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 Scaramelli, 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 approved 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.
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 providence 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, misunderstandings, 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 besetting 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 importance, 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 distractions, and so draws off our attention from God and eternal 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 satisfactions 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 reputation. 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,1 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
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 conscientiously 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 returning, without disquietude. We seldom thought of hell; and the thought of it hardly affects us now. We sometimes caught ourselves making acts of love when we intended to make acts of contrition. We were curiously 18*
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 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 barrenness. 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 sufficiently 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 inconvenient 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 solidity in devotion, by sticking for a year or more to th<i acquisition of a single virtue, or the extirpation of a single 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 natural 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 particular 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 Sacred Humanity; and while somehow caring less about lights, flowers and epithets, we were conscious of a wonderfully 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
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 mistakes after all? 0 far from smoothly, and plenty of mistakes! 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 intention 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 spiritual 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 head gone, spirits went next. We gave way to an inexplicable sadness, and were sorely tempted to change our lives, to discontinue our strictnesses, to talk of our sorrows, 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 perfection 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 conceit 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 exclusively interior things, so as to be drawn off from a loving attention to the sacraments, to Jesus and to God. However, mistakes, like other things, have their day; and we can afford now not only to glean wisdom from our blunders, but amusement also.
But we have not done yet. The ugliest part is still tc be confessed. These mistakes only concerned ourselves
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 appear! We talked about religion, and so illustrated by our words the inconsistency of our practice; and doubtless, 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 contradiction, weary with prayer, irritable with penance, as persons accustomed to have it all their own way with their favourite spiritual books. We envied the spiritual advancement of others, took up with self-willed austerities which interfered with domestic arrangements, unnecessarily 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, because 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 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 lessons 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 unconsciously becoming lukewarm. We might have accepted 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 carelessness 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 pusillanimity and pride.
And with all these miseries and mistakes we are not 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 inclinations, 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 recurring, 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 mortification 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 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 without 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 mortification, which the human spirit will incessantly be whispering, 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,2 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 favour. 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.
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 inevitable 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 annealed. 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 practised, and there is in our souls an incessant quiet multiplication of the degrees of sanctifying grace.
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 mitigates 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, because 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 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 especially anxious to abandon the humbling subjects of meditation, which beloug to that state, and especially meditations 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 consideration 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 ourselves, 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* 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 principles, 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 corresponds 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 gluttony and drunkenness, because of the spirituality of his 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 innocence or heroic penance, by their generous zeal and arduous 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
Footnotes
Chapter 14 of 28