obligatory, practices of devotion,
a captivity to interior recollection with all its difficulties,
trials, and repressions of natural activity ; and all mortifi-
cation is itself but a shape of captivity.

The genuine spirit of captivity may be known by the
following characteristics. It must be universal, extending
its jurisdiction even where there is no question of sin. It-
must jealously include little things as well as great ones.
It must be persevering, and not irregular, vehement, or
intermitting. It must act even when it has no sensible
sweetness to sustain it. In these cases, nature will often
get angry and gnash her teeth ; but this is no real offence
19

218 THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED.

of our superior nature against the spirit of captivity. Love
of God must be its motive and principle, even though it
will not always be sensibly perceived.

This spirit of captivity is very needful, and commits
blessed ravage on the human spirit. Yet it is not with-
out its dangers. Indeed, if it had no dangers it would
be good for nothing. We must be cautious, therefore,
of making things obligatory upon ourselves, and so giving
rise to scruples; and still more must we be careful not to
take every busy, ingenious suggestion of further mortifi-
cation, which the human spirit will incessantly be whisper-
ing, as a divine inspiration. Captivity does not mean
that we are always to do what we dislike. That for the
most part is Jansenist perfection, the perfection of the
Theologia Sanctorum,* a perfection which is on the
Index, I have spoken of it before. In order to provide
against excesses we must let our director legislate for us
on the matter. If he allows us in numerous daily petty
mortifications, he must fix the number, and give us an
obedience always to interpret the doubts in our own fa-
vour. When this captivity discourages us, or forms a
distraction at prayer, it is best to neglect it totally for a
while, in those particular matters in which it most troubles
us. We shall find that a sort of habit of discernment
will gradually grow up in us about it. We must pray for
that gift of the Holy Ghost which is termed fortitude,
St. Teresa's favourite gift of the seven. Liberty of spirit
consists in exemption from cares, from remorse and from
attachments; and captivity is the only road to this royal
liberty.

* This famous book in three folio volumes was written by Henry
of St. Ignatius, a Carmelite, published at Liege in 1709, and con-
demned at Rome in 1714.

THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED. 219

The second weapon against tLe human spirit is the
repose of the soul in its present grace and state. Our
present grace does not mean unconquered infirmities in
which we are to acquiesce. But it consists of the inevi-
table circumstances which surround us, considered as the
ordinance and dispensation of God. It is the exact and
infallible Will of God with regard to us. In the present
grace God gives us so much, and He gives us no more;
He leads us so far, and no further ; He means this, and
He does not mean that.

Now to repose on our present grace is to look at it, and
think of it, and measure ourselves by it. It is quite
strange how little men think of the present as compared
with the past and the future. It is the genius of the
human spirit, and it subserves its interests. It dies in
this repose and acquiescence in the present; it expires
when it is allowed to take no thought for the morrow ;
and in spiritual things especially it abhors this mystical
death. The life of God Himself consists in an unbroken
complacence in the present; and we must faintly imitate
this adorable life in our souls. Moreover to acquiesce in
it is to make it our occupation, no matter with what
baying wolves of temptation we are beleagured, or in what
crucible of interior pains we are being tormented, or in
what furnace of external persecutions we are being an-
nealed. Indeed in this apparent standing still all manner
of progress is involved. For the spirit of faith is fed by
it, the habits of patience with God and ourselves are
formed and strengthened, our ordinary actions are done in
the most perfect way, heroic humility is admirably prac-
tised, and there is in our souls an incessant quiet multipli-
cation of the degrees of sanctifying grace.

220 THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED.

If we examine attentively our spiritual troubles, we
shall find that almost all of them arise from the want of
this acquiescence in our present grace. Take no thought
for the morrow, is a heavenly maxim quite as applicable
to our interior conduct as to our exterior. Peace of heart
is gained by it ; for it is the most perfect remedy for all
those things which disturb interior peace, which are chiefly
precipitation, agitation, and outward disasters. It checks
precipitation, calms agitation, and often prevents or miti-
gates the outward disasters.

The opposite line of conduct is the very master-piece
of the human spirit. It involves habitual opposition to
the divine will. It destroys interior peace. It causes
discontent with God, with others, with our directors, and
with ourselves. It is a fertile source of spiritual envy of
others. Under its influence all things are done ill, be-
cause they are done greedily, unquietly, and hurriedly, as
if the end of everything was nothing more than to get to
the next thing; so that always being an intention ahead
of our actions, all life is spoiled. It envelopes us in a
fog of languor and sadness, which take all the nerve out
of our mortifications ; and its last stroke is to fill us with
a gradually increasing nausea of the sacraments, as over
praised recipes. The acquiescence in our present grace,
on the contrary, seems to me to have been the grand
gift of the great quiet-hearted St. Philip ; and compared
with the heavenly treasure of its solidity, what were his
visions, extasies, and night-long colloquies with his dear
Madonna ?

It may seem almost like a play upon words to say that
hatred of self is a rem(\dy for self-love, which always lies
at the bottom of the human spirit. So it may be put in

THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED. 221

another shape. As I have said before, we are always in
haste to get out of the Purgative Way in religion, and to
enter the Illuminative, just as novices wish to be out of
their noviciate, and long for the graver responsibilities of
jrofession, because of its greater liberty. We are espe-
cially anxious to abandon the humbling subjects of medi-
tation, which beloug to that state, and especially medita-
tions on the four last things. Now, a long continuance
of these very meditations, or at least a frequent recurrence
to them, is a great means of combating the human spirit.
St. Francis Borgia used to meditate as much as two hours
daily on his own nothingness. Hence his characteristic
virtue was humility. He was probably refreshed by
supernatural lights, which enabled him to spend so long
a time profitably on that subject. With him it was most
likely contemplation rather than meditation. Still, it is
an example to "s. A mind well exercised in the conside-
ration of its own nothingness, will be proof against many
au arrow shot against it by the human spirit. It is not
easy to hate ourselves ; but until we come to do so with a
good hearty hatred, we shall never consent to mortify our-
selves, and so never be capable of union with God. This
hatred is, by tho grace of God, the inevitable product of
deep reflection on our own nothingness.

The thoughts among which we should live familiarly,
are such as these. What are we in the order of nature ?
Simply created out of nothing, and so with no rights, but
such as come from God's gratuitous covenant. To the
degradation of our nothingness, we have added the guilt
of rebellion. We are inferior to the angels, and akin to
the beasts : mutable, and almost without self-control ;
subject to sufferings and indignities; helpless in childhood,
19*

222 THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED.

and dishonourable in old age; cur bodies tending to cor
ruption, and our souls gravitating heavily to sin. Wh:it
are we in the order of grace? Without it we are outcasts
and exiles. Sanctifying place is altogether foreign to us,
and from God ; and actual grace must be superadded to
habitual, and even then our will can destroy its efficacy.
And in our best estate, self mingles with and mars our
holiest actions. We have senses, but it is as much as we
can do to keep custody over them ) they are sources of
temptation and sin, which often tyrannically overbear the
soul Our understanding is blind and stupid, imprudent,
conceited, and in a great measure dependent on our bodily
health. Our affections are insubordinate and wild, and
their tastes ignoble, continually fastening on low objects.
If we could only come to judge ourselves by the same
standard according to which we judge others, how royally
should we hate ourselves ! Ah ! if we only demanded,
and as severely exacted, from ourselves, wbat we exact
from others, the same unselfishness all day and night, the
same promptitude in generous deeds, the same high prin-
ciples, the same pure motives ! Alas ! if we could only
look upon ourselves from without, and at the same time
have the knowledge of ourselves which we possess from
within, we should soon be saints !

If we compare ourselves with a beast, the latter is no
spot in God's creation. It is more patient than we are,
and apparently has more self-control in pain. It corres-
ponds better to the end of its creation than we do to ours.
If me look at ourselves by the side of a fallen angel, he
fell but once, and had no room given him for repentance.
Many classes of sins are unknown to him, such as glut-
tony and drunkenness, because of the spirituality of his

THE HUMAN SPIRIT DEFEATED. 223

nature He pines after God, even in his rebellion. He
is without hope, and so has more show of right to be
wicked. God does not love him, and the hapless creature
knows that He never will love him.

But by God's grace we are kept from great wickedness,
and these comparisons do not move us. Then let us
measure ourselves by the side of holy men, by their inno-
cence or heroic penance, by their generous zeal and ardu-
ous labours for God and souls, by their self-sacrifice and
perseverance. Or let us take the angels, and think of
their strength, their beauty, their understanding, their
power, the wonderful ness and purity of their spiritual
nature and its gifts. Cast an eye on our Blessed Lady,
who is a mere creature, and sum up her dignity, her
Banctity, her prerogatives, her sinlessness, her present
empire. Kneel before the Sacred Humanity of Jesus,
and scrutinize its definite grace, its merits, its beauty, its
elevation, its Body, its Soul, its Union with the Word,
and how it is the apex of the universe, the culminating
point of all creation. Or go walk by the shore of that
unresounding sea, the Immense and Incomprehensible
God, cast a bewildered glance over the awful infinite
abyss of His Perfections, known and named, or unknown
and unnamed. And then, poor heart! think of what thou
hast been, from youth upward, in thought, feeling, and
act, think of what thou art at this moment to the eye of
God, even as thou knowest thyself, (and how little dost
thou know !) and think of what at best thou art likel y to be !

We could wrestle better with the human spirit, if we
could keep ourselves down more. We sun ourselves iu
the brightness of high things, and this tells upon us like
the enervating climate of southern latitudes upon the
children of the north

224 SPIRITUAL IDLENESS.

CHAPTER XIV.

SPIRITUAL IDLENESS.

IF, of all graces, that of perseverance is the most pre-
vious, because it is the one which makes all the others of
lasting value, certainly among the vices which beset the
devout life, spiritual idleness is one of the chief; for it is
the contradictory of perseverance. Yet I doubt whether,
practically, we regard it with the fear which it deserves.
All the three dispositions of our normal state, fatigue
especially, are desolated by it. Struggle is tempted to
give way to laziness, and to take recreation away from
Christ. Fatigue is sorely drawn in its aching lassitude
to fall off from dry interior faith, and to seek consolation
in creatures, a step almost as fatal as going to sleep in the
snow. And rest murmurs when the trumpet sounds to
renew the fight, and would fain prolong itself by natural
means when supernatural means have ceased.

I suppose it may be said that every man is an idle
man. Did any one ever see a man who did not naturally
gravitate to idleness, unless perchance he had a heart-
complaint? Nay, so natural is it, that very idle men
plead its very naturalness as a proof that it is almost
irresistible. No man does hard work naturally. He
must be driven to it, no matter whether it be by the love
of money, or the fear of hell. Idleness of its own nature
is sweet, sweeter than the brightest gift the gay world can
give. But spiritual men have a special inclination to be

SPIRITUAL IDLENESS. 225

idle, which they do not always sufficiently consider. No-
thing is more rare in the Church than a irue contempla-
tive vocation. Consequently, it is almost impossible for
the generality of devout persons to spend their whole
time in direct acts of the virtue of religion, and the cul-
tivation of interior motives and dispositions. Then, on
the other hand, they conceive, not always judiciously, that
their former habits of recreation, and their old amuse-
ments, are to be altogether eschewed. So that their piety
creates a sort of void in them, and gives them nothing to
fill it up with. This is one great reason why those who
have no regular profession, or adequate domestic occupa-
tion, should engage themselves in some external work of
zeal and mercy. However, if this theory to explain the
phenomenon be not true, the fact is undeniable, and th(
world has long ill-naturedly pointed to it, that religiouu
people, as a class, are uncommonly idle.

As this idleness is an effectual bar to progress, it is
important that we should examine the matter narrowly ;
and if we do so, we shall find that there are seven deve-
lopements of this spiritual idleness, about each of which
something shall be said.

The first of them is what is usually called dissipation
It is easy to describe, but not easy to define. It is a sir.
without a body. It can make a body of anything and
animate it. It works quietly, and hardly allows itself to
be felt. Indeed one of its most dangerous characteristics
is that a person is rarely aware, at the time, that he is
guilty of dissipation. Its effects upon our devotion are
quite disproportioned to the insignificance of its appear-
ance. It can destroy in a few hours the hard-earned
graces of months, or the fruit of a whole retreat; and the

226 SPIRITUAL IDLENESS

time immediately following a retreat is one of its favourite
and chosen seasons. Let us see in what it consists.
Every one knows after he has been dissipated, that such
has been the case ; but he does not always see in what
his dissipation has consisted. The desolation of his soul
is a proof to him that something has been wrong; but
he cannot always give the wrong its name.

Dissipation consists, first of all, in putting things off
beyond their proper times. So that one duty treads upon
the heels of another, and all duties are felt as irksome
obligations, a yoke beneath which we fret and lose our
peace. In most cases the consequence of this is, that
we have no time to do the work as it ought to be
done. It is therefore done precipitately, with natural
eagerness, with a greater desire to get it simply done
than to do it well, and with very little thought of God
throughout. The French statesman's maxim, Never
do to-day what you can put ofF till to-morrow, admira-
ble as it is for the prudent discharge of worldly duties,
can seldom be safely practised in the spiritual life.
Neither would anything but confusion come of Lord Nel-
son's opposite rule, that a man should always be a quarter
of an hour before his time. The great thing is to do each
duty as it comes, quietly, perseveringly and with our eyes
fixed on God. Without our having any set rule to ob-
serve, daily life has a tendency to settle itself into a groove,
and thus each duty has a time which may be called its
right time ; and by observing this we shall avoid, on the
one hand, being pressed by an accumulation of duties in
arrear, and on the other being dissipated by having gaps
of time not filled up An unoccupied man can neithei
be a happy man nor a spiritual man

SPIRITUAL IDLENESS. 297

Another symptom of dissipation consists in overtalking
and prolonging immoderately visits of civility. By this
is not meant that there is any point at which a person is
bound to stop, or where anything positively wrong begins;
but that there is such a thing as moderation in those mat-
ters, which is guided in each case by circumstances.
Again, indulging in idle and indolent postures of body
when we are alone, tends to dissipate the mind, and
weakens the hold which the presence of God ought to
have upon us. We must also be upon our guard against
a habit, which is far from uncommon, of being always
about to begin some occupation, and yet not beginning it.
This wears and wastes our moral strength, and causes us
to fritter our lives away in sections, being idle to-day be-
cause we have something in view to-morrow, which cannot
be begun until to-morrow. The same dissipating result
will be produced, if we burden ourselves with too many
vocal prayers and external observances of devotion. We
shall always be in a hurry, and under a sense of pressure,
which will soon lead to disgust and low spirits.

A want of jealousy of ourselves at times and places of
recreation is another source of dissipation. Recreation is
itself a dangerous thing; because in one sense it ought to
distract and dissipate us, if it is to do us any good ; and
of such consequence is this distraction, that recreation well
managed is one of the greatest powers of the spiritual life,
a fountain of excellent cheerfulness, and a powerful enemy
of sins of thought. But I must speak of this hereafter.
All that need be said here is that a want of jealousy over
ourselves at recreation is a cause of dissipation. The same
may be said of building castles in the air; and of that
lax spirit which is always desiring dispensations from little
obligations and self-imposed rules. I say self-imposed

<J28 SPIRITUAL IDLENESS.

rules; for why impose them if they are not to be kept, and
how can they be kept unless we be more jealous of seeking
a dispensation when we ourselves are the dispensing power
than when it must be sought from some one else ?

The consequences of this dissipation are unfortunately
oo well known to all of us to require any long descrip-
tion. First comes self-dissatisfaction which is the canker-
worm of all devotion. Then captiousness and self-defence,
after which we feel that the power to pray is gone from
us, as our strength goes from us in an illness. These are
followed by positive illtemper, in an hour of which we
lose weeks of struggle and progress. With this is coupled
a morbid inclination to judge and criticise others. Or if
we have grace to keep down these more gross evils, our
dissipation shows its power in multiplying our distractions
at prayer, in making us peevish after communion, or re-
served with our director, or in drawing us into an effemi-
nate way of performing our duiies, and giving us a great
distaste for penance.

The second development of spiritual idleness is sadness
and low-spirits. It is no uncommon thing for spiritual
persons to speak of sadness as if it were some dignified
interior trial, or as if it were something to call out puie
sympathy, kindness, and commiseration. Whereas in by
far the greater number of instances it is true to say that
no state of the spiritual life represents so much venial sin
and unworthy imperfection as this very sadness. It is
not humility, for it makes us querulous rather than patient.
tt is not repentance, for it is rather vexation with self than
jorrow for the offence against God. The soul of sadness
is self-love. We are sad because we are weary of well
doing and of strict living. The great secret of our cheer

SPIRITUAL IDLENESS. 229

fulness was our anxiety and diligence to avoid venial sins,
and our ingenious industry to root them out. We have
now become negligent on that very point, and therefore
we are sad. If indeed we still try, as much as we did
before, to avoid actual venial sins, we have lost the courage
to keep ourselves away from many pleasant times and
places which we know to be to us occasions of venial sin.
We content ourselves with an indistinct self-confidence
that we shall not fall ; and at once the light of God's
Countenance becomes indistinct also, and the fountain of
inward joy ceases to flow. We desire to be praised, and
are unhappy if no notice is taken of what we do. We
seek publicity as something which will console, rest, and
satisfy us. We want those we love to know what we are
feeling and suffering, or what we are doing and planning.
The world is our sunbeam and we come out to bask in it
What wonder we are sad ?

How many are there whose real end in the spiritual
life is self-improvement rather than God, and how little
they suspect it ! Now perhaps it is true to say that we
never attain in the way of self-improvement a point which
seems to us quite easy of attainment. We are always
below the mark we aimed at. Here again is another
source of sadness. But whatever way we look at this
miserable disposition we shall find that the secret fountain
of all its phases is the want of mortification, and more
especially of external mortification. In a word, who ever
found any spiritual sadness in men trying to be good,
which did not come either from a want of humility, or
from habitually acting without distinct reference to God ?

But the consequences of sadness are of the most fear-
ful description. Nothing gives the devil so much power
20

280 SPIRITUAL IDLENESS.

over us. Mortal sin itself very often gives him less pur-
chase over our souls. It blunts the sacraments, and de-
stroys their influence upon us. It turns all sweet things
bitter, and makes even the remedies of the spiritual life
act as if they were poisons. Under its morbid action we
become so tender that we are unable to bear pain, and
tremble at the very idea of bodily mortification. The
courage which is so necessary for growth in holiness oozes
out of us, and we become timid and passive where we
ought to be bold and venturesome. The vision of God
is clouded in our soul, and every day the fit of sadness
lasts it is carrying us further and further out of our
depth, and beyond the reach of rational consolation. It
seems a strong thing to say, but it is in reality no exag-
geration, that spiritual sadness is a tendency towards the
state of Cain and Judas. The impenitence of both took
root in a sadness, which came out of a want of humility,
and that want was itself the fruit of acting with a view
to self rather than a view to God.

Above all things we must be careful not to let sadness
force us away from our regular communions, or from any
of the strictnesses we may practise. We must be all the
more faithful to them because we are sad ; and we must
beware of adopting any change while the cloud is on us.
Exactness in little duties is a wonderful source of cheer-
fulness; and set mortifications, few and not severe, but
quietly persevered in, will cast out the evil spirit. We
must look out for opportunities of giving way to others ;
for that brings with it softness of heart and a spirit of
prayer. We must make the use of our time a subject
?f particular examination of conscience, and always have
on hand some standing book or occupation with which to

SPIRITUAL IDLENESS. 231

fill up gaps of vacant time. We must never omit our
devotions to our Blessed Lady, whom the Church so
sweetly calls "the cause of our joy;" and we must con-
sider that day lost on which we have not thus done homage
to her. Finally, we must regard, not the act only which
we do, but the time which obedience has fixed for doing
it, whether it be the obedience of self, rule, family, or
director; for the marvellous virtue of obedience resides
often more in the time and manner of an act, than in the
act itself, just as the spiritual life itself consists not so
much in an assemblage of certain actions, as in the way
in which we do all our actions.

To these two idlenesses, dissipation and sadness, we
must add a third ; it is a kind of sloth, or general languor,
which it is very hard to describe ; but the main features
of which every one will recognize. Some time has passed
since we had a clear view of ourselves. We have got
out of sight of ourselves, and are journeying on like men
driving in the dark. Then something occurs which
wakes us up to a consciousness of our position. We find
that we are continually making resolutions, and as con-
tinually breaking them. They form, as usual, part of
our morning prayer, and in an hour or two they have
passed from our minds as though we had never made
them. Even if we reflect upon them, and make some
little effort to put them into execution, we find that they
are utterly nerveless, and without power or animation.
We do not exactly turn a deaf ear to the inspirations
which we are receiving at ail hours, but we are dilatory
in carrying them out, and so the time for them passes
by, and another duty comes in the way, and it is too late

232 SPIRITUAL IDLENESS.

So that on the whole we hardly correspond to any of oui
inspirations

All this is bad enough. But there is added to it a
physical feeling of incapacity to make any exertion. It
seems to us as if any effort was out of the question ; and
what is in truth merely a moral malady puts on all the
semblance and feeling of a bodily indisposition, and soon
causes one. We then begin to make light of serious
twinges of conscience, and we are peevish and impatient
of any warning or admonition, or of any attempt to
bring spiritual matters before us. Everything that every
body does seems inopportune, and out of good taste.
Without rhyme or reason we have an almost universal
nausea of men and things, and we give in to " the spirit
of causeless irritation" which characterizes the paralytic,
as Sir Walter Scott tells us of Chrystal Croftangry. It
is as if life were worn out and we had got to the end of
things, as if we had worked our way through the upper
coats of existence down to what Bossuet calls " the in-
exorable ennui which forms the basis of human life."
In this state we are not only distracted at prayer, but
slovenly also ) and even the sacraments we treat with a
kind of lazy irreverence and formal familiarity, which it
is frightening to think of. In fact our state is a kind of
passive possession of the spirit of disgust and sloth ; it
is as if we had lost the power of being serious, and were
numb, or in a trance, so far as spiritual things are con-
cerned. It is this state to which dissipation is always
tending; and if we are so unfortunate as not to have
checked it in its earlier stages, but find ourselves actually
under this oppression, we must rouse ourselves and act
with as much vigour as if we had fallen into mortal sin

SPIRITUAL IDLENESS. 233

A fourth kind of spiritual idleness may be called use-
less industry, which is a great temptation to active-minded
men ; for, as I said before, idleness is natural and plea-
sant to all temperaments, but has different phases for
different characters. There is nothing in recreation which
hinders our uniting ourselves to God j but there are a
variety of unmeritorious occupations in which we can
fritter away our time, and in which it is almost impossible
for us to have any deliberate or distinct intention to glo-
rify God. It is difficult to specify, but every one knows
that recreating and idling are very different things, and
that idling much more often consists in doing useless or
childish things, than in doing nothing at all. There are
many kinds of reading, which are not wrong in them-
selves, but which for some reasons in our own particular
case will dissipate us, or prepare distractions for our me-
ditation, or will feed future temptations, and supply them
with images ready at hand, or will be dangerous to us
because they will inordinately engross us ; and in which,
in spite of our intellectual conviction that they are not
wrong, we have an interior reproach, which, if we were in
a right state of mind, would act as a prohibition. So in
these days of cheap and rapid postage we ought to be
more jealous of our correspondence than we are. Is it
too much to say that every letter we write is more or
less a drain upon our spirituality ? And if this be so,
ought we not to make a rule to ourselves against unne-
cessary letter-writing, against the writing of any letter
which either business or social propriety or affection does
not render practically unavoidable? Time is precious, a^d
we have little of it, and how much if? spent in writing
letters, and how many pretend that all their letter- writing
20*

234 SPIRITUAL IDLENESS.

is safe because it is, they say, a veritable mortification I
Attachments are multiplied and strengthened by corre-
spondence, while it increases our objects .of anxiety, mag-
nifies our reasons for being nervous and restless, and catera
for that idolatry of family ties which nowadays wage;?
Buch a vigorous warfare against the manliness of Christian
sanctity.

Letter-writiog tends also to increase the natural exag-
geration of our character. We express ourselves in an
exaggerated manner, and our style at last transfers its
exaggeration to our feelings. We thus form a false esti-
mate of things; and are greatly troubled about small
events, or highly excited about low expectations. What
is the family circle generally, but ineffable trifles seen
through a hugely magnifying medium ? It reminds us at
every turn of Wordsworth's real sufferer in the workhouse,
when she says,

I heard my neighbours in their beds complain
Of many things which never troubled me !

Unreality is another obvious effect of excessive corre-
spondence ; for to make much of little things is to be
unreal. Sacraments and prayer cease to have their natural
and legitimate proportions, when we are so eager, and
decisive, and communicative about children, residences,
visits, summer plans and winter projects. We make a
romance of ourselves in our letters, and paint life with
an artificial rouge because its native complexion is for the
most part unhealthy and dull. If our letters turn on
religious subjects, so much the worse; for then they are
full of detraction, levity, and spiritual gossip.

Building castles in the air is another branch of this use

SPIRITUAL IDLENESS. 235

less industry, and by far the least innocent Did any one
ever catch himself building a castle in the air, which did
not in some way redound to his own honour and praise ?
Can religious men spend an hour in giving magnificent
mental alms, or bearing crosses heroically, or undergoing
martyrdom, or evangelizing continents, or ruling churches,
r founding hospitals, or entering austere orders, or ar-
ranging edifying death-beds, or working miracles at their
own tombs, without their being essentially lower and
grosser, vainer and sillier men, than they were when the
hour began ? They acquire a habit of admiring fine
things without practising them. It is worse than novel-
reading, for here men write as well as read them. They
become intoxicated with conceit and sentimentality. It
gives a tincture of puerility to all they do, and lowers
them in thought, feeling and purpose. Do not be startled
at the strong words, but this castle-building literally de-
solates and debauches the soul. It passes over it like a
ruinous eruption, leaving nothing fresh, green, or fruit-
bearing behind it, but a* general languor, peevishness and
weariness with God.

The not managing our recreations well is of sufficient
importance to form a fifth kind of spiritual idleness. I
have already said that recreation is a matter of immense
importance in the spiritual life. The whole tradition of
the Church is in favour of it ; and I doubt if ever there
was a religious house which persevered in strict observance
for any length of time, without the recreations which are
traditional in each order. For an order without traditions
is an order without life, at least without the full life of
maturity. It is either dead, or still an infant. It sounds
Btrange to a man in the world that recreation should te

236 SPIRITUAL IDLENESS.

compulsory in religious houses; yet that it is so, is part
of the universal heavenly wisdom common to all monastio
legislators. But in the world recreation is an affair of
much greater difficulty, because so few rules can be
given about it. All we can say is, that one very important
question concerns the kind of recreation in which we shall
indulge. It must be suited to our state of life, and no
less so to the particular point of advancement which we
have reached in the spiritual life. It must be conformed
to our natural character, and it must not throw us with
companions who will do our souls an injury. The degree
of it is another problem. God's glory must be kept in
view, and we must never emancipate ourselves from a
moderate fear of dissipation : and above all things it must
be seasonable. For an inopportune recreation is always
a loss of grace.

It is difficult to exaggerate the results of well-managed
recreations. The spirit cannot always be on the stretch.
The bow must be unstrung sometimes, or it will spoil.
Now a well-managed recreation does three things ; it pre-
serves all the grace already acquired without suffering one
fraction of it to be lost, or one degree of fervour to evapo-
rate. The love of God runs on from the work into the
recreation, and thus the habit of recollection remains un-
broken, and we are keeping to the side of our heavenly
Father in our amusements as closely as in our work or in
our trials. Secondly, it not only keeps together the past,
and preserves its spirit, but it gains us strength and
freshness, bravery and promptitude, for the future. Old
grace is consolidated, and the appetite for new is
quickened. Children are said to grow more while they
are sleeping than while they are awake. So it is with us

SPIRITUAL IDLENESS. 237

in recreation. This is itn third function. We grow on
it. It is no standing still. It is not only a blessing for
the past, and a blessing for the future; it is a present
blessing, because it is present growth. It increases our
cheerfulness; and whatever makes us cheerful in devo-
tion give? us more power. It would be a great thing if
recreation merely kept us from sin, by filling up and oc-
cupying vacant hours when the infirmity of human nature
compels us to intermit our direct attention to religious
things. We should owe to it our preservation from a
thousand sins of thought, and dissipating inutilities
both of mind and heart. But this is far below its
real work. Its function is not less important in the
spiritual life than is that of sleep in the natural life;
and like sleep it has need of a wise, considerate, and
firm legislation.

1 shall conclude the subject of recreation with the ad-
vice of Scaramelli. If our spirit ask of us imperfect
things, such as diversions, conversation and superfluous
alleviations, which are not called for either by our health
or the discharge of our relative duties, the laws of per-
fection require us to mortify ourselves. I know that
these recreations are the very food of those who are weak
in spirit; as the apostle ways, He that is weak, let him
eat herbs : for being deprived of the consolations which
grace brings to pure souls, they feed their hunger and
weariness with these earthly consolations. Richard of
St. Victor says that a man finds food in his own nature,
the food of sweetness, and food in accidental causes, such
as prosperity and success. But this is not the spiritual
food wherewith Christ refreshed Himself. Nevertheless
it is the food of the imperfect, the pothorbs of the weak :

238 SPIRITUAL IDLENESS.

and is often useful food : for it partly heals and socthes
the disease of sloth, which the mind suffers because of
the penury of grace. But persons who are seriously
bent on the attainment of perfection must deprive them-
selves of these useless recreations, so as to dispose them-
selves to receive from God a greater abundance of grace
and heavenly benedictions. If our spirit asks of us any-
thing concerning food, sleep, clothing and diversion,
which is necessary to the maintenance of life or the pre-
servation of health or the right performance of our duties,
or anything which obedience, fittingness, and right reason
also require, we must condescend to its requests and in-
dulge ourselves in the necessary recreations. But in
these cases a spiritual man must, be careful to purify his
intention, and to protest to himself that he only conde-
scends to these things in order to do God's holy will, not
to satisfy his own natural inclination, to please Him, not
to please himself. So that his condescension may be
rather to the instincts of nature than to its affections ;
and even in his condescension he may contrive to con-
tradict his own satisfaction, and seek only the will and
pleasure of God. In this manner the human spirit may
have its appetite satisfied, without its satisfaction being
any impediment to spiritual progress. I am aware that
these things are difficult to put in practice, but St. Ber-
nard says that we have but to lean confidently on God,
and all will be accomplished, according to that word, T
can do all things in Him who strengthened me.*

A gejeral indifference about the use of our time is a
sixth manifestation of spiritual idleness. The use of
time U » large subject; and it is one of far greater con-

» Discernimento degli spirit, sect. 272, 273.

SPIRITUAL IDLENESS. • ^db

sequence t.Imn many suppose, in those who are aiming at
perfection. Bcliecius in his work on Solid Virtue give?
a whole book to ttte one act of early rising, which is but
a single instance 0/ our use of time. We have to re-
member that time is ihe stuff out of which eternity i?
made, that it is at once precious and irrevocable, and that
we shall have to give tne strictest account of it at the
last. Very few faults are irreparable, but the loss of
time is one of those few; and when we consider how
easy a fault it is, how frequent, how silent, how alluring,
we shall discern something of its real danger. Idleness
moreover, when it has fastened upon us, is a perfect
tyranny, a slavery whose shackles are felt whatever limb
we move, or even when we are lying still. It is a capti-
vating bondage also, whose very sweetness renders it
more perilous. But the worst feature about it is its de-
ceitfulneijs. No idle man believes himself to be idle, ex-
cept in the lucid intervals of grace. No one will credit
how strong the habit of losing time will rapidly become.
To break away from it requires a vehemence and a con-
tinuity of effort to which few are equal. Meanwhile the
iebateable land which lies between it and lukewarmness
is swiftly traversed. The hourly accumulation of minute
carelessnesses is clogging and hampering the soul, while
it is also running us fearfully into ^ebt to the temporal
justice of God. It makes our life ttv very opposite of
His. His minute notice of us stands in dreadful con-
trast with our half-intentional and half-unintentionai
oblivion and disregard of Him. I doubt if a jealous
and conscientious use of time can ever, as many spiritual
excellencies can, become a habit. I suspect time is a
thing which has to be watched all through life. It is a

240 SPIRITUAL IDLENESS.

running stream every ripple of which is freighted witl
some tell-tale evidence which it hastens to depose with
unerring fidelity in that sea which circles the throne of
God. It makes us tremble to think of St. Alphonso just
after he had made his solemn vow never to waste a mo-
ment of time. We feel that a man who with his hu-
mility and discretion dared to commit himself to such a
life, could only end by being raised upon the altars of the
Church.

The seventh and last developement of spiritual idle-
ness is loquacity. Thomas a Kempis says that he never
returned to his cell after a conversation, without entering
it a worse man than he had left it ) and another holy
person said that he never in his life had repented of hold-
ing his tongue, whereas he had rarely ever spoken without
being sorry for it afterwards. What an insight this gives
us into the very core of a saint's life ! In spirituality
when the tired soul seeks some undue vent or recreation,
there is no relief, except castlebuilding, more dangerous
than loquacity; and it is one of the commonest of temp-
tations. Some are tempted to be loquacious with every-
body who will be a listener; others only with certain
people, who are sympathetic, and with whom to exchange
sentiments is to rest their minds. Others are only
tempted to talk at wrong times and on wrong subjects ;
and this is sometimes from the devil, and sometimes
from the human spirit. As a general maxim it may be
laid down that in a spiritual person all effusion of heart
is undesirable, except to God, and that it is equally unde-
sirable whether it be about God or about some indifferent
subject. There is nothing to choose between them.
The evil is in the effusion. We fancy it relieves us in

SPIItlTtAt IDLENESS. 241

temptation. But there never was a greater mistake.
With the exception of certain temptations, solitude braces
us up, where effusion weakens and enervates us. Pious
people, before they begin to be saint-like, are notably
loquacious ; and it is often loquacity which retards the
hour when the likeness of the saints will pass upon them,
or frustrates the process altogether.

It is plain that every one of these seven idlenesses
might be made the subject of a little treatise; but I
have said enough for my purpose. Perfection in the
world is a difficult affair, and many things are fatal to
it. Idleness perhaps slaughters more growths in holi-
ness than anything else ; because it is so very hard for
persons in the world not to be idle. Everything around
us is pusillanimous and exaggerated. The ideas which
pass current are little and low. The air we breathe is*
languor. The types we behold are pompous follies.
Of spiritual romance there is enough, of spiritual fop-
pery more than enough, but of healthy mortification and
sincere manly devotion less than would seem possible, if
the fact were not certain. Thus everything draws us to
dleness and to inutility. It is a common observation that
religious, of both sexes, are strikingly cheerful. This is
owing in no slight degree to the preservation from idle-
ness which rule and community life ensure. We have
none of those helps, and therefore we have more to
dread from this particular enemy. In fact the danger
and the fatal character of idleness may be reckoned
among the prominent characteristics of the attempt to
attain perfection in the world. We have already found
that for perfection in the world a peculiar exercise of
patipnoe is necessary in order to supply the place of a re
21 Q

242 SPIRITUAL IDLENESS.

ligious rule. So now we must give a more than ( omraot
attention to the industrious use of time and the discreet
management of recreations, in order to meet dangers
which religious are beautifully defended from by com-
munity life, and a community life invented by a saintly
founder. Idleness must be a very prominent object in
our warfare, else we shall never attain to the perfection
which the saints tell us is open to people in the world.

PRAYER. 243

CHAPTER XV.

PRAYER.

The spiritual life is quite a cognizably distinct thing
crom the worldly life; and the difference comes from
prayer. When grace lovingly drives a man to give him-
self up to prayer, he gets into the power of prayer, and
prayer makes a new man of him ; and so completely does
he find that his life is prayer, that at last he prays always.
His life itself becomes one unbroken prayer. Unbroken,
because it does not altogether nor so much reside in
methods of mental or forms of vocal prayer; but it is an
attitude of heart by which all his actions and sufferings
become living prayers.

The life of prayer, therefore, which is the badge of the
supernatural man, is the praying always. But what is it
to pray always? What did our Lord mean by it? To
pray always is always to feel the sweet urgency of prayer,
and to hunger after it. Grace is palpably felt and
touched in prayer; hence it strengthens our faith and
inflames our love. The peculiar trial of hard work is
that it keeps us so much from prayer, and takes away the
flower of our strength before we have time for prayer,
and physical strength is very needful for praying well.
In consequence of this attraction we acquire habits of
prayer by having set times for it, whether mental or
vocal. Not that a mere habit of praying will make any
one a man of prayer. But God will not send His fire,
if we do not first lay the sacrifice in order. We must

244 PRAYER.

also practise ejaculatory prayer, and have certain fixed
ejaculations, as well as make frequent spontaneous aspi-
rations to heaven during the day, at will, and out of the
fervid abundance of our hearts. Besides this, there is a
certain gravitation of the mind to God in a prayerftu
way, which comes from love and from the practice of tht»
divine presence, and which ranges from intercession to
thanksgiving, and from thanksgiving to praise, and from
praise to petition, according as the moods of our mind
change, and with hardly any trouble or any conscious
process. To pray always is, furthermore, to renew fre-
quently our acts of pure intention for the glory of God,
and thus to animate with the life of prayer our actions,
conversations, studies, and sufferings.

This is to pray always : and see what comes of it !
Into what a supernatural state it throws a man ! He
lives in a different world from other men. Different
dwellers are round about him, and are his familiars, God,
Jesus, Mary, Angels, and Saints. They are the under-
current of his mind, and often preside over the very
expression of his thoughts. He has not the same inter-
ests, hopes, and aims as other men. When he wishes to
do anything, he goes to work in a different way from
others, and he tests his success differently. Indeed, in
nothing is he so remote from men of the world as in his
tests of success, which are wholly supernatural and full
of the unearthly spirit of the Incarnation. His views of
the world are strange, although they are definite and
clear, because somehow he sees the world confusedly
through the vision of the Church ; and he judges of the
relations and distances of things according as they group
wound the central faith. His affections become shifted,

PRAYER. 24b

bo that he is regarded even by those near him as an im-
passible man, and by those further off as a co.d heart that
is destitute of natural affections and the keen sympathies
of kindred. Moreover the temper of repose which prayer
breeds is unfavourable to success and advancement in a
worldly sense, because it is unfavourable to the eager
desire and restless pursuit of them.

This influence of prayer comes out in a man's opinions
and judgments of men, measures, and things. It is heard
in his language. It is seen in his tranquillity. It is
recognized in his dealings with others, and is the ruling
principle of his occasional apparent want of sympathy
with others. Such is a man whose faculties, affections,
and in some degree even his senses, have been mastered
by the spirit of prayer. We should expect it would win
men by its gracefulness, like an angel's presence. But
it is not so, because its beauty requires a spiritual discern-
ment. To the eyes of the world such a man has all the
strangeness and awkwardness of a foreigner, which in
sober truth he is. Yet such a man is striking to others
in after-thought, as the Blessed Sacrament so often is to
Protestants, when they have come unawares into His
presence and gone again. It is the way of God, and of
the things of God, to be striking in after-thought.

The most serious business of the interior life is mental
prayer, of which I will speak first. Spiritual writers, and
even saints, have sometimes spoken as if meditation were
almost necessary to salvation ; and there are senses and
cases in whieh this may be true. It is, however, quite
certain that mental prayer is necessary to perfection, and
that there can be nothing like a spiritual life without it.
For mental prayer means the occupation of our faculties
21 *

246 PRAYER.

upon God; not in the way of thinking or speculating about
Him, bit stirring up the will to conform itself to Him
and the affections to love Him. The subjects ou which
it is engaged are all the works of God, as well as His
own perfections ; but above all, the Sacred Humanity of
our Blersed Lord. The length of time to be spent in it
will vary with individual cases ; and there are a variety
of methods out of which a man may choose. But it is
most important he should keep to his method when he
has chosen it. Of this, however, something shall be said
hereafter.

Mental prayer, in itself difficult, is rendered still more
so by the temptations which beset it. It is irksome,
quite beyond all explanation as well as expectation ; and
its irksomeness tempts us to abandon it. Very often
when we try to meditate, a sheer inability to think at all
comes over us in a most unaccountable manner. What-
ever may be the bodily posture which we are recommended
to assume at prayer, its sameness becomes wearisome ;
and if we keep changing, anything worthy of the name
of prayer is out of the question. Distractions torment
us at every turn, and their name is legion. Sensible
devotion is our only hope, and it is continually being
withdrawn, without apparent fault of ours. Temptations
to intermit our meditation seem specious, when tempta-
tions to abandon it altogether would be rejected. At other
times we are tempted to think its importance has been
exaggerated. And if we dare disturb nothing else about
it, we satisfy our restlessness by varying our times for it,
and even for this slight concession we often pay dearly.

Now the remedy for all these temptations consists in
«ur considering our meditation as the great feature of

PRAYER. 247

our day, in our spending all the time we can in spiritual
reading, in being full, open, and obedient to our directoi
in all questions concerning it, in weaning ourselves by
degrees from sensible consolations, and in estimating at
their proper value the fruits of a dry, or, as we often per-
versely call it, a bad meditation. We must throw our
whole strength into this matter; for the practice of the
presence of God, our strength against evil angels and evil
habits, our habitual cheerfulness, our ability to carry
crosses, and all that we can do ourselves towards final
perseverance, depend on prayer.

If we attentively examine the various methods of
prayer which approved writers have given us, we shall
see that they may be resolved into two, the Ignatian and
the jSulpician, if we may call them by those names. The
advantages of the Ignatian method are, that it is more
adapted to modern habits of mind, that it suits the greater
number of persons, that it can be taught as an art, and
that most meditation-books are framed upon it. The
advantages of the Sulpician method are, that it is a more
faithful transcript of the tradition of the old Fathers and
the saints of the desert, that it supplies a want for those
who on the one hand can make no way with the Igna-
tian method, and on the other have no aptitude for what
is called Affective Prayer, and that it is in some respects
more suitable for those who are often interrupted at medi-
tation, inasmuch as it is a perfect work wherever it is
broken off, whereas the power of the Ignatian method
is in its conclusion. These are the characteristics of
the two methods. No comparison can be instituted be-
tween them because both are holy, both have schooled

248 PRAYER.

saints, and the use of ihem is a matter either of choice or
of vocation.

1 will speak briefly of both these methods, and first
of the Ignatian, which is by far the most widely spread.
Meditation is a gift for which we must make special
prayer ; and with this prayer we must join an ardent de-
sire for perfection in general. We must make a diligent
use of the means recommended, and we must regard spi-
ritual reading as being to meditation what oil is to the
lamp. There are, therefore, two preparations to medita-
tion ; one is remote, the other proximate. Remote pre-
paration consists partly in removing obstacles, and partly
in obtaining the aids requisite. The obstacles to be re-
moved are, a good opinion of ourselves, and a want of
concealment of our austerities and devotions, all affections
to habitual infirmities, even though the infirmities them-
selves for the present remain habitual, dissipation of mind,
negligent custody of the senses, and an off-hand way of
performing our ordinary actions. The aids which we re-
quire are the lower degrees of humility, simplicity, and
purity of intention in a general way, sufficient custody
of the senses to insure tranquillity of mind, and a certain
inconsiderable degree of mortification. Proximate prepa-
ration consists in reading, hearing, or getting ready our
meditation over-night, and especially in noting what fruit
naturally comes of it, or is most suited to our present spi-
ritual needs; before we compose ourselves to sleep we are
to think briefly over it, and make some suitable ejacula- '
tion ) when we awake we are instantly to recall the sub-
ject of meditation ; while we are dressing, to think of it
or nourish sentiments akin to it, to quiet our minds by
making an act of the presence of God or of the Sacred

PRATER. 249

HumaLitj for about the space of an Ave Maria, and this
should be done before we kneel down; and to observe a
strict silence from the time we have prepared our medi-
tation till the next morning, so as to exclude dissipating
thoughts and images. They who have submitted to the
bondage of these regulations have found a blessing in
them. Many minds cannot brook them. Without a know-
ledge of the. individual case, no one can see how far, or
from what particulars, persons may without prejudice be
dispensed. There are not many to whom the whole array
of the Ignatian method is necessary for any long time, but
there are many who can never make good meditations
now, but who would have done so if they would have con-
strained themselves and borne the yoke for a little while
at first. These two preparations are followed by an act
of adoration and a preparatory prayer.

After the preparations come the preludes, of which
there are always two, and sometimes three. The first
prelude consists in sketching to ourselves a rapid picture
of the subject of our meditation. This helps to keep off
distractions, just as looking hard at a thing makes us
think of it. If we are distracted during the course of our
meditation, then we revert to our picture, just as we look
back to anything we are copying when a noise has made
us look up. Some writers tell us always to put ourselves
into these pictures, and to take care that the pictures are
congenial with the special fruit we look for in that medi-
tation. The second prelude is a direct petition for that
fruit, which it is well to ask through the saint whom the
Church honours that day. In histories, there is a third
prelude, which consists in very briefly going through the
story. All the preludes together should not occupy above
five miDutes.

450 PRAYER.

The preludes are followed by the body of the medita-
tion, which consists of three things, the use of the mem-
ory, the use of the understanding, and the use of the will
The use of the memory seems much the same thing as
the first prelude, but it differs from it in length, in accu-
racy, and in particularity. It consists, to put it as briefly
as possible, in asking seven questions, Who? What?
Where? With what means? Why? How? When?
And this is applicable either to texts or mysteries. We
need not take very long in this first part of the meditation,
else it will pass off into a mere diversion of the imagina-
tion. Nevertheless, we must go through it very accurately,
and with scrupulous exactness. For we shall find here-
after that the root of our affections and resolutions is here.
A careless and perfunctory use of our memory will bring
barrenness of reflections, dry formality in affections, and
a want of compunction and nerve in resolutions. We must
not be disturbed when we find memory trenching on the
province of understanding. One is meant to glide off
into the other; and there will be always left for the un-
derstanding the particular application of the general truth
to ourselves and our present spiritual necessities.

For, by the understanding, which is the second part
?f the meditation, we do these five things. We apply the
subject of our meditation to ourselves, we draw conclu-
sions, we weigh motives, we examine past and present
conduct, and we anticipate future dispositions. The main
thing in the use of our understanding is to be exceedingly
simple. Like the use of the memory, it also consists in
asking seven questions. First, What am I to think about
thin ? Secondly, What practical lesson am I to draw from
it ? And the lesson must be particular, not general, and

PRAYER. 251

it must be adapted to our employment, character, and
condition. Thirdly, What motives persuade me to this
practice? And they must be such as these, convenience,
by which I mean fittingness, utility, at least on superna-
tural grounds, satisfaction, easiness, or necessity. Fourthly,
JHow have I acted up to this hitherto ? And here we must
be disinclined to let conscience answer satisfactorily, and
only give way to irresistible evidence when it is favourable.
We must insist on our own confusion. We must descend
to particulars, and we must jealously sift our present dis-
positions. Fifthly, How must I act for the future ? Here
we must put imaginary cases, not wild, unlikely, or far-
fetched, but such as may easily happen that same day.
Sixthly, What impediments must I remove? Here we
must use the self-knowledge which our daily examination
of conscience gives us. On the whole our impediments
are mostly three, conceit, sensuality and dissipation.
Seventhly, What means am I to choose ? Here we must
be careful to be particular, not general and vague; and
above all, we must be discreet, and not load ourselves with
too much. Many are found in the evening without anj
cross at all because the one they fastened on their shoul-
ders in their morning meditation was heavier than they
could bear ; so they threw it down and were our Lord's
disciples only half that day.

The third part of the meditation is the use of the will.
Without this, meditation is not mental prayer, but either
a speculation or an incomplete examination of conscience.
The use of the will is twofold, the production of affec-
tions, and the production of resolutions* In reality affec-
tions may find their place all over the meditation, in the
application of the memory, and even in the preludes

252 PRATER.

They can hardly ever be out of place wherever they come
It is a good thing to have texts or sayings of the saints
in our minds for the more ready expression of holy affec-
tions; but we must have collected them for ourselves, or
they will not have half the unction. We should never
break off an affection which has to do with humility, so
long as there is any sweetness in it. The whole hour
would be excellently spent in it, even to the neglect of the
rest of the meditation. The same, however, cannot be
said of joy and triumph, which are open to snares and
delusions, and should be kept within bounds. Even com-
punction cannot have the reins given up to it, desirable
as are its affections ; for they tend to be immoderate and
easily coalesce with self-love. If affections are slow in
coming, we must not lose our peace of mind and begin to
be restless, but quietly excite them by acts of faith.

But precious as are the affections of prayer, the reso-
lutions are still more valuable. Their place should be not
only in each point of our meditation, but at the close of
each practical doctrine in each point. They must be prac-
tical, and must not consist in promising certain devotions
and prayers, but in resolving to avoid this or to mortify
that. They must be particular, and not general. They
must have to do with our present state and with imme-
diate action. To resolve to do so and so when you arrive
at such a point, or when such a time comes, is castle-
building, not resolving. If possible, our resolutions should
have to do with the probable events of the very day, so
that our particular examen may entwine itself with our
meditation. They must be founded on solid motives, and
have been often meditated, not rash, or off-hand, or above
our courage when we cool down out of prayer. If any-

PRAYER. 258

thing, they should be below what we might reasonably
hope to do, and very humble. For things seem easy in
meditation, so that we do not distrust ourselves suffi-
ciently; and God rarely strengthens an over-confident
soul, and so we fail. How many of the downcast tales
which people tell about their not advancing, should go to
the account of reckless resolutions in the half-natural,
half-supernatural heat of prayer !

We have now come to the conclusion of the meditation.
This is important, and must be gone through calmly and
fervently. If done in haste, so as to be within the hour,
or for any other reason, it often spoils the whole medita-
tion. We must first collect all our resolutions together,
and renew them. This will often quicken with fervour
the end of the hour that was perhaps flagging through
dryness and languor. The colloquies with God, our Lady,
or the Saints, follow next. In them we must be particu-
lar to ask for the special and predetermined fruit of the
meditation ; and with this we may couple any petition we
have much at heart, and also a humble oblation of the
resolutions we have made. A Pater, Ave, and the Anima
Christi are next prescribed in most of the meditation
books written on this system. We then leave off con-
versing directly with God ; but we do not leave His pre-
sence. On the contrary, we are more than usually careful
at that moment, lest the spirit of dissipation should come
upon us, and there should be too sudden a reaction from
the recollectedness of prayer.

If St. Ignatius could have his will, the meditation

would not end here. He would have us sit down or walk

about, and make what he calls the consideration of our

meditation. The want of this he looks upon as the reason

22

254 PRAYER.

of continued bad meditations. If we reflected on them,
aud found out they were bad at the time, we should pro-
bably find out what it was that made them bad, and so
avoid it for the future. Indeed, of such importance is
this consideration deemed, that we are recommended to
make it later on in the day, if we have omitted it in the
morning. The consideration is divided into two parts, the
examen and the recapitulation. In the examen we briefly
review our over-night preparation, our first thoughts on
rising, our beginnings, preparatory prayer, preludes, choice
of fruit, the progress of the meditation, how we dealt
with distractions in all the three parts, whether our collo-
quies were fervent and humble, whether we have listened
to hear if God would speak in our hearts, and whether
we have been free from irreverence of body, or rashness
of speech, or precipitation of mind. If all this has been
done fairly well, we thank Almighty God for the grace
in the strength of which alone we have been successful.
If it has been done ill, we make an act of contrition and
a modest resolution for the future, without giving way to
sadness or disquietude. We must always bear in mind
that the time of prayer is God's punishment time. It is
then that venial sins, little infidelities, inordinate friend-
ships, and worldly attachments, will rise up and complain
of us, and we shall be chastised for them.

The recapitulation revolves the lessons we have learned,
the resolutions we have made, and the fruit we hoped to
obtain ; and it implores once more the grace to keep our
resolutions. "We are then to take an ejaculation for the
day, or some thought which shall be a spiritual nosegay
to refresh us in the dust and turmoil of the world.
Finally we are to write down the lights we have received

PRAYER. 255

A»id the resolutions we have made, so as to rekindle our
fervour when it flags, by the perusal of them. This last
practice, however, requires great discretion, and is not
suitable for all. This consideration, St. Ignatius says,
should occupy " about" a quarter of an hour.

The first perusal of the Ignatian plan is like a cleric's
nrst look into a breviary. It seems as if we should never
find our way about in it. But the processes are in reality
so natural that they soon become easy to us, and follow
each other in legitimate succession almost without effort
or reflection. It is much more easy than it seems. The
method of St. Francis of Sales is substantially the same,
with some of the peculiarities of his own character thrown
into it. The same may be said of the method of St.
Alphonso, which is that of St. Ignatius with somewhat
more freedom, such as we should expect from the charac-
ter of that glorious saint, who, to his many other titles to
the gratitude of the modern Church, might add that of
the apostle of prayer. Beginners are always inclined to
dispense themselves from the mechanical parts of the
system. But it is well worth our while to be patient for
a few weeks. We shall never be sorry for it, whereas we
shall regret the contrary line of conduct as long as we
live. We must beware also of kneeling vacantly and
doing nothing, which adds the fault of irreverence to that
of idleness. We must not look out for interior voices, or
marked experiences, or decided impressions of the divine
will upon our minds, nor give in to the temptation of
leaving the plain road of pains-taking meditation in order
to reach God by some shorter way. At first it is not well
to read many books about prayer; but keep to the few
oral advices of our director. We must always be trying,

256 PRAYER.

ret in a quiet way, to be shorter with our consideration*
and longer with our affections ; and if all our meditation
should be unmanageably dry, we must make some parti-
cular resolution before we leave our Crucifix, and so the
time will not have been without fruit.

One word on what we call bad meditations. They are
generally the most fruitful. The mere persevering at our
priedieu the full time is an excellent and meritorious act
of obedience. The mystery, which seems to lay no hold
of us, is in reality soaking into our minds, and keeping
us throughout the day more in the presence of God than
we otherwise should have been. We ask something of
God, and that is in itself a great action. We make a
resolution of some kind, and we meet with an occasion of
humiliation. God often thus sends us back, as a master
turns back a boy, to re-examine our course and to discover
little forgotten infidelities for which we have never done
penance. Whenever we have made a bad meditation,
and cannot see that it is our own fault, we may be sure
God means something by it, and it is our own business
to find out what. It is no little thing to be able to endure
ourselves and our own imperfections. On the contrary,
it is a fine act of humility, and draws us on towards per-
fection. In good truth we may make our bad medita-
tions pay us a usurious interest, if we choose.

It is obvious that much of what has been said of the
Ignatian method is applicable to all methods, in the way
of dhestion and guidance. In speaking of the Sulpician
method, therefore, I shall confine myself to those things
which distinguish it from the other. M. Olier divides
prayer into three parts, the preparation, the body of the
prayer, and the conclusion ; and he generally uses the

PRAYER. 257

word prayer instead of meditation; and tilled with the
spirit of the old tradition, he and his interpreters recur
to S. Ambrose, St. John Climacus, S. Nilus, Cassian, and
similar writers for rules and methods. They make three
preparations, the more remote, the less remote, and the
proximate. The first is occupied in removing obstacles,
the second in preparing what is necessary for praying
well, and the third is as it were the entrance into prayer.
The more remote preparation may be said to extend over
the whole of life, and is principally occupied with three
obstacles : sin, the passions, and the thought of creatures.
No soul in a state of sin can converse familiarly with God.
The unquiet movements of human passions prevent inward
peace which is a necessary condition of mental prayer;
and the thought of creatures is the foundation of all dis-
sipation and distraction. Thus the abandonment of sin,
the mortification of the passions, and the custody of the
senses, form the more remote preparation for prayer. The
less remote preparation is concerned with three times, the
time when the subject of prayer is given over-night, the
time which elapses between then and the waking in the
morning, and the third is from our waking to our begin-
ning our prayer. The first requires attention ; the second
a review of the subject and a strict silence ; and the third
the affections of love and joy wherewith we should ap-
proach prayer. The proximate preparation is almost a
part of the prayer itself. It comprises three acts : first,
the putting of ourselves in the presence of God ; secondly,
acknowledging ourselves unworthy to appear in His pre-
sence; and thirdly, confessing ourselves incapable of
praying as we ought without the aid of divine grace. For
each of these three preparations very minute rules are
22* »

258 PRAYER.

given, which are all taken from ancient sources, partica
larly St. Gregory, St. Chrysostom, St. Bonaventure, St
Nilus, St. Bernard, and St. Benedict.

But it is in the body of the prayer that its chief cha-
racteristics are to be found. It consists, as the Ignatian
does, of three points; the first is called adoration, the
second communion, and the third co-operation. In the
first we adore, praise, love, and thank God. In the
second we try to transfer to our own hearts what we have
been praising and loving in God, and to participate in its
virtue according to our measure. In the third we co-
operate with the grace we are receiving by fervent collo-
quies and generous resolutions. The ancient fathers have
handed down to us this method of prayer as in itself a
perfect compendium of Christian perfection. They call
it having Jesus before their eyes, which is the adoration ;
Jesus in their hearts, which is the communion; and Jesus
in their hands, which is the co-operation : and in these
three things all the Christian life consists. After their
accustomed fashion, they deduce it from the precept of
God to the children of Israel, that the words of the law
were to be before their eyes, in their hearts, and bound
upon their hands. Thus St. Ambrose calls these three
points the three seals. The adoration he calls signaculum
in fronte ut semper confiteamur; the communion, signa-
culum in corde ut semper diligamus ; and the co-operation,
signaculum in brachio, ut semper operemur. Others
again declare that this method of prayer is according to
the model which our Lord has given us. Thus the ado-
ration answers to Hallowed be Thy Name, the commu-
nion to Thy kingdom come, and the co-operation to Thy
will be done. It seems that this method of prayer is, as

PRATER. 259

far as we can judge, the same which prevailed among t£e
fathers of the desert; and it is astonishing how many scraps
of ancient tradition there are regarding it.* Its patristic
character is quite the distinguishing feature of the Sulpi-
eian method of prayer. It is a piece of the older spiri-
tuality of the Church.

The first point then is adoration. Here we contem-
plate the subject of our meditation in Jesus, and worship
Him because of it in a befitting way. Hence there are
two things to be observed in this first point. Suppose,
to take the instance given by Tronson, that we are medi-
tating on humility. In this point we first of all consider
Jesus as humble, and in this consideration we include
three things : our Lord's interior dispositions about humi-
lity, the words He said, and the actions He did. Secondly,
we lay at His feet six offerings : adoration, admiration,
praise, love, joy, and gratitude ; sometimes going through
all of them, sometimes selecting such as harmonize with
the subject of our prayer. This point is extremely im-
portant, as it leads us first to contemplate our Blessed
Lord as the source of all virtues ; secondly, to regard Him
as the original and exemplar, of which grace is to make
us copies ; thirdly, of the two ends of prayer, which Ter-
tullian calls the veneration of God and the petition of
man, the first he says is the more perfect; fourthly, St
Gregory Nyssen says that if we look only to our own in-
terests, of the two roads which lead k> perfection, prayer,
and imitation, the first is the shortest, the aiGst efficacious,

* I may remark by the way that it is unfortunate that Honoratua
a Sancta Maria, who collected the tradition of the fathers on several
supernatural states of prayer, should have taken the wrong side in
the great controversy of charity, and so should have disfigured his
book, and blunted the effect of his evidence.

260 PRAYER.

and the most solid. Speaking of the efficacy of adoration
as a part of prayer, the Fathers use this comparison.
They say we may dye a white cloth scarlet in two ways,
first by applying the colour to it, and secondly, by steep-
ing it in the dye ; and the last is the shortest and makes
the colour fastest : so to dip our souls in the dye of the
Heart of Jesus by love and adoration, is a quicker way
to imbue them with a virtue than multiplied acts of the
virtue itself would be. The reader will see that this
doctrine is peculiar, and seems at first sight to differ
from the ordinary tone of modern books. This method
of adoration is with slight modifications applicable to all
tbe six usual subjects of meditation, the attributes and
perfectiu-ns of God, the mysteries and virtues of Jesus, the
actions at ihe saints, the virtues, the vices, and Christian
verities.

The seoona point is communion, by which we endeavour
to participate hi what we have been loving and admiring
in the first. It contains three things. We have first of
all to convince ourselves that the grace we desire to ask il
important to us, and we should try to convince ourselves
of this chiefly by motives of faith. The second thing is
to see how greatly we are wanting in that grace at pre-
sent, and how many opportunities of acquiring it we have
wasted. In this temper we must consider the past, the
present, and the future. The third and chief thing is
the petition itself for the grace in question; and this pe-
tition may take four shapes, the types of which are in
Scripture. First, it may be simple petition: petitiones
vestrae innotescant apud Deum. Secondly, it may be
obsecration, which is the adding of some motive or adju-
ration to our demand, no by the merits of our Lord, or the

PRAYER. 261

graces of our Lady . in omni obsecration e, as the apostle
Bpeaks. Thirdly, it may be by thanksgiving, cum gra-
tiarum actione ; for the saints tell us that thanksgiving
for past graces is the most efficacious petition for new
ones. Fourthly3 it may be by insinuation, as when the
sisters of Lazarus said no more than, Lord, he whom
Thou lovest is sick. All these petitions must be accom-
panied by four conditions : humility, confidence, perseve-
rance, and the union of others in our prayers ; as our Lord
teaches us to pray for our, not my, daily bread, and for
give w$, not we, our trespasses. St. Nilus lays great stress
on this last particular, and says it is the fashion in which
the angels pray.

The third point is the co-operation, in which we make
our resolutions. Now three things are required in these
resolutions, that they should be particular, that they should
be present, that they should be efficacious. They must be
particular, because general ones are of very little use ex-
cept in union with particular ones. They must be pre-
sent, that is, we must have some application of our reso-
lution present to our minds, as likely to occur that day
They must be efficacious, that is, our subsequent care must
be to carry them out with great fidelity, and fully to in-
tend to do so by an explicit intention at the time we make
them.

The conclusion of the prayer consists of three things,
all of which must be very briefly performed. First we
must thank God for the graces He has given us in our
prayer, the grace of having endured us in His presence,
of having given us the ability to pray, and of all the
good thoughts and emotions we have experienced. Se-
condly we must ask pardon for the faults we have com-

262 PRAYER.

mitted in our prayer, negligence, lukewarmness, distrac-
tion, inattention, and restlessness. Thirdly we must put
it all into our Lady's hands to offer it to God, to supply
all defects, and to obtain all blessings. Then follows the
spiritual nosegay of St. Francis of Sales, which St. Nilus
appears to have been the first to suggest to men of prayer.

The Carmelite method, as given by John of Jesus-
Mary, forbids any minute composition of place, and re-
commends onjy one point of meditation. Its component
parts are adoration, oblation, thanksgiving, petition and
intercession ; but he would not have us take them always
in the same order, but take that first which chances to be
most congenial to the subject on which we are meditating.
On the whole it seems true to say that the contemplative
orders hold more to the ancient or as I have called it the
Sulpician method, than to the Ignatian ; and all methods
seem resolvable into one or other of the two.

These two methods of prayer are both of them most
holy, even though they are so different. There is a
different spirit in them, and they tend to form different
characters. But they cannot be set one against the other.
They are both from one Spirit, even the H oly Ghost, and
e&ch will find the hearts to which they are sent. Happy
IP the man who is a faithful disciple of either !

But the class of persons for whom I am writing require
something more than these methods of meditation, with-
out their approaching any of what are called the superna-
tural states of prayer. Many pass beyond meditation,
most men slowly, but some rapidly ; and when a man's
whole life is taken up with God, his studies principally
spiritual books, his occupations chiefly religious, he often
finds that meditation is no longer the right sort of prayer

PRAYER. 268

for him, and that he must practise what ascetical writers
call affective prayer. Of this, therefore, I must say some-
thing.

The passage from meditation to affective prayer is
a crisis in the spiritual life. For we may leave meditation
too soon, or we may leave it too late, or we may refuse to
leave it at all, even when our Lord is bidding us go higher
up. All these three mistakes are fraught with injury to
the soul. By the first we fall into delusions, by the se-
cond we lose time, by the third we forfeit grace. Spiritual
writers give us the following signs that it is time for us to
pass to affective prayer. First, when we are unable to
meditate, and feel drawn to affections. Secondly, when,
do what we will, we get no fruit from our meditation but
weariness and disgust. Thirdly, which I would dwell
upon particularly, when we are so thoroughly penetrated
with the truths of religion and the maxims of Jesus, that
we find it hard to occupy our understanding upon them
in prayer, but pass instantaneously and as it were un-
avoidably into affections of the will. Fourthly, when we
have made some progress in the horror of sin, the in-
difference to amusements, the avoiding of occasions of
danger, moderation of speech, and mortification of the
senses. Then we may begin by little and little to curtail
the use of memory and understanding in our prayer, and
concentrate ourselves upon the affections of the will ; and
so by safe degrees we shall pass from meditation to affective
prayer.

Courbon thus describes the difference between these two
states of jrayer. In the state of meditation we reason
upon some subject, or ruminate on a text, or reflect on
Borne truth, or meditate on some mystery, for the purpose

bA prayer.

of eliciting affections on these subjects. In affective
prayer reasonings and reflections have all ceased, and the
soul proceeds of its own accord to elicit all the necessary
affections. Again, in meditation the soul produces these
affections with a certain amount of pain and labour, and
has to keep its attention fixed ; whereas in affective prayer
this operation costs us no trouble, but comes freely and
spontaneously. So that affective prayer is superior to
meditation in ardour, constancy, and continuity.

When we have made the change at the right time and
in the right way, the fruits of this new prayer very soon
become visible in the soul. The first is a great love of
God, breaking forth in acts of the love of preference,
complacence, and benevolence, and in works of effective
love. The next are a desire to do God's will, a burning
zeal for His glory, a keen appetite for communion, a
hankering after solitude, an avidity to know more about
God, a love of speaking of God, an increase of courage,
a desire to die, a zeal for souls, and a contempt of the
world. At the same time this kind of prayer has its
own peculiar dangers. We are apt to exhaust ourselves
by the vehemence of immoderate affections, to. make de-
votion consist wholly of fervid feelings, to imagine we
are feeling what the saints felt, to believe that everything
we do is done by an inspiration, to be too active and pre-
cipitate in our good works, and to be indiscreet in our zeal.
In affective prayer distractions tease us more sensibly than
in meditation, because our understanding is less occupied.
The subtraction of sweetness is far more sensibly felt \
and the world and the devil combine to attack us with
greater energy than before. Above all, we are peculiarly
liable, to a degree which surprises us, to vanity, anger,

PRAYER. 265

and want of custody of the senses. Against these, how-
ever, we may set the supernatural favours which usually
accompany this state of prayer; such as the gift of tears,
interior colloquies, touches of the soul, the languor of
love, the liquefaction of the soul in God, the wound of
love, the glimpses of our own nothingness, and the super
abundance of spiritual sweetness. But full instruction or
these points belongs to a treatise on prayer. Enough has
been said of mental prayer for our present purpose. It
remains to speak of vocal prayer.

It is one of the marks of false spirituality, as appears
from the Condemned Propositions, to make light of vocal
prayer. It is the universal custom of the faithful, even
if it be not necessary to salvation, as St. Thomas says it
is not. St. Augustine seems to hold the contrary
opinion, and gives as a reason the model which our
Saviour gave us. It is, however, says St. Thomas, of im-
mense utility, and that for three reasons. It awakens
interior devotion, and sustains it when awakened. We
ought to honour God with all His gifts, and voice is His
gift as well as mind. It forms a vent for interior devo-
tion, which increases in vehemence by means of the very
vent. In vocal prayer three attentions are requisite,
though not always all of them at once, attention to the
order and pronunciation of the words, attention to the
meaning of the words, and attention to the end of the
words which is Him to whom we address them, and that
for which we are petitioning.

Speaking in a rough way there are commonly four
kinds of vocal prayer, with a book, without a book, in-
tercessory, and ejaculatory. If we pray from a prayer-
book *t is well to have only one book at a time, and not
23

266 PRATER.

to change it frequently. We should read with pauses,
occasionally closing the book and resting on the thought
of God j and we should be careful not to choose a book
which is much above our real feelings and present attain-
ments. If we pray without a book, we must be brief
and of few words, because of God's majesty; we must
scrupulously use words with forethought, and interpose
silent intervals in our prayers. In the matter of inter-
cessory prayer, we must be cautious of promising people
we will pray for them. We must be wary of perpetual
or multiplied novenas. We must never fix a definite
length of time for which we will pray for an object, and
abandon it then if God has not vouchsafed to hear our
prayers. And in our intercession a prominent place must
always be given to the Holy Father, and his intention?
for the needs of the Church. Ejaculatory prayers should
be frequent, but generally speaking not under rule or of
obligation. They must be almost incessant in times of
temptation, and it is desirable always to have some chosen
ones ready.

There are many cautions which are necessary in the
use of vocal prayer. We must be careful not to burden
ourselves with too many of them, and it is well to begin
them always with a mental act of the divine presence.
When we have given way to distractions, and our atten-
tion has been imperceptibly averted from what we are
saying, and at last we wake up to a consciousness of it, it
very much concerns our peace of mind, that we should
not say over again what we said with inattention. We
must simply stop and make an act of contrition, and so
proceed. The opposite conduct gives rise to many scruples,
and ends by making vocal prayer burdensome and odious.

PRAYER. 267

When slovenly habits have crept ./ver us, we must set mat
ters right by disallowing ourselves in certain liberties which
we have taken, and so cure our slovenliness by taking a
few steps in the direction of the other extreme. Thus,
if we have been in the habit of saying vocal prayers out
of doors, or walking about, or in bed, and some percep-
tible negligence has come of it, it is better for a little
while to abstain from doing so, and say them in our own
room, or kneeling, or in some slightly penitential way.
We must not forget that this blessed right of vocal
prayer is not only a frequent source of scruples, but even
a most prolific occasion of venial sin ; and it is so almost
always from want of reverence and forethought. Hence
we should never begin with a probable interruption
staring us in the face, and we should keep a strict custody
over our eyes. It is said of St. Charles Borromeo that
ne would not say off by heart the more familiar parts of
the missal and breviary, because he considered that his
keeping his eyes fixed on the book, and reading the words
so much conduced to devotion.

It is well to meditate occasionally on the dignity of
vocal prayers, and the communion of saints into which we
enter by reciting them, especially in such world-wide de-
votions as the rosary, and scapular-prayers. They who
are much addicted to vocal prayer should cultivate a spe-
cial devotion to the angels before the throne of God, who
are ever offering in their sweet thuribles the prayers of
the just to His compassionate majesty. We must remem-
ber that, while other means do not always apply to all
eases, prayer has not only a fitness but a special fitness for
all cases. Some persons, when they have prayed for some
virtue or against some vice or temptation for a long while,

268 PRAYER.

grow disheartened and leave off. The devil suggests to
them that their prayers will not be heard, not for lack of
goodness in God, but because they are unworthy to be
heard, and that it is true humility in them to think so.
But in truth such an abasement of spirit is not humility,
but a delusion contrary both to faith and hope; for this
theological truth is very much to be remembered, that
prayer rests solely on God's goodness, and not at all
on our merits. Those who find themselves inapt at
mental prayer should cultivate vocal. But if we have
taken upon ourselves a burden of much vocal prayer,
and find ourselves growing inattentive in spite of our-
selves, we must lessen the quantity gradually, compen-
sating for this by a more arduous effort of attention.
As a general rule it is best to have only a little vocal
prayer, but to persevere in that little with extreme fide-
lity. St. Theresa says, that comfortable postures are
best for mental prayer, penitential postures for vocal.
Under any circumstances reverential postures are half the
battle of vocal prayer. If a mau finds vocal prayer an aid
to inward recollection, it is a sign he has a vocation to it;
but St. Thomas says, if it be a hindrance to inward recol-
lection, he had best abandon what is not of obligation
Finally, those who have for a long time been tepidly
neglecting meditation, have np better means to refresh
themselves, and so get back to mental prayer, than by
giving themselves up for a season to habits, perhaps long
abandoned, of childlike vocal prayer.

Now a few words on answers to prayer, a subject which
teases so many devout souls. St. Bernard says in his
Lent sermons that all bad prayers are bad for one of three
reasons : either they are timid, c r they are tepid, or they

PRAYER. 269

are temerarious. We may dismiss therefore these three
kinds of prayer as not likely to be answered. Answers
to prayer have several characteristics which we ought to
bear in mind. For the most part they are long in coming;
and the thing asked, when it does come, comes often in
another shape; and as often, something else comes in-
stead of it. Answers come quickest when the prayer is
secret and undivulged, or when crosses are asked for, so
we nc :ist be cautious, or when we ask through our Blessed
Lady, or as St. Catherine of Bologna tells us, through the
Souls in Purgatory/ or as S. Theresa tells us, through St.
Joseph. It is false spirituality which teaches us not to
pray, and to pray perse veringly, for the good of indivi-
duals. But our power of impetration depends very much
on two things, our having habits of prayer and being in
habitual communication with God, and our praying in the
pure spirit of simple faith.

We always receive three gifts from God when we pray
humbly and earnestly. The first, S. Nilus says, is the
gift of prayer itself. u God wishes to bless thee for a
longer time while thou art persevering in thy prayer; for
what more blessed than to be detained in colloquy with
God?" We pretend for awhile not to hear the petitions
of those we love, because we so love to hear them asking.
So Joseph feigned with his brethren. You say, says St.
John Climacus, I have received nothing from God, when
all the while you have received one of His greatest gifts,
perseverance in prayer. It is often because He so loves
prayer, that God delays to answer it. The second gift is
the increase of our merits by persevering in unanswered
prajer. He delays to hear His saints, says St. Gregory,
that He may increase their merits. Eo magis exaudiun
23*

^YO PRAYER.

tur ad meritum, quo citius non exauliuntur ad votum
The third gift is that by this perseverance we prepare our-
selves to receive the grace with much greater fruit than
if it were given us at once. S. Isidore says, God delays
to hear your prayer either because you are not in good
dispositions to receive what you ask, or that you may be
able to receive more excellent gifts which he is desirous
of conferring upon you. So, says Gerson, it happens to
us as it does sometimes to a beggar, to whom men give a
more liberal alms because they have kept him waiting at
their door so long. Moreover the relics of our old un-
converted lives, not yet burned out of us, cause prayer to
operate more slowly than if our penance had been more
brisk and vigorous.

Mystical writers give us various signs by which we may
know, even at the time, that our prayers have been an-
swered. We often have an heroic confidence that our
prayers have been answered, without knowing to what we
may attribute it, and when this confidence is coupled with
a great love of God, a contempt of ourselves, and an almost
irresistible propensity to break forth into thanksgiving,
we may for the most part assume that our prayer has been
answered. Very often this confidence is preceded by a
vehement inspiration to pray for the object in question,
and God, says St. Augustine, would not thus impel us to
pray for a thing He was not about to grant. Sometimes
God sends in addition to these internal marks an outward
sign in the shape of a sorrow or disgrace ; such were the
rebuke of Heli to Anna, and of our Lord to Mary at the
marriage feast in Cana, and of our Lord to the Chanansean
woman. They were the precursors of answered prayer.
As Job says, He who is mocked by his friend as I am,

PRAYER. 271

iv ill call upon God, and He will hear him. Richard of St.
Victor mentions an unusual strength of faith, or depth of
humility, or earnestness of importunity, as inward signs
of answered prayer. But S. Bonaventure fears that in
judging of them we may too readily attribute to the Holy
Ghost what are only the movements of excited nature.
Lastly St. Ambrose gives the following rule. In comment-
ing on the words, If two of you shall agree upon earth,
concerning anything whatsoever they shall ask, it shall
be done for them by My Father who is in heaven : for
where there are two or three gathered together in My
Name, there am I in the midst of them, he says, What
are these two or three but the body, the soul, and the Holy
Ghost? For when the soul collects all its interior powers
within the sanctuary of its heart, that it may pray to the
Father in secret, and when the body collects its external
senses and unites them to the soul, the Holy Spirit ap-
proaches and breathes into this union quietude and peace,
so that the prayer may be fervent and efficacious; and then
it is that Jesus is present in the midst of the three. t 0
happy union in which so many combine to supplicate the
Eternal Father! What more could be desired, what more
efficacious be proposed? Delight in the Lord, and He will
grant thee thy petitions, says David. For if it is your joy
to please God, it will be His joy to hear your prayers.

We must be careful however not to fret ourselves over-
much about the answers to our prayers. We should
pray in faith and with a deep sense of our own unworthi-
ness, and leave the rest to God. Even in a self-interested
pcint of view no prayer has such a power of impetration
as that whieh comes from a will conformed to the will of

272 PRAYER. •

God. This was the secret of St. Gertrude's potent inter
cession.

There is one subject more which demands our atten.
tion when we are speaking of vocal prayer. A man who
is much given to vocal prayer is in no slight degree in
the power of his prayer-book.* The choice of favourite
devotions is therefore a matter of great importance; and
what devotions can we choose so safely as those which
are approved by the Church, and those which are indul-
genced by the Church. There is a great connection be-
tween indulgences and the spiritual life, and the use of
indulgenced devotions is almost an infallible test of a
good catholic. St. Alphonso says that in order to become
a saint nothing more is needed than to gain all the in-
dulgences we can; and the Blessed Leonard of Port
Maurice has something to the same effect. The private
and approved revelations of the Saints throw consider-
able light upon this subject. St. Bridget was raised up
in great measure, as she says herself, to propagate the
honour of indulgences ; and so St. Mary Magdalen of
Pazzi saw souls punished in purgatory for nothing else
but a light esteem of them.

In the spiritual life there are what I may call eight
beatitudes of indulgences. First, as they have to do

* When there are so many excellent manuals of devotion, it may
geetn invidious to single out one for commendation. Yet without
meaning in the least to criticize others, I would venture to call the
attention of my readers to a little hook, published by Messrs. Burns
and Lambert, under the title of A Few Flowers from the Garden.
Its merits are that it is simple, practical, not overloaded, well se-
ected, suitable to all, contains many indulgenced devotions, and
nas evidently grown up from long personal use. It is not a fanciful
or merely literary compilation : and its merits will grow upon thou*
who use it.

PttAYER. 27&

with sin, God's justice, and the temporal pain of sin,
they keep us among thoughts which belong to the pur-
gative way, and which are safest for us, although we are
continually and impatiently trying to get out of them.
Secondly, they have a peculiarly unworldly effect upon
us. They lead us into the invisible world ; they sur-
round us with images of a supernatural character ; they
fill our minds with a class of ideas, which detach us from
worldly things and rebuke earthly pleasures. Thirdly,
they keep the doctrine of purgatory constantly before us,
and so force upon us a perpetual exercise of faith, as
well as suggest to us motives of holy fear. Fourthly,
they are an exercise of charity to the faithful departed,
which may easily become heroic, which may be practised
by those who can give no other alms, and which has all
the effects upon our own souls that accompany works of
mercy. Fifthly, God's glory is very much concerned in
them, and that in two ways, in the release of the souls
from purgatory and their earlier admission to His heavenly
court, and also in the manifestation of His perfections
which indulgences display, such as His infinite purity
and detestation of sin, even the slightest, and the exact-
ness of His justice coupled with the ingenuity of His
mercy. Sixthly, they honour the satisfactions of Jesus.
They are to His satisfactions what the doctrine that all
forgiveness of sin is due to Him is to His merits. So
to speak, they leave nothing of Him unused ; and thus
they illustrate the copiousness of His redemption. The;f
honour likewise the satisfactions of Mary and the saints,
in such a way as still more to honour Him. Seventhly,
they deepen our views of sin, and cause us to grow in
horror of it. For they constantly keep before us that

s

fti PRATER.

punishment is due even to forgiven sin, and that thai
punishment is one of the most intolerable kind, and
though it be but temporal, it needs the satisfactions of
Jesus to deliver us from it. Eighthly, they keep us m
narmony with the spirit of the Church, which is of para-
mount importance to those who are striving to live in-
terior lives, and are threading their way among the diffi-
culties of asceticism and inward holiness. For to under-
value indulgences is a sign of heresy; and the hatred
which heresy has for them is an index of the devil's dis-
like of them, and that, in its turn, is a measure of their
power and of their acceptableness with God. They mix
us up with so many peculiarities of the Church, from the
jurisdiction of the Holy See to the belief in purgatory,
good works, the saints, and satisfaction, that they almost
insure our orthodoxy. And the whole history of the un-
happy errors which have vexed the Church on the sub-
ject of the spiritual life shows us that, to be thoroughly
holy, we must be thoroughly catholic, and thoroughly
Roman catholic, for otherwise than Roman we can be
neither catholic nor holy at all.

Then, as to the indulgenced devotions themselves, there
are these advantages in them. "We are sure they are
approved by the Church, because they are more than
approved. We know that numbers of holy souls in the
world are using them every day, and by uniting ourselves
with them we enter more deeply into the communion of
saints, and the life of the Church which is her unity. For
the reasons I have already given, we spiritualize our minds
and quicken our faith very much by the use of them.
They lead us to pray in a manner and about subjects
which the Church desires ; and we attain so many ends

PRAYER. 275

at once when we use them. For by the same act we not
only pray, but we revere the keys of the Church, we
honour Jesus, His Mother and the saints, we get rid of
our own temporal punishment, or, which is a greater
fching, we release the dead and so glorify God, and as may
be seen by looking over the devotions which the Church
has indulgenced, we transfer into our minds a great
amount of touching doctrine which serves as an aliment
for mental prayer and reverential love.

Let us take one instance of this. I cannot conceive a
man being spiritual who does not habitually say the
Rosary. It may be called the queen of indulgenced de-
votions. First consider its importance, as a specially
catholic devotion, as so peculiarly giving us a catholic
turn of mind by keeping Jesus and Mary perpetually
before us, and as a singular help to final perseverance, if
we continue the recital of it, as various revelations show.
Next consider its institution by St. Dominic in 1214, by
revelation, for the purpose of combating heresy, and the
success which attended it. Its matter and form are not
less striking. Its matter consists of the Pater, the Ave
and the Gloria, whose authors are our Blessed Lord Him-
self, St. Gabriel, St. Elizabeth, the Council of Ephesus,
and the whole Church, led in the west by St. Damasus.
Its form is a complete abridgment of £he Gospel, consist-
ing of fifteen mysteries in decades, expressing the three
great phases of the work of redemption, joy, sorrow, and
glory. Its peculiarity is the next attractive feature about
it. It unites mental with vocal prayer. It is a devotional
compendium of theology. It is an efficacious practice of
the presence of God. It is one chief channel of the
traditions of the Incarnation among the faithful. It shows

276 PRAYER

the true nature of devotion to our Blessed Lady ; and is a
means of realizing the communion of saints. Its ends
are the love of Jesus, reparation to the Sacred Humanity
for the outrages of heresy, and a continual affectionate
thanksgiving to the Most Holy Trinity for the benefit of
the Incarnation. It is sanctioned by the Church, by in-
dulgences, by miracles, by the conversion of sinners, and
by the usage of the saints. See also how much the me-
thod of reciting it involves. We should first make a
picture of the mystery, and always put our Blessed Lady
into the picture j for the rosary is hers. We should couple
rome duty or virtue with each mystery ; and fix beforehand
on some soul in purgatory to whom to apply the vast in-
dulgences. Meanwhile, we must not strain our minds, or
be scrupulous ; for to say the Rosary well is quite a thing
which requires learning. Be member always, as the Bac-
colta teaches, that the fifteenth mystery is the coronation
of Mary, and not merely the glory of the saints. Our
beads land us and leave us at the feet of Mary Crowned.
I should not wish to say anything that would seem to
limit the devotion of others; but, all things considered,
why should we have any vocal prayers which are not in-
dulgenced devotions, now that the Church has indulgencad
them in such abundance ?

TEMPTATIONS. 277

CHAPTER XVI.

TEMPTATIONS.

Temptations are the raw material of glory; and the
■Management of them is as great a work ay the government
:>f an empire, and requires a vigilance as incessant and as
universal. It is a startling thing to look out into the
world and study its ways, and then to think that God was
made Man and died upon the cross for its redemption.
But it is equally startling to look at the lives of good
men and examine their dispositions, and then to put one
of the maxims of the Gospel alongside of them. At this
very hour thousands of souls are earnestly complaining to
God of their temptations, and hundreds of confessionals
are filled with whispered and impatient murmurings
against the vehemence or the perseverance of them. Yet,
St. James says, My brethren, count it all joy when you
nail fall into divers temptations. It is plain, therefore,
that we either do not know or do not always bear in mind
the true nature and character of temptations. They are
nearly as multitudinous as our thoughts, and our only
victory over them is through persisting courage, and an
indomitable spirit of cheerfulness. The arrows of temp-
tation fall harmless and blunted from a gay heart, which
has first of all cast itself so low in its humility that nothing
can cast it lower. Be joyous, or, to use scripture words.
" rejoice, and again I say rejoice," and you will not heed
your temptations, neither will they harm you.
24

278 TEMPTATIONS.

But let us obtain a clear idea of the nature of tempta-
tions. It seems an obvious thing to say that in the first
place they are not sins ; yet it nine cases out of ten our
unhappiness comes from not discerning this fact. Some
defilement seems to come from the touch of a mere temp-
tation j and at the same time it reveals to us, as nothing
else does, our extreme feebleness and constant need of
grace and of very great grace. We are like men who do
not know how sore their bruises are until they are
pressed, and then we exaggerate the evil. So when
temptation presses our fallen and infirm nature, the ten-
derness is so sensible and so acute that it gives us at
once the feeling of a wound or a disease. Yet we must
be careful always to distinguish between a sin and a
temptation.

Temptations are either in ourselves, or outside of us,
or partly the one and partly the other. Those from
within ourselves arise, either from our senses, which are
free and undisciplined, or from our passions which are
wild and uncorrected. Those which are outside assail us,
either by delighting us, as riches, honours, attachments
and distractions, or by attacking us as the demons-do;
and those which partake of the nature of both possess the
attractions of both. In one sense, however, all tempta-
tions consist in an alliance between what is within us, and
what is without us. As I have said before, we must not
put too much upon the devil ; yet neither on the other
hand must we be without fear of him, or without a true
and scriptural estimate of his awful and malignant office.
He goes about seeking whom he may devour. He is a
roaring lion, when the roar will affright us, and a noiseless
serpent when success is to be ensured by secrecy. He has

TEMPTATIONS. <I79

reduced the possibilities and probabilities of our destruc-
tion to a science which he applies with the most unrelent-
ing vigour, the most masterly intelligence, almost unfailing
power, and with the most ubiquitous variety. If it were
not for the thought of grace, its abundance and its sove-
reignty, we should not dare to contemplate the ways and
means of the Satanic kingdom.

Yet nowhere is it a mere fight between man and the
devil. Wherever temptation is, there God is also.
There is not one which His will has not permitted, and
there is not a permission which is not an act of love as
well. He has given His whole wisdom to each tempta-
tion. He has calculated its effects, and often diminishes
its power. He has weighed and measured each by the
infirmity of each tempted soul. He has deliberately con-
templated the consequences of each, in union with its
circumstances. The minutest feature has not escaped
Him. The most hidden danger has been an element in
His judgment. All this while the devil is passive and
powerless. He cannot lay a finger on the child until its
loving Father has prescribed the exact conditions, and
has forewarned the soul by His inspirations, and fore-
armed it with proportionable succours of grace. Nothing
is at random, as if temptations were hurrying here and
there, like the bullets in the air of a battle-field. More-
over, each temptation has its own crown prepared for it,
if we correspond to grace and are victorious. I do not
know any picture of God more affecting, or more fatherly,
than the vision of Him which faith gives us in His
assiduous solicitudes and paternal occupations while we
are being tempted. Where wert Thou, Lord! while I
was being tempted? cried the saint of the desert. Close

5280 TEMPTATIONS.

to you, my sou, all the while, was the tender reply.. As
men feel sorrow to be at times a privilege, because it
draws them into the sympathies of their superiors, so is
it a joy to be tempted because it occupies God so intensely
and so lovingly with our little interests and cares. The
highest saint in heaven can never attain to love God, ai
He loves a soul struggling with temptations.

Nevertheless, temptation is exquisite suffering, above
that of sickness and adversity. There is something loath-
some in the breath which it breathes upon us, something
horribly fascinating in its eye, and paralyzing in its touch.
We are faint and sick with the sense of our own corrup-
tion, and helpless weakness ; and the thrilling interests
involved in our resisting or succumbing agitate the most
inward life of our soul. It is foolish either to deny the
suffering or to make light of it. In either case we shall
be less able to endure it. It must be in the nearness of
God, and in the prompt superfluity of grace, that we must
find our cheerfulness and our consolation.

With all his wisdom, the devil is constantly overreach-
ing himself in temptations, not from stupidity, though
perhaps God may stupify him from time to time, but
from his ignorance of the invisible amount of grace which
has been mercifully sent us. God's love is always so far
above either our merits or even our expectations, that
neither the tempter nor ourselves can ever come to believe
it beforehand. Thus the devil sometimes tempts us too
openly, and we are on our guard ; or he sends us the
wrong kind of temptation, as one man sometimes gets a
letter intended for another; or he sends the right temp-
tation at the wrong time ; or, as he cannot always read
our thoughts, he puts a wrong interpretation on our oat-

TEMPTATIONS. 281

ward actions; or he leaves off too soon; or he persists too
long; or he under-estimates the effect of penance and our
love of God on the old habits of past sin. So it is that
from one cause or other he is continually over-reaching
himself. This is a fact to be dwelt upon. For there are
many who would, if questioned, answer quite correctly
about Satan and the limitations of his power, who never-
theless practically in their own minds entertain a wrong
idea of him, and their conduct under temptation shows
the influence which this false view has upon them.
Sometimes they are not nearly so much grieved at their
falls as they ought to be, and sometimes they are panic-
stricken as soon as they feel themselves in his grasp ; so
that for him to touch them is to conquer them. I am
persuaded that a great deal of this is from their being
possessed, half unconsciously, with a wrong idea of the
devil, who acts upon them as the dread of ghosts acts
upon children, unreasonably yet irresistibly. They look
upon him as God's rival, a sort of wicked god, with god-
like attributes all evil, and an omnipotence of iniquity
They do not remember that he is simply our fellow-
creature, and a conquered and blighted creature. We
have reason to fear him. Yet we are not panic-stricken
with the hourly companionship of our own corrupt
nature. And we have far more to fear from it than from him.
Great however as are the pain and annoyance which
the soul experiences from temptation, it is very often a
gift of God not to be delivered from them. Sometimes
it is even wise not to pray for deliverance, but only for
valour to fight a good fight. St. Paul three times asked
to h*ve his thorn removed, in imitation doubtless of oui
Lord's triple prayer to have His chalice pass from Him j
24*

282 TEMPTATIONS.

and ihe answer which God vouchsafed was a proof how
greit a gift the temptation, or its permission, really was.
It has been remarked by an eminent writer on the interior
life, and it may be a great consolation to many to know
it, that when the devil attacks our body it is often a sign
that he has been secretly attacking our soul, and has been
foiled. It is also a characteristic of his efforts rather to
turn us from virtue than to impel us to vice. This is par-
ticularly the case with spiritual people. With them sins
of omission make more for him than sins of commission,
not only because it is less easy to lead a spiritual man
into the former than into the latter, but also because the
latter more effectually rouse him to repentance. Luke-
warmness is often nothing more than a clogging up of the
avenues of the soul with sins of omission, so that the
cool and salutary inundations of grace are hindered.

Nevertheless the approaches of the devil need hardly
ever take the vigilant by surprise. Whether it be of the
spiritual nature of our soul, or of the fore'warnings of
grace, we have almost always a presentiment of his
coming, provided we have a habit of self-recollection.
The great thing when we feel that presentiment is not to
be perturbed, but to meet him in the calmness of
humility. This calmness must never desert us during
the whole of the fight, least of all when we feel the de-
lectation which in many cases the temptation will infal-
libly excite. I say in many cases, because there are
whole classes of temptations which would not be tempta-
tions, at all were it not for the delectation. But the de-
lectation is not consent. We are not the masters of the
first indeliberate movements of our own hearts and minds.
The enemy may run his hand flourishingly over the keys

TEMPTATIONS. 283

before we are aware. But there must be a deliberate ac-
ceptation and retention of the delectation before it can
amount to consent or become a sin.

All men have their temptations, and all men's tempta-
tions are multitudinous. But among the various pathg
by which God onducts chosen souls, one is the way of
temptations. These souls then are not in the case of
other men. Temptation is their road, and their only road.
They pass through crowds of them, and from one crowd
into another, each surpassing its predecessor in horror
and ugliness. But this is not God's ordinary way, and
we are not concerned with legislating for it here. Yet
the fact that God can make a way of perfection consist
of temptations only, throws considerable light on the
nature of temptation generally.

But from the nature let us pass to the times of temp-
tation. It is to be observed that we may often have
seasons of great grace, without being at all aware of it,
from the extreme hiddenness of the operations of the
Holy Ghost in our souls. But temptation is a much
more obvious thing than grace; and it is generally
the case that a season of peculiar temptation is also a
season of peculiar grace. And this it is a consolation
to know. Thus, when St. Stephen's heroic faith was
passing through its extremest temptations, he beheld our
Lord, not sitting, but standing, at the right hand of the
Father, expressive of the aid He was rendering to His
servant in his hour of need. Temptations also vary with
the times of the spiritual life to which they belong.
The temptations of beginners are not those of proficients,
nor those of proficients the temptations of the perfect
If all are terrible, all are in God's hands, and so we may

284 TEMPTATIONS.

be tranquil and of good cheer. There are also times of
temptation, when our own past sin, or our present culpable
inadvertence, is the cause of them. We have brought
them upon ourselves ; and this makes them all the harder
for our self-love to bear. Still, even though they are the
just and immediate chastisement of our own faults, the
patient endurance of them is not the less meritorious \ and
disquietude forms no part of accepted penance. Times
of prayer are also times of peculiar temptation. This
was naturally to be expected, inasmuch as there is
nothing the devil so much desires to interrupt as our
communication with God. Indeed, the access and vehe-
mence of temptations form a part of the supernatural
difficulties of prayer. The spiritual life itself, with its
times of retreat or of increased recollection, brings us into
seasons of peculiar temptation. The world with its out-
ward attractions is removed from us, and the devil, in
dread of these epochs of recollection, more than supplies
their place with his inward appliances of temptation.
There are times also when he teases us with temptations
to which he knows beforehand that we shall not yield ;
yet in which he finds his account because they disquiet
us, or dishearten us, or throw us intr a general irritability.
There are other times in which he tempts us in the grace
we have just used to overcome him, and in the strength
of which we actually have overcome him. The reason
of this is that our success has thrown us off our guard,
and we never dream of failing in a virtue which but a
moment before has flushed us with the joy of victory.
Thus, our Lord having put His confidence in His Father,
the devil first tempted Him by it.

From the times of temptation we pass to its kinds.

TEMPTATIONS. 285

Some temptations are frequent : and there is a peculiai
danger in their frequency. They dissipate us, and break
up the calm of our recollection. Or they tire us, and a!
last we sit down and give up the battle out of weariness
Or we get used to them, and lose our wholesome fear of
them. These frequent temptations have generally some
connection with our ruling passion. Some temptations are
durable, and they also have dangers of their own, and con-
solations of their own. Their chief danger is their out-
living our powers of perseverance ; and their chief conso-
lation is that their very durability is a sign they have not
triumphed. The pressure is removed the moment we
3onsent; and consequently the lasting of the burden is a
measure of the grace God has given us to resist it.
Although Jesus seems fast asleep in the boat, yet that it
is not submerged in the dark angry waters is because He
is there. There are other temptations which are brief,
brief and gentle, or brief and violent. The brief and
gentle leave us in doubt whether we have not consented,
and so perplex us : the brief and violent stun us for the
moment, and leave us in an amazement during which
other temptations may come and surprise us. Each
virtue has its own attendant temptations, set like spies
round about it by the devil. The great object of these
is to make us retire from holy enterprise, and reduce ua
to an unmeritorious inaction. We must meet these as
St. Bernard met the devil when he tempted him to vain-
glory in the middle of a sermon, " I did not begin for
you, and so I shall not leave off for you." Temptations
which approach us by the senses are proof against all
weapons except those of mortification and the sacraments.
Temptations against faith and chastity are two classes

286 TEMPTATIONS.

apart, and have this peculiarity, that they are never to be
directly resisted, but fled from. We must distract our-
selves from them instead of striking them. There are
other temptations, which are merely feelers to explore
our possibilities of sin. The devil sends these out to
gain knowledge of us, as he cannot read our hearts;*
just as a besieging army sends rockets here and there
into a city to try for the powder magazines. But among
all these kinds of temptations, there is no one class,
which is any sign that our souls are in an evil state.
Spiritual writers jay this down as an undoubted fact; and
yet how much self-torment there is in the world because
silly peevish souls will persist in acting as if its contrary
were true.

But what are the uses of tempations ? So many and
so great that I can do no more than indicate a few of them
here. They try us, and we are worth nothing if we are
not tried. Our trial is the one thing God cares for, and
it is the only thing which gives us the least knowledge
of ourselves. They disgust us with the world almost as
effectually as the sweetnesses which God gives us in prayer.
And how hard it is to become thoroughly disgusted with
the world : and how very much more we really love the
world than we have any idea of! Oh, of what price
ought anything to be which helps us to a true and final
divorce from this seductive world ! They enable us to
merit more, that is, they increase God's love of us, and
our love of God, and our glory with God hereafter. They
punish us for past sins; and we ought to court such

* Surin says he can j but the consent of theologians is against
him j and his phenomena are explicable without denying the ad-
mitted maxims of the schools.

TEMPTATIONS. 28V

punishments eagerly, for five minutes of free-will suffer-
ing on earth are worth five years of the tardy cruelties
of purgatory. They purify us for God's presence, which
is the very office of purgatory itself, and anticipate its
work and so prevent its fires. They prepare us for spi-
ritual consolations, perhaps they even earn them for us.
St. Philip says that God gives us first a dark and then a
bright day all through life. Can words tell the joy it is
to be consoled by God? Are not souls whom He has
touched obliged to hold their tongues, because they have
no words to express the happiness it was ? And probably
without the temptation, the consolation never would have
come. Or if it had come, it might have harmed us. The
temptation has made us capable of bearing it without loss,
and tasting it and not fainting away with its unearthly
sweetness. Temptations teach us our own weakness, and
so humble us ; and could our guardian angels do more
than this for us, in all the variety of their affectionate
ministrations ? Dear Prince, more than brother ! I say
it not in light esteem of his unutterable kindness, who
never leaves me a solitary speck in this huge creation of
God, and whose services I shall never know till they all
meet me at the doom brighter than a thousand suns, and
whose love will come to a head rather than to an end
when he embraces me in the first moment of the resur-
rection of the flesh ! But he wishes nothing so much as
to keep me humble, and temptations help him to do the
work. They give us also a greater esteem of grace, and
the want of this is daily the cause of more evil in the
world than the devil can cause in a whole century. Grace
grows by being 3steemed. It multiplies itself when it is
honoured, just as faith merits miracles, while infidelity

288 TEMPTATIONS.

hinders even our Lord from working them. They make
virtue take deeper root, and so they play their part in
the grand grace of final perseverance. How shallow
would all spirituality be if it were not for temptations .
How shallow good men actually are, who are not much
tempted ! The Church can never trust them in her hour
of need. They are always on the side on which St. Tho-
mas of Canterbury would not have been. Temptations
again make us more watchful, and so instead of leading
into sin, they hinder shoals of sins. They make us more
fervent, and kindle in us such a fire of love as burns away
the hay and straw of venial sin, and cauterizes the half-
healed wounds which mortal sin has made. A transport
of generous love can do a work as great, and the great
work as well, as a year's fast on bread and water, with a
discipline a day. Lastly, they teach us spiritual science :
for what we know of self, of the world, of the demons, an<J
of the artifices of divine grace, is chiefly from the pheno-
mena of temptation, and from our defeats quite as mucl
as from our victories.

These are the uses of temptations, and they leave seven
permanent blessings behind them. They leave us merit,
which is no transient thing. Nay, such is its vitality that
when mortal sin has put it to death, penance can bring it
to life again. They leave us love, both God's love of us
and our love of Him. They leave us humility; and with
that all other gifts of God j for the Holy Spirit Himself
rests upon the humble, and makes His dwelling in theii
hearts. They leave us solidity. Our building is so much
higher than it was, and its foundations more safely and
more permanently settled. They leave us self-knowledge,
without which all we do is done in the dark, and the

TEMPTATIONS. 289

rul never shines upon the soul, and the ground is never
clear for the operations of grace. They leave us self-love
killed j and has life a fairer task than the burial of its
worst and most odious enemy? Its dead body is more to
us than the relic of an apostle, and surely that is saying
much. They leave us thrown upon God. For no nurse
ever put a babe into its father's arms more carefully or
more securely than temptations put us into the extended
arms of God. And yet we complain — complain of our
temptations ! Perverse race ! it has always been so; from
beneath the apple-tree in Eden to this hour, we do not
know our own happiness, and in our ignorance we pick a
special quarrel with it !

Mistakes can be made about temptations as about every
thing else in the spiritual life; and many have been
already implied and explained in what has been said.
There are, however, four particular mistakes on which a
few words may be of use. The first mistake is that we
are apt to think the time spent in combating temptations
is time lost. We are all very well and very tranquil, and
more or less consciously in the presence of God, at our
ordinary occupations ; but the time comes for visiting the
Blessed Sacrament, and all at once we are assailed with a
multiplicity of temptations. We have but a quarter of
an hour to be there, and the whole time has gone in doing
battle with these miserable temptations; or we rise in the
morning, full of the thought of God, and say prayers
while we are dressing. We then kneel down to begin our
meditation, and a host of temptations forthwith assail us.
The hour-glass runs down, and what have we done ? No-
thing but fight, and it seems, too, unsatisfactorily, with
these pestering temptations. Now we must remember
25 T

290 TEMPTATIONS.

fchat we aie not to serve God for consolations, or after our
own fashion, and according to our own taste ; but accord-
ing to His wisdom and His will. His rewards are not
attached to the good works we prescribe to ourselves, but
to the combats in which it is His good pleasure to involve
us. Time can never be lost which is spent in doicg the
will of God. On the contrary, all time is lost which is
spent otherwise. What is our object ? It is either to be
glorifying God, or to be perfect, or to reach heaven.
Fighting a temptation is the shortest road to all these
three ends.

The second mistake is the misapprehension of tempta-
tions by negligent souls. Sometimes they think it a mark
of spiritual advancement to be inactive and almost passive
under temptations. They apply to themselves advices
which belong only to the perfect, or maxims which were
intended for the scrupulous. Thus they fall into a perni-
cious habit of letting dangerous thoughts pass through
their minds, without demanding or examining their pass-
ports ; and this not only weakens their mind, but seems
to saturate it with undesirable images and inclinations.
Their feeling about sin ceases to be what it was, and their
confidence in themselves increases as the probabilities of
a fall increase also. The consequence of all this is a state
of torpor and of general slovenliness with God, from which
if they are roused at all, it is probably by the commission
of mortal sin. Lukewarm souls have sometimes been
renewed to holiness in this dreadful way, and God has
shown them mercy even in the judicial chastisement of
this adorable permission. But it is a process, the very
thought of wbich should make us shudder, and which
probably never happened to any one who was negligent

TEMPTATIONS. 291

because he trusted to repentance wilfully delay id, and to
the uucertain possibilities of an eventual reconciliation
with God. Whoever has familiarized himself with what
he knows are temptations, and has domesticated the
thought of them in his mind, no matter of what class
they may be, has taken a decided step towards that state
of tepidity whose logical development is final impenitence.
The third mistake concerns our use of the calms which
come between the storms of periodical temptations.
Every one knows by his own experience that he is subject
to particular classes, or to one particular class of tempta-
tions, which come round in perfect hurricanes, like circu-
lar storms with fair and tranquil weather between. We
have been going on in our ordinary way. We see no
reason for a change, either in ourselves or in external cir-
cumstances, when all at once the storm is down upon us,
with the same sort of panic the heathen felt when it
thundered out of a clear sky. We are possessed with
the images of the temptation. Every outward object
turns into them. We hear voices, as we think, and inar-
ticulate sounds shape themselves into intelligible words.
The lines of books run into the ideas of temptation, and
prayers and holy names seem only fresh food for the
beleaguered imagination. We are sunk, overhead, deep
down, in temptations, and the masterful current is sweep-
ing in eddies above us. It is not as with Peter that a
Hand was held out as we were in the act of sinking.
We are sunk. Yes ! and Jesus is with us in the deep
where we are. Now in the storm we have simply nothing
to do but to hold fast to God with all our might and main.
There is no help for it. We cannot legislate for a hurri-
eane. The real work of the storm must be done in the

21)2 TEMPTATIONS.

preceding caln.. It is a mistake to look upon these calm
as a time of rest when we may give ourselves up to the
simple enjoyment of the absence of the temptations, or
of the spiritual sweetness with which these tempests are
commonly followed. We must lay our plans then, and
make our resolutions, with a foresight of what we have to
encounter. We must fix on occasions to avoid, increase
our mortifications, and redouble our prayers. If we have
gone down in many a storm, it has been because we made
holydays of our calms. Remember, in the spiritual life
there are recreations; but there are no holydays. That
school breaks up but once, and the home afterwards is
eternal.

A fourth mistake is the delusion with which the devil
tries to possess us, that if we give way in some of the
circumstances of the temptation, or to the temptation
itself short of sin, we shall weaken it. Our whole mind
seems so completely overlaid with the images of tempta-
tion, that we think we shall suffer some permanent moral
injury, if it lasts, and. that anything short of sin is not
allowable only, but desirable also, which will release us
from it. It is strange that so gross a snare should ever
succeed; yet it does so in many cases. We must remem-
ber, therefore, that to yield is to weaken ourselves, not
the temptation. We shall get no foothold so strong as
our first ; and men often discover to their cost that even a
change of position, without abandoning an attitude of
defence, is as good as a defeat in the time of temptation.

But how are we to overcome temptations ? Cheerful-
ness is the first thing, cheerfulness the second, and cheer*
fulness the third. The devil is chained. He can bark,
but he cannot bite, unless we go up to him and let him

TEMPTATIONS . 293

Bo so. We must be of good courage. The power of
temptation is in the fainting of our own hearts. Confi-
dence in God is another spiritual weapon, the more potent
Decause no one can have confidence in God who has not
the completest diffidence of himself. God's cause is ours,
for temptation is more really the devil's wrath against
God who has punished him, than against us, whom he
only envies. Our ruin is important to him only as it is a
blow at God's glory. Thus God is bound to us, as it
were; as it is for His sake that we are thus persecuted.
We may be sure, indeed we know infallibly, that we shall
never be tried beyond our strength. Prayer, especially
ejaculatory prayer, is another obvious means of victory,
together with mortification and the frequenting of the
sacraments, which are all of them wells of supernatural
fortitude.

Examination of conscience must help us to detect the
weak and vulnerable parts of our nature ; and then we
must exercise ourselves in acts contrary not only to oui
peculiar infirmities, but also to our besetting temptations.
We must avoid idleness, and crush beginnings. We
must not speak of our temptations indiscriminately to
persons who have no right to know anything about them,
nor even to our spiritual friends. It gives no real relief,
and it feeds the ideas. Neither must we be cast down
if our director treats our temptations more lightly than
we think they deserve. What is the good of speaking
to him at all about them, if we are not going to obey his
rules and adopt his view and follow his advice ?

In times of temptation we must be very eareful not to
retrench any of our spiritual exercises, a line of conduct
or which the evil one may suggest very specious reasons
25*

294 TEMPTATIONS.

We ha\e need of all our strength at that moment; air k
we never know to which of our ordinary exercises God
attaches His grace. It would have been better for the
apostles to have struggled through a drowsy, dry, dis-
tracted prayer, than to have simply gone to sleep in the
garden of Gethsemane. We must remember also that
all our spiritual exercises are less prompt and pleasant
when we are under temptations ; because we are teased
and puzzled by them. Hence nature is more likely to
suggest the abridgment or discontinuance of some of
them, on the ground of their being useless and spiritless.
But although things are established by the mouth of two
witnesses, those two must not be the devil and the human
spirit. We must also be cautious not to change our pur-
poses at such times. The dust and smoke of the battle
hang over us, and darken all things. It is not a time
for us to see God's will about changes and vocations.
His will just then is that we resist the evil, and therefore
that is the single thing for us to do. Nay, we must be-
ware even of any new good which makes its appearance,
knocks at the door of our heart, or puts itself ready-
made into our hands, at such a season. St. Ignatius
long since warned us of a family of temptations which
present themselves in the disguise of good. God would
not send us the good then, or in that way. His will,
once more, is that we should resist the evil. The good
will keep, if it be real good ; and He will send us peace-
able times when we can calmly and deliberately take it
upon ourselves.

We must also be upon our guard against very little
temptations, or such as we should call little. For things
must have comparative magnitudes, even where our soul**

TEMPTATIONS. 295

uri concerned. It is no uncommon thing for a man who
has resisted great temptations to fall in little ones. This
is very intelligible. Wherever there is dignity in an
action or a suffering we can the better brace ourselves up
to it; for we can draw largely upon nature as well as
grace. Self-love likes dignity, and will go through end-
less pain, as if it were an insensible thing, in order to
obtain it. Hence comes the importance of little things
in religion. Nature has less to do with them, and so
they rivet our union with God more closely. The con-
version of souls, works of mercy on a grand scale, visit-
ing prisons, preaching, hearing confessions, and even
establishing religious institutes, are comparatively easy
works when put by the side of exactitude in daily duties,
observation of petty rules, minute custody of the senses,
kind words and modest exterior which preach the pre-
sence of God. We gain more supernatural glory in little
things, because more fortitude is required, as they are
continuous, uninterrupted, and with no dignity about
them to spur us on. All the strength we require must
be found within. We have no outward place or praise
of men, to rest our lever on, and furthermore heroism in
little things is more a matter of endurance than of action.
Lt is a perpetual constraint.

Moreover, our spirit is more effectually taken captive
in little things. Its defeats are more frequent. The very
continuity of the actions forms a linked chain, which
extends to many things. No attachment is to be merely
natural, no word unweighed, no step precipitate, no plea-
sure enjoyed sensually, no joy to evaporate in dissipation,
the heart never to rest on carnal tenderness alone, no
action to have its spring in self-will. We tremble at such

296 TEMPTATI0N8.

seeming impossibilities of perfection ; — yet it is only the
perfection of little things ! Then, again, theie is some-
thing so humbling and secret in little things. Who knows
if we count our words, or what feelings we are curbing ?
God will let us fall in these very respects to hide us more
in Himself, and from the eyes of men. We carry the
mortification of Jesus about us unseen. It is a slow
martyrdom of love. God is the only spectator of our
agony. Nay, we ourselves find it hard to realize that we
are doing purely for God such a multitude of trivial
things; hence we have no room for vain-glory, no falla-
cious support of conscious human rectitude.

But in these little things we not only gain more glory
for ourselves, but we give more glory to God. We show
more esteem for Him in them ', for there must necessarily
be more pure motive and sheer faith in little than in great
things. Great things by their greatness often hide God ;
and at the best the esteem in great things is mostly divided
Detween God and the glory of the action, and so the whole
work is tainted Whereas the littleness and vileness of
small things, their apparent facility and men's contempt
for them, leave the soul face to face with God in the dis
enchanting twilight of interior mortification. But it is
not merely esteem. More actual tribute is paid to God in
little things. In great things we have more help given
us, and we give God less because we have to labour less.
The abundance of grace, the sweetness of it, and the
animation of spirit from the pursuit of a great object, are
three things which lessen our own labour. Yet it is our
own toil that is the real tribute to God, just as dry prayers
are said to be more meritorious than sweet ones. In great
things too we seldom have the liberty of acting as we please.

TEMPTATIONS. 297

Tn little ones we have, and we pay that liberty away hour
by hour to God as a tribute of fidelity and love.

But esteem and tribute are not all. We sacrifice more
to God in little things. We think little of little things,
and so we make the sacrifice, not in swelling thoughts of
mightiness, but out of a subdued feeling of our own utter
nothingness, and of the immensity of our being allowed
to make any sacrifice to God at all. We sacrifice also our
self-interest, which is not attracted by anything in these
ignoble victims; and so we seek God only, and put aside
the pursuit of praise and self. We forego also the enjoy-
ment of strenuous manly action ; for what manliness, as
men count things, is there in regularity, littleness, exact-
ness, and obscurity ? Yet this is the only road to solid
virtue. It was not what we read of in the saints that
made them saints : it was what we do not read of them
that enabled them to be what we wonder at while we read.
Words cannot tell the abhorrence nature has of the piece-
meal captivity of little constraints. And as to little temp-
tations, I can readily conceive a man having the grace to
be roasted over a slow fire for our dearest Mother's Im-
maculate Conception or the Pope's Supremacy, who would
not have the grace to keep his temper in a theological
conversation on either of those points of the catholic faith.

One more question remains about temptations. How
shall we behave when we ourselves are overcome ? There
is but one answer, one advice : it is childish : but is there
any other ? When we fall we must rise again, and go on
our way, wishing ourselves, after a Christian fashion, better
luck another time.

SCRUPLES.

CHAPTER XVII.

SCRUPLES

A scrupulous man teases God, irritates his neigh
bour, torments himself, and oppresses his director. Il
would require a whole volume to prove these four infalli-
ble propositions ; the reader must, therefore, either take
them on faith, or make the acquaintance of a scrupulous
man. Every one who is in trouble and disgrace deserves
commiseration ; but our pity is lessened when the sufferer
has no one to blame hut himself, and it well-nigh departs
altogether when he remains in his suffering of his own
obstinate will. Now this is the case with scrupulous per-
sons during all the earlier stages of their complaint, before
they become incurable. They are the opprobrium of
spiritual physicians, and so intensely difficult is their cure
that God has sometimes allowed those, who were hereafter
to be the guides of souls, to pass through a supernatural
state of scruples, that they might be the better able tc
minister to the disease in others. It is a great part of the
science of the spiritual life to know a temptation from a
gin ; and a scruple may almost be defined to be the culpa
ble ignorance of this Another man may discern that my
scruple is not a «in ; but if I discerned it for myself, it
would not be a scruple ; and if I took it on faith whon
my director told me, I should not be a scrupulous man
This lets us into the secret of the malice of scruples.
They are not sins, but they are so full of wrong disposi-

SCRUPLES. 299

tions that they can become sins at a moment's notice, be-
sides being sources of many sins under the pretext of
good. They are little centres of spiritual death spotting
the soul, a kind of moral erysipelas.

It is unfortunate that scrupulous persons are always
spoken of with great compassion, far more than they de-
erve. Hence they elevate their scruples to an interior
trial of the soul; which they sometimes are, but very
seldom. It is unfortunate also that in common conver-
sation the word scruple is often used in a good sense, as
if it were something respectable, and a sort of vague syno-
nym for conscientiousness. It would, therefore, be a great
thing if men could get well into their minds this ascetical
truth, that there is nothing respectable about a scruple.
It has no intellectual worth. It merits no moral esteem.
It has not the faintest element of spiritual good in it. It
is simply a perversity and a wrongness, deserving of pity
certainly, but of the same kind and amount as we have
for a man who is going to be hung. Francesca of Pam
peluna saw many souls in purgatory only for scruples;
and when this surprised her, our Lord told her there
never was a scruple which was wholly without sin. This
was, of course, not meant to apply to supernatural scru-
ples, which we shall consider presently. But scruples are
not only bad in themselves. They give rise to countless
other mischiefs ; and one of the most provoking of them
is, that men are often deterred from the pursuit of per-
fection and the constraints of the interior life by the feai
of scruples.

A scruple is defined in theology to be a vain fear of
ein where there is no reason nor reasonable ground for
suspecting sin ; and it is sometimes explained in etymo-

800 SCRUPLES.

logy to mean a stone in a man's shoe which makes him
walk lame, and wounds him at every step, which is not
an inapt figure for expressing its consequences in the spi-
ritual life. We may also compare a scrupulous man to a
norse shying at shadows, and so making little progress,
backing, disobeying the rein, often endangering the ridei,
and always trying his temper. Moreover, he runs into
real sin from startling at the shadow of imaginary sin ;
and all this is so connected with pride that the tender
St. Philip gave no quarter to scrupulous persons who
would not pay blind obedience to the rules given them.
Thus scruples are quite distinct from delicacy of con
science, which is known by its not only being reasonable,
but much more by its being tranquil ) neither is a scrupk
the same thing as laxity, but Gerson thinks that it it
almost worse.

The first question for us to consider regards the causes
of scruples. These are three : God, the devil, and our-
selves, or the human spirit ; and to these last the body
contributes as well as the soul.

First, then, scruples may be from God. These are
what I have called supernatural scruples. God may per-
mit us to fall into them for various reasons. Sometimes
it is to prepare us for the office of directing souls, in which
it is important that we should have an experimental
knowledge of scruples, so as to guide others safely through
them. Sometimes it is as an exterior trial, or what
mystics call a purgation of spirit; and their use is one
while to wean us from an excessive attachment to spiri-
tual sweetnesses and the extraordinary favours of God,
and another while to let us have our purgatory on earth,
and another while to destroy the lingering activity of self-

SCRUPLES. 301

love. He thus cleanses us from our past faults by a most
apt, yet extremely severe penance, confirms us in a salu-
tary fear, and humbles us in the ver\ matters wherein
humiliation is felt most distressingly. His share in the
process is simply the withdrawing of the gratuitous light
in which he allowed the soul to walk before. It was under
this subiraction that St. Bonaventure would not say mass,
and St. Ignatius refused to eat, that Ippolito Galantini
was swallowed up in a sea of scruples, that St. Luitgarde
said her office so many times over that God sent an angel
to forbid her, and that St. Augustin, as he tells us in his
Confessions, was so teased with scruples about his natural
pleasure in eating and drinking.

Secondly, scruples may be from the devil, who is a
positive cause of them, which God can never be. St.
Lawrence Justinian says : It often happens by the dispo-
sition of God that the evil spirits confound the consciences
of the weak by doubtfulness and by a host of pricking
fears, so that they cannot move their foot through the
excess of these terrors of conscience. Nay, their per-
suasions and importunities can actually bring it to pass
that what is a very little sin, or no sin at all, may be
turned into a mortal sin. The devil's object is, of course,
always real sin ; and he knows well that scruples are a
sure though a circuitous road to it, and not the less sure
for being circuitous.

But thirdly, the greatest fountain of these dishonour-
able unworthinesses is in ourselves. It is partly in our
soul, and partly in our body. This is the most practical
part of our subject, and must be considered at greater
length. The causes of scruples from our soul are c'/>aer
intrinsic or extrinsic. The intrinsic are five in nui ter.
26

302 SCRUPLES.

The first is the want of discernment in temptations, so
that a man does not distinguish between temptation and
consent. Of this I have spoken in the last chapter. It
is difficult to exaggerate its importance, as so many things
are vitiated by this unhappy ignorance. The second is a
hidden pride, which takes the shape of self-opinionated-
ness. There are few men who have not some pet opinions
to which they cling with an unreasonable tenacity. They
may be very humble in other matters. They may even
have a certain amount of intellectual humility. But they
cannot be made to discern the inordinateness of this
tenacity. If it be on a question of theology, ten to one
it becomes implicit heresy in a short time. They cannot
see the force of any arguments on the other side. They
unsuspiciously interpret in their own favour the mos<
plain counter-statements in theologians, whose authority
they dare not call in question. From conversations they
retire with an exactly opposite impression of the interlo-
cutor's opinion from that which he distinctly meant to
convey. Is there any subject on theology which we can
never discuss without either sadness or irritability ? We
may be sure we have got hold of a wrong opinion about
it. When this tenacity of judgment fastens upon a ques-
tion of the spiritual life, it becomes a source of scruples,
and a source which is itself poisoned by wrong disposi-
tions. Out of this came Jansenism and Quietism ; and
in the secret of private and even conventual life it is, aa
great writers tell us, unceasingly destroying souls. Safe
and happy is the man, if such an one there be, and en
joyable the office of his guardian angel, who, outside the
limits of the catholic faith and the approval of the Church

SCRUPLES. 303

has ik opinion which it would not give hiui Un minutes
uneasiness to abandon !

The third cause is an excessive fear of God's justice or
a distrust of His mercy ; for it may take either of these
forms. Thus if a man has laid to heart what has been
said before of looking on God as a Father, he will escape
this snare. It is not that scruples have any real worship
of the divine justice, which through an intellectual infirm-
ity leads them to underrate the riches of His mercy
Scruples have nothing to do with God for His own sake.
There is no devotional spirit about them, not even a mis-
taken one. The disguise may be varied almost infinitely,
but it is always self-love which is beneath the veil. It is
our fear, not God's honour, which leads us to exaggerate
the one attribute and to depreciate the other. The fourth
^ause is an inordinate anxiety to avoid even the appear-
ance of sin, and to have a full certainty that such and such
actions are not sins. We are impatient of tiie uncertainty
in which it has pleased God that we should often walk-
We would fain change the assurance of faith for the evi-
dence of sight, or the conviction of reason. God has made
faith the light of life. We wish for a light more unde
niable and more bright. He who loves God wishes to
avoid sin ; but to wish to avoid the appearance of sin is
by no means an infallible proof of sanctity and love. Short
of scandal, the saints have seen almost a shelter in the
semblance of sin. It is sin, and not the appearance of it,
which wounds God's honour. So that here again it is
self, our own outward reputation or our own inward
satisfaction, which we are seeking under the false pretence
of God's glory. I cannot repeat it too often, so that we
may be inspired with a greater disgust for these plague-

304 SCRUPLES.

spots; — there is lo search after God in scruples. Self ifi
their centre, and they revolve round it with odioas accu-
racy and fidelity. The fifth cause is an indiscreet auste'
rity, which shows itself in avoiding the company of others,
as if perfection consisted in being morose. There are very
few souls which can bear solitude. For the most part it
makes them a prey to sin instead of deepening their habits
of the presence of God. Hence it was that the old cono-
bites of the desert were so tardy in allowing the vocation
of those who thought themselves called to the hermit's
life. With people in the world the same principles are at
work in their measure. To shun society and shut our-
selves up, as if to keep out of the way of sin, to avoid
rash judgments, to do penance, and to practise prayer, is
a line of conduct which rarely answers. It is beset with
temptations, and an atmosphere of delusions is spread all
over it. In spite of the fertility of sin which we find in
temerarious criticism, and an ungoverned tongue, and an
irritable exacting temper, the majority of men sin less when
they are with others than when they are by themselves.

When the causes of scruples are in the soul, but are so
in consequence of external circumstances, they come either
from the permission of God or the temptation of Satan,
both of which we have already considered, or from convers-
ing with scrupulous persons, or reading books of spiritual-
ity and moral theology which a prudent director would
have prohibited our reading. These two last causes ex-
plain themselves, and need not be commented upon.

There remain two more causes, both of which arise from
the body rather than the soul. The first is a cold, melan-
choly, and hypochondriacal temperament, and the second
is weakness of the head. The scruples which come from

SCRUPLES. 305

a melancholy temperament are of all the most difficult to
cure. This is especially the case when persons of that
disposition are given to immoderate corporal austerities,
which seem at once to thicken the gloom of their minds
and to strengthen the obstinacy of their self-will. It is
very rare indeed that such a person is ever completely
cured. Indeed, as we shall see by-and-bye, complete cures
of this disease are altogether rare. These temperaments
have a constitutional aptitude for turning sweets into bit-
ters, and thus the very remedies re-inforce the malady.
The weakness of head is sometimes natural, and some-
times the result of inordinate study, eager application to
prayer, or a foolish abridgment of sleep. It is not easy
for a spiritual man to be guilty of either of these three
things without sin ; so that in this case even the physical
causes of scruple we prepare for ourselves, by our own
disobedience or the indulgence of self-will. What sight
is more provoking, and alas ! what more common, than
to see a devout man doing a right thing in a wrong way,
and maintaining he is right?

The signs of scruples may be inferred from their causes.
The first is pertinacity of will and way. It is very rare
indeed that a docile man is scrupulous; and when he is
so, his scruples are, for the most part, supernatural, and
therefore sanctifying. Disobedience is the counterpart
of scrupulosity. Pertinacity is the opposite of the spirit
of Jesus.

The second sign is a greedy desire to know our own
interior state. This comes to pass when self-love entirely
possesses us, as if it were a living demon. We are un-
able to use the words of Innocent the Third, to " explode
'he light and rash credulity of our conscience." We must
26* u

806 SCRUPLES.

know whether we are in a state of grace. We will not go
a step further till we do know. We must be told whether
the sin we have confessed be grave or not. We remain
dumb till our confessor has told us. God must give us
a mathematical certainty in moral questions, or we shall
faint. We will give up holiness. We will not try to
persevere. " Human reason cannot take in the infinity
of particulars," says St. Thomas, "so that our providences
must remain uncertain." This is God's will, but it is not
ours. A scrupulous man measures nothing by God's will,
but everything by his own. What ! are we not to know
whether what we are doing is certainly pleasing to God ?
No! says St. Bonaventure; "to know that we have cha-
rity is not necessary to salvation ; it is the having of it
which is so." Thus because we will have more light
than God's light, we walk in the darkness, and down the
precipice : our first step is in perplexity, our second in
cowardice, our third in sadness, and our fourth in irreme-
diable perdition.

The third sign is a frequent change of our opinion for
reasons of no moment, together with an inconstancy and
perturbation in action. We are not only prone to give
way to frivolous fears, but we are fluctuating and unequa-
ble in our very fears. We are disquieted and agitated by
them, even while we persist in caressing them. If we are
asked whether there be sin in such or such an action, we
answer that there is not. Yet we are frightened of acting
even on the conviction of our own reason, coupled with the
admonitions of obedience ; as if forsooth our soul were
worth so much more than the souls of others.

The fourth sign is what Descuret calls the feeding of
ourselves with extravagant reflections on the most trivial

SCRUPLES 307

circumstances of our actions. It belongs to the perverse
genius of scruples to give its attention to what is unim-
portant, and to withdraw it from that in which the whole
gist of the matter lies. In other words it is an essentially
impertinent spirit, in the etymological sense of the word.
It is always busy, but never at its own business ; always
at work, but its work is one of confusion, not of order.
It hovers among the flowers, lights upon them, turns
their cups topsy turvy, and empties them of their crystal
dew, but gets honey out of none of them Some animals
make a noise, not to express their emotions, but to give
vent to their self importance ; and scruples are like one
of these. They are neither of use ncr ornament; but
that they can tease is a grateful sign of power.

The fifth sign is a fear of sin even in actions which
the man himself perceives to be undeniably excellent
There is something amazing in the stupid ingenuity with
which the mind tries to make out a case against good
works, and something still more amazing in +,he power it
has of believing in itself, a belief which is not a whit
shaken by the manifest disbelief of the whole world
besides. Occasionally it makes us suspect that there is
truth in what som§ one said, that all men were mad, and
that what we agree to call madness is only a question of
degree. It is useless to argue with men in thi? disposi-
tion : our duty is to command them, our temptation is to
strike them.

The sixth sign is a habit of bodily attitudes, postures,
gestures, strugglings, half-aloud ejaculations, fidgets, ina-
bility to sit still, which an old Benedictine writer calls
Bimply ridiculous, but which modern manners would
rather deem distressing. I suppose the meaning of this

308 SCRUPLES.

is, alter tne lashion of Gorres' mystical explanations, that
the disease of the soul has spread out and transferred
itself into the organization, and has now reached the feet
and the finger-ends. This can only be cured as we cure
children who rub their eyes and bite their nails, whether
those practices come of idleness, eagerness, temper, or
abstraction.

The seventh sign is a perpetual hankering after our
past confessions, a wish to rake them up and overhaul
them, and see if we cannot find matter for some choice
scruplo in them. We do not know what is wrong about
them. We even shrink from specifying, lest the charm
should £0. But it is a delightful misery, a wretchedness
in which a scrupulous spirit revels. He fondles it, as an
Englishman nurses his beloved melancholy. We are
dying to make a fresh general confession, but not at all
inclined to take any great pains to prepare for it, or any
vigorous measures against present faults. But it esta-
blishes our empire over our director. We triumph over
his reluctance; and we go to it infallibly sure of one
thing, that what he mistakenly conceives to be our beset-
ting sin, is just the one sin, thank God, which does not
beset us. Any one but that. Certainly not that. And
all this while, we fancy that being in motion is necessarily
progress. Alas! we are like the sails of a windmill,
always on the move, but only round and round.

But the signs and developments of scruples are some-
what different, according to the causes from which they
proceed, and it is very important to notice this pheuo
mencn. Foi example, when the scruples arise from our
own temperament, they are generally the same. They
warn, variety Pertinacity sticks to the same things, and

SCRUPLES 309

sombre thoughts turn away from change. Thus, we
never get out of the identical round which we have paced
before, grinding the same clay, to make the same bricks.
Our mind is like a staunch protestant with his twenty-
times-answered objection, recurring to it again and again,
but carefully abstaining from the slightest allusion to the
answer. We have but one note. A parrot speaks plain,
but its sphere of conversation is extremely limited.
When, however, our scruples proceed from the devil, the
case is widely different. Then they are very numerous
and extremely variable. They are for the most part very
dishonourable to God, and fasten by preference either on
His ever-blessed attributes, or on the sweet .mystery of
the Incarnation, or on the soul-saving sacraments. They
are accompanied by a special darkening of the mind, a
sort of eclipse of faith, which is a favourite resort of the
evil one. We are numb and cold in prayer, oppressed
with an enervating languor, and desire exceedingly to
r^lax our rule of life, at least for awhile. When our
scruples are from God, they cease periodically, and cease
all at once, just as a porter slips off his burden and rests
it on a lamp-post. This is an infallible sign of their
being from God. It would not happen naturally. The
natural deposing of a scrupulous conscience cannot be
instantaneous and complete. Another mark of divine
scruples is that we go on towards perfection in spite of
them, or rather secretly because of them. The more they
tease us the more constant we are in our spiritual exer-
cises, the more gentle and forbearing with others, the
more obedient to our guides and superiors : and we look
to God the more smilingly with all the plenitude of a
filial confidence, which is equally clear of servile dread or

810 SCRUPLES

of presuming familiarity; and there is a look of pain on
our faces mingling with the smile.

All scruples, which are not supernatural simply turn
on two hinges, ignorance and pusillanimity. Let us do
away with the first and fortify the second, and these mise
rable emissaries of evil cannot harm us.

If we cast an eye upon the subjects on which scruples
fasten, we shall see still greater reason to turn from them
with mingled repugnance and contempt. First of all
there is prayer. In an unhealthy state of mind it seems
positively to attract scruples to itself. There is no" part
of it, mental, vocal, or ejaculatory, considerations, affec-
tions, or resolutions, which do not seem to be their
favourite food, and out of which they do not suck the
marrow of the divine life. The sacraments, especially
confession and communion, they haunt with a pertinacity
only equalled by their versatility. The dry communion
has its own family of scruples ; the fervent communion
another. With one man's confession it is the penance
they settle on, with another's the contrition, with another's
the narration, with another's the preparation. All is
equal to them ; for they taint wherever they touch. The
keen air which breathes round the heights on which vows
are placed does not impede the respiration of scruples.
They are little creatures, but robust ; and vows are fine
game and glorious food for them. Nothing is higher
than a vow, and that is not too high for them. Nothing
is lower than a fear of bodily discomfort, and that is not
too low for them. They are universal insects, and ubi-
quitous, worse than those that of old teased the African
into being a Manichee. Fraternal correction is a perfec*
luxury to them. It lies in the shade, and thore is no

SCRUPLES. all

strong light upon it, so that it is hard to see the scruple,
to be sure of it, and to get a good aim at it. The motives
of actions are their favourite hiding-places. Temptations
are their task. Imaginary cases are their romps and
games. And predestination is to them like the top of a
tree on which a bird sits and mocks us on a Sunday,
when it knows we have no gun to shoot it with. When
a thing is dangerous and yet not dignified, provoking and
yet it eludes us, despised yet it disquiets us, absurd and
yet we cannot resist being impressed by it, then thai
thing is like a scruple. We scorn it even while we hate
and fear it. Yet we are angry in our hatred, and uneasy
in our contempt.

From the subjects let us pass to the effects of scruples.
They are three, blindness, indevotion, and laxity. If
scruples proceed from ignorance, they also increase and
deepen it. They so perturb the mind that all spiritual
discernment is impossible. They confuse the boundaries
of right and wrong. They remove the ancient landmarks
between temptation and sin, between delectation and con-
sent. They ravel mortal and venial sic inextricably and
indissolubly together. They turn precepts into couusels,
and counsels into precepts. They call things by their
wrong names, and incur the prophet's woe of putting
bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. The blind can
neither lead the blind, nor walk safely on his own road.
The spiritual life is brought to a halt, which must be final
unless we can break through the enemy's lines. This is
the first effect of scrupulosity ; and like the first of Mon-
sieur le Maire's reasons for not firing a salute for Henri
Quatre, namely, that he had no cannon, it might super
ne.de the necessity of investigating the other effects, seeing

8152 SCRUPLES.

that this first she has brought us to the pass of a dead
halt. But as I am writing with an insatiable hatred of
scruples, like the wrath with which a man persecutes a
hypocrite, I shall proceed. Let them be anathematized
in every possible shape, as a heresy in doctrine, a lawless-
ness in discipline, and a corruption in morals.

The second effect then of scruples is indevotion. This
is as much as saying that the death of devotion is un
favorable to devotion. But how is it that they kill devo-
tion ? Devotion is peace, and they are trouble. Devotion
is single-minded, and they are legion. Devotion is docile,
and they are disobedience. Devotion worships God, and
they worship self. Devotion lives on holy food, and their
life is sustained by corrupting the food on which it lives.
They prevent the light of prayer from entering our per-
turbed minds. They interrupt the operations of the sacra-
ments, and even make them prisoners. They obscure our
faith, weaken our hope, and relax our charity. They
have all the bad effects of temptations without any of the
good ones. But listen to the story of the old Cardinal of
Vitry, out of Surius. Once upon a time there was a
pious Cistercian who was silly enough to resolve to win
his way back again to the state of primitive innocence.
What he went through, it would be long to tell. Suffice
it to say that he could not attain his object, and he felt
painfully how far he was falling short. If when he ate,
there was at all a nice taste in the food, he was miserable.
If the least indeliberate ripple of anger came over him,
he was distracted. If he fell into a trifling imperfection,
he magnified it into a mortal sin, and was crushed. From
this excess of scruples he fell into a profound sadness, and
from this sadness he tumbled, as all sad men do, down

SCRUPLES. 3 IS

the precipice of despair. All hope of his eternal salva-
tion being now gone, he ceased to frequent the sacra-
ments ; for as S. Bernard says, tribulation had begotten
pusillanimity, and pusillanimity perturbation, and pertur-
bation despair, and despair had slain. The monks were
broken-hearted. 0 how fervently they recommended
their poor brother to God ! They admonished him with
sage counsels. They rebuked him with sharp reproofs.
But all was in vain. Fortunately a saint was at hand,
the Blessed Mary of Oignies, and God permitted her to
work a miracle upon this poor son of St. Bernard, else
says the cardinal, he would doubtless have been damned.
For, he adds, I myself have known a man gash his breast
with a knife, because of scruples, and 'mother who for
the same reason shot himself through the throat and died.
It is scruples which produce wLat the French physicians
call theomanie, when they write the devil's side of the
lives of the saints. With so much justice did that grave
Dominican, Louis of Blois, say in his magisterial manner,
Excessive fear and inordinate pusillanimity, great sadness
and superfluous scruples, unquiet cares and entangled
solicitudes, — these things let the ascetic avoid.

The third effect of scruples is laxity. Was any man
ever known to be scrupulous in one thing who was not
lax in another ? The laxest of men are scrupulous men
It is very natural. In the first place, we feel as if we
had only a certain amount of conscientiousness, and as
we have expended more than was due on one thing, we
have all the less left for another. If we have spent it all
un one exaggerated duty, then we are without any for the
rest of our duties; and so actions slip through, which
would quite surprise us if we could get a good view of
27

814 SCRUPLES.

them, and see them in their true light. A man who has
overworked himself is always the most dissipated at re-
creation. Again, scruples are a tyranny and an oppres-
sion ; and submission has its reactions. These drive us
to seek consolations in worldly pleasures and natural
affections, in all that is bright, beautiful and tender round
about us ; and then it is the old story of Annibal's
soldiers at Capua. Moreover it follows from our blind-
ness that we fight the wrong foe, and then are too tired
to fight the right one; but surrender our sword. Not
knowing one thing from another, we strain at gnats and
pwallow camels. If we have got wrong by indiscretion
in austerities, now we are more wrong by being over head
and ears in comforts. A man who has no spiritual
pleasures will compensate himself by the abundance of
bis bodily enjoyments. And I have found one old writer
who says that scruples are a very common punishment
for soft and delicate living. And what is all this but
laxity ? And it is the scruples which the devil causes
that mostly set this way.

But it seems as if, historically speaking, laxity, an al-
lowable one, for the Church allowed it, was the first cause
of scruples. Rosignoli, in his Discipline of Christian
Perfection, says that scruples were unknown to the
ancient fathers ; and he attributes this to the old canonical
penances. Men satisfied for sin much more amply than
they do now. The Church Triumphant in joy has so
widened that it more than counterbalances the Church
Militant in sorrow, and so we live under the regime of
indulgences, while our fathers watched and fasted under
the reign of canonical penances. The relaxation of dis-
cipline, says Rosignoli, has produced a new feature in th*

SCRUPLES. 315

Church, namely, scruples. He finds no fault. No true
son of Ignatius ever blamed the Ohurch He only
mentions it as what he deems a fact. I will say nothing
more of his theory than that it is striking and plausible.
Gerson, who is the St. Thomas of modern spirituality, is
one of the first and greatest methodical writers on scruples.
St. Antoninus and S. Laurence Justinian come near to
him ; and among the quite modern men, Fenelon is by
for the sweetest and most admirable scruple-doctor.

Nevertheless there is the thing, if there is not the
name, in John Cassian : and something so like it in St.
Gregory and St. Augustine, that the portrait can hardly
be mistaken ; and Innocent III. comes still nearer the
mark. Some of the temptations in St. John Climacus
would in modern phrase certainly be called scruples. At
the same time it cannot be doubted that in mediaeval and
modern systems of spirituality scruples occupy a much
more important place than in the moral and ascetical
writings of the Fathers, or the anecdotical chronicles of
the saints of the desert, in the same way that the con
fession of venial sins and the whole question of confes-
sions of devotion do. The very term confession of de-
votion, which has quite passed into ascetical terminology,
would have sounded strange to ancient ears; though
here again I venture to suspect that there was more of
the substance of the thing than Gerson seems to allow.
However this is not the place for a history of ascetical
theology. The devotional instincts and phrases of the
Fathers are subjects of intense interest, about which there
is sufficient tradition for us to draw some interesting
inferences.

The remedies for scruples have been to a great extent

316 SCRUPLES.

implied in what has already been sa\.d. But a paragraph
may be devoted to their recapitulation. They find their
place naturally after the consideration of the causes,
signs, subjects and effects of scruples. As the want of
light is the chief cause of the disease, prayer is one of
its principal remedies. We should meditate on cheering
subjects, and cultivate a filial devotion to our Blessed
Lady. We must avoid idleness, and nerve ourselves to
bodily mortification. We must not easily change oui
director, or consult many persons, which is the way with
light-minded men and shallow spiritualists ; neither must
we talk much with scrupulous persons ; for the complaint
is catching. We must never reflect on our own scruples ;
but act as we see other good people act, remembering
that God is our Father, and the Church a benignant
mother. The precepts of God and the Church, says St.
Antoninus, were not meant to take away from us all
spiritual sweetness, as the excessive interpretations of the
scrupulous and timid would make them do, neither did
the Church ever intend by her commands to oblige any
man to drive himself mad. Therefore no precepts bind
in a time or place when the observance of them would be
considered absurd by a discreet man. But the boldest
thing of all was the practice of St. Ignatius. He made
a man, who was scrupulous about his office, recite it by
the sand of an hour-glass, and leave unsaid what was not
said when the sand ran down. And the patient was
cured. We must be careful to avoid the gestures alluded
to before, and not think we can drive a wrong thought
out of our minds by shaking our heads, twitching our
hands, or beating time with our feet. We must also
take the mild side in moral questions. Nothing breeds

SCRUPLES. 817

scruples so much as taking up x stricter theory than you
can carry out in the details of your practice. The man
who adopts a mild theory, does it consciously and on a
principle. He knows how far he can concede, and where
he can concede no longer. The rigorist simply cannot
carry out his views, either with others or himself; and
then being left without a principle to fall back upon, he
retires ever so far, as far as you will push him, into the
allowance of things plainly wrong, and if you will, much
further. The commandments of God, and the precepts
of the Church, and the reverence of the Sacraments, are
in much safer keeping in the hands of a mild theologian
than of a stern one : though of course all principles
have their extremes and all exaggerations are wrong.
But one remedy is as near a specific as anything can be
called a specific which does not cure an incurable disease,
but restores a man to a passable valetudinarian kind of
spiritual existence. And that is blind obedience. The
word explains itself. St. Philip says, that scruples may
make a truce with a man, when once they have beset
him, but a peace never. If wc have been once scrupu-
lous, and our scruples have not been from God, we shall
carry at the least the weakness of them and the nervous-
ness of them to the grave, and as Francesca of Pampeluna
implies, the relics of them into purgatory to receive their
final cautery. But blind obedience will cure us to all in-
tents and purposes. But how shall we kno\ "'t we are
really obedient? 0 most scrupulous of questio*. J ! But
it shall be answered kindly though briefly. By these
three signs. When you never say, 0 but my director is
not a saint, or, I would obey if I was scrupulous and if
this were a scruple, or, I would obev if I couli explain
27*

818 SCftTJfcLES.

myself to my confessor, so that he could really under-
stand my case.

There is quite x consent among theologians that scru-
pulous persons are allowed certain privileges ; and these
will come next under consideration. However much
there may be of their own fault in what they are now
Buffering, nevertheless the reality of their suffering entitles
them to certain privileges. These privileges however are
not rights only ; they are obligations also. If they were
not so, the invalids for whom they were intended would
never dare to use them. Their first privilege of scrupu-
lous persons is, that provided the}' are so instructed by
their spiritual guide, it is allowable for them to aet even
with the fear of sinning while they act. Indeed they are
bound to do so; and if they refuse, they wilfully commit
five separate faults, which approach more or less near to
the confines of venial sin, and not seldom overstep it.
They presumptuously set up their own opinion against
that of their director, which is pride and obstinacy. They
refuse him the obedience due to him, and which they
nave probably promised him. They hinder their own
progress in the spiritual life, and so hold themselves back
from the perfection to which their state of life, or the
grace already conferred upon them, obliges them. In
many instances they hurt their bodily health, and increase
the weakness of their head : and they cause their common
daily duties to be ill performed, inasmuch as they put
away from themselves the means of recovering that light
and peace and presence of Grod, which throw the lustre
of perfectior over our ordinary actions.

Their second privilege is that they may be sure they
nave not committed mortal sin; unless, with full adver

SCRUPLES. 319

'tmce, *hey can reverently swear that they have dune so
The reason of this is founded on the impossibility of the
will's changing unconsciously in one moment from exces-
sive fear to relaxation of morals. It is true that scruples
lead to laxity ; but they neither produce it by an instan-
taneous change,- nor do they introduce it into the subject-
matter of the scruple itself. The obligation, which is the
counterpart of this privilege, is that they should not con-
fess as mortal sins any such dubious actions, nor abstain
from their regular communions on their account. But in
order that this privilege should have place, one or more
or all of the four following signs should be discerned in
the conduct and disposition of the scrupulous person. He
should habitually loathe the sin to which he fancies he
has consented ; so that it may be clear what the normal
state of his will is upon the matter. As soon as he catches
himself, consciously, delaying on the image of temptation,
he should have made some sort of effort and experienced
some disquietude. If he has been thrown into an oppo: -
tuuity of committing the sin, and has not done so, we
may argue that his will is sound and whole ; and if he
cannot remember whether he was all the while fully aware
of the temptations that were besieging him, he is not to
be disquieted, but the doubt is to go in his favour.

The third privilege of scrupulous persons is that they
are not bound to examine matters so exactly as others.
Their infirmity is the reason of this. They are spiritual
invalids, and the life of an invalid is a life of dispensation,
by no less an authority than that of God Himself. The
probability is they will never have robust health after
this, and therefore the slow strength of convalescence
ehould be husbanded. A minute or reiterated examina-

320 SCRUPLES.

tion of conscience or of motives, on the part of a sorupu
lous man, would be equivalent to the tying and untying
of the bandages of a wound, where stillness of the limb
and compression of the hurt were just the two things
which the surgeon commanded. Neither, as before, ar
they to be allowed in such fretful examinations without
grave cause and the permission of their director. For this
privilege, like the rest, must be an obligation io the use.
We certainly care more for our bodies than for our
souls. Yet it is only reasonable that what we readily
submit to in the case of the one, we should at all events
undergo with a good grace in the case of the other. If
we have broken our collar bone, or got the cholera, we
know that we have a certain course of treatment to go
through which nature does not relish ; and we do not
quarrel with our surgeon or physician if he combines
firmness with his gentleness, if he makes us be still vbm
we want to stir, or will not let us have the food we have
set our minds upon. So we must make up our mind to
let our spiritual physician treat us when we are sick of
scruples. Wonderfully difficult as we think our questions
of casuistry to be, he will show us no sign of uncertainty
or hesitation ; so that we shall doubt whether he ha3
weighed it well or heard us rightly. He will give us no
reasons for what he advises ; for such reasons would only
be the seed-plots of new scruples. We must be very open
with him, though this will cost us not a little. At the
same time we must have a real scruple of exaggerating in
confession. This is a common fault of scrupulous persons.
They think they make sure of an adequate explanation
by an exaggerated one, which is not only an error, but
an error on the worst side of the two. Much less mischief
would come of an undue extenuation

SCRUPLES. 321

He will be very gentle to us while we are docile,
but short and abrupt when we are pertinacious. He
will not let us repeat things confession after confession,
though we are yearning to do so. He will make us
learn contempt of our own scruples from his contempt
of them; and this is as bad as Greek epigrams to a fourth
form boy. He will forbid us to confess scruples, and h
will accustom us to go to communion without absolution
which, with our morbid sensitiveness, is worse than great
physical pain. He will stint our allowance of time for
the examination of our conscience, and we shall conse-
quently go to it at first with such a nervous precipitation,
that before we have finished our act of the presence of
God, the time will have run out. He will also force upon
us a compulsory promptitude in deciding whether to act
or not in any particular case, unless the thing looks like a
sin at the very first sight of it. And when we go to him
with long faces, because we have made some mistakes in
consequence of acting on that principle, he will treat us
with hastiness, and our difficulty with contempt. He will
never let us know whether he thinks we are mending or
not, but will put off our questions with some unmeaning
common-places. Rest being of all things that of which
we feel the greatest need, he will allow us none, but fag
us unmercifully with endless' and distracting occupations.
When we have, as many have, scruples without being
habitually scrupulous, that is, when we are over exact in
one matter, and proportionately free and easy in another,
he will be severe to us, and will make us look only at our
laxity. In these cases we shall try his patience, and give
him much difficult and tiresome work, before he can dis-
charge us from his hospital. We are patients who give
v

322

SCRUPLES.

more trouble, and less credit, than any otheis with whom
he has to do.

Persons recently converted have scruples about their
general confession, either as to its fulness or its sorrow.
A spiritual physician will allow them only to reflect gene-
rally on their past sins, and very often will prohibit even
that. He will never allow them, in a state of scruple, to
dwell on particular sins, least of all on circumstances of
sins. For sadness is a snare which the devil ordinarily
sets at this stage of the spiritual life. When their scru-
ples have passed away, he may possibly allow them to
make a quiet general confession, and after that, never let
them mention anything else belonging to the past, unless
they are either wholly without scruple, or able to swear
that they have remembered some sin, which they knew tc
be both mortal and unconfessed. For the sin has been
already indirectly remitted; and we are not bound to the
material integrity of past confessions, with so grave an
inconvenience as a relapse into scruples. If such persons
tell their director that they shall be more at peace, if he
will allow them to speak, he will still refuse, and will tell
them to offer up that inward disquietude as a sacrifice to
God. It is a fearful evil to have a convert scrupulous.
] fear the chances are against his ever making a tho-
roughly good catholic. Scruples fill his veins with the
Biuret poison of self-opinionatedness, just when he has
eterything to learn and everything to unlearn, and obe-
d»-mce is his sole appointed means of thus changing his
w tole inner man. Still, it is our comfort to know that
tie Holy Ghost has reparatory ways and means, which
&Ude the definitions of our poor spiritual science, bu«

SCRUPLBS. 828

whose marvellous healing operations we are continually
witnessing.

But I dare not leave the subject without sayiug a few
words about reasonable scruples. There are such things.
Theology leaves no doubt upon the matter; and nothing
of what I have said will apply to them. A prudent fear
makes a scruple reasonable, just as a vain fear makes it
unreasonable. Thou hast commanded Thy command-
ments to be kept most diligently, says the psalmist. St.
Gregory writing to St. Augustine, of Canterbury, and S.
Clement V., resolving some doubts in the Franciscan rule,
admit of these scruples, and teach that they are to be
respected. For a man is not rightly called scrupulous,
who fears and loves God to a nicety, as the saying is, that
is, who strives to avoid every venial sin, and every least
imperfection. The filial feelings of such men, and the
tranquillity of their solicitude for perfection, show that
they are not scrupulous in the evil sense. There is such
a thing as a wide conscience, and it is wide from the want
of reasonable scruples. I only say this to prevent being
misunderstood. It were better always to use the word
scruple in a bad sense, and to call reasonable scruples by
their much truer and more honorable name of conscien-
tiousness.

Let not the imperfect fear, says St. Augustin, only let
them advance. Yet, because I do not let them fear, let
them not on that account love imperfection, or remain in
it when they have found themselves there. Only let
them advance as far as in them lies, and all is well.

God be praised ! we have done, done little certainly,
but all we can, for our scrupulous patients. Npw let up
leavo this dose ward, and gc out and breathe.

324 THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.

The present chapter brings us to the most vexed ques*
kion of the whole spiritual life, the office of a spiritual
director. There is no subject about which there is a
more harmonious consent up to a certain point, nor one
upon which beyond that point there is a greater dis-
crepancy of conflicting opinions. Writers, who live in
communities and are members of religious houses are
prone to exaggerate the director's office, to confound it
with that of a religious superior or a novice-master, and
to make it unreal to persons living in the world. For
when we make a man try to do more than he can, he in-
evitably ends by doing less, and the fault is ours, not his.
On the other hand, if we take vague or lax views of the
matter, we run the risk of coming under the censure of
the eleventh proposition of the Illuminati and the sixty-
sixth of Molinos, propositions unwittingly enunciated,
almost in the words condemned, by Catholics in common
conversation again and again. It is difficult, therefore,
to write of this subject with becoming moderation, and
yet it is as necessary as it is difficult. The present chap-
ter will contain no theory, but report fairly both sides of
the Catholic tradition as it is to be found both in ancient
books and modern, inclining perhaps a little to the ancient,
because on this point of asceticism as on most others, I
find in them an absence of exaggeration which I often

THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 325

desiderate in modern systems. My object will be to
prevent any opinion of my own escaping on the subject;
or if I fail in this, that it should be only such an expres-
sion of opinion as is unavoidable when an author is com-
menting on those who have gone before him.

The first thing is to be clear, and to be clear we must
sometimes be guilty of some repetition, which, however,
is a less evil than obscurity. I shall divide my subject
then as follows. First, I shall speak of the importance
of a director ; secondly, I shall show what is the meaning
of having one; thirdly, the necessity of him; fourthly,
the choice of him ; fifthly, the change of hiin ; sixthly,
the true Catholic idea of our intercourse with him ; and
seventhly, the suffering he causes us. It is not easy
always to decide under what head to arrange particular
things, but when we have handled these seven points, we
shall certainly leave no important question unconsidered

I am to speak first of the importance of having a
director. The practical and devotional system of the
Catholic Church is almost a greater trial of our faith than
its doctrinal system. No part of it has been more
attacked than this office of a spiritual director, not only
by heretics outside the Church, but by ill-read or luke-
warm Catholics in it. We may say, therefore, what we
are in the habit of saying of devotion to our B. Lady,
that this dead set against it is the measure of the devil's
dislike and dread of it. The vital energies of the Church
are often laid up very secretly and in unlikely places, and
the miserable instincts of heresy may often perform for
Catholics the same office that certain dogs are said to do
for men hunting for a particular sort of earth-nut. Thus,
heresy not only, gets our truth defined, but it indicates the
28

32G THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.

hidden virtue of each particular truth. It is certainly t*
take a yoke upon ourselves to have a director. But un-
less we are prepared for it, it is really useless, not
unfrequently worse than useless, to attempt a spiritual or
interior life. We may possibly be safe without a director,
if we choose to sit down in the dust and ashes of low
attainment ; but not otherwise. Not only do very good
people go wrong for want of a director, and that in ex-
ternal work for the Church as well as in the management
of their devotional privacy ; but it often seems as if the
amount of their goodness only increased the extent and
mischief of their error. This comes to pass in two ways.
In the one case it is self-love which is always making a
man drift imperceptibly away from high principle, so that,
undirected, he is continually settling down to a lower
level than the first aspired to, or actually believes him-
self to be occupying; and these settlements, like those of
a new house, are only discovered by the ugly irregular
cracks afterwards. In the other case, it is the want of
discretion which does the evil. It makes a man afraid
that his fervor is going, because his sensible ardor is less j
and this runs him first into singularity and then into
downright folly. These are the two ways in which
devout laymen are often broken to pieces, and cast aside
by God as unmanageable and misshapen vessels. They
who might have been a St. Edmund, St. Louis, or St. El-
zear, turn out to be thorns in the side of the Church,
wounding her as far as their littleness can go. This is
the reason why so many who live to reform abuses die
out of grace. It would not be surprising to know that
the Church had actually lost great saints by this mistake
When we look over the multitude of devout souls, what

THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 327

is it that excites our keenest regret ? It is the waste of
grace, it is the evaporation of high principles, it is the
brittleness of noble purposes; and by far the greatest
proportion of this is from the want of a spiritual director.
Can more be said to show his importance ? All the
saints are of one mind : to have i director, to be open
and full with him, and to obey him without scruple and
without bondage, behold ! this is half the battle of the
spiritual life !

Secondly, we must consider what the having a director
means, what it looks like as an external fact. It gives to
the life of a person in the world the similitude of a mo-
nastic life, as if they were members of an uncloistered
order. For it is impossible he should stop at being a
merely spiritual counsellor. Prayer and mortification,
temptations and the sacraments, are certainly very diffi-
cult matters, and give rise to a multitude of cases of con.
science, which it would be neither safe nor easy for us to
decide for ourselves. But I doubt whether external con-
duct and temporal affairs are not more prolific of casuistry,
and do not breed a much greater amount of spiritual per-
plexity. The adjustment of domestic duties requires as
much discernment as turning a point in mental prayer.
The exactions of society are far more bewildering to see
our way through, than the uncertainties of a cloudy voca-
tion. It is a marvel to me that persons should fancy that
a director in purely spiritual things, should be a person
of higher attainments than one who is to guide us in
spiritualizing worldly things. It seems to me that this
last requires so much more wisdom, so much more
science, so much closer a union with God. It is generally
the case that the proofs of authors who write good hands

328 TIIE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.

are more full of mistakes, than the proofs of those who
write bad hands; because the good hands are given to the
boys, the orabbed ones to skilful men. So it may be in
the matter of direction. A priest may be bold to direct
a good nun in a supernatural state of prayer, who if he
were humble and sagacious, would tremble to steer a
princess to perfection through the intricacies of town
court, and country life.

The spiritual life does not so much consist in a quantity
of devotions, ceremonies, beliefs, and peculiar exercises,
as in the supernaturalizing of our common life; in a
word, it does not consist so much in certain things as in
a manner of doing all things. Thus every temporal
affair, every worldly relationship, and every social duty,
brings its own case of conscience along with it, and,
though men can solve many of these for themselves at
once, and get an increasing facility of solving others, yet
persons in the world see so little ahead of themselves, be-
cause of the dust that is round about them, that there
must always remain a number of problems which they
must be content to leave to the solution of others. Noth-
ing then can be more shallow than the complaints which
men make of spiritual direction as meddling with tempo-
ral affairs. Its very office is to spiritualize these by in-
fusing into them supernatural motives, and helping the
blindness or the cowardice of self-love to bring them all
under the obedience of Christ, and into subjection to the
maxims of the Gospel.

No experience can hinder the astonishment which we
must all of us feel at occasional interior revelations of the
.mmense hold which the world still has upon us, when wo
have been serving God for years. Quite irrespectively of

THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL. DIRECTOR. 329

liu, worldly principles possess us. They have shaped our
minds, saturated our affections, warped our will, and in-
fluenced even the way in which our senses report external
objects. They lie imbedded in our language, and our
language tells upon our thoughts, and our thoughts in-
sinuate motive lightning-like into the very first steps of
our actions. Now spiritual direction, simply regarded as
a fact, is a witness against the world, and we commit our-
selves to its testimony. It ignores the world's own view
of itself in everything, treats its pretensions with con-
tempt, speaks of it as an imposture, and defines it to be
merely a vile criminal condemned to be burnt, and the
hour of its execution only uncertainly delayed. The
world, therefore, finds a voice in such men as Michelet,
and expresses its natural resentment with a strength
which is amusing. I say, natural resentment, because it
must necessarily misunderstand the nature of spiritual
direction, and it certainly exaggerates both its influence
and its extent. Direction must needs have a look of con-
spiracy to the world's eye, which is peculiarly odious.
Yet the view is not wholly incorrect; for what is the
Church but a divine conspiracy against the world ? More-
over, just as certain words, seemingly innocuous in them-
selves, drive lunatics into a phrensy, so the interference
of an ecclesiastical tie with natural ones exasperates the
world in a preternatural way. We Catholics must bear
this in mind when the world talks to us of spiritual
direction. The interior life is necessarily an unflinching
life-long variance with the world.

Our third consideration must be of the necessity of a
director. This is a most important part of our subject,
and I shall attempt to prove it from six different
28*

330 THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.

sources, from authority, from common sense, from the
nature of the thing, from the peculiarity of the spiritual
life, from the genius of the director's office, and from the
universality of the need.

The argument from authority may be divided into three
heads, the practice of the Church, the condemnation of
heresy, and the drawings of the Holy Ghost acknow-
ledged by orthodox writers on the discernment of spirits.

According to the teaching of the fathers, the office of
spiritual director is shadowed forth in Scripture in the
relations of Samuel to Heli, Peter to Cornelius, and Ana-
nias to Paul. But without stopping to inquire if the in-
ference is not somewhat wide, let us look at the undoubted
practice of the Church. In the dialogues of St. Gre-
gory, Peter asks if Honoratus had a director. Simeon
Metaphrastes says that when Pachomius wished to learn
the secrets of a more perfect life, he took Palemon for
his director. He also tells us that S. Chrysostom was
made spiritual director in his monastery, and the same
office was imposed on S. Dorotheus, who was also the
special director of S. Dositheus. St. John Damascene
was appointed spiritual director to the novices in his
Laura. Euthymius told Sabas to take Theoctistus for his
director. S. Dorotheus himself had been directed by
Seridus, so that the spiritual direction of Dositheus was
by that time a formed tradition. John the Prophet was
directed by Barsanuphius ; and George the Arsilate was
the spiritual director of St. John Slimacus. Theodore
the Studite put himself under the direction of the monk
Plato, who had been formed by the direction of Theoc-
tistus, which he thus handed on, as S. Sabas handed on
(tie same tradition in his monastery. S. Romuaid was

THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 331

directed by Marinus, and Peter Damian by Leo the Her-
mit, who he says was not merely his " accomplice" and
his friend, but his father, doctor, master, and elected
lord, who so excelled in the profundity of spiritual coun-
sels that his words were oracles to all who consulted him.
St. Antoninus was so famous a spiritual director in hia
day that he was called the Father of Counsels. John
Cantacuzene tells us, and this brings us to the spiritual
direction of laymen in the world, that when the emperor
Andronicus was near his death, he asked for his director,
and when the master of the palace sent a monk whom the
emperor did not know, he burst into tears and insisted
upon having his own director. The emperor Manuel
made Macarius, whom he designates as his spiritual
director, one of the executors of his will. When the
emperor John went to the council of Ferrara, he took
with him, it is said, his spiritual director Gregory, a ceno-
bite who was afterwards patriarch of Constantinople, as
Pontanus mentions in his notes to the history of George
Phrantzes, where he shows that these men were not mere
confessors but spiritual directors in the strict sense of the
word. The modern tradition is too well known to make
instances necessary.

In accordance with the practice of the Church have
been her condemnations of those who taught an opposite
doctrine. In 1623 the Illuminati taught that there was
no need of a spiritual director, but that each soul was to
trust to the sacred inspirations of the Holy Ghost, and to
follow them at all hazards. This doctrine was condemned
by the Spanish Inquisition whose judgment is applauded
by theologians. Molinos held that the Catho/ic notion
of a spiritual director was ludicrous and new (doctriua

332 THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.

risu digna et nova in ecclesia Dei), and this proposition
was condemned together with the sixty-eighth, in which
he dispenses spiritual men from direction as able to guide
themselves by their own private spirit.

Madame de Chantal recognized by certain signs that
St. Francis of Sales was the man whom God had destined
to be her spiritual director ; and mystical writers give us
certain indications as being assuredly from the Holy Ghost
in this matter. One of them is an indefinable attraction
which in our best times we never distrust, and which im-
pels us to repose entire confidence in some servant of God,
and forms a union of grace between his soul and ours.
Another is a peace which spreads all through our soul
like a quiet inundation, whenever he speaks to us, resolves
our doubts, or dissipates our scruples. He seems as it
were to magnetize us with a holy joy, which is entirely
free from any natural esteem or personal attachment t6
himself. Another is a certain ardor or vehement desire
to be all for God, which comes over us when we are with
him, or is inspired in us by his words; and another is a
certain impression of mingled respect, obedience, and do-
cility, which makes us see God, and God only, in him and
his guidance.

The second argument for the necessity of a director is
from common sense. Cases of conscience are continually
arising; many of them are very difficult, and these diffi-
culties can only be surmounted by practice, experience,
study, and authority. The generality of men obviously
are without these requisites. That of authority is espe-
cially to be dwelt upon. Knots which cannot be untied
must be cut ; and this authority alone can do. We must
consider also the proverbial impossibility of judging in

THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 338

>ur own cause; and if in addition to this we w^igh well
the character of self-love, with which unfortunately we
have only too intimate an acquaintance, we shall be con-
vinced that the place, which a spiritual director occupies
in the ascetical system of the Church, is nothing more
than an expression of her maternal common sense.

The third argument is very like its predecessor; it is
from the reason of the thing. The interior life is, as we
shall see by and by, full of delusions and dangers. This
being so, the analogy of all other arts and sciences would
go to prove that we must have a pedagogue, some one to
teach us, to keep us in the right way, to prevent our
losing time and name in making old discoveries, to hinder
our following the fatuous fires which have led others into
absurdity or ruin, to show us how to observe, to operate,
or to experimentalize, to test our results, to correct our
processes, and to cheer our fatigue. The spiritual life is
a daily dying to self and a daily carrying of the cross ;
and who has the courage to go on chastising himself all
his life long, if he has not some one by his side at once
to animate and moderate, prohibit or suspend, his holy
cruelty ? We have all of us great confidence in ourselves ;
yet none of us have sufficient self-dependence to enable
us to attach much weight to our own consolations of our-
selves. No man can console himself. He does not
believe in himself with sufficient infallibility. Consola-
tion is a social thing. And can any one, until he is
actually fabricated into a saint, live an unworldly lif?
without consolation ? A man is always very wise and
right in his own eyes ; yet I doubt if the man is to be
found who can habitually act without scruple on his own
ideas No man has invariably light to find out when he

d34 THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.

is wrong, nor patience to wait when he ought to wait, and
to refrain himself in trial. Our faculty of deceiving our-
selves is uncommonly versatile; and prayer, suffering,
and action, the three departments of a director, are from
their own nature the favorite provinces of self-deceit. To
walk alone is impossible; and to wish to walk alone is
against humility, and the lack of humility bars all pro-
gress, even in merely moral excellence. Moreover expe-
rience shows, however little it was to have been expected
beforehand, that a man without a director runs at last
into mere external practices and a barren formality. For
a man only grows interior in proportion as he gains the
habit of renouncing his own favorite views, or wills, or
ways. Hence, as a question of metaphysics, it must result
partly from the nature of man's mind and partly from
this subject of the spiritual life to which it is applying
itself, that a man who stands alone will have an exceed-
ingly limited range of vision, and will often see objects
dim and distorted even within that narrow range.

My fourth argument has been almost anticipated in the
third. It proposes to show the necessity of a director
from the nature of the spiritual life. All animals suffer
when they are called upon to live out of their own elt
ment. The suffering is brief, because death mercifully
interferes. Now the spiritual life is, to a fallen soul, like
the life of a fish out of water. First of all it is suffering,
and secondly, it cannot be sustained except by super-
natural interferences. Life in a battle with eyes blinded
with smoke and ears bleeding with the percussion of the
artillery, or life in a diving-bell with eyes starting, ears
ringing, and pulses galloping, are pictures of it. Its
character is supernatural and can only be administered to

THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 33 ^

dj scientific study. Temptations taset it in invisible
multitudes, some silent' and some clamorous. The delu-
sions that dazzle it are as various and as changeful as the
colored flashes from a pigeon's neck. It requires as many
consolations as a sick child, and a disburdened spirit is
such a necessity to it that it cannot live without it.
When we can see in the dark, breathe in a void, and
grasp the impalpable, then can we manage ourselves in
an ascetic life; but not till then. Godinez in his Praxis
of Mystical Theology says, "Of a thousand souls whom
God calls to perfection, scarcely ten respond to the call,
and of a hundred whom God calls to contemplation,
ninety-nine stop short. Hence I say, many are called but
very few are chosen. For besides other great difficulties,
almost insuperable by our frail nature, and which surround
this business of perfection, one of the chief causes of the
failure of so many is to be found in the fewness of spiri-
tual directors to guide our souls, with the pilotage of
divine grace, over this unknown sea of the spiritual life."
A fifth argument for the necessity of a director may be
drawn from the nature of a director's office. His business
is not that of a pioneer. It is rather to go behind, and
to watch God going before. He must keep his eye fixed
on God, who is in the dimness ahead. He does not lead
his penitents. The Holy Ghost leads them. He holds
out his hands from behind, as a mother does to her totter-
ing child, to balance his uncertain steps as he sways over-
much, now on one side, now on another. He is not td
have a way of his own, to be applied to every one. This
is what a novice-master does with his novices. He leads
them by an acknowledged tradition, and animates them
With the definite fixed spirit of the order, and models

. ft5 THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.

them, as a faithful copyist, on their sainted Founder
But this is not at all the function of a spiritual director
He only knows that we are in the way which is right for
us when he sees God in front. Then he keeps us super-
stitiously in the Blessed Foot-prints left behind. He
looks after our advance, and when he sees God increasing
the distance between Himself and the soul, he spurs on
the latter, discreetly and gently, yet firmly and uninter-
ruptedly. He gains as much light from prayer, as from
his knowledge of character and his personal observation
of ourselves. His oflBce is very supernatural, but it is
very natural also; and he will not direct us well if he
overshadows the natural by the supernatural. It would
be a safer mistake if he attributed a light to his natural
penetration and sagacity, the divination of his own genius,
which was really due to a gratuitous and supernatural
discernment of spirits, than if he took that for superna-
tural which was really natural. It is a perilous thing to
make a superstition of direction. Hence a director would
rather say supernatural things in a natural way, than emit
oracles, observe odd intervals of silence, say pompous ob-
scure words, or talk grandiloquently about God having
put things into his mind. To such an one it is almost
strange that his guardian angel does not impatiently break
Bilence and say, "All things are God's gifts : go to, simple-
ton ! and help your neighbor to the best of your abilities
with a good-humored diligence, and neither make so much
of it, nor throw a mystery around it." Yes, above all,
let us have no mysteries in direction.

Our director must also look to his own purity of con-
science and disinterestedness of conduct, so as to be open
to receive supernatural lights and helps when God chooses

THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 337

He will not talk too much to us, nor care if he be a down-
right trial to us by his silence. God's past work in each
will be the exemplar of his own work for that soul. He
will found all he does and all he endeavors in the evi-
dences of God's past grace. How can such an office as this
be a mere ornament or accessary ? Must it not be at least
an integral part of any system, of which it is a part at all ?

But sixthly, a necessity must be a very real necessity,
if it is universal. Now what class of persons trying to
be good does not stand in need of a director ? Poor fel-
lows who are trying to extricate themselves out of habits
of sin, who have everything to learn, everything to begin,
who have no arms and yet the enemy is down upon them,
with traitors in their own souls, yet who can scarcely dis-
cern the treachery until its fatal consummation by some
fresh act of sin, blind and blundering, weak and excited,
cowardly and presumptuous, deceitful and disappointing,
tiresome and exasperating, yet with a great thick mantle
of God's dearest love and glorious converting grace thrown
all over them, — do they not need a spiritual father ? and
who is the man who would not be a father to them, and
die for their grand immortal souls, if he might, and if
our Lord had not already taken all that luxury for Him-
self and left us scarce a share ?

Are beginners in a perfect life in less need ? See what
difficult work they have to do, and such utter inexperience
in the doing of it. No man can learn a trade without an
apprenticeship. And this is such a trade ! Discourage-
ment would be the ruin of them, and yet none are so
liable to it, and none also have so much which might rea.
sonably discourage them. There they are, among the
ruins of themselves. All around them are strewn broken
29 w

888 THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR

resolutions, vows grown cold, distracted prayers, eccentric
scruples, weak-minded enthusiasms, slovenly sacraments,
plans that have suffocated each other for want of room,
and all the inexpressible variety of tarnished tawdry
thoughts and things and aspirations, scattered about like
the finery of a burnt playJiouse in the muddy street.
And here is the devil marching down upon them, and
they must have all in order in a trice, and fight for their
lives; for it is no other kind of fight with them just now.

The need of the advanced is hardly less. They are
just entering on more supernatural ways. They are
crossing the frontiers into a jealous empire. Are their
passports in order? Have they nothing contraband in
their luggage ? They should be advised to travel only
with light baggage. How the difficulties multiply ! They
cannot speak the language, nor catch the manners of the
people. They are always in scrapes, and do not know
what is wholesome to eat. They give offence, and they
take offence, where none was intended on either side.
They may get used to it all in time. Meanwhile, their
delusions become at once more numerous, more secret,
more contradictory, and more intricate. The devil dis-
plays greater ability than before, and the human spirit has
arisen, crowned himself king, and commenced an usurpa-
tion which, all things considered, bids fair to last. The
exercise of humility becomes more needful at every step,
and it seems as if nothing but a director could supply a
healthy, continuous, and refreshing exercise of that invi-
gorating grace.

As to the perfect, I know nothing about them. But 1
see men as trees walking, and they seem to reel to and
6ro, as if divine love had intoxicated their human frailty.

THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 339

They seem always at cross purposes with others, and often
m plump contradiction to themselves. Occasionally, they
appear not quite to know which road to take, or what to
do. At other times they look stolid and unmeaning, and
lifeless as the glistening caverns in the moon. Then again
I see the air filled with balloons, and men in them taking
every kind of indiscreet liberty. They get out and walk
upon the clouds, or put on a pair of wings, and fly
through sunset, or shoot up like a rocket, and dissolve iD
spangles, or balance themselves on a star, or hide them-
selves in the Milky Way, or sail in opposite directions, as
if each soul had a wind at its will. Not unfrequently I
see them come down to the earth, in the poorest para-
chutes, or without them, with appalling velocity; and
though I have no notion what their other movements up
in the siderial space may mean, I feel satisfied that this
parachute work is extremely dangerous, and unexception-
ably wrong. How their director is to reach such people,
I cannot tell, but I am sure they need one ; and it is not
every one who, like Catherine of Genoa, and Claudia of
the Angels, has the Holy Ghost for sole director. I sus-
pect some of the parachute souls dreamed He was direct-
ing them, and were fatally mistaken.

May I not from these six considerations legitimately
infer the necessity of a spiritual director ?

Now for the choice of him : this is my fourth point.
There are various kinds of directors. One writer divides
them into human, spiritual, and divine. He calls a
human director one who goes according to the spirit of
the world, and the maxims of human prudence. A soul
is very unfortunate when it falls into such keeping aa
that. A spiritual director he defines to be a man who

340 THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.

leads us into mortification and prayer, but has not clear or
consistent views of spirituality ; so that he sometimes
makes mistakes, though God for the most part blesses his
purity of intention, and does not allow our souls to suffer
loss. A divine director is a wholly supernatural man,
who lives always in a flood of light, and guides us as if
he read our hearts, and prophesied our future. Then
directors have very various gifts. Some have a benediction
for beginners, others for the more advanced, others for the
perfect. Some are quite wonderful in their management
of newly-converted persons. Some have a peculiar apti-
tude for educated and refined people, who make sad blun-
ders with the poor. Some revel in cases of vocation,
while others are not at all at home in them. Some have
the magnificent grace of making the laboring poor interior,
and supernaturalizing poverty and sufferings. Some are
expert at scruples, others with interior trials. Some seem
inevitably, with the holiest intentions and purest science,
to involve their penitents in fancies and delusions, making
them sentimental and unreal ; while others have the gift
of disenchanting the deluded, and of making their peni-
tents at once spiritual, and yet natural common-sense
persons. Hardly any one is a good director for all, and
not often for one person all his life long. This must be
borne in mind, because it has so much to do both with
the choice and change of directors.

As to the choice of a director, what has been just said
shows that we must be by no means precipitate. It is
one of the most serious questions of our life, and the evil
of delay is nothing to the mischief of precipitation. It
must be the subject of long and fervent prayer, not with
the foolish expectation of any miraculous token of God's

THE OFFICE 3F SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 341

will at the last, but to get the grace to choose with dis-
cernment, in faith, and without human respect. We
must ask the special intercession of St. Joseph, the patron
of interior souls. Whenever a real attraction to a devout
life becomes manifest in our souls, and is more than a
transient caprice of fervor, then is the time when God ia
calling us to choose a director, if we have not already got
one. We must look around us, see if we have the inward
signs I mentioned earlier on, and then carefully separate
all natural feelings from the choice. We must let it be
either the deliberate selection of a prayerful and satisfied
mind; which I like best, or the result of supernatural
attractions, which I like least, because it is less under the
control of cool resolve and sober calculation.

It seems singular to couple the change of a director
with the choice ; yet this must be my fifth point. On
the whole, and speaking quite generally, the change of
director is an evil. Yet we may err in four ways ; either
by changing too soon, or by changing at all, or by chang-
ing too late, or by never changing. There is nothing
more perplexing than the distinguishing the right times
from the wrong in this matter. The only thing to be
said is that the change of our director is so grave a step
and fraught with so many consequences, that God hardly
ever brings the difficulty to our doors without giving us
a more than common light along with it. If we have
chosen without deliberation, we may have the less scruple
in changing. When we find we do not advance, and are
not conscious to ourselves of any abatement in our earnest
desire to advance, and we think we perceive some special
hindrance in the method of our direction, then we may
at least take other advice, and entertain the question of
29*

842 THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.

a change. Perhaps it will come to nothing. But whik
he would be a very indiscreet adviser who should tell U9
to make light of such a change, I do not know that I am
not more afraid of some who represent it as the hugest
evil of the spiritual life, the mother of delusions, and
tantamount to final perdition. I suspect that so far is it
from being desirable that we should stick so scrupulously
to our director (I speak diffidently), that when we have
lost our liberty and ease with him, he has lost his grace
for us ; and that without fault on either side. Spiritual
direction must be free as air, and fresh as the morning
sun. Neither temptation nor scruple, neither mortifica-
tion nor obedience, must be able to infuse into it one
element of bondage. The moment they do, let us break
the direction, and take the consequence. For the end
of spiritual direction in all stages of the interior and
mystical life is one and single and invariable, and it is
liberty of spirit. The opposite doctrine does not belong
to the wisdom of direction, but to the superstition of
direction.

This thought brings me to my sixth point, which is
the true catholic idea of our intercourse with our director.
The first characteristic of this intercourse must obviously
be openness. Our sins and imperfections, the working
of our passions, our inward disorderly inclinations, our
temptations and the secret suggestions of evil which haunt
us, the style of architecture of our castles in the air, our
good works, penances, devotions, lights, and inspirations,
must all be open to him, not with superstitious minute-
ness, which degenerates into frivolity, but to such a degree
as will enable him to be a fair judge of our interior con-
dition We must also be obedient as well as open. We

THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 343

have chosen him for his spiritual doctrine, whereby he
knows the ways of God, the tempter, and the human
spirit ; for his holiness, whereby he is zealous to advance
those whom he directs; for his experience, whereby he
gains a readiness in applying principles to practice ; and
for his aptitude at direction, natural, supernatural, or
both combined. Hence we must see God in him : for
this is the meaning of obedience. We must submit our
judgment to him ; for his science is his primary qualifi-
cation, St. Theresa says our director should be learned
and devout; but that if we cannot find both in one man,
it is better to have the learning without the devotion,
than the devotion without the learning. And of all the
Saint's wise words, and they are innumerable, she nevei
uttered one that was more like herself than that.

Unhappily this obedience to our director is a stumbling-
block to many of us. I cannot think it would be so, if
we had a clear idea of it, or which is the same thing, an
unexaggerated idea of it. What shall I say to clear your
thoughts without lowering them ? In the first place a
spiritual director is not a monastic superior. Our obe-
dience to the last must be minute, to the first general. The
superior's jurisdiction is universal, the director's only
where we invite it, or he asks it and we accord it. The
superior commands us unconsulted, the director's com-
mands arise out of our own questions. Nigronius said
he never augured well of a man who made his director
take the initiative in spiritual direction. The superior
turns into precept matters of supererogation, a director
must have forgotten himself if he attempts anything of
the kind. If we disobey a superior, we sin; it would

344 THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.

require very peculiar and unusual circumstances to maka
disobedience to our director any sin at all.

Now, the wrong use of a right thing is always bad.
But the confounding of a spiritual director with a religious
superior is fraught with specially pernicious consequences
to our souls. If we are living in the world, and aiming
at perfection amid the freedom of its distractions and pur-
suits, our undue subordination to our director is out of
keeping with the rest of our life. It is a discord. It is
a foreign element, which will cause either corruption or
explosion, according to our temperament. It unmans us ;
and what a host of evils there are in that one word !
Moreover, it plays the game of some one or other of the
many forms of spiritual idleness, and secretly nourishes
our self-love. We like to think we are obedient, and to
feel that we are being governed. It is agreeable to us to
live in the bustle of a perpetual spiritual administration.
We hold endless cabinet councils, and grow pompous and
absurd, uneasy, mysterious, and conceited. We fancy
ourselves great people. We magnify our tiny experiences.
At last we grow soft, effeminate, sentimental, feverish, and
languid. In a great measure it does away with the
seriousness of our relations with God, and leads us
unawares into a kind of irreverence. We throw things
upon our director which we have no power to throw upon
any one but God. We lose the sense of God's imme-
diateness, which is the secret of false spirituality, and
ends in moral helplessness.

It is a monstrous thing to say ; but it is unhappily no
uncommon sight to see a soul made for high things and
now gone all astray, simply because a false notion of the
kind of obedience due to its director led it to surrender

THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 345

itself indolently to an idea of safety, as if it had trans-
ferred its conscience. We cannot get rid of our respon-
sibility. In point of fact, it is physically as well as
morally impossible to put our director into the position of
a monastic superior, so as to make the famous words of
the saints about blind obedience as true of the one office
as the other. Let us ponder the words of St. Theresa.
u My directors told me that what was a venial sin was
no sin at all, and that what was mortal was only venial.
This did me so much mischief that I do not think it
superfluous to mention it here as a caution to others. For
before God, as I plainly see, I was not excused by this.
It is enough that a thing is not good, that we should ab-
stain from it; and I believe that God on account of my
sins permitted my directors to be deluded and then to
delude me, and then that I should delude many others,
by telling them what my directors told me. I was in
this blindness for seventeen years." Schram, the Bene-
dictine, quotes the passage, and adds, " Tremenda, theolo-
gia de ignorantiis sepe vincilibus." Yet it is, as all truth
is, theology as salutary as it is tremendous.*

Furthermore, as it must be the care of our director to
watch and be slow, and thus not to interfere with the
work of God in our souls, so also must it be our care not

* The saint's words axe worthy of notice. "I thought," she says,
" that I was not obliged to more than to believe them," (her direc-
tors.) Yo pensava che no era obligada a mas de creerlos. Vida cap. 5.
This remarkable passage has, as might be expected, attracted con-
siderable notice. It has not only been commented upon by Schram
in his Theologia Mystica-j but also by Arbiol, the Franciscan, in his
Desenganos Misticos, lib. iii. cap. 9, where he is treating of the de-
lusions of those souls who appear to be far advanced in prayer, and
rery little advanced in the practice of solid virtues.

846 THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR

to interfere with that work by exaggerating our relations
with our director, and putting upon him what does not
belong to the austere simplicity of his office. We must
not go to him too often, which is impatience and loss of
time. Neither must we seek any extraordinary interview
with him without thought and prayer. We must be sure
of what we are going to ask, and that it is worth asking,
and real, and not an impulse, or a first thought, or a wild
idea, or a conclusion we have jumped to in a hurry and a
heat. We must really be serious about these things ; for
they touch God. We must not prolong our interviews,
nor say more than is necessary. Indeed our conversa-
tions with him, at least in brevity, pertinence, and fore-
thought, should ever have some analogy with prayer.
The penitents who talk most are the least obedient.
"Believe me," said M. Lantages, superior of the Semi-
nary of Puy, "it is not the long confessions that are the
good ones." Neither should we go to our director merely
for consolation ) this is greedy, and unmanly. Spiritual
direction is meant to elevate people : yet how often it de-
bases them ! This comes of our not remembering that it,
like all things else in the direct service of God, must be
thoroughly reascnable.

It only remains for me to speak of my seventh point,
the sufferings which our director causes us. Our obedi-
ence to him, to be reasonable, must allow itself to be
modified by time/ place, person, circumstances, country,
proficiency, character, both his and our own, and com-
panions. Yet even thus it will be a source to us of many
Bufferings. I need say the less about them here, because
I have enumerated them when speaking of patience. The
mortification of our judgment is always painful, but it in

THE- OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 347

pre-eminently painful when it concerns devotional tastes
The discomfort of faucying ourselves misunderstood is not
slight. His scanty words are intolerable to self-love.
When he sees we lean too much upon him, he will draw
his arm away, and we shall falter. He will leave us
sometimes to ourselves to teach us to walk, though it may
be at the risk of a sinless fall. He knows we shall never
be brave for God, if we have not a certain amount of in-
dependence of character, even in spiritual matters. He
will know how to combine this with humility. One of
his greatest and most precious secrets is, how to keep
intact all the rights of lowliness, without letting it swerve
into poor-spiritedness and a craven spirituality.

We should beware of driving our director into much
speaking, either by acting on his human respect or his
natural kindness, or wearying him by importunity.
There is after all little to be said where growth is so slow
as it is in the spiritual life. A conversation between an
oak and the woodman would surely soon come to an end,
if growth and development, blight, birds, bees, and ivy,
were the only subjects of conversation, and it was not al-
lowed to pass into idle and irrelevant matters. For an
oak does not make an inch a month, either of trunk or
twig, and it could hardly expect to have its bark brushed
and varnished, and picked out with gold. So the soul is
not revolutionized every day. To-day is yesterday's
brother, and to-morrow's also. What is there to be said ?
All this talking leads to our making new starts in new
directions after each palaver. It is taking up devotions
and throwing them down again, like a child restless amid
his toys. It is heaping practices upon practices, and

848 THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.

getting the fruit out of none of them. It is applying
remedies, and then applying others before the first have
had time to take effect. It is driving God. It is play-
ing rashly with the proverbial delusions of spiritual com-
munications. It is clouding God, and forcing Him up to
the surface of the soul, when He is pleased to bury Him-
self in the depths of it.

It is better to go through the little vexations of our
director's slowness and silence, than to run the risk of all
these mischiefs. And none of these sufferings bring any
real feeling of bondage along with them. Bondage is the
only thing to dread. All else surely may be borne in so
grave a cause. Why ask more of our spiritual than of
our bodily physician? The office is analogous, though
the subject-matter is so different. And then see what
blessing we have : safety, victory, inward peace, the merit
of obedience, and a good man's prayers.

I have seen a geranium brought up from the cellar
when the spring-time came. It had been a mild winter,
and in the warm darkness, it had grown an unwholesome
growth ! It hung down like a creeper, with lanky whitish-
yellow shoots, and miserable jaundiced leaves. The
growth had been abundant ; and it would not be true to
say that the abundance was the only good point about it;
for it was the worst point of it all. There was but one
course. It was cut down, planted out, and flowered the
latest of its brethren that year, and very poorly after all.
Such is the soul that has been over-directed; and the
spring-time is eternity. Alas ! in that matter there comes
the cuttiug-down, but there cannot come the planting out.
I never knew or read of any one who had a director, and

THE OFFICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 349

then who suffered because he was too little directed. The
souls damaged by over-direction would fill a hospital in
any decently large town.

I have written with a host of authorities before me :
and this I believe to be in the main, the mind of the most
approved writers in the Church on this most difficult
question. I have sought only one thing, not to swert*
from their even-handed moderation.

30

350 AUIDrNG SORROW FOR SIN.

CHAPTER XIX.

ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN.

It is a very troublesome thought that so many persons
have lofty and sincere aspirations after high things, and
so few reach them ; that, as Godinez says, so many are
called to perfection, and so few answer to the call ; that
so many begin ardently and prudently, and yet die leaving
their tower unbuilt; that so many, says Arbiol, are con-
versant with mental prayer, yet never come to perfection.
It is a troublesome thought, because it sets us calculating
the doctriue of chances about ourselves; and id less selfish
moods, calculating the loss of glory to God, w»4 of power
to the Church. For every perfect ascetic is a veritable
fountain of power in the Church, however hidden, un-
known, or mean-looking he may be. There is certainly
an analogy between the waste of grace in the spiritual
world, and the waste of seeds, and flowers, and fruits, in
the natural world. Yet there is poor consolation in a
oarren analogy. It may serve for a book of evidences ;
but we shall get little light out of it, and less heat. It
does not content us We must pursue our troublesome
thought further, until we get some wisdom or warning out
of it.

Now the universality of this phenomenon, when re-
flected on, leads us to suppose that it has some common
cause, which is one and the same in everybody. In the
spiritual life, a variety of causes will produce a similar

ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN 851

effect. But here is a case which holds equally among
men of the south and men of the north, among born
Catholics and converts, in all countries and in all times,
frustrated vocations to perfection. The more we think of
it, the more irresistible seems the conclusion that there ia
one common cause ; and if so, how much it imports to
discover it ! For a long time, I thought it was the want
of perseverance in prayer; but then there were so many
instances in which the theory broke down. I must have
gone against the whole tradition of mystical theology, if I
maintained that mental prayer was at all necessarily con-
nected with perfection. Nothing grows upon us so much
as the wide distinction between the habit of prayer and
the gift of prayer. We may find men who have not
missed a meditation for years, and yet who seem to have
no growth about them at all ; nor even any tenderness,
which ought to be the infallible product of persevering
prayer, if the prayer is right in other respects. They are
perhaps critical to excess in judging others, or they are
wanton and ungoverned in their loquacity; and month
follows month, and year year, and these unbroken prayers
do not seem to tell upon either of these faults. And can
any faults be named more fatal to piety than criticism
and loquacity? It is as if these men prayed in some
way outside their souls, as if their prayer were an adjunct
of their spiritual life, and not its heart's blood. These
inoperative meditations and unreforming prayers, are very
melancholy things. But, having tried to establish my
theory, I found it was out of the question to attribute
these failures to a mere want of perseverance in prayer.

Then I cast about for another guilty cause ; and I took
it into my head that these failures might be owing to a

3d2 abiding sorrow for sin.

want of bodily mortification. Why did I not rathei
suspect the. absence of interior mortification? F3r thk
reason. Because bodily mortification seemed so rare, that
I was afraid interior mortification was put forward as a
means of evading bodily mortification. There ts some-
thing honest, satisfactory, and intelligible about bodily
mortification; and I preferred dealing with it. More-
over, I could not but see that bodily mortification almost
always either brings interior mortification along with it,
or makes a man easily convertible to it. I had more fear
lest the outward should be wanting than the inward.
The style of the times obviously warranted this fear. In
truth, I found that incalculable mischiefs might be put
down to this want of corporal austerity ; but that it could
not be brought in guilty of these failures in perfection.
First there was the awkward fact, before observed, that
those who made most of the austerities practised them
least. For it is obvious to put innocently impertinent
questions to men who preach strong doctrines. I was
astonished how little they did who talked so much. This
was discouraging at the outset of the inquiry. However,
further investigation seemed to show that although there
could be no growth without austerity, the growth did not
depend upon the austerity. Men mortified themselves
and yet seemed to stand still. Much evil was hindered,
and much killed. Souls were kept good, who might have
fallen away. But they did not seem to shoot ahead.
Austerity purified and prepared, and went no further.
This was expressed by S. Ephrem, when he quaintly said
of his holy friend, that the dirt of his body cleansed away
the filth of his soul. I must be understood, however, to
be speaking of clean macerations. Tn a word, it appeared

ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN. 353

that in the soul bodily austerity was medicinal rather than
nutritious; and that it sometimes made men irritable,
morose, and hard-natured, as medicine will do. All
honor to it : but it does not secure by itself our growth
in holiness.

What was to be the third object of my suspicions ?
They were awakened by perpetual hints and innuendoes
dropped by St. Francis of Sales, which observation seemed
more and more to corroborate. I therefore charged with
these failures in perfection that form of indiscretion, which
consists in taking too many things on ourselves, and so
acting in an eager, feverish, and precipitate manner,
which St. Francis calls empressement. The circumstances
of modern life appeared to beguile men into it more than
ever. Its miserable consequences were patent on all
sides. It vitiates all it touches, and weakens what is
most divine in all our spiritual exercises. It confuses
the operations of grace, and turns the fruit of sacraments
on one side. Our duties are all disorderly, untidy, and
ill-tempered, because they rush pell-mell from morning
till night, treading on each other's heels, and turning
round to reproach each other. Now let some men be
found, who have no duties but those which their state of
life renders indispensable, whose day is roomy and large
quiet, and old-fashioned, everything in its place, and all
things clean. They must have but few spiritual exer-
cises, and they must make much of those few, do them
slowly and punctiliously, value recollection, and have no
signs of tepidity. Many such were to be found, but on
close inspection growth in holiness was anything but the
invariable rule with them. Their slow way of doing
things, their roominess, so to call it, was an immense
30* x

354 ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN.

blessing to them, and fraught with many graces. Ne^er«
theless they were for the most part a phenomenon. Un-
less all the spiritual books in the world have conspired to
be wrong, there is no such thing as a dead level in piety,
on which people can pace up and down without eithe;
advancing or going back, like a comfortable terrace, with-
out a single inequality in it, as if it was laid down and
levelled for the purpose of Office being said upon it. All
theory is positive that there is no such thing. Yet by
some means these good men have contrived to make it or
to find it. Explain it who will, there they are pacing up
and down, thoroughly good, truly edifying, yet on a level,
and a low level too. I am not going out of my way to
account for it. It overthrew my theory; and with all
the good will in the world, and out of love for St. Francis
of Sales, to give precipitation a bad name, I was obliged
to return a verdict of Not guilty, at least on the charge
of causing all these unhappy failures in perfection. But
the oftener a man is baffled the more obstinate he groWb.
Here were three failures, and a determination to try
again.

This time I was longer at fault than I had been before.
I did not so much cast about for a theory, as watched and
waited; and by slow degrees so many facts obtruded
themselves upon me that a sort of induction from them
was unavoidable. At first it took this technical shape,
that all men are anxious to get clear of the Purgative
Way of the ascetic life, and enter into the brightness of
the Illuminative or the sweetness of the Unitive, and that
all failures in perfection, or so nearly all as to satisfy the
requirements of a general rule, are owing to this one
thing. Nothing ever presented itself to make me doubt

ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN. 355

the substantial truth of this conclusion. But the Purga-
tive Way is a wide thing, a very comprehensive term.
Would experience allow us to narrow it, without making
it too narrow to bear the superstructure that was to be
built upon it ? The thing was to wait for more facts, so
as to have a larger and safer induction. The result was
a persuasion, which I venture to record under correction,
that the common cause of all failures in perfection is the
want of Abiding Sorrow for Sin. Just as all worship
breaks down, if it is not based on the feelings due from
a creature to his Creator, just as all conversions come to
nothing which are not conversions from sin, just as all
penances come to nought which do not rest on Christ, just
as all good works crumble away which do not rest upon
our Saviour, so in like manner all holiness has lost its
principle of growth if it is separated from abiding sorrow
for sin. For the principle of growth is not love only, but
forgiven love.

This persuasion was strengthened in me by the gradual
observation that the absence of abiding sorrow for sin
adequately explained all the separate phenomena, that
had induced me to accuse and prosecute, first the want of
perseverance in prayer, then for the lack of bodily austeri-
ties, and last of all, the precipitation of having too much
to do. For this abiding sorrow would produce the same
continual feelings of our own unworthiness and of our
dependence upon Grod, which would be the fruits of per-
severing prayer. It would engage us in perpetual warfare
with and disesteem of self, and would keep us in the
spirit of penance, and that without intermission, which
bodily mortification would do excellently but intermit-
kingly. It would give us all the quietness and gentleness

556 ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN.

with self, the sweetness and forbearance with others, the
patience and slowness with God, which we should gain
from the absence of precipitation. The salient features,
therefore, which had drawn suspicion upon these things,
were all reunited in this abiding sorrow for sin.

Meditation on the mysteries of our Blessed Lord, and
on our Lady's life, threw still further light on this sup-
position. First of all there was this remarkable fact.
Jesus was sinless, by His own intrinsic sanctity, the un-
utterable holiness of his Divine Person. Mary was sin-
less, by the gift of Jesus and the pre-eminent prevention
of His redeeming grace. Yet the characteristic of the
lives of both was that they practised penance in an heroic
degree, as if penance might be holy without innocence,
but not innocence without penance. The theological ways
of accounting for the penance of Jesus and Mary led to
more light. It appeared that their life of penance con-
sisted in some measure in an abiding sorrow from first to
last. The first moment of conception was the full use
and complete energy of reason. But reason dawned upon
a wonderful, deep, and fixed sorrow. From that instant
till the moment of death the sorrow abided with them.
It put itself in harmony with every kind of feeling. It
adapted itself to all circumstances. It never darkened
into gloom. It never melted into light. It lived on the
present, and the clear view of the future was part of its
present, and it never let go its hold of the past. It was
keen and distinct in the soul of Mary, while she magnified
God in the exultation of her Divine Maternity. In the
ever-blessed soul of Jesus it dwelt amid the fires of the
Beatific Vision, and was not consumed. It was a beauti«
fui mystery of perennial sorrow.

ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN. 357

The characteristics of this sorrow were that it was life-
long, quiet, supernatural, and a fountain of love. These
features of it are very much to be weighed and observed.
For when we come to look at ourselves, whether it be the
rare few who have preserved their baptismal innocence
and whose souls are only charged with venial sins, or the
great apostles, unrivalled amidst the saints, confirmed in
grace, and whose grace was superabundant, or the mass
of men whose best estate is that of repentant and return-
ing sinners, we shall see that no sorrow is possible to us
which shall unite these four characteristics except the
abiding sorrow for sin. It is as much life-long with us
as anything can be. It is a prominent part of our first
turning to God, and there is no height of holiness in
which it will leave us. It is the interior representation
of our guardian angel in our souls, and the disposition and
demeanor he would fain should be constant and persever-
ing in us. It is quiet. Indeed, it rather tranquillizes a
troubled soul than perturbs a contented one. It hushes
the noises of the world, and rebukes the loquacity of the
human spirit. It softens asperities, subdues exaggera-
tions, and constrains everything with a sweet and gracious
spell which nothing else can equal. It is supernatural.
For it has a natural motive to feed upon. It is all from
God, and all for God. It is forgiven sin for which we
mourn, and not sin which perils self. And this very fact
makes it also a fountain of love. We love because much
has been forgiven, and we always remember how much it
was. We love because the forgiveness has abated fear.
We love because we wonder at the compassion that could
so visit such unworthiness. We love because the softness
of sorrow is akin to the filial confidence of love. Thui?

858 ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN.

abiding sorrow for sin is the only possible parallel in oui
souls to the mysterious life-long sorrow of Jesus and
Mary; and the fact that sorrow clung to them character-
istically in spite of their sinlessness seems to show how
much of the secret life of Christian holiness is hidden in
its gentle supernatural melancholy.

Moreover, it was impossible not to perceive that under
a variety of names, sorrow, repentance, fear, and the like,
Scripture speaks of an abiding penance, of fearing always,
of fearing forgiven sin, of passing the time of our sojourn-
ing in fear, of the sorrow which is unto life. It never
contemplates the possibility of the dispositions of repent-
ance ceasing; for the single passage of St. John about
love casting out fear is hardly to be understood of this
life. So that there seems to be a precept of always sor-
rowing for sin analogous to the precept of always praying,
and subject to the same kind of difficulties in its interpre-
tation. Now what does this abiding sorrow of Scripture
mean ? Certainly not austerities ; for they are occasional
and intermitting. Certainly not sadness, which is sorrow
with self in it, and where God should be. Certainly not
human melancholy, which is either a consequence of sin,
or a fruit of idleness, or a disease of a deranged bodily
system. Thus Scripture, forming the last link in that
chain of proof, which led me to charge failures in perfec-
tion on the want of abiding sorrow for sin as their single
common cause, a cause uniting in all men with the other
causes which affect this or that individual, brings me also
into the consideration of my subject. We must first
ascertain the nature of this sorrow.

It consists in an abiding sense that we are sinners,
without at all bringing up to remembmnce definite and

ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN. 8(»9

particular sins. On the contrary, it would not only avoid
such a picturing of sins as a matter of prudence, but it
would be quite foreign to its genius to think of it. It is
too much occupied with God to do more than to fix its
eyes on self with a touching, patient, reproachful look,
'ft consists also in an undoubting and yet an unceasing
prayer for pardon. If it were argumentative it might
say, that a sin was either forgiven or was not forgiven,
that forgiveness was an instantaneous act, whether it were
gratuitous or conditional, and that to ask forgiveness for
what is forgiven is to approach God with unmeaning words.
But David gives it a voice, Amplius lava me, Wash me
more and more, 0 Lord ; and the whole Church through-
out the world has adopted his Miserere, and is continually
upon her knees, crying, Amplius lava me. 0 how the
soul yearns for that Amplius ! Theologians tell us that
the fires of purgatory do not amid their other severely
benignant offices burn the stains of sin out of our souls j
because in truth there are no stains there ; the Precious
Blood obliterated them in the act of forgiving them. Still
there are the fires. So there are the fires of that Amplius
in the soul. It is a thing to be felt rather than accounted
for, to be cherished rather than defined.

It consists also in a dread of forgiven sin, not so much
because of purgatory, though it is far from affecting to
be above these mixed and lower motives — poor soul, how
should it venture to think itself above anything ! — but
because of the way in which old habits revive, and the
species of old sins haunt the imagination, making it often,
to use the forcible words of Scripture, like a cage of un-
clean birds. It dare not go to sleep with the seemingly
dead enemy by its side. Through the cold night, and

&0<) ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN.

on the strewn battle-field, it wakes and watches, and in a
low voice sings the triumphs of grace, that it may repel
the approaches of slumber. It consists also in a growing
hatred of sin. This growing hatred is a different thing
from the startled horror of our conversion to God, when
He tore the mask off its face, and turned the fierce full
light of His Spirit upon it, exhibiting its loathsome
deformity and preternatural hideousness to our soul that
trembled under the idea of His judgments, while our flesh
was freezingly pierced with His sharp chastening fears.
That hour has passed away. It was a baptism, but He
held us in His arm while He baptized us, and we did not
perish. But it is an increase of the spirit of Gethsemane
in our souls, a communication from that solitary mystery
beneath the olive trees, when even apostles slept. It is
the Sacred Heart touching our hearts, and leaving faint
stigmata of His own life-long sorrow upon them.

It consists in a growing sensitiveness of conscience as
to what is sin. Ineffably bright as is the sanctity of God
and His refulgent glory, to gaze upon it strengthens our
soul's eye rather than dazzles it. We see more clearly
what is imperfect, unworthy, and dishonorable in actions
We discern the complication and mixture of motives more
distinctly. And entangled in a confusion of infirmities,
a very inevitability of imperfections, where self-love can
find no single resting-place for the sole of its foot, we
grow in a divine sadness, which humility and faith will
not allow to be disquietude. With all this, and in the
way of consequence, our personal love of our most
blessed Lord increases, and love of Him as our actual
Saviour from sin. It is our joy to " call His Name,
Jesus, because He saveth His people from their sins/'

ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN. 361

There are two classes of persons trying to serve God \
those who do not feel this abiding sorrow for sin, and those
who do. Or it would be more accurate to say that the
one class -has not got it, and does not feel the want of it,
and the other either has it, or wants to have it. Various
causes hinder men from feeling this want ; the most com-
mon is tepidity. Lukewarmness is incompatible with this
holy sorrow, and cannot co-exist with it. But the charac-
teristic of such men is the absence of spiritual growth,
and their perseverance in the ways of devotion doubtful.
On the contrary, those who have not this sorrow, but feel
the want of it, have this consolation, that the very feeling
of the want is a sign of a healthy state, or at least of
returning health ; though it may be even with them that
lukewarmness has brought their necessity safely home to
them. Many men are unhappily without it, from their
having suddenly or prematurely taken too high a place in
the spiritual life, left the purgative way too rapidly,
vitiated their palates by mystical books, or undertaken
penances too hard for them, and works beyond their exist-
ing grace. If we insist upon our souls growing upwards
before they have taken root downwards, they are sure to
be stunted. Little birds that try to fly before they are
fledged, fall from the eaves, and are hurt or killed, accord-
ing to the height from which they fall. The love of such
men for our Blessed Lord is cold and poor, and anything
like ardor looks to them mere high-flown romance, or a
wordy enthusiasm. That the sorrow, however, is not
always sensible, is no proof that it is not habitual. Yet
sensible sorrow, like sensible sweetness, is a great gift,
and to be moderately desired and asked of God. Alas !
we may often wish to feel as we did when God first turned
SI

362 ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN.

as to Himself. 0 that I was as in former days, says
Job. Yet the question is, how far this is possible, and
if possible, how far it would be well. The sorrow we
must cultivate is of another sort.

The apostle tells us there are two kinds of sorrow; one
of them is sorrow unto death, the other a sorrow unto
life. The sorrow unto death is more like self-vexation
than genuine sorrow. It is often the consequence of an
exaggerated human respect. It is a sorrow for sin which
causes fresh sins, by filling us full of irritability both to-
wards others and ourselves. It is without any trust in
God, without any realization of grace, and leads to no
amendment of life. This is the sorrow unto death in its
earlier stages, during which it may occasionally mingle
unperceived with the dispositions of excellent and interior
persons. Its later stages are the preparations of despair;
and its consequence, worked logically out, is final impeni-
tence, and an unfavorable doom.

The sorrow which is unto life is of two kinds. The
first is that which works conversion. It is impetuous,
outwardly demonstrative, full of self-revenge, greedy of
mortification, impatient with too easy forgiveness, and
eaten up with a desire to suffer, which is not as yet really
rooted in the soul, an appetite for pain which is more a
nervous craving than a gracious hunger after justice, so
that it must not be satisfied. This sorrow is naturally
transient; for it has an end to accomplish, and then it
goes.

The other is the sorrow which we should wish to retain
with us always. As I have said, it is life-long, quiet,
supernatural, and a fountain of love. Hence it is affec-
tionate, and not reproachful. It knows how to deal gently

ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN. 362

with rfelf, without dealing indulgently. It :s humble, and
neve/ downcast at falls. Strange to say, its fear of hell
is infrequent, faint, and intermitting ; yet it is never, not
for a moment nor even in extasy, without a solemn, reve-
rential fear of God's inscrutable judgments. The celestial
raptures of our Lord's Sacred Humanity interrupted not
for one moment the reverential fear with which His Body
and Soul were penetrated. It is possible for the fear of
hell to be so strong and so lasting, as to be a spiritual
disease. Moreover, this abiding sorrow is devotional. It
inclines to prayer, brings pleasure in prayer, and though
a sorrow, is itself a sweetness. It is very confident, and
its confidence rests solely upon God. It lives by the
fountains of the Saviour's Blood, weeps silent tears like
one who is continually hearing good news, and is hopeful.
This affectionate sorrow delivers us from many spiritual
dangers. It throws a tenderness into our whole character,
and makes us deep and pliant. It brings with it the
unction of that special gift of the Holy Ghost which is
named " piety.' ' It hinders our getting into a formal
way both of doing our ordinary actions and of going
through our accustomed devotions. The sap subsides in
the trees as the cold weather comes, and the chilly nights
quicken its descent. So is the gradual declension of
fervor in our souls. But this sorrow saves us from it; it
is the sap of our spiritual lives, whose character it is to
be perennial, and its foliage evergreen. The leaves may
be cold-crumpled and frost-bitten; but the tree is still
green. It also saves us from making light of venial sins,
and is always stopping, even when we know it not, little
untruths, teasing jealousies, wounded conceits, and sins
of the tongue. For it is the sorrow which was the

864 ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN.

Lord's mantle. We are holding the sacred fringe, and
virtue goes out of Him into us, and the issue of the
bleeding soul is stayed.

The fruits which it produces in us are of equal import-
ance with the dangers from which it preserves us. It
makes us charitable towards the falls of others, and this
reacts upon ourselves in the way of an increase of
humility. It involves a continual renewal of our good
resolutions, additional reality and fortitude in our wish to
do more for God, and an increasing power of perseverance,
with more stability and less effort. It blessedly dimin-
ishes our taste for the world and its pleasures. It flings
the charm of heaven around us, and disenchants all other
spells. It leads to a more fruitful, because a more reve-
rent, humble and hungry use of the Sacraments ; and no
grace that comes to us is wasted while this sorrow pos-
sesses our souls. It grinds all grist in its mill. There
is nothing which makes our endurance of crosses more
patient or more graceful : nothing which gives us so calm
and fertile a pertinacity in works of mercy to others. We
are always flooded with inward tenderness, so that there
is not an ache or pain in one of Christ's members
which does not awake our sympathy, and find its account
in our sensibility. Devotion to our Lord's Passion is
meant for the daily bread of Christian thought, and it
keeps fresh and new in this sorrow as in a genial atmos-
phere. Our perceptions of the invisible world become
finer and keener; we are more liable to be excited by
spiritual interests, and more alive to the soul's wants and
dangers; and there is about us a liveliness of thanks-
giving, which only shows the copiousness of the hidden
joy in this apparent sorrow. It is as though the happy

ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN 365

resurrection of the flesh were partially anticipated. The
coils and drags fall off our soul, and we have a new
facility and promptitude for everything which has to do
with God.

But how are we to get, or if gotten how keep, this
dear and precious sorrow ? Need I say that we must
make it a subject of special prayer ? We must not give
way to disgusts with common devotions, tame books,
ordinary practices, and common-place direction. We must
avoid changing our director hastily, and prepare carefully
and leisurely for sacraments and make much of them. We
must have a great devotion for the conversion of sinners,
and be very simple in the accusation of ourselves in the
confessional. We must be jealous of anything which
hinders our constant growth in personal love of Jesus.
Whatever else stops for awhile, often inculpably, this love
can never stop. There is no end to it. It partakes of
God's infinity. Nothing is above it in kind, nothing co-
equal with it in degree. We must never consciously seek
consolation as a primary object either in sermons, direc-
tion, devotion, voluntary bodily inflictions, or spiritual
conferences. We must not seek to be consoled in a sor-
row which is our treasure, and which we are fain should
abide with us not only until the day of this world is far
spent, but until the new eternal day has veritably dawned.
And if we be in the illuminative, or even in the unitive
way, never let us part company altogether with medita-
tion on the Four Last Things.

But particularly we must be upon our guard against

iwo foolish mistakes, which betray an ignorance of the

first principles of the interior life, and which nevertheless

are not uncommon. The first mistake is the putting

31*

366 ABIDING SORROW FOR SIN.

lightly away of movements of remorse and inward up
braidings, as if they were mere scruples. Directors, in
a hurry to get rid of their penitents, or anxious to keep
them calm at all costs, often cast them into this delusion.
But it is a serious misfortune as well as a grave mistake.
It may be some old root of bitterness which is causing
the twinge, or some secret reserve with God which has
found voice and is upbraiding us. What shall we lose if
we leave these things still in us ? Or it may be that our
Lord is doing to us something like what we read of
various saints, that He is squeezing the last drops of bad
blood out of our hearts : and are we to meddle and un-
clasp the kind firmness of his fingers from the aching
place, when if we knew our own good fortune we should
see that that ache is worth kingdoms to us ? A cloud is
always a cloud ; but it is wisdom to know when the cloud
that is overshadowing us is the Holy Ghost.

The other mistake, is thinking it uncatholic to take
serious and religious views of things. Converts are very
liable to this from the ordinary laws of reaction and
recoil. So also are priests, seminarists, and religious, as
thinking seriousness professional. Levity will not make
us happy, and I never read the life of a saint who thought
it fine to speak lightly, or who was given to do so.
They said little, and what they said was invariably grave.
I believe it was their gravity that made them cheerful.
There is something under-graduate about this levity. It
ia partly the conceit, and partly the vulgarity of the
spiritual life.

I am confident no vocation to perfection will be frus-
trated by a soul in which there is this abiding sorrow for
sin. It is the quintessence of devotion to the Sacked
Heart, and it is there that we must seek it.

THE RIGHT VIEW OF OUR FAULTS. 367

CHAPTER XX.

THE RIGHT VIEW OF OUR FAULTS.

The sweetest of all the sweet doctrines which St.
Francis of Sales was inspired to teach us, was that which
regarded, the right view of our own faults. The conside-
ration of it falls very naturally into this place. On the
one hand, we have got clear views of temptations and of
scruples, and on the other, a perception of the necessity
of an abiding sorrow for sin. That sorrow, as we now
understand it, can be no source of scruples, but a right
view of our own faults must fall in with and be a part
of it. Unfortunately our faults form a great portion of
ourselves, and it is plain that the management of them
can be no slight affair in the spiritual life, and that our
management of them depends very much upon the view
we take of them.

Indeed, much of life depends upon taking right views
of things. Time is saved. Mistakes are hindered.
Sometimes we chance upon a short road to heaven. Not
that the short roads are always the easiest. Strictly
speaking, none are short and none are easy ; but they
may be comparatively so among themselves, and all are
full of pleasantness and peace. What do we most abound
in ? Certainly, in faults. Perhaps a right view of them
may be a short read to heaven. It will at all events,
help us to make a road of what looks like a series of
barriers.

S68 THE RIGHT VIEW OF OUR FAULTS.

If a good person were asked to give an account of
himself, it would probably be somewhat after the follow-
ing fashion :

I am constantly doing things which are wrong in them-
selves. It is not that I do them on purpose, or with fore-
thought. I hope I do not commit any venial sin deliber-
ately. It is the great object of my life, next to loving
God, to avoid that. Yet neither on the other hand can I
say that my falls are altogether surprises. They seem so
at the time, but not when I come to look back upon them.
The sense of guilt grows upon me in the retrospect, rather
than reproaches me at the moment. And, worst of all, I
see no visible improvement in myself in this matter.
Again, when I do things which are outwardly right, nay,
which are generous, and involve some amount of sacrifice,
I continually detect some low motive in them. I cannot
6hake off human respect. Self-love seems inseparable even
from my very thoughts, my very sacrifices. It is not as
if this happened now and then, but it is going on all day.
It runs parallel with the stream of life. I believe I have
never done a good work in my life. A spoiled good
work is my highest point.

But in prayer I am quite a different person. I seem
to have entered another world. I am at my ease and at
large. The aspirations of the saints appear to be mine.
Desires of suffering, an appetite for calumny, tremendous
penances, ardent resolutions, heroic deeds, all rush upon
me at once, and express precisely what I am feeling most
gtrongly in my interior life. Bold words, from which at
other times I should have shrunk with reverence, fill my
prayers. I plead the right of saints, and urge their peti-
tions, and demean myself as if I was one. And all this

THE RIGHT VIEW OF OUR FAULTS. 369

before God ! I do not mean to be insincere. I feel, or 1
fancy I feel, what I am saying. Yet when 1 3ome back
to the level of my daily practice, I feel as if my prayer
had been all an hypocrisy from beginning to end. I wish
I could think that it were not so. There is no sort of
proportion between my prayer and my practice. The
first is always running ahead of the last, and so absurdly
far ahead !

For when I come to practice, generosity in suffering is
just what I cannot realize; and as to mortifications, they
are simply to me what punishments are to a child. It
would be as surprising to others as it is humiliating to
myself, if I were to mention what little things I do for
God, and what a laborious effort it takes to do them, and
what immense pain it is. How I complain, and tremble,
and put it off, and hunt for a justifiable dispensation, and
sink back into comfortable spirituality, as soon as the
momentary effort is over. The revelations I could make
of my own pusillanimity, would be almost incredible.
But I was grand at prayer in the morning, grand as a
martyr at the block in front of one of my own castles in
the air.

The upshot of the whole is, that I seem to myself to
be getting worse and going back. My sensible fervors
have gone, and I do not see that they have left formed
habits behind them. I wish I could name any one im-
perfection that I could say had been effectually weeded
out, or any one venial sin, whose crowded ranks had been
thinned, or that I could show anything beyond a scratch
here and there on my ruling passion. All that I can see
is that I make as much effort as I used to do, perhaps
irore, but apparently with less effect.

370 THE RIGHT VIEW OF OUR FAULTS

Now is a person who gives such an account of himself
in a good way ? Let me think. On the whole, Yes ?
I found my judgment on two things; the evident desire
for perfection with which he began, and the fact of con-
tinued effort with which he ended. Starting then with
these two things, he may reasonably take a consoling view
of the rest. But let us speak of ourselves. Our faults
are very numerous and very great : true. But is there
anything to surprise us in them ? From our own know-
ledge of ourselves and from what we knew of the mea-
sure of our grace, are they not what might have been
expected ? At times we have thought of our future hum-
bly and prudently, was it very different from what has
actually taken place? The fact is that neither in the
kind nor in the degree of our faults, is there anything
astonishing : and if nothing astonishing, then nothing dis-
couraging. But this is not going far enough. There is
something astonishing, and the astonishing thing is that
our faults have not been greater. When we weigh our-
selves against our temptations, our estimate of things is
very different. How unlike ourselves we have happily
been in many things ! This can be nothing less than the
work of grace. Instead of being peevish because we have
been so bad, the wonder is that we have been so good, and
the fear is lest we should be elated in seeing it.

Common-sense also has a word or two to say on the
matter. The faults are committed. They have done
their harm, and gone to God. There is no good in being
cast down. There is much good in not being so. There
is no good in being cast down ; for the faults cannot be
recalled. We may fidget about the circumstances, and
worry oursdves by thinking how easily the evil might

THE RIGHT VIEW OP OUU FAULTS. 371

have been avoided. But the fault itself lost us some of
our peace; why should we now lose more in self-vexa-
tion ? Discouragement moreover is no part of penance.
It atones for nothing, satisfies for nothing, merits nothing,
impetrates nothing. It does not make us more careful
next time. On the contrary oy dejecting us it makes us
at once more open to temptation and less masculine in
resisting it. But on the contrary there is much good in
not being cast down. We shall be less teased with the
imperfection in ourselves, and more occupied with the
infidelity to God. To fall and not be out of spirits with
it is not only to keep the courage we had, but to gain
more. It is the humblest course, and on that account
the most acceptable to God. It is the most reasonable,
and therefore has the greater blessing.

Sometimes a saint gives us a new thought, which for
what we can see is not to be found in any of the spiritual
writers before him. It is his contribution to the tradi-
tion. When he has said it, it sounds so common-place
that we wonder we never thought of it for ourselves, like
the sayings of all great minds. Such a thought is that
of St. Francis of Sales, the man of many new thoughts,
when he taught us that if in the spiritual life we often
fall without perceiving it, so it must be true that we as often
get up again without perceiving it. It sounds like a
pleasantry j but if a man who has the infelicitous habit
of disquieting himself about his faults, would once in a
way take it for the subject of his hour's meditation, ho
would suck from it the very marrow of spiritual wisdom
I should spoil it, if I enlarged upon it.

We may imagine that we take a sufficiently low view
of ourselves, and estimate our attainments, as humility

372 THE RIGHT VIEW OF OUR FAULTS.

would approve. But any disquietude about our faults,
which is more than transient, or a temptation, is a proof
to us that we have secretly been putting a far higher
price i>pon ourselves than we were warranted in doing.
And this turning king's evidence against us is the only
good such disquietude ever does, and that is as it were in
spite of itself. But does not God occasionally show us
fearful things in the depths of our own souls ? Some-
times a family with the sunshine of domestic peace and
virtue all around it has tenanted an ancient house for
years, when lo ! the necessity of some repairs leads to the
discovery of secret dungeons and horrible places under
ground, with traces of misery suffered there, and of guilt
perpetrated. So it is in our own souls. The access of
some unusual temptation, the accidental waking up of
some long-dormant passion, or a flash of supernatural
light from God, illuminate for a moment unexplored
cavities and unexpected materials for evil. It may be
that the reading or hearing of great crimes may have
brought it home to us. But by whatever means we make
the discovery, there can be no doubt that we carry about
with us immense capabilities of uncommitted sin. No-
thing but the merciful turns of a considerate Providence,
and the constraining empire of grace, prevent these from
being realized in acts. 0 how we crouch under God's
mantle, and hold to His feet, when we first get sight of
these things ! What an amazing, what a blessed dispro-
portion between the evil we do and the evil we are capable
of doing, and seem sometimes on the very verge of doing !
If my soul has grown tares, when it was full of the seeds
of nightshade, how happy ought I to be ! And that the
tares have not wholly strangled the wheat, what a wonder

THE RIGHT VIEW OF OUR FAULTS. 373

it is, an operation of grace, the work of the sacraments 1
If the heathen emperor thanked God daily for the tempta-
tions which He did not allow to approach him, how ought
not we to thank Him for the sins we have not committed 1

Then, again, have we not times in which, I must express
myself so, grace seems to. stir up the very dregs of our
nature, and throw them into a state of fiery effervescence,
by some combination of supernatural chemistry ? What
devils, what beasts, we look to ourselves ! For a moment
we feel as if we were polluted by the sins which we
might have committed, and though a dream, it is all so
life-like that the horrid impression haunts us for days.
We are as heavy as if we had very blood upon our souls.
At these moments, and without one atom of vanity or
the least fear of complacency, the grateful thought of
what we are, the thought which another while vexes and
disheartens us, is the pillow of rest to which we turn, to
forget in the sense of God's mercies the thought of what
we might have been, and yet may be. Strange that
our little faults should ever be the chosen place of our
repose !

Here is another consoling vision. Compare the drossj
mixture which we are of God's grace and the human
spirit, with what we should be if, without any touch, or
taste, or odor of the devil, God left your human spirit
simply to itself. M. Olier could not realize this, but
God made him see it by subtracting His succors from
him. He showed him what we should be if He were
merely to leave us to ourselves. The intense interest of
the passages must excuse the length of the quotation.

"This subtraction takes place," says M. Olier, "with
regard to sensible grace; for the divine goodness does
32

374 THE UIGHT VIEW OP OUR FAULTS.

not cease even then to succor us with insensible graces,
of a still more efficacious kind. The default of Hia
sensible graces causes strange effects and often prodigious
humiliations in the soul. Under the influence of those
succors the will and the heart are drawn to God with
delight, aud something may be observed even in our ex-
terior, the way in which we carry ourselves and the works
we do, of an unparalleled sweetness, modesty, and equa-
bility. When God withdraws these sensible gifts He
leaves the soul in its nakedness, and as great lights came
from them before, there is nothing left in the soul now
but trouble and confusion. Touched with compassion
for my state, God mercifully took these gifts away from
me, to show me what I really was, and thus tenderly dis-
abuse me of my error. It is really an effect of huge
mercy thus to leave us to ourselves, else we should go on
esteeming self, and appropriating to ourselves what
belongs to God only, until perhaps we might fall into
a blindness like that of Lucifer. God thus shows visibly
to the soul the depths of its own abjection, and so con-
vinces it of its misery. For this sensible grace, which
reined in the corrupt man and held him in check, having
now retired, everything is changed both in the interio
and exterior. The Holy Spirit then leaves him to fee*
the amount of his natural unruliness and the corruption
of his desires. The bridle is thrown upon the neck of
ihe passions. We feel nothing but anger on the slightest
occasions, envy, aversions, sentiments of self-love, until
our pride breaks out externally in the fierce and haughty
expression of our countenance. Yet very often the soul
does not at all contribute to this by any thought or
voluntary emotion. It is the natural effect of a rising

THE RIGHT VIEW OF OU* FAULTS. 375

inuudation of pride, now that He is gone who OCu*d re-
press it, and bid it hide itself.

" Thus when the Holy Spirit, who had raised He soul
to God for a time, retires, the soul, no longer sustained
by the fortitude of this powerful principle, falls In upon
itself, and seems by the fall to relapse into an abyss of
obscurity, darkness, corruption, and confusion, an abyss
of passions which, like wild beasts, gnaw and tear them-
selves. In a word the soul feels as if it had fallen from
heaven to hell, so appalling is our own reality to ourselves.
How much more then to the eye of God, who is purity
and sanctity itself. Thus God leaves in the midst of us
that fiery furnace, the concupiscence, which, no less
than the ashes of Sodom and Gomorrha, advertises us
of the judgments of God pronounced against Adam and
his posterity. It is a mouth of hell which we bear about
inside ourselves, vomiting a thousand stenches insupport-
able to God, and which draw down upon our sinful flesh
the chastisements of His avenging arm. I am not speak-
ing of the sins which we have committed by our own
malice, but only of the humiliation common to all the
world. I do not wonder at the saints arming themselves
with holy fury against themselves, and furnished with
instruments of penance, cutting their flesh to pieces and
making their blood to flow, in the justest of martyrdoms.
It was to show men what they ought to suffer in their
criminal flesh, that the Son of God vouchsafed to be
scourged, and to have His blood flow, and His bones be
dislocated. So when the sensible succors of grace retire,
and this subtraction lays our malice bare, we feel it an
ease and a relief to be the butt of injuries and outrages,
and the object of treatment the most rigorous and the
most undeserved.

376 THE RIGHT VIEW OF OUR FAULTS.

lt See how these subtractions of grace work ! First o\
all they give us a plain and visible knowledge that of
ourselves we are nothing but sin. Then comes humility,
which makes us love to be treated both by God and men
as our sin deserves. God only subtracts these sensible
graces to put more excellent ones in their place, like a
gardener who roots up one tree to plant a better. But. as
it is not His will always to accomplish the same operations
in all men, He does not prepare them all in the same
way. As it is not His intention to take an equally inti-
mate possession of all, He does not so utterly and radi-
cally detach some from themselves as He does others.
He makes us feel these subtractions and derelictions in
proportion to the gifts He intends to confer upon us ; and
because it is more common to be proud of the gifts of
grace than of those of nature, and yet that the former
pride is more odious to Him than the latter, this kind
Master, careful of our good, makes the gifts of grace
rather than those of nature the theatre of these subtrac-
tions."*

So far M. Olier. Oh ! a thousand faults that were not

* Vie. i. 285. It should be observed that the epithets, which M.
Jlier uses, betoken his doctrine on the subject of original sin, which
appears in a very startling way in his Catechism of the Interior
Life; where, to say the least, he has pushed it to the extremes!
limits which orthodoxy will allow. Where I have had to use adjec-
tives qualifying our fallen nature and its propensities elsewhere in
the book, I have spoken out of tbe belief that the state of origlua!
sin is like that of pura natura, with the exception that it is a stat<
of privation. As a man's views of original sin exercise a great in
fluence on his spiritual life, I have thought it right to take exception
to M. Olier's expressions, without intending to say anything disre-
spectful towards him of whom I have observed elsewhere that of all
the uncanonized servants of God whose lives I have read, he mnst
resembles a canonized saint.

THE RIGHT VIEW OP OUR FAULTS. 377

mortal sins, were better far than this nature, emancipated
from the devil, yet without grace, and enjoying its own
wretched prerogatives, would be ! See what we are at
bottom. Why we are saints compared to our real un-
tempted selves, selves uncompounded with grace and
God's compassion !

From all these considerations I infer that we ought to
be, I do not say thoroughly contented, but fairly happy,
if as time goes on we do not add to the kinds of venial
sin of which we have to accuse ourselves, nor increase the
numbers of those which beset us, nor fall into those with
more advertence than before, nor give way more resist-
ingly to surprises of temptation, and still continue to
entertain even in our worst times an habitual preference
for God. These are five sources of moderate cheerfulness,
which, like Cowper's cups of tea, while they cheer, will
not inebriate.

But is it safe and wise to give ourselves up to these
considerations ? Do we run no risk in thus taking our
faults quietly ? Let us then now consider the propriety
and spiritual wisdom of so doing. What is humble is
safe, provided it be true humility. Now, to be indifferent
to faults, and to make no endeavor to improve, would
not be humility, but lukewarmness or irreligion. But it
is a very different thing to take our faults quietly, and
all the while be doing our very best to mend, and wishing
intensely to be better. Neither is there any danger of
laxity in it, because we are looking to God j and laxity
implies a downward, not an upward eye. It leads us
sway from self. Even self-love makes us hate self. So
that ill this taking of our faults quietly is in reality based
32*

878 THE RIGHT VIEW OF OUR FAULTS.

upon a supernatural principle, which both implies and
ftugmjnts interior mortification.

Moreover, quietness is absolutely necessary for spiritual
growth under ordinary circumstances. There are some-
times brief tempests in the interior when we grow, like
children in an illness. But these are eccentric pheno-
mena. It is plain that quietness must be the prevailing
atmosphere of an ascetic. We must be quiet in order to
pray. Mortification must be quiet, or else it will be
merely vehement nature, growing in fury as it grows in
pain. Confidence in God must be quiet. The very word
itself is full of the sound of rest. The receiving of the
sacraments must be quiet. Noise and hurry would be
simple irreverence. Our love of others must be quiet,
else it will degenerate into earthly tenderness. In a
word, there is hardly a function of the spiritual life
which does not require quietness for its exercise and ful-
filment. Yet faults are universal, daily, in all subject-
matters, thought, word, deed, look, omission. They
cover the whole surface of life incessantly ; so that if we
do not take them quietly, we shall never be quiet at all.
This is so absurd a result, that it is as good as a demon-
stration that we must take our faults quietly.

The desire of perfection is, as we have already seen, a
gift from God, and a great gift; and a generous and
earnest pursuit of virtue is necessary to perfection. Yet
we must not be inordinately attached, either to the desire
or the pursuit. If it is God's will to hold us back, we
must be content to be held back. The goodness of a
thing is no justification of an unruly eagerness in acquir-
ing it. Thi eagerness of the pursuit will more than

THE RJGH1 VIEW OF OUR FAULTS. 379

counterbalance the blessing of the acquisition. Our
falls are permitted. Our share in them must be wiped
away by cheerful, hopeful sorrow. The rest God will
look to, and we must be at peace.

There is also this other disadvantage in the opposite
line of conduct. Discouragement necessarily brings with
it a greediness for consolation. The more we are dis-
quieted, the more we fly to what will solace and soothe.
And this is bringing back self Again into everything,
besides unnerving us for genuine struggle, and giving us
a disrelish for mortification. Consolations from creatures
never really help, but very often hinder ; *<nd an appetite
for them is a bad augury of progress.

But in the spiritual life there is never a permission
without a caution, never a relaxation without a saving
clause against laxity. So in this case we must be careful
to distinguish hopefulness from self-conceit. To be quiet
under our faults is not to be free and easy with them ;
and cheerfulness is a very different thing from vanity.
But how to discern between the two ? Hope implies a
certain amount of doubt, and that again implies fear : so
that when we hope in time to advance beyond the circle
of particular faults, we have some, but a subordinate,
fear, that possibly we may not succeed. That fear is
plainly self-distrust, and it is subordinate, else it would
be discouragement. Conceit has no fear, because it has
no doubt, and no hope, because it does not contemplate
its success as being in any way uncertain. So that self-
distrust is one test by which we can distinguish hopeful-
ness from conceit. A confidence in Grod more than
equalling ( ur distrust of self is another sign Conceit

880 THE RIGHT VIEW OP OUR FAULTS.

trusts in itself; and in its reckonings calculates as a
right what humility sees to be a grace. A third test is
to be found in the gradual growth of the supernatural in
our feelings, motives, and desires. If we look more to
God, if we lean more on sacraments, if we prefer the
divine will to our own spiritual advancement, then we
may be sure that our quietness with our faults is hopeful-
ness, and not conceit.

The whole question comes to this. There are two
views of growth in grace, the self-improvement view and
the will-of-God view. In these views, for what is more
operative than a view ? is the root of all the error and of
all the wisdom of the matter. If a man puts self-im-
provement before him as the end of life, almost every
step that he takes will be wrong. If he works away at
himself, as a sculptor finishes off a statue, he will get
more out of proportion, and bring out more black marks
and gray blotches, the longer he chisels. Not a motive
will be right, not an aim true. If he takes up his par-
ticular examen and his rule of life, and his periodical
penances, as merely medicinal appliances, if he shuts
himself up in a reformatory school of his own, if he
models his whole spiritual life upon the complacent
theory of self-improvement, his asceticism will be nothing
better than a systematizing and a glorifying of self-will.
Under such auspices he can never be a spiritual man, and
he will hardly be a moral man. Yet how common is this
miserable view, even among men living right in the heart
of a system so intensely supernatural as that of the
Catholic Church.

The will-of-God view, on the contrary, refers every
thing, but diligence and correspondence, to Him. A man

THE RIGHT VIEW OF OUR FAULTS. 331

follows God's lead, and does not strike out a road for
himself. He models himself in his measure and degree
on the imitation of Jesus. He seeks to please God, and
acts out of love. His inconsistencies neither astonish nor
tease him. An imperfection annoys him, not because it
mars the symmetry of his character, but because it grieves
the Holy Ghost. Sacraments, and scapulars, and beads
and medals, relics and rites, all find their places in his
system ; and the natural and the supernatural form one
whole. God is always pleased when a man seeks humbly,
and in appointed ways, to please Him. Hence this man
is quieted, cheerful and hopeful with his faults. The
gaiety of endless success is in his heart. God is his
Father. Whereas the self-improvement man either does1
not succeed in improving himself, or he does so too slowly,
or he loses on one side what he gains on the other, or
people will persist in being scandalized at his edifying
deportment, for with such men edification is the crown of
virtue, and if they do not edify, they have failed. Hence
he is unquiet, sulky, and desponding about his faults.
The bitterness of endless piecemeal failure is in his
heart.

After death we shall have many revelations. I suspect
the hiddenness of our spiritual growth here on earth will
give rise to some. How surprised many humble spirits
will be at the extraordinary beauty of their souls, when
death has disengaged them ! So much more is always
going on than we in the least suspect I

3M2 THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELEOT.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELEOT.

It is the most unconverting thing in the world to tell a
man there is nothing in his objection. This is partly the
reason of its being easier to convince a man who has a
valid objection, than one who has only an invalid one.
Not only because we have something definite and intelli-
gible to answer, but also because our candor and fairness
in admitting what is real in his objection, softens and
wins our opponent's heart. Hence those who will not
admit that the Catholic system presents many reasonable
difficulties to an external mind, do not only themselves
admit a strong argument against its divinity, but will not
usually be very fertile of converts, or have much cause to
rejoice either in the progress, or perseverance, or thorough
Catholicism, of the converts they make.

The same principle is the reason of the present chapter.
It is strange that when a man has been so engrossed with
interior things, he should be plagued with external diffi-
culties. Yet as he never can get rid of his liability to
presumption and discouragement, they each of them find
vent in a difficulty which has nothing to do with himself,
and is a distraction and an unhappiness to him. It is
remarkable how many and what clear-sighted spiritual
persons find a real temptation in seeing how wicked the
world is, and how good they are in comparison with it,
which leads them to presumption, or in the doctrine of

THE IRRELIGIOUS ANb THE ELECT. 383

the fewness of the elect which casts them into dejection
I cannot say that there is nothing in an objection which
teases so many, or nothing reasonable in what men urge,
whom I could only call unreasonable by using the word
in the usual sense of controversialists, with whom it means
a man who is hardy enough to differ from themselves. I
shall admit the objections and go into them, and so I
hope to blunt them.

The progress of spirituality is the growth of detach-
ment from the world ) and there is much that is imperfect
and ungraceful on our part in many of the processes. We
do not all at once hate the world with a supernatural
hatred, when we have ceased to love it. We tremble
with our old habitual respect for its judgments, or we
regard it with the critical eye of a mere natural aversion.
It is when we are in this last stage, that the utter bad-
ness of the world is a temptation to us to think ourselves
saints.

There are as it were, five visions of the world's wicked-
ness which distress us. For men either harden their
hearts, or they pass God over altogether, or they are not
converted when they ought to be, or they positively hate
God, or they profess to serve Him and are inconsistent,
as devotees often are.

The first state is that of impenitence, the state of
hardened hearts. Men know that they ought to leave off
sin, and refuse to do so, not that they have any conscious
hatred of God, or any conscious aversion to morality, but
because they like sin, and are willing to have it with its
costs and risks. To a man who is well and high-spirited,
there is a great deal of natural enjoyment in sin, and to
those who are ailing or unhappy, there is both repose and

884 THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELECT.

consolation in sensuality. The world is also extremelj
graceful and attractive in its bearing. A man must be
already converted, before he can see the truth of the harsh
judgments we pass upon the world in our pulpits and
confessionals; they cannot convert him. Such men wil-
fully stifle conscience when it speaks, yet there is a blind
notion of the duty of repentance left at last, which few
can entirely extirpate; and which, if it is allowed to dis-
charge no kindlier office, will at least justify God in the
severity of their eternal doom. Christians would do well
to remember that all confessions without sorrow, and all
relapses into sin, are in reality energetic tendencies to
this state of impenitence. There is something in the
peculiar malice of a relapse very congenial to final im-
penitence.

The second phase of the world is indifference. Men
pass God over, and that too without being infidels. This
is compatible, not only with an external profession of
Christianity, but also with an intellectual belief in it.
Spiritual men find something irritatingly odious in this
state. Indifferent men arrogate to themselves all the
candor and moderation in the world. They imagine them-
selves to be on a height, so that they look up at nothing,
but down upon everything. Inside the Church they care
very little about doctrines, and wish to stand well with all
parties. They have no keen sense of the Church, no sus-
ceptibility about the poor, no instinct about the heinous-
ness of sin. They intend to hang on to God by just the
necessary duties, and no more. They theologize for them-
selves, and strike out a road to heaven without love, ex
cept that radical love which is in the soul, will, reason,
brain, blood, bones, and marrow of organized man towards

TtfE IRRELIGIOUS AND TllE ELECT. 385

his Creator. All their views and all their interests, are
Bteeped in materialism ; and in religion they think them-
selves amazingly prudent in not aiming at too much, or
committing themselves to God. They are always ready
to damp every zealous work, and throw a dash of chill,
which is their notion of moderation, into everything. To
hear them talk, you would suppose the world was on fire
with a romantic love of God, and that our merciful Crea-
tor had deputed them to come and play upon the confla-
gration with cold water, which they do with all the calm
ness and dignity conceivable. It makes spiritual people
sea-sick to watch these men, and yet they will watch them,
they often cannot help watching them, with a kind of
fascination.

The third state of the world is unconversion. Men
simply do not think of God at all, or they push His grace
from them as men repel a shock in the street, without
knowing whether it is man or thing they are resisting.
They do not wish to make up their minds to be either for
or against God, not so much because they are indifferent
about it, but because they are deterred by its difficulties.
They live as if there were no spiritual world, and no in-
visible powers. They have all that unsuspiciousness of
supernatural things, which is the effect of long self-indulg-
ence, even independent of positive sin. Indeed, they are
often outwardly moral; for the characters which shine
most in domestic life often belong to this class. When
religiousness is obtruded upon them, they rest in vague
views of God, and profane generalities about His attribute
of mercy, or they make the existence of religious differ-
ences an excuse for not fairly meeting the question. Good
people themselves should remember that all reserves with
83 z

386 THE IRRELIGIOUS AND TIIE ELECT.

God, no matter with how much other excellence combined,
are so many steps to unconversion.

The fourth state is irreligion. God is an object of pos-
itive aversion to many. They are fidgeted by the men-
tion of Him. They rise up in arms when his claims are
urged, however modestly. They are vexed with holiness,
even where it can cause no practical inconvenience to
them. The definition of the Immaculate Conception
sours them : so much so, that they cannot sneer. The
canonization of a saint provokes them, though how it
concerns them it is difficult to see. They have a strong
feeling that religion must be put down, and they look to
the newspapers to do it. A good word for God they take
as a personal affront to themselves, and, if intellectual
convictions have moral qualities, they have an ill-tem-
pered disbelief in hell.

The assertion of the supernatural makes them fretful,
and they pronounce very strongly against mortification,
as superstitious and undignified. They are vehement
against Church authority, and all ecclesiastical arrange-
ments and jurisdiction are gall to them. Yet they can-
not shake off an uneasy and insecure feeling that they
are not so infallible as they wish to seem. They feel as
if there was an enemy in the rear, who would come up
with them some day, as He will do. This perhaps ex-
plains the ill-humor which is their prominent character-
istic. A man who loses his temper because our Lady
has appeared on the steeps of La Salette is evidently not
at ease about his own religious convictions ; else he would
smile, not frown. Everyone likes to be good-humored,
and is so, when he can afford to be.

From all these states comes judicial blindness Men

THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELECT. 387

are in a mist, and do not know it : only those, who can
look upon the mist from without, perceive that there is
any mist at all. In this blindness they neither see the
evil they do, nor the good they might do. They are in
darkness as to the real state of their souls, the truths of
religion, the character of God, and His dispositions to-
wards them. And so they go into eternity, and their
eyes are opened, and at last they see.

A melancholy world ! No wonder we look to ourselves
so good in the middle of it. But to get rid of the tempt-
ation we fix our eyes upon the few good men in it, and
with the most unsatisfactory result. There is something
especially unpleasant in the faults of pious persons. Their
inconsistency grates very harshty upon us. They ought
to be humble, and they are proud. They should be
grave, and they are frivolous. They should be overflow-
ing with mercy, and they are abstracted and unsympa-
thetic. They are peevish, and bear less well than other
men either contradiction or interruption. There is an
annoying littleness about their faults, which sometimes
makes us sigh for the world's great sins. They make
sacred things grotesque, and there is a charmed atmos-
phere of exaggeration round about them. They judge
each other, and all walk different roads. Now the sting
of the temptation is in this last vision. If we thought
ourselves good, when we measured ourselves by the bad
people, we are saints by the side of the good. The more
we try to do for God the more forcibly all this comes upon
us, and times of prayer and penance are its choicest sea-
sons. I admit it is a trial, enough of a trial to be a
temptation ; and that we had better arm ourselves with
some considerations against it.

OOO THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELECT.

We must consider, first of all, that men are very dif«
ferent from what they seem, and that our real knowledge
of them is very small indeed. Moreover, even when
they wish to do the reverse, men put out their bad and
draw in their good ; although badness is in itself a much
more demonstrative thing than goodness. Then what
should we have been without grace ? And we did not
merit it for ourselves at first. It has often failed to move
us even when its impulses have been strong and lasting.
Had any one of these men ever one such single impulse ?
Who knows ? We cannot apply the doctrine of chance
to grace. What would they have been if they had had
our grace ? It is inconceivable that any one should have
corresponded less faithfully to it than we have done. So
far as supernatural things are concerned, look at what an
advantageous position we occupy, from our own past ex-
perience of God's operations in our souls. Have they
anything they can parallel with that? Who knows?
And what are they to us ? Will not our judgment be
solitary ? We shall not pass muster in a crowd. We
shall each stand alone and apart before the "great white
throne" when the books are opened; and as Christ died
for each one of us as completely as if He had no one else
to die for, so we are judged each by himself as if he were
the only one to be judged. There is in this temptation,
therefore, an unconscious reference to the world as a
standard and measure, which shows the imperfection of
our state. By our own grace, by our own light, accord-
ing to our own works, and to our own Master, we shall
stand or fall ; and by His mercy only shall even His
chosen be set up in that day.

We are as ignorant of the future of these rasn as we

THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELECT. 38C

are of their past ; and this added to our exaggeration of
their present, leaves us in a total incapacity of judging.
They may be converted; and who knows whether they
will not then be great saints? In the fervor of their
penance, it will be no hard matter for them to overshoot
us, and throw our attainments completely into the shade.
They will love more, because more has been forgiven
them. We who minister to souls must often have been
surprised when bold unblushing sinners, whose very bear-
ing even inspires us with human respect, have fallen into
our hands, to see what sweetness of disposition, and child-
like character, and attractive moral timidity were covered
by that external effrontery of voice, of swagger, of eye,
and of evil deed. They have as many capabilities of
being saints as we have possibilities of being demons
Besides which, if the worst comes to the worst, we surely
knew beforehand that the world was God's enemy; for
in our baptismal engagements we had pledged ourselves
to renounce it. We ought not, therefore, to be surprised
at that of which we were not forewarned, but against
which we were solemnly forearmed.

As to the criticism of the faults of good people, is not
this perhaps rather a sin than only a temptation ? We
have no business with them. It is not our affair. When
the world has become really and genuinely our enemy,
we participate in God's right to judge it. But it is not
bo with His own servants. It is an injury to ourselves,
because it takes off our attention from our own souls.
But the main thing to consider is, that we can come to no
fair estimate of devout people, or test their progress in
holiness. This is partly for the same reasons which
applied to worldly men, and partly f }r others peculiar to

390 THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELECT.

themselves. The spiritual life is greatly a matter of ex«
terior motives and interior combats. Now we can know
only the outside; faults are plainer to see than virtues.
One sin docs not make a habit, perhaps not even many.
Falls may be surprises, or they may be violences. Old
manners often remain after inward conversion, just as
strong scents linger in jars and bottles. God leads men
bo differently, that there are almost as many diversities
in the spiritual life, as there are human faces and features
in the world. To know a man's progress we must know
his besetting sin, and we do not know it. It is not
always the amount of grace given, which is the index,
but the proportion of correspondence to what is given.
Even the saints seem paradoxical; and in one word
charity means breadth, and a charity which is not broad
is not charity at all. There is no one in the world who
does not excel us in some one thing ; and charity believes
in that one thing against sight, and conjectures more.

So much for the temptation to presumption. I do not
say I have answered it ; for I began by allowing it. But
I have fastened a counter-weight to it, which ought to
make it slide easily, and not let it jerk us out of our
place. I have now to meet the other temptation to dis-
couragement, which is based in a continual, ever-present,
depressing thought of the number of the elect. I
allow the temptation ; I do not think anything can ex-
aggerate its misery, and shall only endeavor to balance it.

We ought to be less inclined to treat this temptation
lightly, because it comes so frequently from physical tem-
perament or the present state of health, and those who
are most affected by it are the least to blame, either for
briAging it on themselves or idly magnifying it when it

THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELEOT. 391

has come. The same questions which cast a salutary
fear into the lukewarm, tease, bewilder, and sadden the
good. If the temptation to think ourselves good because
the world is bad, may be rather a sin than a temptation,
the temptation to despair because the elect are so few,
may be called more a suffering than a temptation.

The way in which this temptation comes about, seems
to be as follows. In most cases the subject is prepared
by indisposition, nervousness, bodily ailments, an accu-
mulation of temporal misfortunes, or the oppression of
some sadness. Then we begin to calculate our own
chances of salvation as nearly as it is in our power to do
so, which is foolish ; but the attraction to do so at times
is irresistible. We put the greatness of the reward, and
our own demerits, alongside of each other. We measure
our actual practice by the requirements of God's law.
We stand by the side of the saints, and see how tall we
are. And what is the inevitable consequence of these
processes? Do we look as if we were picked out, or
elect? Can any one possibly think so? The occupations
of eternity are to a certain extent revealed to us ; should
we be happy and our tastes suited in them ? Then we
get darker and darker as we go along. Are we really in
any habitual anxiety about the salvation of our souls?
Is the spiritual life in any sense a contest with us ? If
it is, what are we contesting, and with whom ?

Then we are snatched away from ourselves, and borne
far off, and put down amid uninhabited mountains by a
dark sea, whose angry breakers wake eternal echoes. We
are in the midst of the everlasting predestination of the
Divine Mind. It is the scene of the first act of God
towards ourselves. How immense that act, on any view

392 THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELECT.

how potent, and how utterly unknown ! The freedom
of our will is as clearly uninjured by that act as the
elouds are unpolluted by the sunbeam. Nevertheless,
how awful is the mere fact that the doom we shall even-
tually work out for ourselves is known already by Him,
who has prepared our place for us. Somewhere in crea-
tion a lodging is ready, and is empty. It is ours j but
where? Above? Below? He must have an impene-
trably exterior mind through whom this doubt does not
often thrill, like a current of electricity. At first sight
and first sound, Scripture seems to speak of the fewness
of the elect and of the difficulty of salvation, and what
we actually observe among men bears this out. How few
promise well for heaven ! The freedom of our own will
only adds nervousness to the question. God being the
Father He is, there would be more security for us in His
absolute sovereignty. But he knows best. He has put
our souls into our hands, but He has still mercifully kept
them in His own. Free will without grace would be de-
moniacal despair.

Now, not in answer to, but in palliation of, all this, I
tmall make two observations. The first is this. If we
can know nothing about the future, we can at least know
a great deal about the present. In spiritual matters God
;s pleased to instruct His Church by His saints, and the
Church before canonizing them, sets her seal upon their
writings. Now the saints mention seven things, which
they call the signs of predestination. This means some-
thing more than that they are symptoms of our being at
present in a state of grace and the way of holiness. It
means that they are to a certain extent prophecies of the
future, not infallibly true but supernaturally hopeful. Jt

THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELECT. 393

means that they are the sort of things to be expected in
the elect, and not to be expected in others ; things essential
to the elect, and which through all the centuries of the
Church have distinguished the elect. Hence if we find
all, many, or a few of them in ourselves, we are legiti-
mately entitled to proportionate consolation. They are, the
imitation of Christ, devotion to our Blessed Lady, works
of mercy, love of prayer, self-distrust, the gift of faith,
and past mercies from God. We must also bear in mind
of all these things, that it is not the plenary possession
of them which counts with God, and so is a sign of pre-
destination, but the earnest desire of them and the sin-
cere endeavor after them. What wonder the theologian
Viva should make the number of the saved so large, and
the saint of Geneva almost doubt if any Catholics were
lost?

My second observation is this. We are discussing a
temptation of the catholic spiritual life; and we may
keep to what is strictly practical. Consequently we are
dispensed from touching on the question of the fewness-
of the elect out of the whole number of mankind. We
have nothing to do with curiosity about the future desti-
nies of heathen and of heretics. I do not want to lose
my soul by losing my temper with God because He has
not told me how He is going to manage His own creation.
Their chances will obviously be regulated by the greatness
of the boon which the gift of faith is to the soul. To us
there can be no trouble in this. The grave opinions of
theologians will teach us all we need either know or tc
surmise, which is very little. Our business is with
the doubt whether few Catholics will be saved, and how
far we may reverently take comfort from the indications?

394 THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELECT.

of God's will in His Holy Word, and in the reasons of
theology.

First of all we have St. John's Vidi turbam magnam,
which sounds in our ears at Sext through the octave of
All Saints. I saw a great multitude, which no man
could number, of all nations, and tribes, and people, and
tongues, standing before the throne, and in sight of the
Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands.*
Secondly, a Spanish theologian says, we may surely with
great reverence suppose, that it befits the goodness of God
that the number of the elect should equal, or surpass,
that of the lost. This would carry the benignant inter-
pretation far beyond what the interests of catholics only
would require ; and it certainly seems to involve in
obscurity certain words of our Lord's which seem very
plain. However it is something to know what so holy
and enlightened a man as Da Ponte thought. He must
have taken into account the multitude of baptized infants.
Thirdly, there may be an analogy between the angels and
ourselves; and only a third of them fell, as the Apoca-
lypse tells us. Neither is it true that the places in
heaven are only the vacancies left by the angels. There
is a huge multitude beside. This nearly all theologians
teach j and some have said that as many men will be
saved as angels, if not more. Of course these are only
opinions. But then our temptation is only an opinion
also. It is ours against theirs, and ours only so long as
it torments us, for we should be glad to get rid of it, if
we could. Fourthly, the glory of our Lord seems to
require that the fruit of His Passion should be very
multitudinous. The Holy Innocents are a sample of thi»
* Apoc. vii. 9

THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELECT. 395

Isaias says of His Passion,* If He shall lay down His
life for sin, He shall see a long-lived seed, and the will
of the Lord shall be prosperous in His hand Because
His soul hath labored, He shall see and be filled. Fifthly,
the glory and joy of the Blessed themselves seem to
require multitude, especially too as they are arranged in
different orders and degrees ; and multitude is also suit-
able to the magnificence of place, as Baruch saysf 0
Israel, how great is the house of God, and how vast is
the place of His possession. It is great and hath no end*
it is high and immense. Sixthly, of the two thieves one
was saved, and of the twelve apostles only one fell. These
are all bad arguments, taken simply, but collectively
they establish a lawful benignant supposition. Seventhly,
our Lord Himself says, In my Father's house are many
mansions, and then as if he foresaw all our trouble, He
adds with deep and sweet significancy, If it were not so,
I would have told you. It was these considerations
which led St. Francis of Sales and Viva to the belief
that by far the greater number of catholics would b*
saved.

We read in the life of St. Philip that in the monastery
of Santa Marta, a nun named Scholastica Gazzi, went to
speak to him at the grate, and to lay open to him a
thought she had never mentioned to any one else, which
was a conviction that she should be damned. As soon as
St. Philip saw her, he said to her, What are you doing,
Scholastica, what are you doing? Paradise is yours.
Nay, father, replied the nun, I fear the contrary will be
the ease : I feel as though I should be damned. No,
answered the saint, J. tell you that paradise is yours, and
*UU. 10. fiii.24

896 THE IRRELIGIOUS AND THE ELECT.

I will prove it to you : tell me, for whom did Christ die?
For sinners, said she. Well ! said Philip, and what are
you ? A sinner, replied the sister. Then, concluded the
saint, Paradise is yours, yours because you repent of your
Bins. This conclusion restored peace to Sister Scholar
tica's mind. The temptation left her and never troubled
her again; but on the contrary, the words Paradise is
yours, yours, seemed always sounding in her ears. Gentle
reader ! may St. Philip do the same for you and me !

Now, here is no answer to our temptation ; but here is
another side to it. Let us pray for the gift of holy and
discerning fear. Then let us go on joyously, adding
grace to grace, and love to love, and doubt not of our
eternity. Heaven will come soon. The temptation is, to
be impatient because it does not come sooner. Yet as
God wills. It shall be our act of love to Him that we
*?ait where we are, and for his sake be content to live.
Life is a hardship, but not a very grievous one ; for it
does not hinder our loving God. And short of that, aU
griefs can be but light.

THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE TRUE IDEA OP DEVOTION.

Devotion is a word which has a great many meanings,
fcnd it is unfortunately seldom used in the right one.
Sometimes it is used to express a part of itself instead of
the whole, sometimes one or other of its accidents, some-
times one of its kinds, sometimes one of its characteris-
tics, and sometimes its effects, as its sweetness, beauty,
and heroism. But it is useless to appeal to etymology, or
to fi^ht about words. The substance is to have a right
idea of the thing intended to be conveyed. To point out
some of the mistakes of ordinary conversation, will be a
step towards this.

We say that a person gives too much time to devotion,
and not enough to his worldly affairs, or works of charity
Here by devotion we obviously mean prayer. We say
that a man is too devout; and here by devotion we under-
stand the acts which concern the direct worship of God.
When we talk of having had a great deal of devotion at
a certain church, or on a certain feast, we mean by the
word spiritual sweetness. Or a thing is devout which
inspires us with serious feelings, or is in good religious
taste. We often use the word for recollection, for much
church-going, and the like. There is a truth and a
meaning in all these expressions, and it is useless to
quarrel with them. But they have not unfrequently done
harm by making the true idea of devotion less clear. One
34

S98 THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION.

fact all this shows, that as the word has fastened itself to
so many holy practices, and clothed itself in so many
respectable significations, the thing must be of no incon-
siderable importance. Indeed, to the misunderstanding
of it much that is unreal, sentimental, fickle, and exagge-
rated in spiritual persons, is to be attributed.

In theology, devotion means a particular propension of
the soul to God, whereby it devotes itself, commits itself,
binds itself over, consecrates itself, to the worship and
service of God. This it may do by vow, by oath, or by
simple sentiment. Thus an author, who once passed
under the name of St. Augustine, says that devotion is
the action of turning ourselves towards God with a humble
and pious affection j humble because of the consciousness
of our own weakness, and pious because of our trust in
the divine compassion. But St. Thomas more accurately
as well as more clearly defines it, as the will to do
promptly whatever belongs to the service of God, and as
Valentia warns us, it is not to be confounded with fervor,
no uncommon mistake. St. Francis of Sales defines it to
be a kind of charity by which we not only do good, but do
it carefully, frequently, and promptly. It falls under the
virtue of religion. Directly, it is an act of the will, im-
plying indirectly an act of the understanding which
excites the will. Its cause is extrinsic, namely, God
Himself, acting through intrinsic grace. St. Francis of
Sales remarks that, though a kind of love, it is something
more than the love of God ; and that " something more"
is a certain vivacity in doing what the love of God would
bave us do. Perhaps I may then be permitted to call
devotion spiritual agility, which seems to express what
St. Thomas and St. Francis say.

THE TRUE IDEA OP DEVOTION. 399

Thus it appears that devotion is a very grave, solid,
hard-headed, stout-willed, business-like affair, and not at
all the sweet, fervid, heroic, graceful, tender thing it is
often taken for. It is well when it has all the qualities
these latter epithets imply. But when they are there,
they add something to it, and do not express merely its
own nature. If it did not sound like a play upon words, I
would say that it is desirable we should have a more
theological and a less devotional idea of devotion than we
sommonly have.

Theologians go on to divide devotion into substantial
and accidental, and accidental they subdivide again into
accidental spiritual, and accidental sensible. Substantial
devotion is that intelligent promptitude of the will to
serve God, which rests on no attraction of the imagination
or sweetness of the affections, but on the principles of the
faith, and fixes the soul in a solid resolution to serve God,
under whatever circumstances. Without this substantial
devotion no other is worth anything, no other is enduring,
no other is a reasonable service. Next to the gift of faith
we should prize nothing so much as this substantial devo-
tion. Accidental spiritual devotion is in reality only a
state of substantial devotion, to which God is mercifully
pleased to add His gift of sweetness. A certain recrea-
tion, corroboration, comfort of spirit, flows from Him into
us, and rests in our spirit without at all descending to the
sensitive part of our nature. This adds to the agility of
substantial devotion, and gives it more force to overcome
difficulties, and a certain kind of pleasure in overcoming
them. Accidental sensible devotion is a state of sub-
stantial devotion, and also of accidental spiritual devotion,
wherein God condescends still further to our infirmities

400 THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION.

or needs, and lavishes upon us still more sensibly the
caresses of His love, by allowing His sweetness not only
to inundate our spirits, but also to flow down into our
sensitive appetites, and sometimes into our very flesh and
blood. Hence it follows that there are two kinds of dry-
ness and desolation : desolation of spirit, which consists in
the privation of accidental spiritual devotion, and leaves
us in the state of bare substantial devotion ; and desola-
tion of sense, which consists in the privation of accidental
sensible devotion, and stays the divine sweetness in the
upper parts of our nature, as our Blessed Lord cut off the
waters of His divinity from the lower parts of His soul
in the garden of Gethsemane.

It is thus of great importance to distinguish the effects
of devotion from devotion itself; and S. Thomas helps
us to do this in a very simple and clear manner. The
school of S. Thomas is always speaking of " light" and
" understanding j" these are in his teachings what "will"
and " affections" are in the school of Scotus. So here
he says that devotion causes a light in the soul, and that
the effects of this light vary according to the objects on
which it falls. If it brings the beauty of God close to
the soul so that it has a certain enjoyment of Him, the
result is joy and gladness. If it shows God far off, be-
yond the reach of our nothingness and the attainment of
our weak desires, then it causes the pain, not altogether
painful, of desire and spiritual anxiety. If it shows us
our own sinfulness and vileness, the result is a gracious
sorrow and holy affliction.

Putting this doctrine of the Angelic Doctor before our
eyes, how strange must seem the delusions of those who
are perpetually seeking devotion where it is not to be

THE TRUE IDEA OP DEVOTION. 401

found, and perpetually lamenting the absence of one of
its merest accidents and adjuncts, as if the soul had fallen
off from God altogether. Many seek it in sweetnesses,
which are simply God's gratuitous favors, and which
nothing would be less likely to merit than a greediness
to have them. Many look for it in freedom from tempta-
tions, which may be either a displeased condescension to
our slow convalescence from sin, or a withdrawal of the
materials of merit because we have been found unworthy
of perfection, or an engrossing concentration of the human
spirit in some temporary occupation, or a stratagem of
Satan for purposes he will hereafter disclose. Some
seek it in a multitude of practices, as if a man's strength
consisted in the multitude of things he had to do, and
not rather that he could do a multitude of things because
he was strong: and what if the multitude of things
should break his back ? Some are so foolish as tc seek
it in a sensible love of images and pictures, which is like
asking matter to have the goodness to make mind spiritual,
n thing which a man might not say even of the wonder-
ful sacraments themselves. This mistake first weakens
the head, secondly turns us unreal, and thirdly makes us
foolish. Some seek devotion in vehement resolutions
There is little good to be found in vehemence of any
kind in the spiritual life. And this amounts to confound-
ing the intention to be virtuous with the actual possession
of the virtue itself, to which it is but a help. Some seek
it in continually increasing austerities. But it is not the
invariable reward even of these. They often make a
heart still harder, whose want of tenderness is the true
cause of its want, of devotion. I distrust all austerities

done for a purpose. They should only be the twofold
34* 2A

102 THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION.

expression of love desiring at once to take vengeance
upon self and to imitate her mortified Redeemer. Some
seek devotion in sighs and tears, when these sighs and
tears themselves must have come out of devotion, and
be its outside accidents, to be themselves worth anything
ut all. Some place it in violent contrition. But contri-
tion is a calm, intelligent, sorrowful purpose, so far as our
side goes; its violence and intensity are the gifts of God.
Some even place it in an ability to echo the hot and fer-
vent words of others, forgetting first, that there is hardly
any state of feeling to which we cannot work ourselves
up if we please, and secondly, that there is no feeling
which we cannot deceive ourselves into believing we feel.
Yet what baseless fabrics of radiant devotion often rest
on this treacherous chasm ! And lastly some think it
consists in discerning what God is actually doing in our
30uls. But to see our own devotion is only to know we
have got it, not to cause it. Here are ten delusions
which fade away in the plain light of St. Thomas and
his doctrine.

"We have already seen in what devotion consists . but
how are we to know it ? What are its infallible signs,
its invariable concomitants, if these things are not? It
is known by the strong practical will, which without rely-
ing upon itself puts forth every effort, and does not spare
itself. It is known by a promptitude or agility of action
which fears no kind of work and limits itself to no
degree, which has no reserves with God, and does not
stipulate for its reward. Perseverance shows itj for
God's favours are meant to be transient, and man's delu-
sions are showy and deceitful, while substantial devotion
alon* endures. It shows itself in suffering and self-vio

THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION. 403

lence • for though other things have the spirit to attempt
great deeds, devotion alone can carry them through. It
is manifest in the sanctification of our ordinary actions, a
grace which has this privilege, that no delusion can
counterfeit it with success. It shows itself in unselfish-
ness and the renunciation of our own interests, whereas
all its spurious imitations seek self only, under a more
or less palpable disguise. In speaking of its signs, how-
ever, we must remember that substantial devotion is an
essentially inferior thing; and many consequences flow
from this one truth. Moreover it is a habit, and habits
do not commonly become sensible except in acts. It is
the doing of the act which makes substantial devotion
apparent, and the sweetness accompanying the doing of
it which makes devotion sensible.

What then, it may be asked, are Special Devotions,
and how do they fit in with what has been said of devo-
tion in general ? I must repeat somewhat, in order to
make this plain. Devotion is a devoting of ourselves to
God, a loving promptitude of the will in all that concerns
His worship and service, a spiritual agility. It is this
which renders all acts of virtue acceptable and merito-
rious ; for it is the hand wherewith grace touches them.
It is caused extrinsically by God, intrinsically by medita-
tion ; and the effects of it are joy, tenderness, softness of
heart, and delighted peace. Hence a tender devotion is
the characteristic of the Gospel. But as substantial de
votion rests on the principles of faith, all forms of heresy
lose tenderness, as any one may see who is acquainted
with their history, or has compared the mysticism outside
the Church with the mysticism within it. Tenderness in
devotion is necesparily orthodox.

404 THE TRUE IDEA OP DEVOTION.

Now devotion is a practical acting out of a belief ip
spiritual things and in an unseen world ; and Christianity
is a worship not of things, but of Divine Persons, dis-
closing themselves to us in certain mysteries, which are
for the most part mysteries of sorrow and suffering.
Thus the Infancy and Passion of our Lord, the Blessed
Eucharist, the dolors of our Lady, the acts of the martyrs,
are things especially calculated to win and soften. This
was the character our Lord intended to give to His reli-
gion ; and He made every circumstance of the Incarna-
tion and every feature of the Church contribute to this
unexampled and celestial pathos. Every such mystery,
circumstance, and feature becomes in its degree the ob-
ject of a special devotion.

Every man who is a friend of God, is in a state of
habitual or sanctifying grace, in which his friendship with
his Creator consists. Upon this habitual grace God is
endlessly sending down the impulses of His actual grace,
illustrating the understanding, as I believe, in every cir-
cumstance of life, and not merely rarely and on great oc-
casions. In addition to these two kinds of grace, every
baptized person has infused into his soul seven superna-
tural gifts of the Holy Ghost. These gifts S. Thomas
defines to be certain habits by which a man is enabled
promptly to obey the Holy Ghost, and S. Bonaventure,
habits disposing a man to follow the instinct of the Holy
Ghost. These gifts lie in the soul as keys of an instru-
ment on which no one is playing. They are passive,
habitual, and form a state, just as sanctifying grace does.
They are played upon according to the needs of our spi-
ritual life by what are called the actual impulses of the
Holy Ghost, and which correspond in their subject -matter

THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION. 405

to actual grace, standing in the f,ame relation to the ha-
bitual gifts as it does to habitual grace.

Of these gifts, four belong to the intellect, Wisdom,
Understanding, Science, and Counsel; and three to the
will, Fortitude, Piety, and Fear. Tender devotion is the
fruit of the gift of Piety, which may be defined to be
the divine ray that illuminates the mind, and bends the
heart to worship God as our most loving Father, and to
help our neighbor as His image. But teuderness of its
own nature specializes, that is, it singles out an object
and magnifies it, and for the time excludes other objects
from its loving attention. Thus it always comes to pass
that there is a dash of exaggeration in Special Devotions,
which makes it the more needful that devotion should be
orthodox, and take heed to the analogy of faith. They
must be exclusive in order to be special, and what is ex-
clusive has a tendency to be exaggerated. It may almost
be said that the Incarnation, which is a galaxy of tender
mysteries, involves special devotions in its very idea, and
that the gift of piety is the telescope by which we resolve
this galaxy into clusters of constellations or into single
stars. Different devotions are connected with different
virtues, and have special gifts for the attainment of those
most congenial to their own spirit. The Holy Ghost also
leads different souls, either by natural character or super-
natural attraction, to different devotions, and gives them
various lights upon them. Thus we have special devo-
tions, and special saints to further them, to our Lord's
Infancy, His Boyhood, His Active Life, His Passion,
His Wounds, His Cross, His Bisen Life, His Precious
Blood, and His Sacred Heart, to His Mother, His Angels,
His Apostles, and the various orders of His Saints.. The

406 THE TRUE IDEA OP DEVOTION.

unity of our faith hinders the one-sidedness of our special
devotions, and the devotions of all the children of the
Church may be considered as one, full, harmonious, and
for humanity, adequate worship of the most Holy Trin-
ity, made co-equal to the Infinitude of the Divine Ma-
jesty, by the Worship of the Word made Flesh.

Such is the account to be given of Special Devotions,
which are as it were developments of the worship of the
Sacred Humanity of the Eternal Word. They are es-
sentially doctrinal devotions, and therefore we should
always jealously ascertain that they have had the approval
of the Church. But, say some, they change and grow,
and this is a difficulty. Certainly ; let us see what is to
be said in answer to it. I will take the case of devotion
to our B. Lady as affording the greatest difficulty, as well
as the one for many reasons the most likely to be felt.

It must be admitted then that devotions grow. His-
tory is too clear to allow of a case being made out on the
other side. If devotion were not grounded on dogma, it
would be unreal. We have no business to be devoted to
an untrue thing or a fanciful mystery. It would not
however follow that because devotions grow, dogma grows.
The two propositions are distinct. It is of faith that our
Lord lived a given number of years upon the earth, which
were spent in such and such a way. This fact cannot
grow out of it. No one can fix a limit to them. It is
of course true that each additional definition soon be-
comes the basis of special devotions; because definition
makes the truth plainer and surer to the eye of love, and
devotkms have a marked partiality for articles of faith.
The mind and the heart of the Church, her doctors and
uer people work and move together; so that devotions

THE TRUE IDEA OP DEVOTION. 407

almost always represent the turn theology is taking in
their day. Sometimes they run ahead of the schools;
sometimes the schools run ahead of them. The schools
and the people are never found very far apart. The his-
tory of the doctrine and devotion of the Immaculate Con-
ception is an illustration of this; while the rise of the
devotion to St. Joseph is quite a singular phenomenon in
the history of devotions, because it does not seem to have
followed this rule.

Now the Church is pre-eminently a soul-saving institu-
tion ; and doctrine has as much to do with the saving of
souls as sacraments, jurisdiction, discipline, hierarchy,
and ceremonies, or perhaps even more ; and devotions are
the application of doctrine to the souls of the people. We
must not lose sight of the livingness of the Church. If
we do, then the growth of devotions becomes a serious
difficulty, and the art of printing would have done as well
as a pope. But the Church is a living soul-saver ; and
as soul-saving consists, not only in bidding souls come to
her to be saved, but much more in following thern into
the wilderness whither they have wandered, the Church
is, to a certain extent, dependent upon the vagaries of the
world for her movements. So that variety, change,
adaptation, and growth were to be beforehand expected
of her, and are not only not contrary to her unity, but
actually fruits of it. A man is not always in one place
because he is a soldier, but rather because he is a soldier
he is successively in many places serving his country.
He follows his enemy; the Church follows hers, to get
back the plundered souls. The history of Canonical
Penances and Indulgences is an example of this. It also
■explains the Church's apparent copying of the World,

408 THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION.

from time to time ; though it is always after a fashion of
her own. Her conduct at the time of the Renaissance is
an illustration of it. This sort of adaptation of the soul-
saving Church to the circumstances in which in each age
she finds herself, is effected by the Holy Ghost who dwells
in her, through the medium of the popes, the saints of
the day, and the spirit either of old orders who have kept
their fervor, or new ones which He raises up to meet the
exigencies of the times.

The earliest special devotion, with a modern look about
it, seems to have been to the holy angels, which fills the
acts of the martyrs; and S. Gregory's dialogues both re-
presented the devotions of his day, and propagated them
to future times, especially devotion to the souls in pur-
gatory. Devotions seem to have become much more
numerous when pilgrimages began to be disused, and to
have multiplied proportionately with the liberality of the
Church in granting indulgences. Moreover, as the Euro-
pean mind became more subjective, the reign of mental
prayer was spread j and he must think strangely either
of the copiousness of divine mysteries or of the power
of human contemplation, who should be surprised that
eighteen hundred years meditation on the mystery of
the Incarnation has contributed, and is forever contri-
buting, art and poetry and devotion to the Christian
Church.

The whole history of the worship of the Blessed
Sacrament is a commentary on this. The same may be
said of the Sacred Heart. St. Gertrude asked in vision
why there was no special devotion to the Sacred Heart,
and St. John answered her that its time was not yet come.
It came at last, through Margaret Mary Alacoque and

THE TRUE IDEA OP DEVOTION. 409

the Visitation. The devotion to th3 Interior Life of
Jesus arose in France, and was part of a reform of the
secular clergy. The devotion of the Precious Blood seems
to have begun with S. Catherine of Siena, and +ook a
definite shape at Ferrara. That to the Immaculate
Heart of Mary was French. That of St. Joseph began
among the bachelors of Avignon. That of St. John re
ceived a great development in the spirit of S. Sulpice.
The name of Jesus was a Franciscan devotion. The
Month of Mary was unknown even to S. Alphonso
Liguori. Yet, when we say that devotions begun at
such a place or with such a person, we are speaking only
of the date of their taking visible shape and consistency.
There were always preludes of them in the fathers and
the saints. This is especially the case with the devotion
of the Sacred Heart.

Meanwhile the Church is not taken unawares by any
of these things. Ilather it is she who gives them out as
part of her own life. Thus when the Feast of the
Eternal Father was asked for in France, Benedict XIV.
gives at length the reasons why the Church was jealous
of this devotion ; and the reasons are exclusively doctrinal.
The devotion of the Slavery of Mary was condemned
also as unsafe in doctrine. The devotion to our Lady in
the Blessed Sacrament, though seemingly countenanced
by St. Ignatius, met with the same fate. The difficulties
experienced by Juliana of Retinue in the case of the
Blessed Sacrament, by the Venerable Margaret Mary in
the case of the Sacred Heart, and by St. Bernardino of
Siena with his new devotion to the Name of Jesus, show
how jealously and sagaciously the Church watches, and
35

410 THE TRUE IDEA OE DEVOTION.

curbs, and tests, and ballasts new devotion, or new ex-
pressions of an old devotion,

So it is with devotion to our Blessed Lady. As
Scripture says, she was to take root in an honorable peo-
ple ; and taking root is a work of time. Saints have
rooted her, councils have rooted her, universities have
rooted her, monastic orders have rooted her, schools of
theology have rooted her, the eventful vicissitudes and
personal homage of popes have rooted her. Pius VII. at
Savona is repeated in Pius IX. at Gaeta. As the world
got used to the mystery of the Incarnation, it hardened
its heart to its tenderness; and this devotion, which is
the very spirit of Jesus, breathed over it, like the moist,
warm south wind over the garden of spices. TheChurch
has worked it up inextricably into her whole system.
God has sanctioned it by revelations, visions and miracles.
Even in the weary, thankless, dusty toil of to-day, we are
greeted by Rimini, and refreshed by La Saletta. The
actual fruits of sanctity in the nineteenth century illumi-
nate the devotion, which was the subject of prophecy at
the end of the first century in the inspired apocalypse.
We cease to envy those who heard Mary proclaimed
Mother of God at Ephesus, since we have heard our own
Holy Father of to-day infallibly pronounce her Conceived
Immaculate.

But spiritual books often warn us against false devo-
tions. What are these ? There are three classes of
false devotions ; those which are wrong from being too
high for the person practising them, those which are sin-
gular and uncommon, and those which are too subtle.

Those which are wrong from being too high for the
derson practising them come sometimes from the tempera-

THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION. 411

ment of the person, sometimes from the indisoiction of a
director, and sometimes from a strong delusion of the
devil. They lead men to force themselves iuto super-
natural states of prayer, and to try to suspend the use of
their understanding, and rest passively in God, when they
are not called to it by Him. They consist in a wild, ur>
humble, and indiscreet imitation of the saints. Person?
addicted to them disdain common things, affect an interior
vocabulary, and imitate the grandiloquent language of St.
Denys and other mystics. Such persons are not often
fond of the writings of St. Theresa. Directors sometimes
drive their penitents into these false devotions by toe
hastily fancying they discern supernatural signs upon
them, not sufficiently attending to their advancement in
solid virtue, and too readily taking for their full value the
descriptions such persons give of their own souls. Such
coin must not pass current for a twentieth part of its nomi-
nal value.

Other devotions are false by being singular, uncommon,
or grotesque. Some souls look with disrelish over a whole
host of common devotions, such as the multitude of pious
Catholics practise, and with a sort of diseased instinct
fasten upon some startling act or word of a saint, which
was either really a mistake on his part or a special im-
pulse of the Holy Ghost, and they will proceed to found
upon it at once some peculiar and odd devotion of their
own. There have been instances of persons whose whole
prayers have been to request God to retire from them and
keep Himself in His own grandeur, which they founded
on St. Peter's words, Depart from me, 0 Lord ! for 1 am
a sinful man. Yet these people ought rather to have
besn climbing up sycamore trees with Zaccheus, to get a

412 THE TRUE IDEA OF I/EVOTION.

nearer view of Jesus. Devotions founded upon the apoc*
ryphal gospels or unrecognized revelations fall under tbi&
head ; and indeed everything which is foreign to the com-
mon and motherly ways of Holy Church.

Devotions which are false from being too subtle ar«
those which are founded on dubious theological opinions,
Dr on the abstract conceptions of the schools. Such have
been certain devotions to the Attributes of God, not very
honorable to the Sacred Humanity of our Lord. They
were common among the Quietists ; and some may be still
found in the works of certain eminent French spiritualists
of the school of Bernieres de Louvigny. They generally
arise from the activity of the imagination, and often strike
us as beautiful at first sight, but without unction in the
using. Devotion must be artless, tender, simple, guile-
less, natural, spontaneous ; and how can these things be,
when the object of them is obscure, abstract, difficult, and
subtle ? It need hardly be added that all devotions which
are false in any of these three ways, are very ruinous to
the soul.

But in devotion we have to receive as well as give, to
receive more than we give. In truth from first to last it
rather seems to be mostly receiving, and little giving
The exercise of devotion finds its chief theatre in prayer ;
and inspirations are God's side of prayer. We must not
always be speaking, we must be listening also. We must
pause from time to time, and make all quiet in our hearts,
that we may not lose the heavenly whispers that come
floating there. I am not speaking now of extraordinary
mystical colloquies, but of what will pass in the souls of
all recollected men at prayer. As soon, says St. Gregory,
as an inspiration touches our soul, it elevate* it above

THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION. 413

itself, represses the thoughts of temporal things, and
quickens the desire of things eternal, so that it is deligh;ed
with heavenly things only, and weary of earthly; and
such a height of perfection does it communicate to the
soul, that it likens it to the Holy Ghost ; for, as Scripture
says, What is born of the Spirit is spirit. These inspira-
tions are the actual impulses of the Holy Ghost of which
I spoke before j and they may be called the very neces-
saries of life to those who are aiming at perfection. They
are wanting them nearly all the day long ; for as it is by
habitual and actual grace that we live the life of grace,
obeying the commandments of God and the precepts of
the Church, so it is by the habitual gifts of the Holy
Ghost and His actual impulses and inspirations, super-
added to grace, that we live the lives of perfect men
and of ascetics who are training for perfection. These in-
spirations are not chance things, or rare, or what are
technically called spiritual favors. We must beware of
confounding them with these. They are our daily bread.
They are to perfection, what grace is to virtue. They
flow into us, whether we hear and feel them or not, in an
almost unintermitting stream. Before we gave ourselves
up to God without reserve we had them frequently, more
frequently than sinners, who nevertheless have them very
often in right of their baptism ; but now they flow into us
in an unintermitting stream. One great mystical theolo-
gian calls the gifts of the Holy Ghost the seven sails of
the soul in which it catches the various breezes of inspira-
tion, and so navigates the sea of perfection.

The first thing then to be observed about these inspira-
tions is what St. Thomas tells us, that all the just have
a right to ask for them and to expect them, because of
35*

414 THE TRUE IDEA OP DEVOTION.

that first infusion of the Seven Gifts at baptism, whien
were communicated to them simply to make them
capable of obeying and quick to obey these very inspira-
tions ; and that we should especially ask for them when
we are attempting the more perfect ways either of the
active or contemplative life. This involves on our part
continual prayer for them, a habit of listening for them,
and an obligation, to be discreetly ascertained, to obey
them. The second important observation to make, is
that we ourselves cannot fix the time, place, exercise or
occasions of these inspirations. They depend simply on
the will of the everblessed Giver, the Holy Spirit Him-
self. Dost thou know, said the Lord to Job, by what
way the light is spread, and the heat divided upon the
earth ? He bloweth where He willeth, and chooses His own
occasions. Thus no vehemence of our own, no straining
of our inward ear, will bring us these inspirations. We
must be careful that our listening in prayer does not.
become idleness, or degenerate into a quietude to which
we are not called. We must not put out force ; that
will only delay the Holy Spirit. We must use patience,
and wait; and patience will accelerate His coming.
Nevertheless, which is the third thing to be observed,
there are certain places where He is wont to come, and
therefore where it is wisest to wait. St. Gregory, in his
Morals, has given us the whole theology of inspirations
so fully, and with so much system and completeness, that
later writers seem to have added nothing to him. He
calls these means of communication which the Holy
Ghost vouchsafes to use, the veins of the whisper of God,
like the veins of water which irrigate the earth, and tho
veins which distribute in all our members the blocd of

THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION. 41 6

life. He numbers among them prayer, the Word of
God, sermons, spiritual reading, and all the exercises of
the contemplative life. But the richest veins of all arc
the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacrament of the Altar;
and thus the likeliest time and place for these inspirations
to come are indicated to us.

But there are four sources of these inspirations : though
indirectly they are of course all from God. The first
source is God Himself, acting directly upon the soul, as
in the inspirations of .which I have been speaking. The
second source is our guardian angel ; the third, conscience]
and the fourth, love. Of the inspirations which come
direct from God, I have already spoken. Scripture speaks
of our guardian angel as a fountain of holy inspirations ;
and indeed, we could hardly conceive so inseparable a
companion, and so loving and efficacious a guide as our
guardian angel, not frequently communicating his mind
to ours, when we are so often made to feel against our
wills the impressions of the minds of devils in our almost
daily temptations. Thus God says to Moses :* Behold,
I will send My angel, who shall go before thee, and keep
thee in thy journey, and bring thee into the place that
I have prepared. Take notice of him, and hear his
voice, and do not think him one to be contemned ; for he
will not forgive when thou hast sinned, and My Name is
in him. So Zacharias says : The angel that spoke in me
same again, and he waked me, as a man that is wakened
out of his sleep. And I answered and said to the angel
that spoke in me, saying, What are these things, my lord?
And the angel that spoke in me answered, and said to me,
KDOwest thou not what these things are ? And I said,
* Exodus xxiii.

H6 THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION.

No, my lord. And he answered and spoke to me, saying
. . . Then presently after the vision changes, and the
prophet says, The word of the Lord came to me.* So
when Elias fled from Jezabel, the angel of the Lord
awoke him as he slept under a juniper, and spoke to him
and fed him, and gave him directions to go to Horeb, and
when there, not the angel, but God himself spoke to him-
So that the cases of Elias and Zacharias not only esta-
blished the office of the angel, but also its relation to the
direct inspirations of God.

0 with what care, says S. Bernard, quoted by Da
Ponte, and with what gladness, the angels join themselves
to those who sing psalms, assist those who pray, remain
with those who meditate, accompany those who contem-
plate, and preside over those who are occupied in active
business ! For these supernal powers recognize their
future fellow-citizens, and therefore, with all solicitude,
co-operate with those who are to receive the heavenly
inheritance. They rejoice with them, comfort them,
guard them, foresee and provide for them, that is for our-
selves. Finally, they inspire us to pray, and mortify our-
selves, to sing psalms, and to beat our cymbals, for our
bodies which we macerate are our cymbals, that God may
be pleased with the music of prayer, mingled with the
music of mortification. If sleep invades us in these exer-
cises, they arouse us, and say, Arise and hasten, for the
active life is a long journey still before you, and the con-
templative life still longer, if at least you are to go from
virtue to virtue, and see the God of Gods in Sion, who
will recreate your spirit, and speak to your heart, and
unite you with Himself by the thin, sweet whispei of His
♦ Zach. iv.

THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION. 417

inspirations. 0 lofty angel ! adds Da Ponte, whose im-
pulses help me so much to receive these sweet inspira-
tions, assist me always, rouse me from my torpor, animate
my confidence, supply my infirmity, so that with thee for
my companion, I may promptly walk the ways of morti-
fication and prayer, until I come to the mountain of God,
where I may see Him, and enjoy Him in His glory.*

The third fountain of inspirations is our own conscience.
Its office is to tell us what to pursue, and to warn us what
to avoid, and to incline our will as well as illuminate our
understanding. Fallen as we are, St. Thomas says that
the virtues are natural to us, and in a certain way con-
formable to the natural propensions of our spirit. The
inspirations of conscience call these propensions into play,
actively discerning them from under the law of sin, the
sting of the flesh, and the buffeting angel of Satan, by
which they are overlaid. Its office, says Origen, is to call
the house, never to sleep, always to be preaching, and to
sit like a pedagogue in the upper chambers of our soul,
and give orders. But its inspirations are not only sugges-
tive before action, but when need requires, reproachful
afterwards. It is, in fact, the good side of the human
spirit, and claims obedience by divine right.

The fourth fountain of inspirations is the stimulus of
love. The charity of Christ urgeth us, saith the apostle.
It is of the very nature of love to quicken our perceptions
of what the object of our love requires. Its docility is
equal to its quickness. An eye can command it without
a word, and a smile can sufficiently reward it. It is essen-
tially inventive, full $f affectionate wiles, divining unex-

* Dux Spiritualis. Tract 1, cap. xxi., sect. 2. I quote from the
Latin translation of Trevinsius, not possessing the Spanish.
2f

418 THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION.

pressed desires, prophesying the future, and thoroughly
alive to every feature of the present. When it sleeps, its
heart waketh. So that what with its sensitiveness, and
what with its delicacy, and what with its contagious near-
ness to God Himself, it is an independent fountain of
inspirations, which, as human, are often marred by indis-
cretion and extravagance, yet nevertheless, with caution
and counsel, are great helps to perfection. All these four
kinds of inspiration are, according to their several degrees,
entitled to our obedience. They form as it were the rule
under which we live, filling the places of superior and
subordinate superiors, according to the order and harmony
which is in all the works of God, and nowhere more than
in the subordinations of the interior life.

As in the matter of devotion it is important to dis-
tinguish between inspirations and spiritual favors, one
being of the common, the other of the uncommon order,
so is it also important to distinguish between tenderness
and spiritual sweetness, the former being of the common,
the latter of the uncommon order. These distinctions
are often overlooked, which leads not only to our having
unclean ideas in our own mind, but to our misunder-
standing and misapplying spiritual books. Tenderness is
the Christian feature of devotion. I am not saying we
are not to seek for spiritual sweetness : that is the question
for the next chapter to consider; but we must by all
means pray for the impulses of the gift of piety, and for
our inspirations to play upon that gift, because tenderness
is quite an essential in catholic devotion. We must pray
for tenderness as we pray for grace. We must claim it
as we claim the spirit of prayer. It belongs to us, not
as one of the unusual phenomena of the saints, but as

THE TRUE IDEA OP DEVOTION. 419

something without which we can neither pray, confess,
nor communicate, as we ought to do.

I cannot illustrate my meaning better, nor bring the
mind of the Church more forcibly before you, than by
speaking of what is called in theology the gift of tears
I am sure most persons will think that, although it is A
great and good thing to have this gift, yet it would not
come natural to ask for it. But in the collection of col-
lects in the Missal, a set, and those among the most
beautiful, are to ask the gift of tears, which is the chosen
symbol of tenderness. They are as follows : Almighty
and most merciful God, who didst draw from the rock a
fountain of living water for Thy thirsting people, draw
from the hardness of our hearts the tears of compunction,
that we may be able to bewail our sins, and through Thy
mercy merit their remission. We beseech Thee, 0 Lord
God, propitiously to look upon this oblation, and draw
from our eyes the rivers of tears which may extinguish
the fury of the fires we have deserved. 0 Lord God,
mercifully pour into our hearts the grace of the Holy
Spirit, which may enable us to wash away our sins with
the plaintiveness of our tears, and through Thy bounty
obtain the fruit of the indulgence we desire. It is our
duty, says St. Gregory, in the third book of his
Dialogues, to implore of our Creator with profoundest
plaints the gift of tears ; and the Catechism of the Coun-
cil of Trent, speaking of contrition, says that tears ought
to be desired and sought for with the greatest care.
There can hardly be a doubt then about the mind of the
Church.

In accordance therefore with her wish, spiritual theolo-
gians have treated systematically of this gift of tears

120 THE TRUE IDEA OP DEVOTION.

They have divided tears into four kinds, natural, dia
bolical, human, and divine. Natural tears are those
which proceed from constitution, temperament, age, sex,
and the like causes. God, says one writer, has made His
tears to rain both upon the just and the unjust, that they
may use them or not for the good of their souls. Such
tears have no character, either for good or evil ; and those
who have them not, need not be cast down; for the
physical expression, though sweet and helpful, is but the
outward manifestation of the inward tenderness. Dia-
bolical tears are caused by the devil acting through oui
minds on our physical temperament. Such were the
tears of Ismahel, the son of Nathanias, of whom Jere
mias speaks; and those also of which Ecclesiasticus
says, An enemy weepeth with his eyes; but if he find an
opportunity, he will not be satisfied with blood. An
enemy hath tears in his eyes ; and while he pretendeth to
help thee, will undermine thy feet. Such also are the
tears of hypocrites, who make themselves appear sad to
the eyes of men ; and mystical theologians remark, that
heretics have often had a diabolical gift of tears, in order
that they may mistake this physical softness of heart for
the tenderness of devotion, and so not find out tli.it they
have gone astray from the true road of interior piety,
and that those whom they delude, women especially, may
fancy their leaders are sainte, and that where they are,
the Church must be also. Human tears are those which
flow from the human spirit. Tears at the loss of temporal
goods, at the breaking of earthly attachments, or at
moving narratives and pathetic incidents, these are all
human. Such were the tears of Esau, when, as the
ipostle says, he found no place for penance though he

THE TRUE IDEA OP DEVOTION. 421

sought it with tears, because it was the loss of .the temporal
benediction, not of the spiritual promises, for which he
wept. St. Jerome says, that these tears are signified by
Mieheas, under the names of the wailing of dragon
and the mourning of ostriches. It is plain that they are
not holy in themselves, and many of them nothing can
sanctify, because an evil motive corrupts them. But who
would say that the mother's tears for her only son de-
parting to the horrors of the Crimea, or the long, silent
streams of the soldier's widow, fructify not in their souls
with the fruits of eternal life ? Surely, in the good, they
are a kind of prayer.

The tears which are from the Holy Spirit, and which
we mean properly by the gift of tears, are like those of
Tobias, to whom St. Raphael said, When thou didst
pray with tears, I offered thy prayer to the Lord; or
those of Ezechias, to whom God said, I heard thy prayer,
and I saw thy tears ; and those of our blessed Lord, of
whom St. Paul says, that in the days of His flesh, He
offered up prayers and supplications, with a strong cry
and tears, and was heard for His reverence. They come
from those unutterable plaints with which the Holy Ghost
is making intercession in our hearts; and it is their char-
acteristic to clear the mind and not to trouble it, to leave
the spirit not perturbed, but delightfully and unspeakably
serene. Theologians distinguish five degrees of these
tears, which are more or less perfect. The first degree
consists of those which we shed over human miseries.
Even these may be the gift of the Holy Ghost. Such
were the tears of Anna, the mother of Samuel, of Tobias,
jf Sara the daughter of Raguel, and of Judith. The
tears of the second degree flow from the consideration of
36

422 THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION.

Bin, seen in . the light of the divine compassions. Such
were the tears that David often shed, such those of Mag-
dalen over her Master's feet, such those of Peter, when
he rose from his fall. Tears of the third degree, flow
from the compassion of Jesus, and the meditation of His
Passion. Such were the tears of Mary in her dolors.
The tears of the fourth degree arise from the desire of
seeing God, and the intolerable burden of His absence.
Such were the tears of David, which were his bread day
and night, while his soul thirsted for the face of the
strong and living Grod ; and the tears that Magdalen wept,
when she stood weeping at the sepulchre because Jesus
was not there. The tears of the fifth degree come from
an ardent love of our neighbor, and a supernatural sorrow
for his sins and his calamities. Such were the tears that
Samuel shed for Saul, and our Blessed Lord for Lazarus,
and over His beautiful, infatuated, and. dear Jerusalem.

It appears then that these tears are no slight help to
holiness ; that while they are gratuitous, they are never-
theless to be impetrated ; and that it is the mind of the
Church that we should ask for them with persevering
earnestness. Still while we are anxious, our anxiety is to
be moderate, else it will harm us. Our appetite is not to
be inordinate, else it is a symptom of disease. We may
take complacency in our tears, yet we must not be attached
to them. Neither must we pride ourselves upon them ;
for they are a gift. Still — what think you, is the mind
of the Church about inward tenderness, when, so unlike
her usual self, she would have us even pray for its exterioi
«nd physical manifestation ?

THE RICIHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS. 423

CHAPTER XXIII.

TffA RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

There is no subject on which the ancient and modern
traditions of the spiritual life are more apparently at
variance, than concerning the right use of spiritual favors.
Ancient books bid us seek after them, pray for them,
make much of them ; while modern books tell us to
shrink from them, to be afraid of them, to be nervously
cautious when we have them, and to pray rather to be
guided by the common way of faith. There is no real
discrepancy in this seeming contradiction. It is the same
tradition manifesting itself differently under altered cir-
cumstances. But I approach the subject with fear and
trembling.

Our first duty is to get a clear view of the question.
Spiritual favors belong to what may be called the uncom-
mon order. Nevertheless, there are two classes of them.
One class consists of the raptures, extasies, visions, locu-
tions, touches, wounds, thirsts, stigmata, and transforma-
tions which belong to the saints. The second class
includes only two things, spiritual sweetnesses and spiri-
tual consolations, which are the frequent and often daily
gifts of the middle-class Christians, that is, those who rise
above mere precept, and walk by counsels, without enter-
ing into the higher mystical world of the saints. Now
with the first class I have nothing whatever to do. Not a
word I shall say will allude to them. It may be true that

424 THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

the extatic state is, as some theologians say, the naturae
Btate of man ; that Adam was created in it, and that our
Lord lived in it ; and that the supernatural mystical holi-
ness works its way more or less imperfectly back into it.
But nothing of this is applicable to the class of souls to
frhose interests this treatise is devoted.

I am writing, let me repeat it, for persons living in the
world, yet nevertheless aiming at perfection, and a disin-
terested love of God. This must be borne in mind
throughout, or else much that is said will inevitably be
misunderstood or misapplied. If any one is so bold as tc
say that perfection of any kind is impossible to seculars, he
must consider the treatise a simple mistake from beginning
to end. I have no controversy with him, and shall not
stay now to prove a truth, in whose favor I have the whole
ascetical tradition of spirited writers, and the indubitable
facts of many processes of canonization. Such a contro-
versy would be useless and hopeless. For the sake, how-
ever, of those whom such wild inconsiderate doctrine may
trouble, and even hold back from a generous love of God,
I will quote from the Bollandists an anecdote of St.
Catherine of Genoa, while she was living in a Genoese
palace, and in the state of marriage. One day Fra
Domenico de Ponzo, a Franciscan, hearing Catherine speak
_n a ravishing manner of divine love, either from a desire
to try her, or from a wish to induce her to embrace the
religious state, began to tell her that in the secular state,
and with the tie of marriage, the heart had not liberty to
love God, and could not love Him so purely, as in the
religious state. So long as the Friar contested nimself
with showing the undoubted superiority of tb« religious
over the secular state, Catherine agreed wi*V fr»l but

THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS. 425

when he came to limit the love of God possible in the
secular state, she rose from her seat with her countenance
all on lire, and her eyes sparkling, and said, If I believed
that the habit which you wear, and which it is not in my
power to put on, could add the slightest spark to my love,
I would snatch it off your shoulders, and tear it to pieces.
That your renunciation of everything, and your religious
state, may enable you to acquire merits far superior to
mine, may be true; I let it pass, and congratulate you
on your happiness ) but you will never make me believe
that I cannot love God as perfectly as you. In fact, my
love finds nothing to arrest it, and if it did, it would cease
to be pure love. Then turning to God, she cried out, 0
my love ! who then shall hinder me from loving thee as
much as I please ? For that end I have no need of reli-
gious profession. Were I in a camp, in the midst of sol-
diers, I do not see what obstacle there would be to my
love ! She then quitted the room, leaving the company
in amazement at her heat and energy j and retiring to her
own chamber to give free course to the vehemence of her
love, she cried out, 0 Love ! who then can hinder me
from loving Thee ? If the world, or the state of mar-
riage, or any other thing, could hinder my love, how con-
temptible it would be ! But I know that love overturns
all obstacles. God was pleased to reward this outburst
by speaking an interior word in her soul, assuring her
that no state could hinder the perfection of love, and
effacing at once the trouble injected into her mind by the
temerarious doctrine of Fra Domeuico.*

* To persons aiming at perfection in the world, I would recommend
a little book published by Pelagaud at Lyons, entitled Pratique de
la Vie Interieure a Pusage des gens du mo'nde : and also La Vraio

86*

426 THE EIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

I confine myself therefore to the second division of
gifts, and whenever I speak of spiritual favors I shah
mean only one or both of two things, either spiritual
sweetnesses or spiritual consolations, which, though of the
uncommon order and gratuitous, are the ordinary gifts
not only of the perfect, but of every soul honestly striving
after perfection. It is as if they were merited by our
having no reserves with God, and followed as a spiritual
consequence from generosity, although from various causes
they are often withdrawn or suspended.

Spiritual sweetness and spiritual consolation are in
reality two different things, though they may be often
spoken of together, because they follow the same laws,
while they exhibit different phenomena. Alvarez de Paz
warns us to keep the distinction in mind. Spiritual
sweetness is a grace from God, which produces serenity

PiSte" au milieu du Monde, by M. Huguet, a Marist Father, published
also at Lyons, by Girard et Josserand. I should also mention old
Walter Hilton's Treatise to a Devout Man of Secular Estate, though
it is not easy to procure. Even in the Scale of Perfection, addressed
to a cloistered nun, he says (pp. 21, 22, London edition of 1659),
" Worship in thy heart such as lead active lives in the world, and
suffer many tribulations and temptations, which thou, sitting in thy
house, feelest not of, and they endure very much labor and care, and
take much pains for their own and other men's sustenance; and
many of them had rather, if they might, serve God as thou dost, it
bodily rest and quietness. And nevertheless they, in the midst of
their worldly business, avoid many sins, which thou, if thou wert in
their state, shouldst fall into ; and they do many good deeds which
thou canst not do. There is no doubt but many do thus; but which
they be thou knowest not; and therefore it's good for thee to worship
them all, and set them all in thy heart above thyself as thy betters,
and cast thyself down at their feet." It should be remembered that
ho who wrote thus was a Carthusian.

THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS. 427

and tranquility, no matter amid what a tumult of passions
and temptations it has entered the soul. We see a diffi-
culty before us at which our infirmity recoils, but sweet-
ness at once smooths it away, levelling the hills and fill-
ing up the vales, so that we run, like a railroad, on an
easy level. A duty lies at our door, for which our
character has an insurmountable repugnance j but sweet-
ness surmounts the insurmountable, and the repugnance
vanishes. When the soul is hard, it softens it, and when
it is indocile, it renders it tractable. It lasts longer than
consolation. It abides out of prayer, even if it comes in
it, and it makes us affable to others, while consolation
sometimes leaves us with a temptation to irritability.
Consolation, on the other hand, is as it were a honey to
the palate of the mind. It infuses delight and pleasure
rather than peace and tranquillity. It attracts the soul
to itself, and then floods it with spiritual sensations of
the most exquisite delicacy. It is shorter in its duration
than sweetness, but more efficacious. It does a greater
wor!: in a less time. It belongs especially to prayer ; but
it does not usually come until we are weaned from the
world, as the manna did not fall in the wilderness till
the meal of Egypt was consumed. Thus sweetness draws
nearer to tenderness in devotion, though distinct from it,
while consolation touches more on those high things on
which I have said I shall not enter. Both are divine,
but sweetness works in a more human way, and is less
masterful than consolation. Having thus distinguished
the two, I shall henceforth speak of them under the
common title of spiritual favors; because, as I said
before, while they exhibit different phenomena they follow

428 THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS

the same laws, and that is sufficient for my present
purpose.*

I shall now make some observations on the following
points : first, the office of these spiritual favors; secondly,
the fruits of them ; thirdly, the necessity of them shown
by their effects ; fourthly, the signs of them ; fifthly, the
delay, denial, or suspension of them ; sixthly, the way tc
obtain them; seventhly, the right use of them; and
eighthly, the apparent discrepancy between ancient and
modern books upon the subject. And as I divide for the

* The same distinction is studiously made by Father Graciano de
la Madre de Dios, in the second part of his Dilucidario del Verda-
dero Espiritu. Vol. ii. cap. 74. What we should call sweetness he
names ternuras, tendernesses, and distinguishes them from alegria
espiritual, jubilo, regozijo, (mirth) consolaciones, embriaguez (inebri-
ation), hartura (satiety). The subject is also discussed by Padre
Fraz Joseph del Espiritu Santo, a Portuguese Carmelite, in his
Cadena Mystica Carmelitana. Colac. Pri. Propuesta i. Respuesta v
The language of the Spanish Mystical writers is for the most part
more accurate and expressive than that of others. Thus the Italian
term liquefazione is much less full and expressive for the particular
operation of grace which it describes, than the Spanish derretimiento,
a rapid thaw. Saliendo assi de si el alma, y como abriendo los
poros para atraer assi el bien amado, esta dilatacion, se llama Derre-
timiento. As I am quoting Father Gracian's Dilucidario, I may
mention, as throwing light on what I have said before of the human
spirit, his commentary on those words of Eliu in the book of Job
(cap. 32,) where he speaks of his inward fervor "as new wine which
wanteth vent, which bursteth the new vessels." He says that when
pious persons, and especially beginners, neglect their studies or the
duties of their station for devotional exercises, it is a common thing
to pay that they are under a delusion of the devil ; but in reality, he
observes, it is simply the infirmity of the human spirit, which is often
inculpable, as it is as yet unused to this " divine inebriation f* and
they who are harsh and excessive in their condemnation of it run
the risk of frightening men away from the spiritual life.

THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS, 429

fiake of clearness, so my division will lead me into occa-
sional repetition.

First, let us speak of the office of these spiritual
favors. St. Bonaventure sums them all up in fivti
things. They fill the memory with holy thoughts.
They give us a vast intelligence of God. They inspire
us efficaciously with conformity to His will. They cause
revsrence and composition of body and outward demeanor.
They lead us to delight in hard work, and, if need be, in
suffering for God. Another way of looking at the matter
is this. If we consider the nature of devotion and our
own nature, we shall see that there are in us three im-
pediments to devotion, the infirmity of the flesh, which
caused the disciples to sleep in Gethsemane, sensuality,
which was the law St. Paul felt warring in his members
against the law of Christ, and the necessary cares of life,
which he experienced in bearing the solicitudes of all the
Churches. Now sweetness and consolations, one with
another, remove these three impediments ; and God will
either send them to us without any co-operation of our
own, or sometimes to reward preceding efforts or present
fervor.

Secondly, the fruits of these spiritual favors rapidly
make themselves manifest in the soul. The busy, noisy,
populous memory, ever like a seething and seditious city,
becomes quiet and loyal, and attends to its manufactures,
and keeps the feasts of Holy Church with an obedient
joy. All trains of thought which concern heavenly
things display a copiousness and exuberance which they
never had before. Meditations are fluent and abundant.
The virtues no longer bring forth their actions in pair*
and travail, but with facility and abundance, and their

430 THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVOReJ.

offspring are rich, beautiful and heroic. There are pro.
vinces of temptations always in discontented and smoul-
dering rebellion. But we have a power over them which
is new, and which is growing. We have such a facility
in difficulties as almost to change the character of the
spiritual life; and a union of body and spirit which is aa
great a revolution as agreement and peace in a divided
household. All these seven blessings are the mutations
of the Right Hand of the Most High. Even to begin-
ners, God often vouchsafes to give them, not merely as
sugar-plums to children, as some writers have strangely
said, but to do a real work in their souls, and enable them
to drive their way through the supernatural difficulties
proper to their state. But proficients should ardently
desire them, for they fatten prayer; and the perfect can
lever do without them, as they can never cease augment-
ing their virtues and rendering the exercise of them
pleasant. What is the death-bed itself but an exercise
of virtues, so intense as to compress the growth of ten
years into an hour ? Nay, even in desolations we need
them ; for it is an axiom in mystical theology that God
both desolates and consoles at one and the same moment,
and by one and the same process.

Well, therefore, may Alvarez de Paz say : * " They err
then who do not magnify this spiritual sweetness, and do
not thirst for it in prayer, and are not saddened, if it
withdraws. They show that they have never learned by
experience its manifold utility. For if they had once
tasted it, and seen how by its impulse they rather ran than
walked, yea ind even flew to perfection, they would indeed
have esteemed that to be precious which brings with it
* De Inquisitione Pacis, ii. 3, 2.

THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS. 131

bo great an increase of virtues and purity. When it has
possession of the heart even of a beginner and an imper-
fect man, it elicits actions which are perfect at all points
(omnibus numeris absolutas). And if it hides itself from
a man who is advanced in virtue and already perfect, he
does not know how to do his ordinary actions without
multifarious imperfections during that temporary suspen
sion. It is not the sign of a soft-living man, and an
effeminate heart or over-delicate spirit, to sigh after this
sweetness; but it is the work of a wise and strong man,
who, recognizing his inborn infirmity, desires that which
will eaable him to run to God with more speed and with
greater agility, and to do greater and more heroic deeds.
He whose judgment is otherwise neither knows himself
nor has any ardent desire after perfection, nor compre
hends the true and solid riches of this sweetness." *

One of the reasons which have induced some spiritual
writers to speak discouragingly of consolations is their

* This matter is of such great importance, especially so far as
regards the connection between spiritual sweetness and the solidity
of virtue, that I cannot forbear giving a passage from Da Ponte.
It is in his life of Marina d'Escobar, and as he is not there professedly
treating of the present matter, the passage shows how completely the
view given in the text was part of his mind. He is saying that
spiritual favors, crosses, and virtues are the triple cord of the spiri-
tual life, which Ecclesiastes says is not easily broken. He gives this
reason, — Porque a los favores, y regalos sin las cruces, facilmente
suele veneer la soberbia, presuncion, y vanagloria; las cruces, y
tormentos, sin alivios de regalos, facilmente despenan en impaciencia,
tedio, y pusilanymidad de espiritu. Las virtude? sin Id mezela de
essotras dos cosas nunca son solidas, ni fuertes, ni bien probadas, y
assi faMlmente las vence lapereza, y tibieza del corazon j pero quand»
todas tres se juntan, hacen una santidad aventajada, y eomo iujpug-
n»bla — Vida Meravilloea. vol. I. Introd. See*. IT.

432 THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

laying us open to delusion. This of course expresses ae
undoubted truth of ascetical theology. Yet I will ven-
ture to say that the exaggeration, that common bane of
spiritual books, into which some writers have fallen, haf
done far more harm to the souls of readers by the false
and unreasonable suspicions it has created, than even a
positive delusion of Satan would have done. Nay, this
diabolical prudence, to use a common expression of ascetijs,
is itself a delusion of the enemy, and one of his most fatal
and most successful stratagems ; and spiritual books are
his usual ambuscades. Let us take a case of the worst
kind, a case in which the consolations have actually been
delusions, and let us learn from the saints, both by exam-
ple and doctrine, their heavenly sagacity and enlightened
moderation. For our example we may take St. Catherine
of Bologna, whose consolations for five years were in
great measure delusions, and among them were continual
apparitions of our Blessed Lord, as she believed, but
which were in reality fictions of Satan. Yet because of
humility and obedience, all turned to her good and to
her growth in holiness. Nay, she says she "drew great
profit" from her delusions.

But a saint's own example is perhaps less to us than a
saint's teaching to souls more like our own. Let us listen
then to the great prophetess of Carmel. St. Theresa is
explaining the words of the Pater Noster, Lead us not
into temptation. She says that those who arrive at per-
fection do not pray to be delivered from those temptations
which consist in sufferings and combats. On the con-
trary they desire, and pray for, and delight in such trials,
as soldiers wish for war, because they know how great
is the profit which they will derive from them. "They

THE RIGHT USE OP SPIR/TUAL FAVORS. 433

are never much afraid of open enemies What they

dread, and ought to dread continually, and beg our Lord
to be delivered from, are traitorous enemies, certain de-
mons who transform themselves into angels of light, and
come disguised. These are not found out, until they
have done great harm to the soul : but they keep suck-
ing the very blood, and destroying the virtues, and we
are in the very midst of the temptation without knowing
it. It is from them that we must pray the Lord to
deliver us/' Now, after the Saint has thus distinctly
pointed out the mischief these transfigured demons may
do us, mark what follows. " Observe, that there are
many ways in which they do injury, and do not think
that it is only by making us believe that the false conso-
lations and delights, which they can produce in us, are
from God. This seems to me the least part of the harm
which they can do : nay, rather, it may happen that they
thereby cause the soul to advance more rapidly ; for with
the bait of these consolations it continues more hours in
prayer ; and not knowing that they come from the devil,
and seeing itself unworthy of such delights, it will never
cease giving thanks to God; it will feel under greater
obligations to serve Him, and it will make more efforts
to dispose itself in order that it may receive still greater
favors from our Lord, since it believes that they proceed
from Sis Hand. Always follow after humility. Keep
in view that you are unworthy of these favors, and strive
not after them. If this is done, in my opinion the devil
loses in this way many souls, whom he hopes to ruin,
and the Lord brings our good out of the evil, which Satan
endeavors to do us. For His Majesty looks to our in-
tention, which is, ti please and serve Him, when we are
37 20

434 THE RIGHT tJSE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

with Him in prayer; and the Lord is faithful. It is
right to walk carefully, that there may be no flaw in
humility through some vainglory, and to entreat our Lord
to deliver you in this peril. Fear not, my daughters,
that His Majesty will allow you to receive many consola*
tions from any one but Himself."*

So in a like spirit St. Teresa says, that it is a false
humility, to reject from a fear of vain-glory the superna-
tural gifts and consolations which God bestows on faith-
ful souls in prayer. For since we see that they are gifts,
and that we in no way deserve them, they only serve to
excite in us an intenser love of the Giver. " It seems
to me," she adds, "impossible according to the constitu-
tion of our nature for any one to have courage for great
undertakings, who does not perceive that he is favored by
God. For we are so miserable and so inclined to things
of the earth, that we shall be ill able to abhor in very
deed and with great detachment all things here below,
unless we see that we have some pledge from above : since
it is with these gifts that the Lord bestows on us the
strength which we lost by our sins. It will be a hard
matter, too, for us to desire to be held in displeasure and
abhorrence by all, as well as to aim at all the other great
virtues which the perfect possess, if we have not some

* The saint's words in the passage in Italics are as follows : Este
me parece el menos dano en parte que ellos pueden haeer, antes
podrd ser que con esto hagan caminar mas apriesa, porque cehados
de aquel gusto, estan mas horas en la oracion ; y como ellos estan
ignorantes que es el demonio, y como se ven indignos de aquellos
regalos, no acabaran de dar gracias a Dios : quedaran mas }bligado?
a servirle : esforzarse han a disponerse, para que les haga mas mer-
eedes el Senor, pensando son de su mano. Camino ie Perfection,
tap. xxxviii

THE RIGHT USE OP SPIRITUAL FAVORS. 435

pledge of the love which God beais us, and wilh it a
lively faith. For we are by nature so dead that we fol-
low after what we see before us, and hence, these very
favors are tLe means of arousing our faith and of strength-
ening it. Perhaps, indeed, it is I, who am so vile, that
am judging of others by myself; and there may be per-
sons who need no more than the truth of the faith in
order to perform works of great perfection, whereas I, as
I am so miserable, have had need of everything." *

Of course we must not run into the other extreme, and
offend against the moderation of the saints, on the sub-
ject of these sweetnesses and consolations. St. John of
the Cross makes the best road to the summit, indeed the
only one to the topmost peak, of his Carmel, straight and
narrow, the way of pure faith and the absence of sensible
consolations. But on the other hand, he gives us another
road, tortuous but upward, on which he writes the words
Science, Counsel, Sweetness, Security, Glory; and to
this he gives the name of the Way of the Imperfect Spi-
rit, with these two mottoes, "Because I took pains to
procure these (consolations) I had less than I should have
had if I had ascended by the straight path/' and, "I
went slower, and gained a less elevation, because I did
not take the straight path.'7 From this doctrine what
other inference can be drawn than that the highest per-
fection is in the renunciation of these gifts, but that there
is also a perfection which seeks them, and a perfection
too by which the tops of Carmel may be scaled ? It will
be well indeed for most of us if we can mount to perfec-
tion at all, even by the less perfect road. But the fol-
lowing passage of St. Theresa will put both sides of the
* Vida, cap. x.

486 THE RIGHT USE OE SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

question before us at once, and with a clearness whick
precludes the necessity of comment.

" It is most worthy of note, and I say it because I
know it by experience, that the soul which begins to
travel along this way of mental prayer with determination,
and can bring itself not to care much or to be much
elated or cast down, because these delights and tender-
nesses are wanting, or because the Lord bestows them,
has already accomplished great part of the journey.
There is no fear of such a one turning back, however
much he may stumble, because the building is being
begun on a firm foundation. For the love of God con-
sists not in having tears, or in these delights and tender-
nesses, which we desire for the most part on account of
the consolation which we receive from them, but in
serving Him with justice and strength of mind, and
humility. The other seems to me more like receiving
and giving nothing ourselves. For poor women, such as
me, weak and without strength, there appears to me a
suitableness, in my being led as (God is now doing with
me) by consolations; in order that I may be able to
support certain labors which it has pleased His Majesty
that I should have : but for the servants of God, men of
weight, learning, and understanding, whom I see make
so much ado because God does not give them devotion, it
disgusts me to hear of it. I do not say that they should
not accept it, if God gives it them, and esteem it highly,
since in that case His Majesty sees that it is suitable : but
when they have it not, they should not distress them-
selves : and they should understand that it is not neces-
sary, inasmuch as his Majesty does not give it, and they
should be masters of themselves. Let them believe that

THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS. 437

it is a fault : I have proved it and seen it. Let them be-
lieve that it is an imperfection, and that they are not
walking with liberty of spirit, but that they will find
themselves weak in what they undertake.

u I do not say this so much for beginners, though I lay
such stress upon it, since it is of the greatest importance
for them to begin with this liberty and determination :
but I say it for others, and they are many, who have
begun and never could succeed in finishing: and the
reason of this, I believe to be in a great measure that
they have not embraced the cross from the beginning.
They are ever in affliction because it seems to them that
they are doing nothing ; when the understanding ceases
to operate, they cannot endure it : and yet perchance this
is the very time when the will is growing stout, and ac-
quiring strength, though they perceive it not."*

Thirdly, emboldened by the doctrine of Alvarez de
Paz, I will go on to say that some measure of these spiri-
tual favors is necessary, and that the necessity may be
shown by their effects. Can we do withont fervor, which
it is their special office to produce ? Are not copious and
tender affections, something more than a help to us in
prayer? Do we not actually measure our growth in
holiness by our facility in the exercise of virtues ? Shall
we persevere in mortifying ourselves, if we do not at last
come to love mortifications? We are full often in
absolute need of something more than their own light to
be thrown on the truths of faith. Even to preserve re-
verence, mysteries must sometimes be compelled by pres-
sure to give out the savory taste and the recreating odor
they contain. Worldliness is a wide thing with an ob-
• Vida, o. xi.

37*

438 THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

stinate life, and it sometimes bursts out oven in a chvout
soul like a devouring conflagration. Nothing can ex
tinguish it but an abundance of spiritual sweetness. A
drunken man dares, what a sober man will not dare, from
a leap out hunting to higher things. So in the spiritual
life we have many a leap to take in the darkness of faith,
which we never should take were we not inebriated with
divine love and the wine of spiritual consolations. Dis-
cretion is indispensable to the spiritual life ; but the deli-
cacies of it are never found apart from the serenity of
spiritual sweetness. This is the reason S. Ignatius tella
us never to decide on anything in times of dryness and
desolation. Now look at these nine wants. Are they
not absolute wauts to the spiritual man ? And what are
their satisfactions but the nine effects of spiritual favors ?
If you please, we may look at it in Da Ponte's way.
He says that when we give ourselves up to God and aim
at perfection, we labor under two necessities. Observe,
he calls them necessities. The first is perseverance in
prayer, and the second is perseverance in mortification ;
and he adds that it is quite hopeless for us to dream of
persevering in either of them without spiritual favors.
According to his doctrine, God shows us this by the very
seasons which He usually selects as the times of His
visitations, which are times of prayer, times of mortifica-
tion, times of sorrow, times of dryness, and times of dis-
traction. But hear two of the great fathers of the Church.
St. Gregory says, I will go to the mountain of myrrh and
the hill of frankincense. What is the mountain of myrrh,
but lofty and solid mortification ? And what is the hill
of frankincense, but great humility and prayer? It is
Iben that the Spouse comes to this mountain and hillf

THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS. 439

when He familiarly visity those whom He sees striving
to mount on high by the mortification of their vices and
distractions, and to smell sweetly of pure and lowly
prayer. And what comes of this visitation except that
the just, like trees of myrrh and frankincense planted on
this mountain and hill, distil their precious liquors in
greater abundance and excellence, while they exercise
higher and more fervent affections of mortification and
prayer ? This is what the soul herself felt when she said,
Come, 0 south wind, blow through my garden, and let
thea romatical spices thereof flow, that is, the odoriferous
dew of the tears which flow from our eyes. By this the
soul signified that the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which
is represented by the moist and warm south wind, was
necessary (necessaria) to soften the heart that it might
bring forth abundantly the tender affections of devotion,
the eye sweet tears, and the hands fervent works. For
that visitation is nothing else than the choicest myrrh
which drops from the hands of the Spouse.*

St. Bernard, that saint in whom antiquity so suddenly
puts on a modern look, thus describes the unfortunate
predicament in which the heart is placed from which
these spiritual favors have been withdrawn. " From this
proceeds the barrenness of my soul and the lack of devo-
tion which I feel. Hence it is that my heart is dried up,
and my soul like a land without water. I cannot shed
tears. I can find no savor in the Psalms. I have n
pleasure in reading good books. Prayer does not recreate
me. The door is not opened to meditation. I am lazy
in work, sleep at my vigils, prone to anger, obstinate in
my dislikes, free in my tongue, and unrefrained in mjf
* S. Greg, in loc.

440 THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

appetite. Alas for me ! for the Lord visits the mountains
which are round about me, but He comes not near to me.
Am I then one of the hills over which the Spouse leaps so
as not to touch it ? For I see one man singular in his gift
of abstinence, and another admirable for his patience.
One has extasies in contemplation, another penetrates
heaven by the importunity of his intercessions. Others
excel in various virtues, as mountains that the Lord visits,
and on which the Spouse of holy souls leaps and exults.
But I miserable, who feel none of these things, what am
I but one of those mountains of Gelboe from which, for
my sins, the Lord has turned aside, when He compassion-
ately visited the others ? Wherefore, my soul, you ought
to tremble, when you feel the grace of this divine vis-
itation taken from you. In that failing, you will fail,
and whatever good you have will fail with you." It
seems then to be the doctrine of the saints that these
spiritual favors, I speak of consolations and sweetnesses,
are not ornaments and crowns, but are to be numbered
among the necessary vital forces of the spiritual life.

Fourthly, we have to consider the signs of these
spiritual favors. Some are premonitory warnings of
God's coming, and some are tokens of His actual presence
in the soul; and it is of no little consequence to be
acquainted with both these classes of symptoms. The
premonitory warnings of God's coming are five in
number. Sometimes, without any cause of which we
can take cognizance, an instinct awakes in our soul tc
expect God, an impulse to get ready for His coming. It
causes no inward perturbance, though it is a surprise;
neither does it throw us into any confusion, though it*
fjret effect is to deepen our reverential fear At othei

THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS. 441

times we feel, without, anything either in our inward dis-
positions or external occupations to account for it, interior
admonitions to sanctify ourselves, to make acts of contri-
tion, to go to confession, or suddenly to turn our attention
with considerable vivacity upon some particular venial
sins. We feel and act as if we were on the eve of some
great feast. ' Or again we feel wrapped in a delightful
peace. The peace may have been sudden, as in a school-
room when the master's step is heard, or it may have
deepened gradually till it became sensible. Or like
sudden appetites which come on us, we all at once are
aware of an unusual hunger after justice and holiness, as
if there was some void in our soul which we were aching
to fill. Or again we are sensibly possessed with an
intense and very humble, but also very efficacious, desire
to be more pure, in order to win God down to us ; for we
know that pure souls are His magnets and attract Him.
This last is considered to be in most cases quite the
immediate precursor of our Lord. He comes swiftly
then, as to Mary the moment her beautiful Fiat was pro-
nounced. He comes to exhort, to teach, to console, to
reprove, yet to reprove so lovingly that a divine reproof is
a thousand times sweeter than earth's best consolation.

There are also five signs of God's actual presence in
the soul, for the purpose of dispensing His spiritual
favors. The first is a sudden breadth of mind, as if walls
had been thrown down and we saw far away over immense
and various landscapes, all lying with the most gorgeous
golden sunshine upon them. The second is an outbreak
of torrents of thoughts and affections, as if at once the
windows of heaven had been opened and the fountains
pf the great deep broken up as at the deluge The third

442 THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRI1UAL FAVORS.

is a clear apprehension of heavenly things, as if we saw
exactly how the heavenly court is arranged, and what are
the eternal occupations of the blessed, and as if we too
were put in momentary possession of their feelings about
earth and the things of earth. The fourth is a feeling
as if devotion were feeding us with substantial food, so
solid does it seem to be, and such conscious vigor and
strength is it pouring into every faculty of our soul, and
perhaps even into the tired limbs of our body. The fifth
is a fastidious contempt of the world, which makes us
turn with sick hearts and weary eyes from every manifes-
tation and development of it. It is like learning the
treachery and meanness of a friend. From that moment
fresh attachment seems an impossibility. Any one or
more of these signs is a token to us of a divine visitation.

It should be observed also that the manner of God's
entry into the soul is twofold. Sometimes He arrives in
the upper part of the soul, and thence, like dew, He
insinuates His sweetness gradually all through us, even
to our bodies. At other times He arrives in the lowest
depths of our soul, and breaks upward like a crystal bub-
bling fountain, which fast inundates us till we overflow.
The first method seems to concentrate us in Him ; the
second to make us spread ourselves out in love and works
of mercy towards others. The last is more the method
of sweetness, the first the method of consolation, were it
not that God comes as He wills, and will not be bound
by systems.

Fifthly, we have to consider, still following in the track
of the old spiritual masters, the reasons we may reverently
venture to find for God's denying, delaying, or suspend-
ing these spiritual favors. St. Gregory says, that it is

THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS. 443

lest we should think these gifts come from our owu na-
ture, were our own inheritance, or were due to us by any
title of justice. We cannot be kept in too complete a
dependence upon God, and the occasional subtractions of
the divine favors admirably effect this. At other times
He does it to increase our appreciation of His favors, to
make us desire them more spiritually, and to long for
His return more fervently, treating us, says St. John
Climacus, as a mother does her sucking child. Another
reason is that we may humble ourselves and lay His
absence to the charge of our own sins, to our ingratitude,
our negligence, our want of humility, and especially our
want of reverence in our way of receiving Him when He
comes : or it may be to caution us against vanity and too
great a complacency in ourselves, as if His favors were
attestations of our sanctity, instead of excesses of His
mercy. Sometimes the weakness of our bodily constitu-
tion makes it necessary for Him to withdraw His favors
for awhile, lest our health should give way under the
application to divine things which they cause in us, or we
should lose our sleep and appetite, and so be unable to go
through the duties of our office or station in life. Some-
times He foresees that we shall be so allured by the sensible
sweetness of His favors if He continues them, that we
shall be guilty of an indiscreet excess, as children make
themselves sick by eating sweets; and so a reaction would
come over us; and a spiritual languor, nausea, and un-
profitable idleness would take possession of us. Some-
times He suspends His favors because we begin to have
a repugnance to our external work and the assistance of
our neighbor, and to perform our obligations in a ver^
perfunctory way, because we affect the sweetness and

444 THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

solitude of this divine intercourse. For while it lasts, it
mostly abstracts the soul from other things, and altogether
possesses it.

At other times He withdraws to give us the opportunity
of exercising true and solid virtues by turning His pre-
vious visitations to account. For solid virtues are found
in God only, not in his sweetnesses and consolations. So
that if the sweetness lasted we should not know our-
selves as we ought to do, and we might mistake for our
own activity what wag in reality the energy of His sweet-
ness. Again, He delights to see us laboring on without
the succors of His sensible favors, because it is an image
to Him of His own ever-blessed Passion, and because it
is then we are winning the brightest crowns for ourselves.
Furthermore, He would have us expert in the spiritual
life, and proved with a diversity of trials, that we may
know how to bend over the oar in a calm, as well as shake
out our sails to the wind in a breeze. Sometimes He
would advance us all at once in heroic humility, or give
us our purgatory here for some infidelity, or burn and eat
away certain spots of sin, by some most grievous derelic-
tion, such as Job had when he cried out, Thou wilt take
me as a lioness, and returning Thou tormentest me won-
derfully. Sometimes He sees in us that common fault,
a want of esteem of grace, and He comes and goes, that
by a comparison of our two states we may measure at
once our own imbecility and the efficacy of grace. Into
the deeper mysteries of dryness and desolation I need not
enter. They would not be practical to those for whom I
write.

Generally speaking the abundance of divine favors de-
pends on our proficiency in the spiritual life. Gerson, in

THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS. 446

his Mountain of Contemplation, remarks that there are
three reasons of favors, which resemble three seasons of
the year. The state of beginners is the winter, when the
sun is hidden from us by clouds and fogs, and the cold is
great, and the rain frequent, though the sun sometimes
shines and the days are occasionally smiling. For in
their beginnings they have to sustain great obscurities,
the relics of their past lives, and the contradiction of still
unmodified passions; yet God sometimes visits them and
shows them His glad and beneficent countenance. So
far was that great master of mystical theology from think-
ing spiritual sweetness merely a bait for children in holi-
ness. Those who have made some progress in prayer
live in a kind of early spring. They have a greater
variety. On one day the sky is clear and serene, the
next it is cloudy and rainy. Yet the sun often makes
his appearance. So the Sun of justice frequently visits
the proficients, and indulges them, and gives them sen-
sible tokens of His presence, and leaves with them the
odoriferous flowers of fervent desires. Nevertheless He
withdraws Himself from them, so that a little while they
see Him, and again a little while and they do not see
Him ; in order that this variety may increase their hunger
and appetite for Him, and make them prepare themselves
so as to retain Him longer when He visits them. The
perfect live in summer, when the rays of the sun are
more ardent, and fewer clouds pass over his face; yet
there are occasional storms, thunder and hail and tremen-
dous rains, such as winter does not know. Thus the per-
fect enjoy a more stable and durable quiet, and God's
visitations of them are much more frequent. Yet occa-
sionally He tries them with more awful inward conflictg
38

446 THE RIGHT USE OE SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

and penul desolations, so as to advance them in humility.
Yet in the midst of these tempests He sends upon them
scattered rays of light, so that the nights seem almost to
be days because of the frequency of the divine lightnings.
Sixthly, we have to consider the way to obtain these
favors. The teaching of all the old spiritual books is
that we are to besiege God for them, like the importunate
widow in the Gospel. If we are to know, says one, how
we are to desire them, let us look how the old patriarchs
desired Christ. They must be our model. As they
yearned for Him in the flesh, so must we yearn for Him
in these favors; for it is truly Himself we seek when we
seek them. Sicut antiqui patres ! it is hard to have
before us an example of more intense desire. To be
humble when they come, and grateful as well as humble,
is the way to win them back again with increased riches,
and more exuberant sweetness. When our Lord sees
that we are solicitous to retain Him, and will not let Him
go, as Jacob held the angel fast till morning light, He
indulges us, and if He quits us then, He soon returns
again. If we are anxious forthwith to turn the sweetness
of His favors into solid virtues, increased mortification,
redoubled prayer, and practical holiness, we have insured
His speedy returns and His more frequent visitation.
There are two cases also in which it pleases Him and
makes Him love to haunt us, if we say, Fuge, Dilecte mi,
Fly, my Beloved. One is when discretion tells us that
exuberant devotion is becoming injurious to our health, and
encroaching on our work; and the other is when obedi*
ence and duty call us off from the secret caresses of His
love. We must learn, as St. Philip said, to leave Christ
for Christ. Moreover if we would enjoy to the uttermost

THE RIGHT USE OP SPIRITUAL FAVORS 447

the frequency of these divine favors, we must beware of
an inordinate and irregular greediness for them, and of
any complacency or return upon self in them. Louis of
Blois mentions the case of a pious person who was
punished with a dryness of fifteen years because of one
vain complacency in her spiritual favors. We must also
cautiously avoid all culpable distractions at prayer ; for
God only fills empty souls, says St. Bernard, quoting the
miracle of Eliseus and the oil (4 Kings iv.). When the
vessels were full, she said to her son, Bring me yet a vessel.
And he answered, I have no more. And the oil stood

Seventhly, we have to consider the right use of these
-spiritual favors. After what has been said, a few words
will dismiss this part of our subject. We have seen that
we must value them and pray for them, and yet not be
greedy of them. We must desire them, not for their
own sakes, but for their divine effects and solid virtues.
We must commute sweetness into additional practice,
and consolation into increased strength, as fast as they
come. We must receive them with the profoundest
humility, and with a growing fervor. They must be-
come the marrow of our mortifications, and be abun-
dantly and unsparingly poured out in kindness to others,
and in zeal for souls, and in ministries to the poor.
We must with a holy superstition keep them secret, as
the secret of a king. As soon as they are known they
will evanesce. This is their way. When God means us
to let any of them be known, He will give us such a light
that we cannot mistake Him and such an impulse that
we cannot resist Him. Perhaps this will not be once in
our whole life. Then also we must have the art of for-
getting them and remembering them at the right times

448 THE RIGHT USE OP SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

This must be according as presumption and discourage-
ment, those two sleepless deflecting powers of the spiritua
creation, try to disturb the equilibrium of our soul.
Finally they must make us languish after God ; for what
do they show us, with their heaven upon earth, so much
as this, that it is not really heaven that is sweet, but the
God of heaven ?

Eighthly, we have to consider the discrepance between
ancient and modern books on the subject of these favors.
What has been already said shows that these gifts have a
dangerous side, and that caution and moderation are
required in the using of them. Barring certain exaggera-
tions, I do not think any really contradictory propositions
could be drawn from the two classes of writers on the
subject. The genius of the ancients led them to put for-
ward the beauty and desirableness, nay, the necessity, of
these favors; while the spirit of the moderns led them to
dwell on the dangers of an immoderate appetite for them,
and the perils of an incautious use. It is the very aim
of a spiritual writer to speak to those of his own day.
He is without meaning if he does not. Now I suppose
that modern writers found the world very much more
effeminate than it was in the days of Gerson. Richard of
St. Victor, Tauler, Ruysbroke, Hugh of St. Victor, St.
Bonaventure, and Louis of Blois, to say nothing of St.
John Climacus, St. Nilus, Cassian, and St. Gregory.
This want of mortification would at once make the appe-
tite for spiritual sweetness more immoderate and the use
of it less cautious. The greater subjective turn of the
human mind, and possibly the weakened nerves of the
race, have rendered delusions much more common than
they were, or possibly, as the times of Antichrist draw

THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS. 449

nearer, Satan's chain may be lengthened ; or we may take
the view that they were more common when the modern
spiritual school was forming than they are now, when the
Jesuit writers have so flooded with scientific light every
nook of ascetical theology. Moreover the number of new
saints, and the publication of their lives, make the know-
ledge of these favors more common, and people more
readily fancy they are in spiritual states analogous to
those they read of in the lives of the saints. Possibly
humility is less flourishing in the world than it was,
though it never can have flourished much. Moreover,
heresies abound in false sweetnesses, and are multiplied on
the matters which concern the ascetic life. Jansenism
had not only a system of false dogma, but one also of
diabolical spiritualism; and Quietism had almost fright-
ened men away from an act of pure love, especially when
they found all Quietism out of favor with the Holy See,
even in Fenelon's extremest mitigations of the heresy. I
venture to make these conjectures in defence of the modern
writers, especially as they are more attainable by most
readers, and are safer in that their writers had the advan-
tage of many definitions of the Church which their pre-
decessors had not ; and I am anxious to show that the
tradition of the spiritual life in the Church has always
been substantially one and the same. I may therefore
be permitted to add (which I do, speaking under correc-
tion), that I cannot help thinking that in the grand French
ascetics of the seventeenth century there is an extremely
faint reflection of Quietism, which appears here and there
in their systems, like wayward summer lightning, espe-
cially when they speak of the abnegation of self, of tha
discernment between God and His favors, of the blessings
38* 2D

4 50 THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

of aridity, of what they call the nudity of faith, and othet
homogeneous subjects. Not that there is not & holy truth
in all these things : but I cannot disabuse myself of the
prejudice, if it be a prejudice, that there is a little exag-
geration in their way of putting them forward, and that
that exaggeration is in the direction of Quietism. As
Alvarez de Paz says, no one should be heard on the subject
of spiritual sweetness whom God has not led by them.

In the life of St. Jane Frances de Chantal we read as
follows.* While she was in one of the largest cities in
France, a religious, a person of great virtue, desired to
speak with her respecting her soul, which she readily
allowed. These two great servants of our Lord discover-
ing to each other in all simplicity the paths by which our
Lord had led them, the religious said to our Mother, that
she was occasionally so tired interiorly, as to be reduced
to great weakness and extreme languor ; so that she was
obliged to be contented with knowing that God is God,
without daring to call him her God, or even thinking that
He was her God. Our saint's reply was as follows : I
shall leave that point to you, my dear Mother, and I shall
never practise this abnegation. However tormented and
beaten down my soul has been, it has never been so low
that I could not say, My God, Thou art my God and the
God of my heart. For if the faith teaches me that He
is my God, the baptism which I have received makes me
realize that of a truth He is my God. The religious im-
mediately replied, that it seemed to her that in saying
that word, my God, we had not arrived at a perfect spirit
of abnegation. To this our Mother replied that our feel-
ing of abandonment could never equal that of the Son

* Vol. ii. p. 25. Oratorian Edition.

THE RIGHT USE OF SPIRITUAL FAVORS. 451

of God, and that in the greatest of His trials, He had
*aid, My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?
adding, I have often said to our Lord, when most severely
tried, that if it was His pleasure that I should dwell in
hell, provided it could be done without ray offending Him,
and that my eternal torment should be to his eternal
glory, I should be satisfied, but that for all that He should
be always my God. The religious thanked our Mother
for the light which she had imparted to her, declaring
that she was well fitted to be her mistress in divine love,
that she would never forget her maxims, and that there
was no more delicate matter in the spiritual life than the
knowing how to follow the example which the Father has
Bet us in His Son our Lord. The saint very often
recurred to this conversation, it made so strong an im-
pression on her.

What, then, is the result of our inquiry on this most
delicate subject of spiritual favors ? Briefly, it comes to
this. They are from God, and they are signs of love.
He knows best the times and seasons, the ways and the
means, of sending them ; and as He always sends them
for good and never for a snare, this consideration of His
knowledge of us should enable us to abate any exaggera-
tions of fear or caution we may have about them. The
idea of their being merely sweetmeats to allure children,
is as false in theology as it is surely intolerable as a ques-
tion of taste and reverence, and contradicted by all expe-
rience, as the saints are the persons who abound most in
these very favors. Neither are they to be considered as
one of G-od's many ways of leading souls. Some He leads
by an abundance of them. Others by fewer. But none
either by absolutely few, or by none. We must therefore
mafee them the subject of earnest prayer

452 THE RIGHT USE 0* SPIRITUAL FAVORS.

By them we attain an experimental knowledge of God,
which, while it requires to be corrected by theology, is
greater than any that theology can teach us. They give
us power over nature and against evil. They subject to
us the human spirit, and the demons. They give us a
facility in fulfilling our vocations. They intensify our
love, fortify us in temptation, give us confidence in God,
enlarge our gift of faith, and make us the comforters of
our brethren. May we not say with the people of Ca-
pharnaum, Lord ! give us always this bread ? Or, with
truth in every word, make the prayer of the poor Sama-
ritan woman our own, Sir, give me this water, thit I may
not thirst, nor come hither to draw ? *

• S. John ri. 34, ir. 16.

DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 458

CHAPTER XXIV.

DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES.

I? is usually said that prayer has four enemies, distrac-
tions, scruples, dryness, and desolation. Scruples have
already been treated of; and for the class of persons I am
addressing, enough has been said of dryness and desola-
tion when we considered the denial, delay, or suspension
of divine favors. It remains now to say something on the
subject of distractions, which the soul in the progress of
the spiritual life finds one of its most obstinate and most
tiresome impediments : tiresome, because it takes the
smoothness, sweetness, and facility out of all devotion,
and obstinate, inasmuch as it appears to acknowledge the
power of no specifics, but to be irritated and worsened by
the very application of remedies. For there is nothing
which looks so much like our own fault as distractions,
and I fully believe that no impediment of the spiritual
life is more often without any fault at all. In most cases
it is an unavoidable mortification, and the fault it leads to
is not want of attention at prayer, but want of patience at
having our prayer teased, embittered, and dishonored.

Distractions are said more particularly to infest begin-
ners; and they contain two things, the wandering or re-
moval of the mind from the subject of prayer, and the
occupation of the imagination by impertinent and irrele-
vant ideas. Hence it comes to pass, from their very
definition, and while they greatly injure vocal prayer,

154 DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES.

they do not spoil it altogether; whereas mental prayer ia
destroyed by them ; for in mental prayer we pray while
we are attending, and no longer; no matter, say S. Isidore
and Alvarez de Paz, how long we may remain upon our
knees. Even when they are quite inculpable, St. Thomas
teaches us that they deprive us of " spiritual reflection of
the mind," which comes from prayer. They are like the
gnats on a summer evening, which tease with their shrill-
ness more often than they pierce with their bites. We
strike them and they yield; but it is in vain; the pliant
cohorts form again in still more closely serried ranks and
pipe on a higher note than they did before. Where we
go, they go ; and it is only the thin air of the high hills
of mortification or the coming on of the grateful deep
night of contemplation, which can effectually draw off
from us these irritating tenants of the twilight.

We must then begin our inquiry into this subject by
laying to heart the doctrine of the abbot Moses in Cassian,
namely, that it is impossible for us to be altogether free
from distractions, useless to attempt it, and foolish to be de-
jected, because we have not accomplished that impossibility.
Conscious and deliberate acquiescence in and retention of
distractions are of course our own affair; for it is in our
power to withhold them ; but the indeliberate occupation
of our minds by them it is not in our power to prevent.
Nothing can hinder, says the abbot, bitter thoughts from
disturbing us, wrong thoughts from staining us, and vain
thoughts from disquieting and fatiguing us. The first
sort of distractions he calls sand, the second pitch, and
the third straw. The author of the treatise on the love
of God, among the spurious works of S. Bernard, seems
to countenance the doctrine already laid down, that they

DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 455

accompany us to the mountain of contemplation, and leave
us there; for he compares them to Abraham's joung
men, while he likens his body to the ass, and his reason
to Isaac, and he says, You cares, you anxieties, you toils,
you pains, you slaveries, all you distractions, stay you
here with the ass, the body : I and the boy will go with
speed as far as yonder, and after we have worshipped, will
return to you. Thus there is a sort of parallel between
distractions and venial sins. We cannot avoid them at
all ; but let us take them in detail, and we can avoid them
one by one. Thus, to any one who has made up his
mind entirely to cure himself of distractions, I would say,
You will never succeed. You are aiming at a state which
is only transient, even with the saints, and belongs to
contemplation. Your strife will increase your malady;
and your want of success will plunge you in self-vexation
and pusillanimity. Every reason I gave you to be quiet
with your faults tells with greater force in the case of dis-
tractions; for they are much more inevitable tnan faults.
A complete and final cure is out of the question.

So well aware is the tempter that distractions are one
of the unavoidable infirmities of our nature, and at the
same time one of the most vexing and annoying to the
human spirit, that he often tries to delude spiritual per-
sons into taking the diminution of their distractions as
the test of their progress in the spiritual life. He gains
many objects by this one stratagem. He calls off their
attention from real faults, especially those of the tongue
and misuse of time, and from the means of advancement,
where their attention would be profitably employed ; and
he fixes their eyes, and aims, and desires, on an object,
nr hopeless as the unprofitable labors which are put

456 DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEEIfiS.

among the punishments of the heathen hell. For ever
to be rolling a stone up an impossible hill, and for ever to
be filling at the fountain the vessel that leaks, this is
what these poor souls have condemned themselves to do j
and as they have taken it as the measure of their pro-
gress, through what anxieties, and strainings, and forced
marches, and discouragements, and swamps of sadness,
will not the Will of the Wisp lead them ! To resolve to
be altogether quit of your distractions is to keep and to
pay a standing army of them ; and in the end they will
be the sovereign, not you. Despots have slaughtered
Janissaries whom they could not disband, and have
broken the stone turbans off their graves. You will have-
no such success with your distractions.

When we proceed to examine the sources from which
distractions come, we must bear in mind the definition of
them, and the two processes which it implies, the removal
of the mind from the subject of prayer, and the occupa-
tion of the imagination by irrelevant ideas and images.
With this definition for our guide we shall discover that
this great Nile of distractions has five fountains : dis-
ordered health, the action of the Holy Spirit, the devil,
inculpable self, and culpable self.

By disordered health I do not so much mean actual
illness, when in all probability ejaculatory acts of love,
of patience, and of conformity, will form the whole of the
sufferer's prayers, with a constant quiet eye on his Cru-
cifix, or some other emblem of the Passion. I rather
mean the valetudinarian state which is now so very com-
mon, with its distinguishing bodily feebleness, and daily
tendency to slight headache, especially when, as is often
the case, the feeling of fatigue is greatest at first rising

DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 457

in the morning. With many persons this is so distiessing
that they are quite unable to make a morning meditation.
In these cases, bodily strength is wanting to keep off or
to banish distractions. The greater the effort made, the
greater will the vehemence of the distractions be, and the
result of a violent effort will be an inability to pray at all.
Such persons must be quiet and tranquil, and try to
keep God's presence lovingly before them with gentleness
and without scruple. It will seem to themselves that
they do not pray at all, and that their attempts are so
many constellations of venial sins. But this is really
very far from being the case. They must take the annoy-
ance as they would any other consequence of ill-health,
and learn humility in its endurance. If they are quiet,
they will have a spot within where there is peace, even
while distractions are raging without ; but if they make
vehement and ill-advised efforts, they will only surrender
to the distractions that inward sanctuary also.

The action of the Holy Spirit is another fountain of
distractions. Just as persons in the higher stages of the
spiritual life are supernaturally tried and purified by
desolations and aridities, so those who are passing through
the earlier stages, and along the more ordinary paths of
perfection, are sometimes put into a crucible of distrac-
tions, in order to ground them in more solid devotion, to
burn away the remains of sin, and to subdue the vivacity
of self-love. It is not easy for a man to know when the
distractions he is suffering from are supernatural. Per-
haps the knowledge would interfere with th ~ir efficacy.
Still it is a consolation to know that there -ire cases in
which distractions are a divine trial; and thae one pro-
bable sign of their being so is when we are unt-ble to at
39

458 DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES.

tribute their unusual inroad, or its perseverance, to any
other cause or to any fault of our own. There is also
another class of supernatural distractions, which must be
noticed. These infest us when the Holy Spirit is calling
us to a different subject of prayer, or to a higher state of
prayer, and we are unconsciously or consciously misunder-
standing and resisting the vocation. He will let us have
no rest until we obey Him, and He sends us these dis-
tractions to harass us into obedience.

Thirdly, distractions may come from the devil, and in
a very great number of cases do so. It is obvious that
devotion is fatal to his kingdom in the soul, and con-
sequently must always be one of his main objects of
attack. His distractions may be known, first by their
torrent-like abundance, secondly by the vivid pictures
which accompany them, thirdly by their disquieting the
soul iu a peculiar and disproportionate manner, fourthly
by their disconnection with the ordinary engrossing
actions of our state of life, fifthly, and in this respect
they are the opposite of diabolical scruples, by their want
of variety, and their always returning to the charge in
the same shape, and sixthly, by their being of such a
nature, as if dwelt upon will easily become sin. Reguera,
in his Mystical Theology, tells us not to pursue distrac-
tions at all, but to treat them as a man does barking dogs
as he passes through a street. This advice applies with
peculiar force to those distractions whose origin we have
reason to believe is diabolical.

Inculpable self is the fourth source of distractions, or
rather contains within itself four distinct springs of them.
The first is the imagination, which is much more strongly
developed in some persons than others, and mu(h more

DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 459

susceptible of images presented to it. Thus there are
instances of men unable to make what is called the com-
position of place in meditation, that is, the picture of the
mystery, because the vividness of the picture so excites
their imagination, that it is a source of distractions to
them all through their hour of prayer. The ruling pas-
sion is another of these springs. All ideas and objects
connected with it seem to participate both in its domineer-
ing spirit and its tenacity. They are always seen as it
were through a magnifying medium, and lay so strong a
hold upon the mind that it is difficult to shake them off;
and when, as in the act of prayer, other external objects
are shaken off by the ordinary efforts we naturally make
at that time, those which are connected with the ruling pas-
sion only seem to have the field more comparatively to them-
selves, and to subject the mind to a more rigorous tyranny.
The third spring is what has been called the " ingenium
vagum," the genius of dissipation, the turn of mind
which makes a man diffuse himself over many objects,
and turn away with repugnance from interior things. It
is just the opposite of concentration. It has no fixity,
no steadiness. It is a constitutional flaw in the mind,
analogous to irresoluteness in the will. It loves novelty
and change, and show, and sound, and hurry, and many
thiugs to do, and the luxury of complaining it has many
things to do. Like all constitutional faults, it is full of
the possibilities of moral evil, still it is itself constitu-
tional, and so inculpable. In speaking of the human
spirit I quoted Scaramelli to show that there was a pro-
foundly melancholy temperament which could nail itself
so undistractedly to an object as to be mistaken for a
supernatural gift of contemplation. The ingenium vagum

460 DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES.

is just the very opposite to this ; and as the former is with.
out merit, so is the latter without blame. The fourth
spring is the unskilfulness of our spiritual director.
Directors, who drag their penitents rather than follow
them to keep them in the way, are necessarily the cause
of habitual distractions, because the souls of their peni-
tents are always in an unreal and forced state, and are not
developing in the way of the Holy Spirit. Hence they
are feverish, panic-stricken, obstinate, now querulous,
now fantastic, one while dumb, another while loquacious,
and a few years hence would have given up the pursuit
of perfection altogether. The prayers of such persons
are composed of two-thirds distractions and one-third
petulant complaint of the distractions to Grod. Other
directors have a pet method of prayer, and will insist on
all their penitents praying as they do. None are to pray
lower. Perfection, say they, requires such or such a
degree of prayer. None are to pray higher. It would
be delusion. Such a director looks down upon his flock
as on a lower level than himself on the mountain. He
is piping up above. It does not strike him that he is
ever to look up, sometimes with dazzled eyes and aching
neck, at penitents above him. All above him are
stragglers. He sends his dog for them, and they come
precipitately down at the peril of their lives. Others
take Scaramelli and such books, and pass their penitents
through twelve or fifteen degrees of prayer in succession,
like the stages of an operation, a manufacture, o? a medi-
cal cure. They can tell as well where they are in prayer
as they can show by a map how far they are on their road
to a given place. The consequence, to the poor penitents,
of all this narrowness and pedantry in their being

DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 161

devoured by wolves the whole time of prayer. To be in
a state of prayer in which God does not will us to be, is a
zind of spiritual dislocation. We snail be easy in no
posture, and recollection is impossible. These four springs
together make up the source of inculpable self.

The fourth and last fountain of distractions is culpable
self. All distractions, from whatever source, are culpable,
if we clearly perceive them and deliberately entertain
them. They become culpable in the same way as temp-
tations become sins, by advertence and consent. But,
beyond this, there is a class of distractions arising imme-
diately from ourselves, and which are always culpable.
They have two springs, the body and the mind. The
body culpably causes them, when we practise no sort of
mortification, and foresee that the result of that neglect
will be distractions. Irreverent postures in prayer, and
continual changes of position, and all want of outward
modesty and propriety, also give rise to distractions which
are culpable. The remedy for these is of course as obvi-
ous as their cause. Then the mind is another prolific
spring of several classes of distractions for which we have
no one to blame but ourselves. We have debauched our
Dwn minds. We have disarmed our spirit, and left it a
helpless prey to those merciless distractions.

Among our many faults there are seven especially,
which not only indirectly, but directly, play into the
hands of distractions. The first is a carelessness about
very minute sins, which, like the dead flies in the apothe-
caries' ointment, may be indefinitely small, and yet cor-
rupt the purity of intention of all we do. They dissipate
the mind, induce one or other of the forms of spiritual
idleness, involve supernatural objects in a sort of fog, and
39*

*62 DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES.

weaken grace at every turn. The second fault is tepidity,
of which I shall have to speak in the following chapter.
The third is curiosity, and especially a thirst for news,
whether it be of the great world, the camp and the court
far off, or details of what our neighbors are saying, doing,
and suffering, or an inordinate love of writing and receiv-
ing letters, or the puerile magnifications and idolatries of
domestic life and love. All these must be paid for, to
the uttermost farthing, by these inexorable distractions.
Shylock will not stick to his bond more pertinaciously
than they. The fourth fault is going to prayer without
due preparation. We walk in and out of the presence of
God, without doing reverence or homage, or observing
any of the ceremonial of His august celestial court. There
is no one perhaps with whom we are more rude than with
the Incomprehensible God ; and we are never really
familiar with those to whom we are rude. Hence come
distractions, which can breathe any air but that of holy
familiarity with God. A fifth fault is our want of custody
of the senses, not merely in the time of prayer but out of
it. Distractions being an infirmity of our nature, we can-
not purchase, I will not say immunity, but a sufficiently
ample jurisdiction over them, without a sacrifice on our
own part. We cannot enjoy to the full our unshackled
liberty of looking where we will and listening to what we
will, even far short of sin, and not take the consequences
which follow by the mere operation of the natural laws
of mind. The manner as well as the amount of custody
of the senses is different in each case ; but without some
manner and some amount we shall always be powerless
over distractions. Our sixth fault is our neglecting to
practise ejaculatory prayers. They are, so to speak, the
heavenly side of distractions, thoughts of God which dis-

DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 463

tract us from the world, and interfere with the quiet pos-
Bession which the world has taken of our souls. Ejacula-
tions are our doing for God what distractions do against
Him. They have a speciality to evict distractions. There
is no better practice for bringing them under our control.
Our seventh and last fault is our taking no pains to watch
from what object it is that the thickest swarms of our
distractions arise, and then mortifying ourselves in those
very things. Obvious as this duty is, it is one very com-
monly neglected. Men lock at distractions as unscientifio
people look at a phenomenon. It tells them nothing. It
leads to nothing. They do not ask whence it comes nor
whither it goes. It is simply a phenomenon. So here
are these distractions. No matter whence they come;
the question is what we are to do with them. Certainly;
but it is just to find out this last, that we must know the
first. If our imagination is fairly sinking at prayer in a
sea of distractions, it is very well to work at the nrmps,
but it is something more to find out the leak. Attention
to these seven faults will in time produce something like
subordination in our distractions ; and we shall never get
much beyond this, until our whole state is higher and
more supernatural. It is one of the essential and incur-
able defects of the state of proficiency, as compared with
the state of the already perfect ; just as there are essential
and incurable defects in beginners which gradually disap-
pear in proficients. Anything that helps to purity of
intention helps also to the subjugation of distractions.

But the great thing to be borne in mind is that the
time of prayer is not the time for the true combat with
distractions. If we delay till then, even our very victories
will be melancholy; for they will be won only by the loss

464 DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES.

of our prayer. How many persons complain of their dis-
tractions, and even look forward with a sort of dread to
the time of prayer because of the mental suffering it will
bring with it ; and yet how few make it the business of
their lives, out of prayer, to hinder the recurrence of
these same distractions ! I have already said, and I will
repeat it, that when a man is not seriously directing his
life out of prayer against the sources of distractions, prayer
must necessarily be the most distracted of times. For
we empty the heart of many things, and distractions gush
in to fill up the void. We shall never get rid of distrac^
tions or get a decent mastery over them by fighting
against distractions, but by fighting against something
else, against the source or cause of the distractions; and
our fight must cover the whole breadth of our daily life.

There are two practices of interior spirituality which
excellently accomplish this end; and they occupy the
entire ground of life. One of them is the having a rule
of life; and the other devoting our undivided attention to
the perfecting of our ordinary actions. With regard to
the rule of life, it is so completely a question for con-
sideration in each particular case, that I shall not enter
into it at any length. Ic gives sanctity in the world a
kind of shadowy likeness of sanctity in a convent, which
acts sometimes well, sometimes ill. With some persons
the captivity and bondage of it rapidly advance them in
holiness. With others its arrangements only minister to
delusion and self-love. In the case of some it meets their
faults, and strangles them with a sort of slowly twisting
bow-string. In the case of others, it ruins their delicacy
of conscience ; their attention is called off from real faults
and even cryittg imperfections, and is so fixed on obedi-

DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 465

ence to the details of their rules, that their conscience
comes soon to feel keenly the one, which is of little con-
sequence, and be callous to the other, in which even
questions of sin are often concerned. People will confess
with real sorrow a breach of their tfme-paper, who forget
even to mention that they spoke sharply to their servant,
or discussed the character of an absent neighbor. Of all
the appliances of the spiritual life there are none which
can with less wisdom and safety be indiscriminately applied.
Upon the whole, fewer can wear the yoke than not ; or at
least as many get injury as get benefit, from this form of
spirituality. Only, where it succeeds, it succeeds admir-
ably. But in the case of persons living in the world, I
believe rules have stunted more souls than they have
advanced.

But there are none to whom our Lady's devotion, her
shape of the spiritual life, cannot be applied with abundant
blessings : I mean the attempt to do perfectly our ordi-
nary actions. This is the most excellent of practices,
and walks in a clear air which delusions seldom can ob-
scure ; and our power over our distractions grows in pro-
portion to our perseverance and our skill in this exercise.

Methods for this practice abound in our most approved
spiritual writers. I will select one out of many, because
of its simplicity, clearness, and spirituality. There are
then two things to be regarded in every one of our ordi-
nary actions, the exterior and the interior. The exterior
is to it what the body is to the soul, as necessary and yet
also as subordinate. Where outward discipline is want-
ing, interior perfection cannot be observed, says William
of Paris. The religion of our exterior, says St. Bona*
venture, excites the affection of our interior. The per-

2E

166 DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES.

fection of the exterior of our actions is attained by the
presence of three virtues, fidelity, punctuality, and
modesty. Fidelity enables us to admit nothing, punctu-
ality to procrastinate nothing, and modesty to do all
things with gracefulness and edification.

For the interior of our actions three things also are
required : to do all for God, in the presence of God, and
in the sight of Jesus.

To do our actions for God is to refer them to him by
an act of intention. Many actions are done for a bad
intention, such as the desire of praise; and then the act
is vitiated. Many also are done with merely human in-
tentions, as for the pleasure of a thing, and then there is
no merit. And alas ! multitudes of actions of multitudes
of men are done with no intention at all; and custom,
precipitation, and negligence, devour what might have
been the pure food of God's greater glory. 0 what
teeming years of human life are wasted through this un-
thinking absence of all intention ; and we thought our-
selves so good because after all we were not so bad ; and
now tears of blood will not weep them back again ! When
we are doing a great thing for God, we must momentarily
collect ourselves before acting, and try to touch lightly
with our intention the beginning, middle, and end of each
considerable action, and not throw away, as fish too small
for the table, the little actions of the day.

Now I have said certain things here which will imme-
diately turn to scruples in some minds, if I do not meet
them by giving some signs which, without an absurd
over-exactness of self-inspection, will enable us to know
whether on the whole we are doing our works for God.
Here is one sign : we are really working for God, if we

DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 467

eould say Yes, did any one suddenly ask us if what we
are doing is for God. Another is, if we are not uneasily
anxious about the judgment men will pass upon our
actions. A third is, if we are not wholly indifferent, but
quite tranquil about success. A fourth is, if we take as
much pains in private with what we are doing as in pub-
lic before witnesses. A fifth is, if we are not jealous
either of associating others with our works, or of their
equal or greater success.

We do our works in the presence of God, which is the
second grace the perfection of our ordinary actions re-
quires, when we practise the presence of God while we do
them. There are six ways of practising the presence of God
which are given in books, and from which souls should select
those which are most suited to them, but not try to practise
more than one. The first is to try to realize God as He
is in heaven. The second to regard ourselves in Him as
in His immensity. The third to look at each creature as
if it were a sacrament having God hidden under it. The
fourth is to think of Him and see Him by pure faith.
The fifth to look at Him as in ourselves, rather than out-
side of us, though He is both. And the sixth is to gra-
vitate towards Him by an habitual loving mindfulness of
heart, a kind of instinct which is no uncommon growth
of prayer, and comes sooner than would be expected,
when men strive to serve God out of the single motive of
holy love.

The third requisite for the perfection of our ordinary
actions is that we should do them in the sight of Jesus,
that is, to use the words of the missal, by Christ, with
Christ, and in Christ. To do our actions by Christ is to
do them in dependence upon Him, as He did everything

468 DISTRACTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES.

in dependence on His Father and by the movements of
His Spirit. To do our actions with Christ is to practise
the same virtues as our Lord, to clothe ourselves with the
same dispositions, and to act from the same intentions^
all according to the measure of the lowliness of our possi-
bilities. To do our actions in Christ is to unite ours with
His, and to offer them to God along with His, so that for
the sake of His they may be accepted on high.

This is a good old-fashioned French method of per-
fecting our ordinary actions, and not so hard as at first
sight it seems to be. To try and combat our distractions
when the time of prayer has come, is like speaking reason
to a seditious multitude. What I have said is not perhaps
satisfactory. It is hard to be told that we cannot shake
off altogether a yoke so degrading and so wearisome.
But will facts warrant me in promising more ? No man
ehort of a real contemplative will ever reign like a despot
over his vast hordes of distractions. He is a happy man,
and has done much, who has set up a constitutional
monarchy among them.

LUKEWARMNESS.

CHAPTER XXV.

LUKEWARMNESS.

Bellecio in his treatise on Solid Virtue puts .uko»
warmness almost at the very commencement. This has
always seemed to me an inconvenient arrangement
Lukewarmness is in no sense a beginning. We may begin
by being cold, but not by being lukewarm. For luke-
warmness implies that a great deal has gone before, that
a height has been climbed, and that from cowardice,
human respect, or weariness, we have come down from it.
Like certain phenomena in geology, it is at once an
evidence of a former state of things, and of the catas-
trophe which overthrew it. He who was never fervent
can never be lukewarm. Cold he may be, and low, and
mean, and ungenerous, and a poltroon, but not luke-
warm.

I prefer therefore to consider lukewarmness in this
place, because the knowledge we have now gained of the
various appliances of the spiritual life will enable us the
better to understand its true nature ; and also because all
the component parts of the spiritual life being also, when
spoiled, the component parts of lukewarmness, this is the
natural place it occupies. In fact, all that has gone be-
fore of struggle, fatigue, and rest, with their helps, hin-
drances, phenomena, and developments, issues simply in
one of two states, lukewarmness or fervor. Either we
40

470 LtJKEWARMNESS.

are lukewarm, or we are fervent. These are the ends
of our whole voyage as proficients : either we run on the
sandbanks and go to pieces at the very base of the light-
house, or we hit the mouth of the harbor, and lie suugly
in its deep water with the mountains of God embracing
us on either side. The rudder of the spiritual life, the
little-seeming power which governs the whole ship, is dis-
cretion. This turns us off from the treacherous shoal,
keeps us in the deep midway channel, and steers us fairly
into port. Hence my last three chapters will naturally
be occupied with the consideration of lukewarmnesSj
fervor, and discretion.

There is nothing in the spiritual life which arrests our
attention so forcibly as lukewarm ness, because of the un-
usual language in which it has pleased God to express
His ineffable disgust with it, and the startling doctrine
which accompanies the declaration of His loathing, that
coldness is less offensive to Him than tepidity. Who is
it then with whom God is so exceedingly displeased, that
He is sick of His own redeemed creature ? We tremble
at the answer. It is the man, who is patient when he
has nothing to suffer, who is gentle while he is uncon-
tradicted, who is humble when men leave his honor un-
touched, who wishes to be a saint without the trouble of
it, who seeks to acquire virtues without mortification, who
is willing to do many things, but not to take the kingdom
of heaven by violence. Alas ! here are verified the dread
words of the Prince of the Apostles. The time is that
judgment should begin at the house of God. And if
first at us, what shall be the end of those who believe
not the gospel of God? And if the just maa shall

LUKEWARMNESS. 471

scarcely be saved, where shall the wicked and the sinnei
appear ?*

The diseases and evils of the body are, as might be
expected, seeing they are the immediate outflowings of
siu, in a great degree typical of the miseries and mis-
fortunes of the soul. If we seek the correlative of hike-
warmness, we shall find it in blindness. It is a blindness
which does not know even its own self, and does not sus-
pect that it is blind, or that other men see better than
itself. It is a judicial blindness, because it once saw
better itself, and now does not remember either what it
saw, or that it ever saw at all. It is usual to consider
that this blindness is owing principally to three causes,
the frequency of venial sins, habitual dissipation of mind,
and the ruling passion. The frequency of venial sins is
like travelling in the wilderness, where the bright air is
imperceptibly filled with fine sand. Habitual dissipation
of mind is like reading in the sunshine, and living in a
light too strong for our eyes. The ruling passion is an
external violence which menaces us, and makes us shut
our eyes, and have them always shut, that we may not
see what it would fain hide, and so when we open them
after long being used to darkness, it is the very light it-
self which blinds us.

The immediate results of this blindness are three also.
In the first place conscience becomes untrue. The bodv
does not move firmly and in a straight line in the dark
So the conscience also must see in order to keep its
balance. But if we falsify the oracle, and still believe
it, what is the consequence but error and corruption
everjwhere? If the light that is in us be darkness,

* 1 S. Peter iv. 17.

172 LUKEWARMNESS.

6ays our Lord, how great is that darkness! So first
there comes a false conscience. But in proportion as
conscience becomes dark, and so cold, and finally numb,
in the same proportion the bad instincts of the human
spirit, like owls at night, get more far-sighted, animated,
and vivacious. These instincts lead us with uncommon
tact to avoid anything which will restore animation to the
conscience. For their purpose it had best remain under
chloroform for life. Thus they make us shrink from any-
thing like vigorous spiritual direction. We suspect we
shall be awakened, and driven, and made too good.
Discretion, that is, the discretion of the blind conscience,
tells us this shrinking is wisdom and sagacity. We must,
it says, be moderate in everything, but of all things
amazingly moderate in the love of God. So in hear-
ing sermons, reading books, cultivating acquaintances,
patronizing works of mercy, it draws back from every-
thing that is likely to come too near or hit too hard. It
is the old story of the earthen jug and the brazen jar, as
they went down the stream together. Here is the second
result of this blindness, which renders the cure still less
likely. Indeed it is a characteristic of tepidity, that
everything we do while we are in that state, has a ten-
dency to confirm us as incurable. Out of the two pre-
ceding results flows a third, which is a profane use of
the sacraments. To go to Holy Communion when we are
physically drowsy, yawning, and half asleep, or to make
our general confession half stupefied with laudanum,
would be fair types of the way in which we morally use
the sacraments. Thus frequent or even daily Communion
seems to have only a negative effect upon us. We do
not knew how bad we might be without it; and that is

LUKEWARMNESS. 473

all. Weekly confession gives us no additional powef
over our commonest imperfections. Matters look as if
they had come to a stand-still, if there were any such
phase of the spiritual life. But no! we are blind men
whose faces have been turned unwittingly. We are
retracing our steps; and the only wonder is, that the
easier task of going down hill, does not by its contrast
make us suspicious of some mistake. Alas! we are
asleep as well as blind. The finest things we do now
are no better than feats of somnambulism.

It is plain from this description that what is of the
greatest practical utility in this matter of lukewarmness,
is a thorough acquaintance with the symptoms by which
the insidious disease allows itself to be detected. These
are seven in number; and according as we perceive that
we unite them in ourselves, either in number or degree,
so we have reason painfully to doubt whether our spiritual
eyesight is not failing. The first mark is a great facility
in omitting our exercises of piety, which is the exact
contradictory of fervor. Every one has his routine of
pious exercises ; and there are few days in which they do
not entail upon us some little inconveniences. Perhaps
it is one of their special uses to do this, especially if
habitual distractions are going to make the exercise itself
of small value. Now these little inconveniences suggest
dispensations, or at least delays, which we see confusedly
will turn out dispensations at the last. Clearly there are
cases in which conflicting duties or the needs of charity
will interfere, and it will be more perfect to give way to
them than to read or meditate. But most often the in-
conveniences concern only ourselves. We have the power
to dispense ourselves ; and we grant these dispensations
40*

474 LUKEWARMNESS.

either rarely and with reluctance, or often and with facility
If the latter be the case, behold the first mark of tepidity !
I do not say that by itself it proves everything ; but it
proves much. At all events, wherever there is luke-
warmness, there also is this symptom. But we are not
only easy in omitting exercises of piety, we are negligent
in those which we do perform. We care more about the
fact of going through them, than the manner or the spi-
rit of it. Thus our prayers rise to heaven with an equi-
page of venial sins in attendance upon them, and the
angels are reluctant witnesses of our confessions and com-
munions. This is a second symptom. Here is a third.
The soul feels not altogether right with God. It does
not exactly know what is wrong; but it is sure all is not
right. It casts about to see. It quarrels with every-
thing it does, and questions each of them, and yet the
mischief eludes it. It is angry with its confessions ; yet
it is not easy to settle how to amend them. Something
always seems unexpressed, something left behind which
ought to have come out and does not. What is it ?
Then the communions are overhauled in a similar way,
the examens of conscience tortured, meditations repri-
manded, spiritual books cashiered, together with a deter-
mination to reform everything. General orders are issued
from self's head-quarters, in which strong things are said
ambiguously. Every one feels he is aimed at. Blame
lies everywhere. Yet all to no purpose. At last when
we have given the matter up, we suddenly come upon
the offending thing, just as we look for a lost article till
we are hot and tired, and then all at once see it lying in
open day in a spot we have searched four or five times
before. Now when we have this feeling of not being

LUKEWARMNESS. 475

altogether right with God, and yet will not vigorously
face the inquiry, and make the disturbance I have de-
scribed, and buckle to the triple task of discovery, punish-
ment, and reformation, it is a symptom of our being luke-
warm.

A fourth symptom of lukewarmness is an habitual
acting without any intention at all, good, bad, or indiffer-
ent, of which I spoke in the preceding chapter. A fifth
is a carelessness about forming habits of virtue. This is
the opposite of the inordinate appetite for self-improve-
ment already considered; the truth lying here, as it
mostly does in spiritual matters, in a mean. A sixth
symptom is a contempt of little things and of daily oppor-
tunities. This is a necessary part of our blindness. We
can only despise little things because we do not discern
ihe capabilities of glorifying God, and advancing our own
spiritual interests, which they contain. The seventh and
last symptom is a thinking rather of the good we have
done than of the good we have left undone, resting on
the past rather than striving for the future, loving to look
at people below us rather than people above us. Our
own ease and self-complacency find their account in this
attitude of the soul. This is the way in which tepidity
attacks the inmates of convents. When religious become
lukewarm, they like to measure themselves with the poor
citizens of the world, rather than with the grand saints
of their own order. They are ever calculating the sac-
rifices they have made, and fondly realizing to themselves
the glory of their self-devotion. When these signs are
observed, superiors recognize in them the alarming symp-
toms of tepidity. It all lies in one word. Such reli
gious do, what St. Paul said he did not do. They count

476 LTJKEWARMNESS.

themselves tc have apprehended.* Brethren, I do not
count myself to have apprehended. But one thing I
do; forgetting the things that are behind, and stretch-
ing forth myself to those that are before, I pursue to-
wards the mark, for the prize of the supernal vocation
of God in Christ Jesus. Let us, therefcre, as many as
are perfect, be thus minded.

From these fatal marks let us pass to consider the ex-
traordinary hatred which God has of this state. These
things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, who
is the beginning of the creation of God. I know thy
works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou
wert cold or hot. But because thou art lukewarm, and
neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of My
mouth. ")• This passage is without any parallel in Scrip-
ture. God not only prefers coldness; but he rejects
tepidity. It turns him sick who is eternal love. The
charity of the Heart of Jesus, our only home, cannot
retain us. If is disgust is too strong for Him to resist it;
and He rejects us with an unconquerable nausea which
even redeeming love cannot temper or allay. It is a most
awful figure, and one which, but for His own word, we
should not dare to have mentioned in the same breath with
His adorable majesty. How much He must have meant
to teach us by the singularity of that terrific language !
Now God is infinitely just, therefore His hatred of this
state cannot be too great. It is not in his majesty to
exaggerate. But He is also infinitely forbearing, so that
His punishment must be if anything short of its horrible
deserts. What then must its real horror be ?

But why does He hate it so ? Let us venture to search
• Philippious iii. 13. f Apoo. iii. 14, 15, 16.

LUKEWARMNESS. 477

for reasons. Because it is a quiet intentional appreciation
of other things over God. It cheapens God, and parts
with Him second-hand. Meanwhile, as it is not open
wickedness, but is even an open profession and exterioi
practice of His service, it pretends friendship, and takes
rank in the world as one of God's friends ; and hence it
involves the twofold guilt of treachery and hypocrisy. It
thus has a peculiar ability to wound God's glory by the
scandal it gives. It has God's honor in its power, and
treats it shamefully and cruelly. It profanes grace by
the indifference with which it misuses it. It takes it as a
right, and misapplies it, as a dishonest man spends money
on purposes for which it was not trusted to him. It is
taking a liberty with the majesty of God's exceeding
goodness, which is a terrible thing to do. It were better
to play with His thunderbolts, than to make sport with
His compassions. And all this is done with knowledge,
the double knowledge of God and of evil. What wonder
that it turns God's whole being, and sours even the sweet-
ness of the Sacred Heart !

A few words on its remedies, and the hateful subject
may be dismissed. Its cure is immensely difficult; St.
Bernard would make us almost despair of its being curable
at all. Only, we made up our minds at the beginning to
hold this all through, that nothing is incurable, though
many things in the spiritual life are nearly so ; and neither
doctor, nor father, nor saint, but only the Pope, shall
drive us from this doctrine. St. Bernard therefore will
be satisfied if we say that its cure is immensely difficult,
because all the saints have said so, because the evil is
unsuspected, because even the good is mixed with evil,

47* LUKEWARM NESS.

because men do not realize the possible forfeiture of grace
to keep precepts when they have been playing fast and
loose with counsels, and because, as St. Theresa teaches,
for some souls perfection is accidentally necessary even
for their salvation !

How absurd it seems to mention the feeble remedies t
The first is to quicken faith by meditation on eternal
truths, so as to possess our minds -habitually with their
overwhelming importance and their exacting purity. The
second is, not having so many things to do. It is no use.
The times are busy. But we cannot save our souls if we
have so many things to do. But the remedy? Good
soul ! there are some knots in life which cannot be untied ;
the thing is to cut them, and leave the consequences to
help themselves. If you have more duties to do than
you can do well, you must boldly neglect some of them.
Only have faith, and God will spirit the consequences
away, so that you will see nothing more of them. The
third remedy is the practice of silence, not in any offensive
or singular way, but proportionably to our state of life.
The fourth is to persevere in our spiritual exercises in
spite of dryness and distractions ; and the fifth, which is
nearer a specific than any of the others, is a habit of
mortification, not interior, but exterior. The interior will
look out for itself when its time comes. Just now I want
the flesh to suffer. If you turn away from this I give you
up. It is the quinine for your ague. Alas ! alas ! what
does all this come to but the admission that the only sure
remedy for lukewarmness is never to be lukewarm, an
Dracle worthy of the pompous physician of the old comedy ?
Set does it not in reality say a great deal ?

LTJKEWARMNESR. 479

1 fear this evil of lukewarmness is very common, and
that at this moment, it is gnawing the life out of many
souls who suspect not its presence there It is a great
grace, a prophecy of a miraculous cure, to find out that
we are lukewarm ; but we are lost if wt do not act with
vigor, the momeni we make this triguteuing discovery.
It is like going to sleep in tb-» snow, almost a plea?«rl
tingling feeling at the first, antf khen, — l<j*« r'jr tv*

FERVOR.

CHAPTER XXVJ.

FERVOR.

Fervor is the state of the saints on earth, and in one
Bense of the blessed in heaven ; and in its degree, it ought
to be the normal state of all who are aiming at perfec-
tion. It is at once the growth of holiness, and the
strength by which holiness grows. Every chapter hitherto
has tended to this, and to avoid recapitulation, I shall
confine myself now to conveying a clear idea of genuine
fervor. This seems what is most wanted. How few
could define fervor if they were asked !

Fervor, considered as a state, is a similitude to God.
It is equable like God. It is moderate like God. It is
hidden like God, only escaping to view by its own irre-
pressible excellence. It is silent like God. Praise is in
no way its food, neither is it desirable for it. It thinks
long before acting, as God condescends to seem as if He
also did. It is unanxious about results, which is one of
the marvels of God. And it is fiery like God, consuming
obstacles, and its very power causing it to make no noise.
We must meditate separately on each of these clauses, if
we would gain a clear notion of fervor.

Fervor acts in the practical spiritual life as might be
expected from the above description. It has no fits and
starts. It is never run away with by a new idea. It
never boils over, and puts the fire out, that is, it never

FERVOR. 481

quenches the Holy Spirit by indiscretion. It is not eager
for heroic opportunities, though it expatiates magnificently
on them when it has them. It is a stable vital force in
the soul, thrusting its way with uniform power and noise-
less pressure. Common trivial things persevered in and
animated by an unremitting attention, these are its de-
light, and the infallible proofs both of its presence and
its power. As a graceful person walks or stoops or stands
gracefully, and whatever he does is done with a grace, so
pure charity is the gracefulness of fervor. It is punctual
as it were spontaneously and by nature. It omits nothing,
anticipates nothing, defers nothing. When time is lost,
it can make it up without precipitation, and without com-
pressing, or elbowing, or dislodging other duties. Its
conduct is a sort of mirror, upon whose faultless crystal,
eternity and heaven and the likeness of God are forever
unbrokenly imaged, beautiful to see, commonplace as the
commonest daily life, and yet enchanting as a fairy tale,
and heroic as the old apostolic days. Its smile is sweet
and serene, like an angel's. It can be angry, but beau-
tifully, divinely, attractively. But it cannot frown ; it is
bo flooded with inward peace it has lost the power. It
cannot brood sadly or gloomily ; for its nature is as that
of the undulations of light. It is sweet to the taste as
well as bright to the eye, and it makes music as it undu-
lates, and it smells of the flowers of Eden. It is as if
the savor of the Fall had never passed upon it, as the
odor of fire passed not on the garments of the Three
Children. It is the only thing in the world that is in
perfect keeping and proportion ; for it bears a proportion
in its conduct to the claims of God upon the soul. This
is what makes its beauty austere. It is one of the an-
41 2F

482 FERVOR

fciques, an antique of the Christian deserts, of the old
monasteries, of the palaces whose kings wore sackcloth
beneath their ermine. We could adore it, it is so beau-
tiful and godlike; were it not that it says to us with the
angel in the Apocalypse, See thou do it not j for I am
thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren who have the tes»
timony of Jesus.*

What are the fruits of this fervor ? Eye has not seen,
nor ear heard, nor heart of man conceived. The va-
riegated splendors of heaven, the riches of the treasures
at God's Right Hand, those are the golden fruits of its
eternal autumn. It does no more than bloom here ; but
its blossoms are more healing than the fruits of other
things. An infusion of their leaves is the wine, the
medicine, and the nutriment of the soul. First of all
they give us courage, a courage to go even beyond nature,
and to keep up the fight when by the laws of our being
we should have yielded. So that we may resemble our
dearest Lord, who supported Himself supernaturally to
suffer, and made Himself live by miracle in order to love
and suffer more, and drank many a cup of various bitter-
ness to the dregs, when those that had gone before would
naturally have brought about His death. Fervor gives
us a self-distrust because of the deep Irnowledge it
conveys to us of the nature of divine grace, and of our-
selves. Mortification, which is a mountain of toil to the
cold and lukewarm, is to fervor a relief and a necessity.
It is the ordinary safety-valve, by which it allows its fires
to escape, which otherwise would shrivel what they ought
only to mature. When St. Francis of Sales came to die,
his last lesson, the crowning part of his long, deep, fiery,

* Apoc. xix. 10.

ffEfcvoft. 483

beautiful wisdom, was Ask nothing and refuse nothing
This is a short, perhaps inspired, definition of fervor. It
is the " holy iniifference" of St. Ignatius become domes-
ticated as a permanent majestic habit of the soul. It has
no choice ; it takes things as God sends them. This is
the most enviable part of its loveliness. Yet strange to
say, by a secret of its own, it knows how to combine with
this almost passive tranquillity the two apparently con-
tradictory excellencies of being immediate and uninter-
mitting. It is swift as lightning. It darts on its duties,
like the rapid noiseless hawk, and is down, and up again
poised in air, so that our eyes doubt if in truth we saw
its descent and its rising again. And it holds on its
course like the smooth earth turning day and night on its
unseen axle Thus immediately and untiredly it works
at present duties ; and thus immediately and untiredly it
loses no time between duties. I believe it sees God, and
is always copying, within its sublime possibilities, the
gracious mysteries of the Divine Nature.

Are there any rocks upon which fervor can make ship-
wreck ? No ! it would cease to be fervor before it could
run on a rock ; for it would see visible rocks, and it would
divine sunken rocks, and would never neglect its chart.
But there is a false fervor which is always running on
rocks, and we may know it by the- rocks it runs upon.
It is a history of ship-wrecks from first to last. There is
a fervor, which looks fine, and seemingly sails well, but
when it has caught the wind full in its sails, it begins
judging others both in thought and word, imputing
motives, and criticizing the navigation of its neighbors.
In a moment you hear the dull sound of the strike. With
what a monf en turn she went upon the rocks ! And now

484 FERVOR.

the harmless summer sea, whose fault the disaster eauU
in no wise be accounted, is covered with the shivered
timbers of a broken and lost spiritual life. There is
another fervor, like that of the Pharisee's prayer, which
consists more in the contempt of others, than in a loving
hatred of ourselves. This contempt is a very commor
habit of mind in these days, and nothing can be mora
incompatible with spirituality. There is a third fervor,
which is the intoxication of a weak head and a vain will
with one or more spiritual ideas, and the result of which
is a little crude practice of mortification with a very abun-
dant spirit of reforming things, persons, places, domestio
circles and institutes. A fourth fervor is the singularity
of a very active but one-sided and self-sufficient mind.
And a fifth is the mere life of changeableness, with its
prolific plans, superficial rapidity, and loudness of brief
and brittle purposes. These are sometimes called the
rocks on which fervor strikes and makes shipwreck of it-
self. But it is surely more true to say that they are
counterfeit fervors, which have nothing in common with
the austere and beautiful thing which we are considering.
Yet genuine fervor has most unjustly to bear the burden
of their misdoings. Hence the scandal which these indis-
creet fervors give, which would be no scandals if they
were known to be what they really are. They assume
principles which do not belong to them. They wear
oorrowed clothes and call themselves by other persons'
lames ; and then by their vagaries fatigue all good people
<n their neighborhood. It is these false fervors which
briDg piety into disesteem, as well by their obtrusiveness,
as by their inconsistencies and inequalities. With them
everything is exaggerated, doctrine, practice, ritual, and

FERVOR. 485

mortification. They are ruled by the spirit of publicity.
They deal in broad principles and round assertions. They
like to differ from all around them, while agreeing is
tame and uninteresting. They present to people an image
of God without His beauty ; and what can be more terrible
than this, which is the opposite of all He has ever been
pleased to do Himself? Counterfeit fervors, unlike most
other counterfeits, copy nothing in their original but its
fires. In all other things they are in even verbal con-
tradiction to it. And yet how sad to think that true
fervor, all in celestial armor clad, grave, tranquil, majes-
tic, serene, establishing everywhere the royalties of God
in the human soul, should have to bear the burden of the
wild and puerile furies of half-converted, half-cleansed,
and not so good as half-humbled souls !

I said I would confine myself to conveying a clear idea
of genuine fervor. If I have also given a picture of these
caricatures of fervor, it is to make the true idea clearer.
I have now three observations to make, to which some
importance is to be attached.

First, it is a common idea that fervor is part of our
training, part of our noviciate, something by the help of
which we get out of certain difficulties; and when wo
have done with it, it passes in its turn. Every one has
it, or ought to have it, as children should have the measles,
and it goes from one to another doing its work, with more
or less success. This I think is a not uncommon idea of
fervor. We must take this then as our first fixed point
about the doctrine of fervor, that it is, not a transient
thing which does a work and passes off; but that it is a
permanent state; nay, that its whole essence is in its
41*

486 FERVOR.

permanence, and that it has the fewest alternations of
any state which is known to human fragility and incon
stancy.

Secondly, fervor is a tried state ; and therefore not to
be confounded with the effervescence of conversion. This
last is essentially transient. It comes with a commission,
and goes when it is executed. Nevertheless, we must
not think lightly of this effervescence, or, as it is some-
times called, our first fervors. They came to us from
God, and were freighted with a hundred benedictions.
They were young, perhaps, and their zeal was indis-
creet, and their taste questionable, and their conceit
unquestionable. But amid it all there was a sweet
power of God, which neither reverence nor gratitude will
permit us now to despise. What God has once touched
is sanctified. Never let us speak lightly, or think lightly,
of what God once made a channel of grace, even if it were
in our darkest days. 0 how many of us may have cause
to look wistfully back even to the rawness of those begin,
nings, and to pine for a purity of intention and a sim-
plicity of affectionate good-will which now perhaps is far
from us, and nothing better come in its stead ! Those
first fervors do not come twice. If we have not used
them, we have abused them. If they have gone and left
their work undone, nothing will do it now. We must be
the worse for the want of their work to the last day of
life. It is as if an angel had come to us, and had gone,
and left no blessing because we were not humble enough
to ask one. But we may come to have genuine fervor
without having had them. It is like the sweetness which
the maturity of sorrow gives to the Christian soul com-
pared with the sweetness of sunny generous youth It

FERVOR. 48?

h 4 come out of trial. It has learned secrets. It has
washed its robes in the Blood of the Lamb.

Thirdly, by some perversity of mind men will always
picture fervor to themselves as something which is about
tc cool down. It were truer to deem of it as ever on the
increase. For it is the characteristic of fervor to be
always augmenting, and to increase with very visible yet
still tranquil rapidity towards death, just as a stone seek-
ing its centre grows rapid and impetuous as it nears it.
We may prophesy death sometimes by the way fervor
sucks us in and overwhelms us with divine love. 0 that
we may feel it so, as body weakens, as ailments multiply,
as sorrows bend our backs, and pains increase ; so that we
may pass out of the world, not cold, not lukewarm, not
seeming to hang on to God by threads of grace or a timely
sacrament, but all in a glow of spiritual health and love,
a sweet purgatory which will carry us clear over that
painful one which lies beyond the grave, and is so tedi<raa
Mid so siow in its sacred operation* 1

488 DISCRETION.

CHAPTER XXVH.

DISCRETION.

A postscript on the rudder of our spiritual ship, and
my work is done. There is a well-known story that at a
conference of monks in the old times, when different holy
men had said which virtue they thought the highest, and
for what reasons, the great St. Antony decided in favor
of discretion, because it moderated all the other virtues
St. Joseph is the most perfect model of this virtue, and
all spiritual writers agree that it would not be easy to
exaggerate its excellence. It may briefly be defined to be
Persevering Love.

It is too often the case that a thing is best described
by a description of its opposite ; and in this instance 1
must partly illustrate discretion by examples of indiscre-
tion, if not mainly so. First, therefore, I shall speak of
doing too much, secondly of doing too little, and thirdly,
of the manner of what we do.

First of doing too much. I do not mean too much for
God, but too much for our grace to bear, or our courage
to sustain. Nothing can be too much, for nothing can be
enough, for God. But our grace is limited. God calls
each one to a certain height and no higher; and although
we can never know to what height we shall reach before
we dvi, yet still at each step grace is dealt out to us by

DISCRETION. 489

measure, and we must be careful not u) run beyond our
present grace. Grace does not do away with either our
weakness or our cowardice. We must not give way to
them, but we must take them into our calculations, and
not only allow for them but give them liberal allowance.
Mortification is a matter in which an honest will may bo
carried away by mere natural motives and may do too
much ; and this applies equally both to interior and ex-
terior mortification. Discretion bids us keep in mind that
mortification is always a means and never an end. It
tells us that discontinued mortifications are the very bane
of spirituality. No man undertakes to do a thing for
God, and lays it aside because he finds perseverance in
it too much for him, without his soul being seriously
damaged by it. He has taken up a disadvantageous
position. This is not a reason for not trying, but it is a
reason for trying soberly, discreetly, and with delibera-
tion. Discretion will have mortification free from the
slightest blemish of singularity. It will have charity to
others lord paramount of all self-denials and austerities.
It gives the relative duties of our states, that eighth
sacrament as I have called them, precedence over them;
and when mortification wears out our good temper, and
makes us short and snappish, discretion would have us
after a little trial lose our penance rather than our temper.
In our prayers and spiritual exercises discretion will
have us moderate and tranquil, and all things in due
keepi'ng with our state of life. It allows of no eagerness
or anxiety. It condemns all inordinate pursuits, even
though the acquisition of virtue be the object of them,
and it equally prohibits all greediness of spiritual favors.

490 DISCRETION.

It takes out of our bauds books wbicb ire too bigb for
us, as scrupulous and disturbing. It watebes over a voca-
tion as if it were its enemy; for to commit ourselves to
a way of life in whicb we cannot persevere, is like doing
something which will make us bed-ridden all our days.
And when discretion has taught us all this, it adds that
everything combines to show that we must either take
council in the spiritual life, or give devotion up altogether,
and sit down acquiescing in low ways and little things.

The second kind of indiscretion consists in doing too
little, too little for God, and too little for the grace He
has given us. Men sometimes make up their minds that
they have gone as far as they intend to go in the spiritual
life, that they have got up to a certain level, and do not
intend to mount higher. They forget that God is the
master, not themselves; and that their business is to
follow the lead of grace, whithersoever it may take them.
Besides, there is no such thing as a level in the spiritual
life. All is ascent or descent, advance or retreat. What-
ever is not the first, is assuredly the last. The question
is not what we will do, but what God will do. What
iudiscretion can be greater than to disobey God or to
dictate to Him ? Yet worldly people do not like to be
told this. They delight in the admonitions of discretion,
when they go towards curbing those who do too mueh,
and they willingly make themselves missiouers of the
Order of St. Antony to preach his favorite virtue. But
they chafe when the same principles are applied to. doing
too little. Christian art represents St. Antony as followed
by a pig: the figure is instructive though inelegant.
The indiscretion of being inconsiderately generous with

DISCRETION 491

God is patent enough to them. The indiscretion of
being disobediently mean and close with Him is neither
bo obvious to them, nor so readily acknowledged. For,
in their vocabulary, discretion means easiness and indevo-
tion, a habit of surrendering God when the world finds
His service inconvenient to itself. Such men habitually
turn a deaf ear to inspirations, suspect higher calls, and
yet purposely will not face them or examine them, lest
haply they should be found to be from God.

The indiscretion of all this is manifold from the very
statement of it. It angers God not only by its ungene-
rosity, but by its irreverence ; and it may even endanger
salvation by causing Him to withdraw from us succors
which happen in our case to be necessary to our persever-
ance, but which He is in nowise bound to give. Another
form of this indiscretion is our modelling our conduct on
safe principles, in which we persevere even when we have
perceived that they are not the best principles, and when
we have felt that God is distinctly pressing us to a highei
line of conduct. In this case the principles, however
safe in the abstract, cease to be safe for us. They become
rash, heady, and self-willed, and often partake of the
repugnant character of lukewarmness. Thus in our
social intercourse we sometimes humor matters, not for
charity's sake but for peace, and we allow God to be
slightly a sufferer in some encounter with the world. Our
high principles have capitulated, leaving Him as a hostage
in the hands of His enemies. This soon comes to lead us
a step further. We slide imperceptibly, so imperceptibly
that we should be shocked if we were accused of it, into
making our own ease and the good opinion of men our

492 DISCRETION.

rule, instead of the will of God and the maxims of the
Gospel. Downward descents are tempting, and this step
leads us lower still. We judge, interfere, and are veiled
with others who are more devout than ourselves, liiis
is sinking through lukewarm ness, and out of it, below it
Cold people are mostly indiscreet. They cannot see t iat
hesitation is not discretion. Only conceive hesitat Ag
with God ! As if He was taking us the wrong road !
Oh what so imprudent as this prudence, what so indiscreet
as this discretion !

All this is a want of caution, of moderation, and of
considerate, foreseeing, calculating discretion. And this
for three conclusive reasons. We gain nothing b^ it.
"We inevitably lose much, and we run the risk of losing
everything. Sometimes how rash it is to be so unsalfcly
safe ! And how fatal is that moderation which leaves us
short of the spot where God is waiting for us !

Thirdly, I must say a few words of the share discre-
tion claims in the method of our actions. Generally
speaking, discretion may be resolved into obedience, the
not worshipping our own lights nor following our own
wills. A very eminent spiritual writer simply speaks of
the two virtues as if they were one, or of discretion as if
it were but a function of obedience. Speaking howevei
in detail, discretion of manner consists in five things which
I will state as briefly as possible, in order that they may
be the more readily impressed upon the memory.

Discretion acts slowly and after prayer, doubts im-
pulses, and takes counsel.

Discretion does little, one thing at a time, calculates
its own strength, perseveres in its little, is on the look out
to add, and prognosticates nothing.

DISCRETION. 493

Discretion does its work very carefully, attends to the
circumstances of its actions, and never pulls them to
pieces again when it has once made them up.

Discretion gently forces itself to its work, and insists
on an interior spirit, pure motives, and the practice of
God's presence.

Discretion does all its work for God supremely, as a
man's chief work and indeed only great work, appreciates
its importance, estimates its difficulty, and is not hopeful
but sure of its results

What is not discretion then, but the most temerarious
indiscretion, is to be afraid of God and of holiness, to
wish to stand well with the world, to be in a visible
mean, that is a mean every one can see and praise, be-
tween extremes, to fear committing ourselves with God,
to be frightened ot ui\.l-aju.&> wnen we know that we
are really not at all drawn to it, as a rule rather to give
God a little less than His due than a little more, for
safety's sake. Now look at the beautiful contradiction
of all this in St. Joseph's life, so tried and chequered,
with gravest doubts, and dreams, and changes, as if ho
were set to be the sport of all the unlikelihoods of grace
and of all the perplexing unearthly ways of God : and
how quiet, how docile, how all for God, how interior, how
never looking before light and grace given, how childlike
and prompt the moment it came ! And what was the
end of it all ? Like St. John, but before him, he lies at
last on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and discretion dies of
love!

Kin<? Reader I I can sav no more to help you in your
42

494 DISCRETION.

growth in holiness. May God give you grace now ;pu
have finished the book to forget all that may be theory of
mine, and to remember only the wisdom and the practice
of His saints ! And in charity breathe one aspiration to
the inexhaustible compassion of the Most High, that he
who has ventured to preach to others may not himself be
?a*t away.

TH1P PfJV.

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