The Remedies of Self-Deceit

Is there anything substantial in creation? Is thcrcany one in the world who is real? Is there any spiritual life at all? These are questions which we ask in our almost blameless irritation, when the subject of religious delusions is fairly brought before us. Self is miserably potty, and we see it in all its undisguised pettiness when our minds are introverted upon it. It takes the freshness even out of worship. It throws a sickly glare over devout practices, which ought to lie in the quiet unobtrusive sunshine of disinterested love. It is not easy to keep the line always clearly drawn between habitual examination of conscience and the misery of self-contemplation. Yet without examination of conscience we are lost, wliib self-contemplation is an odious leprosy of the soul. Down in the caverns of self the air is close, and all things are damp, mouldy, and decaying. A soul turned inward upon itself is mostly mildewed. An ailing self is a nauseous thing, the more repulsive the nearer we come to it, the more offensive the more we handle it. Moreover all things turn o to delusion! Prayer, sacraments, mortifications, sallies of divine love, things in themselves fresh as the leapinocataracts in the cool wood or on the breezy cliff, all turn or may easily turn to something diseased and unpleasant when they are imbedded in our spiritual life.

I do not wonder that intellectual men, men of robust character, men of successful activity, -and men of energetic physical health, have such a mingled horror and contempt of what is called the spiritual life. Nevertheless everything is right in its own place. Patients are better in a hospital than on the top of Ben Nevis. Fresh air, bright summits, dashing waters, aromatic pines, dewy fern, and crisp heather, belong to the next world of spirituality, not to this one. It is foolish to be impatient. If there is a self-hatred which is wise, there is also a self-hatred which is either stupidity or conceit. A man is a coxcomb who cannot be patient with himself. If he breaks away from the undignified bondage of a pious life, will he in reality escape from himself? Or if he keeps to outward devotion, and studiously refuses to cultivate an interior spiuit because of its sickliness and liability to delusion, will not his little spites, his airs, his self-importances, his tiny prejudices, his threadbare peculiarities, his unimposing fretfulness, his girlish jealousy, his ungraceful aptness to take offence, his love of nice cookery, his anxiety about his health, his reference to his age and his past, will not all these pusillanimities, which will be his masters then, be sicklier far than the meanness of a craven scruple, the jargon of pedantic prayer, and the stifling atmosphere of a self-introverted spirit, the boisterousness of an inelegant asceticism, or the censoriousness of a man who has mortified himself into bitterness, because his grace has not been potent enough to overcome the incapacity for sweetness which belongs to his natural character. We may depend upon it that all men, who have an instinctive aversion for the spiritual life, are doing more of the devil s work than they suppose. It is fortunate that they are mostly unsuccessful men.

"Why have I said all this? Because we are now going to study the remedies of self-deceit, and I am anxious to keep down your expectations. We shall find nothing so complete or so specific or so definite, as we should desire. Self-deceit is a bad business. I was once entrapped into printing that there was nothing in the spiritual life which was irreparable. Half a dozen times self-deceit has driven me to the very edge of chancdnsf my mind. But I believe I was ri^ht, and I fctill keep to it. We will settle therefore that self-deceit is certainly reparable. ]S"ow, as to the spiritual treatment for it, you may think of that, as indeed of the spiritual life ^altogether, as a necessary evil, if you choose. This puts it low enough, yet leaves it indispensable; and when a thing which regards our relation to God is indispensable, the sooner we set to work, and the more cheerfully we work, the better, even for our interested selves. In this temper then let us look at the remedies of self-deceit. If there is nothing to satisfy great expectations, there is a good deal to cheer. As we sink deeper still and deeper in the knowledge of our own falsehood, we come nearer and nearer to the grand truthfulness of God; and somehow self-abasement gives us heart. Strange it should be so; yet so it is.

Something then may be said, first of all of a general character, and then secondly with a more special application. We may say generally that the knowledge of our own self-deceit is the nearest approach to its cure; and this is my reason for having dwelt at such length upon it. What is so versatile and individual has to be met in such a variety of ways, that, when we once see our self-deceit, the occasion and the circumstances will suggest the weapons with which we had best fight it.

It does not like to be known. It.affects disguise. It flourishes in concealment. When it is seen, a sense of guilt makes it tremble. A distrust in the completeness of its disguise unmans it, and causes it to betray itself. It loses its head when a strong light is turned upon it, and makes an involuntary gesture, against which at other times it is on its guard. Thus the mere know ledge of our self-deceit not only enables us to direct our aim at it, but also renders it a much less formidable enemy by making it a coward. In so important a matter, this would be a sufficient excuse for haying said so much of this evil, without pointing out a definite plan of cure. For, what has been already said enables us the more easily to recognize this self-deceit when we see it, and also indicates to us the localities in which it is most likoly to be found. So that if the mere knowledge cannot be a complete cure, it is at least a partial one.

Then, again, general simplicity of life is an antagonistic power to self-deceit. Every additional degree of simplicity, which there is in our conduct, weakens the influence of self-deceit, diminishes its force, and subtracts its occasions. Simplicity is in the spiritual world what light is in the natural world. We cannot have a better idea of it than that which light gives us. The energy of light is such that scarcely anything can be exposed to it, for a few moments even, without some change taking place in it. Both animal life and vegetable life languish, if they are deprived of light. It gives the green to the leaves and the colours to the blossoms. The want of light will even turn the course of nature, or rather will frustrate its designs. Some animals cannot develope in the dark. A tadpole becomes a gigantic tadpole if it is kept in the dark, but it cannot take the step of becoming a frog. Some people say diamonds are made by light. Many salts will not crystallize in the dark. "We might multiply these things indefinitely; and yet we should find them all types and allegories of the action of heavenly simplicity in the spiritual life. A man who habitually thinks of God, or one who thinks of God first and himself second, or one who does not sensibly live and act under the eyes and tongues of others, or one who does his duty lovingly, making few returns upon self, is as nearly an impossible subject for the greater triumphs of self-deceit as can be found among us poor self-loving, self-seeking creatures. "With such souls self-deceit is almost mitigated into some other disease, when it does come, like the smallpox in vaccinated subjects. There are certainly endless reasons for being simple, and many of them extremely cogent; but there are few more cogent, than the reflection that all simplicity is a general unfitness for self-deceit. Its constitution has something in it peculiarly uncongenial to that disease.

One more general remark: general in two senses, both as regards the cure of the disease, and as regards its application to individual souls even as a general remark. When a man makes a series of discoveries, and such discoveries generally do come in a series, that he is the victim of continual self-deceit, and that what he valued as the principal basis of his inward life has been neither more nor less than a delusion, it will often be his wisest policy to remould his spiritual system, and cast it into some one concentrated practice; and the practice most suited to his case will be that of making acts of purity of intention, trying to render his pious intention actual, instead of virtual or habitual. The bird that lives on the leaves and berries of the huaco tree, and then fights with serpents, and is stung by them, and suffers not, because its ordinary nutriment is an anti dote, presents us with an emblem of the soul that lives on purity of intention. Serpent-fighting is the work of all souls. Few however have the safe agility and speedy aim of the secretary-bird, to fly up to heaven with their snakes, and let them fall from the height to earth, and so be dashed to pieces, without either giving the reptiles the opportunity of a bite, or allowing them to hamper its wings with their writhing folds. We must be content for the most part to eat the antidote, and then let ourselves be stung. But this remedy, of concentrating the whole power of the soul on purity of intention exclusively, cannot be indiscriminately recom mended to all. It will do more harm than good to those who are scrupulous: and if few are scrupulous naturally, many are made so by the indiscretions of direction; so that, by fault or by misfortune, no slight proportion of pious persons are partially scrupulous-But those, with whom the remedy agrees, will find it almost a specific. Those, whom it makes unhappy, it does not suit. There is no serving God in unhappiness, when the unhappiness is of our own making. Let us serve God in the sunshine, while He makes the sun shine. We shall then serve Him all the better in the dark, when He sends the darkness. It is sure to come. But meanwhile false darkness is worse than false light. It is more deceiving, peopled with phantoms, rife with delusions. So, if seeking to make our intentions for God s glory always actual entangles our conduct instead of simplifying it, if it darkens our spirit instead of illuminating it, we may be sure it is not the right road for us, though it is right in itself, and right for so many others. Safe things are dangerous to those for whom they are not intended. Only let our light be God s light, and our darkness God s darkness, and we shall be safe at home when the great nightfall comes.

But let us come more to particulars. Before we speak of the remedies, we have something to say of the right way to go to work in effecting the cure of this disease. We must also fix what we are to avoid doing, as well as what we are to do. First of all then, we must not seek to combat self-deceit by means of an excessive examination of conscience and a perpetual uneasy probing of our motives in all our actions. To keep undoing a wound, to see if it is healing, is an obvious folly. All things in the spiritual life should be taken quietly. Even our falls must be taken quietly. Much more then our spiritual exercises. But among these spiritual exercises it is to be expected, that some from their own nature should especially require tranquillity; and examination of conscience is one of these. An excess of it draws our attention too much to ourselves, and disturbs the balance between the outward and the inward, upon the evenness of which all sobriety in asceticism de pends. It also inclines us to scruples by exaggeration, and to unscrupulousness by partiality and extenuation. Our motives are complicated things, and the observation of them must be practised with caution, just as there are some chemical experiments which have to be made in a dangerous atmosphere, and therefore when once begun, will not brook delay. A diver can only remain a very limited time in the depths of the sea, and even then he often comes up with the blood gushing from his mouth and ears. So is it with us down in the depths of our own motives. "We must not stay there long. If we cannot find what we want there quickty, it is better to come up quickly, without haying found it. We can often effect more by looking up to heaven than by going down under water. An earnest man is under a great temptation to rummage himself thoroughly, when something has gone wrong, especially when he has detected himself in a spiritual dishonesty. But it is a temptation, not an impulse of grace. It is often only a satisfaction to that sort of savage indignation which such men have against themselves, and which is itself merely another form of self-deceit, a form too which is a particular favourite with self-love.

We must also remember that this cure of self-deceit is not a thing which can be done once for all, and then be over. It is a lifelong work. It is important to remember this, because we naturally go to work differently upon what is. occasional and temporary, and upon what is a normal part of our daily lives. It is also a process to the success of which discouragement is peculiarly fatal. The longer an effort has to last, the less will it bear discouragement. What is persevering requires the vehemence of an impulse. A long length of wire droops and is slack, as you may see daily by the sides of the railways. So it is with perseverance. It must rest on posts. We cannot hang weights to it; its own weight is as much as it can carry. It will deserve praise if it carries that well. But, besides this, the nature of our warfare with self-deceit, and the character of the enemy we are fighting, both invest discouragement with a particular danger. It is hope which keeps fciith s eye clear and steady. Now the tactics of self-deceit are to harass our hope. Entanglement, complication, indistinctness, stratagem, multiplicity of attack, and an habitually versatile neglect of the expected laws of war. tend to wear out our hope; and if we once sit down and despair, the chances are very much against our ever being allowed to get up again.

Moreover we must not be proud. There are battles in which it is not very honourable to be victor, because we are lowered by having to fight them at all, as when soldiers charge a mob in the streets. There are battles also in which the conquerors come out draggled and disfigured, as when men fight their way through a marsh. So in our warfare with self-deceit we must not look for glory. We shall never march into any of the moral cities we may conquer, with the sun shining on our clean scarlet and glittering gold, and on our unsoiled banner flapping like slow flashes of lightning in the bright beams, with our trumpets braying wildly in the hoarse accents of triumph. We shall always go home draggled. We must also, for this is another characteristic of our warfare, show extreme patience and goodhumoured contentment, with little victories and modest successes. We must often think a drawn battle as good as a victory. Finally, we must go to war with a manly resolution to spare ourselves in nothing, whatever turns up.

When we come to speak of the remedies themselves, we shall be disappointed to find, that even those which are most particular are after all very general. It must be so in a work which is so manifold, and which is also lifelong. The first remedy is a great distrust of self, not merely in a general way, although that cannot be urged too forcibly, for it is difficult to exaggerate its importance, but also and further in a very particular way. I must explain it by a homely illustration. When I was a little boy, I was greatly given to write verses. This interested those who loved me, and they showed at once their interest and their love by laying down this rule for me, that whenever any verse pleased me exceedingly, and appeared to me much better than the rest, I was to run my pen through it, and concoct something less striking. It was a sharp discipline, but tolerably efficacious. Now there are always certain things, or certain things at certain times, in which we feel quite sure we are right. It is plain as the sun at noon. Almost universally as we ought to distrust ourselves, these occasions and these subject matters are obviously dispensed from this universal wearisome vigilance. We have at least no reason to distrust ourselves here. Every man has, or, what is practically the same thing, believes he has, within his mind some one noontide region where it is always light, and light with out even vicissitudes of brightness; and up and down this he has the comfort of walking fearlessly, because there is no ambush there for self-deceit. But the remedy of self- distrust, now in question, is the distrust ing of ourselves precisely at these privileged times and places. It consists in making it of faith to ourselves, that, when we are most sure we are in the right, we are most surely in the wrong. Experience soon shows us, that in all such inward convictions of our being in the right there is a garrison of self-love. Meanwhile the practice of especially distrusting ourselves in these inward assurances very soon produces a peculiar effect upon our characters, and one which is of no little consequence in our conflict with self-deceit. A certain limpidity of character is perceived. There is no other word for it. We speak of limpid waters, such waters as come from mountain springs. It means something more than clear. It implies purity as well as transparence. It is not simplicity, though akin to it. It looks more like an acquisition than simplicity, more as if it had gone through a process, just as the bright water has percolated through the earth; and jet this limpid character moves as freely and flows as naturally as true simplicity. There is a peculiar clearness about characters which have learned to be true after having been deceitful.

Whatever prevents our following the counsels of self-love is also a remedy against self-deceit; and among these things we must enumerate docility to our spiritual director. This saves us from many a mistake. It likewise enables us to preserve our inward peace, and thus to act with much more quietness than we other wise should have done; and quietness is always an un favourable circumstance for self-deceit. Slow action is often a favourite field for self-deceit, almost more so than very rapid action, because it simulates discretion, and ministers to our obstinacy. Self-opinionatedness is said to be the energy of dulness. A stupid man is almost inevitably self-opinionated. But quietness of action, while it saves us from the speed which blinds us, preserves us also from the yet more dangerous slowness of self-importance. Of course it is easy for us to make a farce of direction, by insisting on having too much of it, and making it a safety-valve for our love of talking of ourselves, an opportunity for satisfying our appetite for sympathy, and an occasion of gossip, which is worse than frivolous, because it concerns our souls. But, sensibly and moderately practised, openness and docility to our director will greatly aid us in acquiring that tranquil spirit which is so congenial to simplicity.

Meditation on the Attributes of God is another defence against self-deceit. The likeness of God is the aim of holiness, and we unconsciously imitate that which is a frequent subject of our meditation. But there is some thing more than this. The Creator s imao-e is on the o. o creature s soul. It has to be revived and refreshed rather than engraven anew; and when we reverently put God before ourselves in detail and for a lon time too-ether, there is a sympathy in our soul which draws out, clears, defines, and sharpens His image within us. Then, moreover, God is truth. All His perfections have the character of truth upon them and the atmosphere of truth around them. The neighbourhood of God is the native land of truth. Moreover everything, which leads us to throw ourselves out of ourselves, and upon the objects of faith, is in itself a remedy against self-deceit; and what can win us from self-contemplation more effectually, than that earthly beatific vision, the prospect of the Attributes of God? Reverence also is unfavourable to self-deceit, and meditation on the Divine Perfections is a perennial source of holy fear and self- abasing adoration. It is to be remarked also, and a curious remark it is, that reverence towards God makes men natural and simple towards each other. There is a modest yet unabashed naturalness of manner, which occasionally distinguishes spiritual persons, into what ever company they are thrown. At first we hardly notice it, as it is the gift of naturalness not to be noticed. Then it strikes us, then gro\vs upon us, and ends by exercising a sort of fascination over us. We shall gene rally find that the devotion of such men is marked by a forcible attraction towards the Attributes of God. A man will hardly ever be awkward in public, who in secret habitually pays reverent court to God. Habitual reverence is the high breeding of the spiritual life.

The choice of our devotions may also be turned into a remedy for self-deceit. Two may be particularly selected as more or less specific against self-deceit, as they are representations of the Eye of God. It is not easy to look God in the face, and then tell ourselves a lie. The planets -were imaged in the water an hour ago, but the round moon has climbed heaven, and has effaced their tremulous reflections. So with us the Eye of God eclipses the world s eye. If we become de ceivers, and surely this is the ordinary process, by acting always under a consciousness that men s eyes are upon us, whatever distracts us from that baneful consciousness frees us from a slavery, which, like all slaveries, makes liars of us. The Eye of God alone can do this. What is it which makes political parties so essentially dishonest, even when composed of honest units, but the continual sense of being watched, the unintermitted feeling of critical and unkindly eyes being fixed on every move? Yet on a smaller scale the life of most of us is spent under a like bondage. The emancipation from this tyranny of human respect is one of the most beautiful operations of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. It is not an emblem, or an idea, or a moving ritual, or a stirring relic, which is before us, but Jesus Himself, our actual Lord, in all the awful reality of that most peculiar eucharistic life. The more we are with the Blessed Sacrament the less we shall deceive ourselves. Who has not seen how that devotion changes souls, how it achieves conversions, how it perfects imperfect conversions, how it lifts men s graces into a higher sphere, how it fills out vacant places in faulty characters, and gives symmetry and correctness to impulse and injudicious devotion? What is all this but saying that it is just the devotion to preserve us from self-deceit? But we cannot be always with the Blessed Sacrament; and the thought of it is quite a different thing from its presence. We must carry with us another devotion into the thick of life, devotion to our Guardian Angel. He is an- eye of God, while his eye sees the unveiled God close to us, still when we are still, and moving as we move. He is nearer to us than any of our human critics. His criticisms are faultlessly just, and their justice is equalled by their kindness. When saints come habitually to see their Guardian Angel, it appears to me almost a natural consequence of their sanctity, developing in them by degrees the power of beholding God, just as the command over the elements and ani mals, which saints have, especially saints of remarkable austerity, seems to be the almost natural working of penance back to the state of man s unfallen innocence. The sight of their Guardian Angel is a growth of their holiness, and an emblem of what is inward, even while it is also a peculiar and gratuitous gift of God. Human respect soon begins to relax its hold upon us, when we come to love our Guardian Angel with so much respectful tenderness, that we feel his presence almost without effort.

But we must not conclude without some cautions respecting our combat with self-deceit. We may do wrongly that which it is right to do. We may make false steps upon the true path. Particular examination of conscience, that which is technically called particular, is the hound with which we hunt self-deceifc through its various lurking covers. Nevertheless we must not let the changeableness of our self-deceit carry us too far. In other words we must be careful not to change the subject of our particular examen too often. An inapt huntsman both wearies his dogs and puzzles them. He overhunts them. So we shall soon destroy both the speed, the scent, and the sagacity of our conscience, if we are continually directing it upon different subjects. We must also be very reserved in talking about our religious feelings. The more we detect ourselves in self-deceit, the more silent must we become about our own spiritual state. Religious talk is a very feast to self-deceit. We must also endeavour to walk purely by faith. Everything about our devotion should be as inward as is discreetly possible. We must not go by what chance advisers tell us, or by what some saintly religious is reported to have said of us, or by what some supernatural nun is considered to have hinted about our guidance. We must not let the habit of looking for outward providential tokens master us over much. The light, the road, the circumstances, the temper, of faith, here is our safety; and, what is more, here also is our perfection. We must remember too that censoriousness, bad enough always and anywhere, has a peculiarly injurious effect upon the soul, when it is in actual conflict with self-deceit. Indeed, as a rule, all excess in talking, even when it is not about our own spiritual life or the characters of others, may be regarded as a power of self-deceit. The tongue has nearly as much to do with lies of thought as with lies of speech.

But above all things let us beware of one grand error. It is that of thinking, from the delusions and entangle ments of the spiritual life, that God is as it were insidious, that He beguiles us into committing ourselves, and then stands by His bargain regardless of our infirmity. There is often an appearance of this in some of the complicated situations in which an almost inevitable self-deceit has placed us. Sometimes there comes a 15 complication in the spiritual life, which looks like the end of the world, so hopeless is it. It may even affect our outward life, if we are placed in charges of great responsibility. It looks like the end of the world; or is it a possibility of madness? Self-deceit is in some way or other concerned with it, we may be sure. We must therefore cultivate confidence in God as a most special remedy. We must cultivate it as a habit of mind, as well as an emotion of the heart. God never wishes to entrap us, or take us at a disadvantage. Yet, in fighting against self-deceit, it is perhaps the most distressing of our temptations to think thus un worthily of the straightforwardness of God s paternal love.