Chapter XI. 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 consequently that the recommendations of spiritual writers under this head are to be taken with considerable abatement. If this means that a less degree of exterior mortification is necessary for holiness now than was necessary for past ages of the Church, nothing can be more untrue, and it comes up to the verge of condemned propositions If it means that increased valetudinarianism and the universality 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 further. The degree of mortification and its idea must remain 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 exercise 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 unaltered 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 Virgin, 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 austerities 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 effeminate 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 circumstances, is of precept and necessary to salvation. This is not only true of the self-inflicted pains which are sometimes of obligation in order to overcome vehement temptations, or of those various mortifications which are needful in order to avoid sin. But a definite amount of fasting and abstinence, irrespective of the temptations or circumstances of individuals, is imposed by the Church on all her children under pain of eternal damnation. This expresses 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 opposite 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 reigning 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.

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 mortification 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 observance 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 consequences of a state of valetudinarianism to be on the spiritual life, a general and plenary dispensation from corporal austerities is not one of them j and we must remembei 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 behalf 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 contemplatives and solitaries. I do not say therefore that this objection 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 disturbing 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 harmony with the whole stream of approved spiritual teaching in the Church; and the brevity of his perseverance 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 welcome of these dispensations were of infinitely greater price than the sting of the discipline or the twinge of the catenella, most true and most important would the lesson be, and to many a hot-hearted spiritual suckling quite indispensable. 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 mortifications 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 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 success. 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 misappreciation of austerity. They are connected with each other, and both enter deeply into the region of supernatural operations. To think lightly of either is to be out of harmony with the mind of the Church, and to injure our own soul, whatever may be its vocation, by narrowing the range of its supernatural vision.

From all these considerations it may warrantably be concluded that there is nothing in modern times to dispense 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 themselves wholly with the kind of mortification and not at all with the degree.

Something remains to be said on the uses of mortification. These are ten in number and all of them deserving a serious consideration. Its first use is to tame the body and bring its rebellious passions under tho Jontrol 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 removed, 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 subjection. 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 mortification. 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 perception 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 conscience 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 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 prayers 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 salvation 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 evidence 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 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 ourselves with new ties; for mortification is found by experience 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 proportion 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 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 primitive vagueness and to remain undefined. Weekly Communion 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 magnificently 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 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.

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 remained 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 building) 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 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 repents, 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 austerities. Without exterior mortification it is idle to expect that we shall ever attain the higher grace of interior mortification. 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 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 because it is more sensible. It is harder because our victories 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 circumstances 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 devotion, 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 interior 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 complacency, 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 most excellent school for the queenly virtue of discretion The truly mortified man will as little think of not listening 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 obedience, humility, self-distrust, perseverance, and detachment 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 vocation 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 direction 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. Pleasures 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 observed, 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 infirmities 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 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. Condemn 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 desolations are a fourth, and horrible temptations, specially allowed by God, a fifth. All these have their own symptoms and require their own method of treatment which it would be out of place here to investigate. There is 16 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, Whenever 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 indiscretion to fasten upon our penances and corrode their precious inward life. And they are the six chief dangers of mortification. 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 mortifications 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 is a putting something to death and the passion 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 unconsciously 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 delusion 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 anything 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-

To the difficulties and dangers of mortification we must add a word on its delusions. It is a fertile subject. Guillor£, 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 innocent 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 cowardice, 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 chastisement 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.