Chapter I. God alone can make us happy

All that F. Rigoleu collected of the instructions of his director F. Lallemant concerning the spiritual life, may be reduced to seven principles : viz. the consideration of the end — the idea of perfection — purity of heart — docility in following the leadings of the Holy Spirit — recollection, or the interior life — ^union with our Lord — and the order or steps of the spiritual life.

There is a void in our heart which all creatures united would be unable to fill. God alone can fill it ; for He is our beginning and our end. The possession of God fills up this void, and makes us happy. The privation of God leaves in us this void, and is the cause of our wretchedness.

Before God fills up this void, He puts us in the way of faith ; with this condition, that if we never cease to regard Him as our last end, if we use creatures with moderation, and refer to His service the use we make of them, at the same time contributing faithfully to the glory which it is His will to draw from all created beings. He will give Himself to us to fill up the void within us, and make us happy. But if we are wanting in fidelity. He will leave in us that void which, left unfilled, will cause our supreme misery.

Creatures desire to take the place of our last end, and we ourselves more than all, we desire to be our own last end. A creature says to us, " Come to me ; I will satisfy thee." We believe it, and it deceives us. Then another and another holds the same language to us, deceives us in like manner, and will go on deceiving us all our life long. Creatures call to us on all sides, and promise to satisfy us. All their promises, however, are but lies; and yet we are ever ready to let ourselves be cheated. It is as if the bed of the sea were empty, and one were to take a handful of water to refill it. Thus we are never satisfied; for when we attach ourselves to creatures, they estrange us from God, and cast us into an ocean of pain, trouble, and misery — elements as inseparable from the creature, as joy, peace, and happiness are inseparable from God.

§ ni.

We are like jaded epicures, who taste a dish, then leave it, and immediately stretch out their hand to another, to leave it also in its turn, finding nothing to their liking. We seize upon every manner of thing. without being able to satisfy ourselves with any. God alone is the sovereign good who can make us happy; and we deceive ourselves when we say, " Were I in such a place, had I such a situation, I should be satisfied. Such an one is happy; he has what he desires." Vanity ! Were you Pope, you would not be content. Let us seek God ; let us seek God only. He only can satisfy all our desires.

§iv.

Of old the devil disguised himself as God, presenting himself to the heathen in idols as the author and the end of every thing in the world. Creatures do much the same thing. They disguise themselves as God, cheating us into the belief that they will satisfy us by giving us wherewithal to fill our souls. But every thing they give us serves only to increase our emptiness. Now we do not feel it; it is only truly realised in the next life, where the soul, separated from its body, has an almost infinite desire to see itself filled with God, and the disappointment of this causes it to suffer a pain in a manner infinite.

§v.

At the hour of death we shall know how miserably we have let ourselves be deceived and deluded by creatures. We shall be astounded that for things so low and vile we should have been willing to lose that which is so great and precious ; and our punishment for this foolish conduct will be, to be deprived for a time of the sight of God, without which nothing can satisfy the soul. The desire it has to see Him and possess Him is as much beyond conception as the punishment caused by such desire when it is unsatisfied.

This is why we must resolve generously to renoimce all designs of our own devising, all human views, all desires and hopes of things that might gratify self-love; and, in short, every thing that might hinder us in promoting the glory of God. This it is which, in the words of Scripture, is called " walking before the Lord," " having an upright soul," " walking in truth," " seeking God with all our heart." Without this we shall never be happy.

Why do we cling to creatures as we do ? They are so limited and so void of any solid good, that all the pleasure and satisfaction we may promise ourselves from them is but a vain imaginary happiness, which only femishes instead of filling us, because our appetite being infinite, it can be satisfied only in the possession of the sovereign good. Add to which that creatures endure but for a while and soon leave us, or we are ourselves compelled to leave them.

And as for men in particular, do we not know that they love only themselves, and in all things seek but their own interest ? The little property, credit, authority which they possess, they economise for themselves ; and if they had all manner of goods in abimdance, they would not act otherwise. Every thing which they do not purely for God, they do from self-love ; and in any thing which they do for others, they never lose sight of themselves. They are our benefactors and our faithful Mends only so far as they find their own account in it. What reliance, then, can we place on the favour and the friendship of men ?