Chapter VIII. Our Normal State

Everything in the world seems to have a peculiai beginning and a peculiar ending, with a normal state between 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 spiritual 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 expec 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 God 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.

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 completion. 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 dispositions, 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 exercising 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 dispositions 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 theoretically 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 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 satisfactory 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 invalids in holiness; for spiritual direction expends its efforts in producing a composing silence round about our sickbeds, 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 irritability 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 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 Ferrer preached in its streets, and Father Colombiere in its mews. Do not keep down what is good in it, only because 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 deserving 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 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 consequence 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 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

Fourthly, we have to struggle against the changes of our own faults. After all, there is something very comfortable 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. Improvements 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 favourite 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 warfare 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 particular expressions, matters connected with external composure 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 temper. 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. Perhaps grace is often saved under the shadow of an imperfection; 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 tiresome 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 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 ourselves 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 mortification. Happy they who can wrestle with God in uncomplaining 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 especially with three things, prayer, sacraments, and temptations. As I have said before, to have relations with God is a very fearful thing. To love God is a bold and arduous 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 preparing, of using words without weighing them, of slouching 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 majesty of God. It grows upon us. Use brings slovenliness, and slovenliness makes us profane. Familiarity with the sacraments consists in going to confession with a very cursory examination, and a mere flying act of contrition, 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 frequent 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 meditation 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 feeling 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 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 frequent defeat, but from the harassing nature of the warfare; 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 propensions 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 mortification 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 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 proportion as grace takes possession of us, we grow out of sympathy 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 contemplative 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 consented 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 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 without 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 wearisome in itself. This is in great measure the wretchedness 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 government 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 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, defeat 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 saturated 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. Unfortunately 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 blustering 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 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 fatigued 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 indifferent 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 occupation. We must burden still more the already overburdened 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 picture, 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 consolation 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 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 momentary and apparent dulness and uninterestingness of the things of God to seek refuge and consolation in creatures. 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 to the mountain of God. Fourthly, it is very peaceful. 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 tranquillity, 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 substantia 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 rivev^.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 conscious to ourselves of an actual decay of all strong feelings, 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 daydreams? 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 imperfections; 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 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 necessary 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. Preparations 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 enjoyment 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 participates in the end of all ends and ultimate rest of all things, God himself. Hence our very struggle is rest, 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 allowed 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 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, beneath 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