Chapter I. The first act of a soul seeking perfection

Article I

How we ought to seek God in aU things, omd to seek hut Him alone.

To seek God truly, we must represent Him to ourselves, 1, as the first principle of nature and of grace ; 2, as the Preserver of all creatures ; 3, as the sovereign Lord who governs every thing and disposes every thing by His providence. Thus we ought to regard all events, even the smallest, as flowing from the will of God and Hifl good pleasure.

To seek God is to wish for nothing and to desire nothing but that which He wills, and which He ordains by His providence. We ought to consider how in God there are, as it were, two acts with reference to us. One by which He wills to bestow upon us such and such graces to conduct us to such a degree of glory, if we are faithful to Him. The other, by which He wills not to bestow upon us further graces, nor to raise us to a higher degree of glory. Few have sufficient courage and fidelity to accomplish the designs of God, and by their co-operation to reach the point of grace and of glory which God desires for them. We ought to regard the will of God, His judgments, and the decrees of His providence, with so much esteem, love, and submission, as to desire neither more grace nor glory than that which He is pleased to give us, even were it in our power to have as much as we would. We must confine ourselves to these limits, out of the unbounded respect which we ought to have for the dispositions of divine providence.

Another excellent way of seeking God is to have no other object in all things but the glory of God.

This maxim, applied to literary studies, teaches us to seek to know only that which tends to the greater service of God. The devil has beyond comparison more knowledge than we have, but we surpass him in this, that we can refer our knowledge to the greater glory of God, which the devil cannot do.

The same maxim may be applied to all our employments and to all things generally. We ought to be so detached from ourselves, our own interests, our own tastes, our own individual inclinations and designs, as to be in a disposition to renounce every thing for the sake of the service of God, and of that which may help us to seek and to find God; for nothing is desirable in itself but God, and all else is desirable only with reference to God. So that to seek that which does not lead us to God, to bestow care upon it, or to take a pleasure in it, is an error and delusion.

When we desert this rule, and prefer that which is most agreeable to ourselves to that which most conduces to the glory of God, it is as if a king were to sell his kingdom for a glass of water ; — ^the greatest folly in the world, seeing that every thing is but vanity, every thing is but a lie, which has not God for its object And hence it follows, that every day we suffer immense losses j for we lose as much glory for ourselves as we ought to have procured for God when we had the power of doing so.

To act in all things for the greater glory of God, this is the noblest end imaginable. All that God Himself can give to the highest seraph without this is less than this ; neither is it possible for God to raise a creature to a sublimer end than this ; even were that creature a thousand times more perfect than the highest seraph.

Let us, then, seek God in all things, and make every thing serve as instruments of His greater glory ; prosperity and adversity, consolations and dryness of spirit, yea, our very sins and imperfections. Every thing is available to those who know how to seek God, and to find Gk>d in every thing that happens to them.

§ in. There is still another way of seeking God, which it is difficult to understand unless it be put in practice. It is not only to seek His will and His glory, not only to seek His gifts and His graces. His consolations and sweetness of devotion, but to seek Himself, to repose in Him alone, and to find no sweetness save in Him. Otherwise, if we make His favours and sensible sweet-nesses our object, we expose ourselves to great dangers, and shall never reach the end at which we aim. Whereas, when it is God Himself and Him only that we seek, we rise above all created things, and esteem the crowns and glories of the whole universe — nay, a thousand worlds and every thing that is not God — even as nothing.

Our greatest care and our constant study ought to be to seek God in this way ; and until we have found Him, we must not so much as stir abroad to seek to serve our neighbour, except in the way of experimental essays. We must be like hounds held at half leash. When we have arrived at the possession of God, we shall be able to give our zeal a greater freedom, and then we shall do more in one day than we have hitherto done in ten years.

When a soul has no longer any affection but for God, when it seeks but God, and is united to God, and feels no pleasure but in Him, when it finds no rest save in Him alone, nothing can cause it any pain. Thus the Saints, though persecuted by men, and assaulted by devils, laughed it all to scorn. It was but the outside that felt the blows, the interior was in peace.

Until we attain to this state, we shall always be miserable. Let the body be decked out with a thousand jewels, if the soul have departed, it turns to corruption, and is but a corpse loaded with infection. In Like manner, let the soul possess all the advantages that can be desired, if it has not God, every thing else it has cannot prevent it being wretched.

When creatures display their attractions in order to tempt us, the best way to secure ourselves from being surprised is to retire at once into God, to sigh after God, to gain a sweet savour of God by some devout and holy thought, instead of stopping to contend and dispute against the allurements of the temptation, which has more in it of perplexity and danger. We ought to pursue the same course at the first pressure of sufferings, crosses, and adversities.

Our study must be to seek God, and our end to fill ourselves with God. We shall only perfectly attain to this after we have thoroughly purged ourselves from our sins. However, we must be always tending to it, and for this end we must avail ourselves of all creatures as means, without yielding our heart to them.

§v.

A great misfortune it is to us to be able to find our satisfaction in creatures, when we ought to feel for them only contempt and aversion. We set great value upon some advantageous or desirable appointment j we are eager to obtain it ; and when we have succeeded, we are gratified. A very nothing is sufficient to content us, as if God were not our happiness.

We must not fix our eyes or our hearts even upon the supernatural gifts of God. It is Him alone we ought to seek ; it is in Him alone that we ought to rest. Out of Him every thing is nought. " God is my portion for ever."

"Our Father director," adds F. Rigoleu, "recommends nothing to us so much as to seek God simply in all things, without stopping at any thing out of God, not even His gifts."

Article II

We must give oursdves wholly to God, It is a great help to perfection to serve God with a generous soul, and with a full and unreserved heart. If you compare the life of the lukewarm with that of the fervent, if you reckon up their happy and their unhappy days, you will find that the first will have spent many more sad hours than the second.

Consider two religious : one who from the very first gives hirnqglf up to God, and resolves to spare nothing to secure his sanctification ; another^ who walks at a slow pace^ and has not the courage to rise superior to more than half his difficulties. Compare the life of the one with the life of the other — I say the whole life, and not a mere portion of it, — and you* will find that the lukewarm will have sufibred much more than the fervent. "Affliction and unhappiness are in their ways," says the royal prophet, speaking of those cowardly souls who do not give themselves up generously to God ; " the way of peace they have not known.'* This term 'ways' denotes the inward disposition of one who, resisting God, feels in his interior only the torment and galling restraint of conscience. He is content only in appearance and on the surface, not in the centre of his soul, where the fervent have peacSy which, according to the Hebrew, signifies the abundance of all good.

In short, there is a base infidelity in contenting ourselves with some small degree of perfection we may have acquired, since we are called to a state in which we may hope every thing from God, if we correspond faithfully with the grace of our vocation.

We spend whole years, and often a whole life, in bargaining whether we shall give ourselves wholly to God. We cannot make up our minds to so complete a sacrifice. We reserve to ourselves many affections, designs, desires, hopes, pretensions, of which we are unwilling to strip ourselves in order to put ourselves in that perfect nudity of spirit which disposes us to being fiiUy possessed by God. These are so many ties by which the enemy holds us bound, that he may prevent our advancing in perfection. We shall be sensible of the cheat at the hour of death, when we shall see that we have let ourselves be amused by trifles, l^e children.

We fight against God for whole years, and resist the movements of His grace, which urge us interiorly to rid ourselves of a part of our miseries, by forsaking the vain amusements which stop our course, and giving ourselves to Him without reserve and without delay. But burdened with our self-love, blinded by our ignorance, deterred by vain apprehensions, we dare not take the step ; and for fear of being miserable, we continue in our misery, instead of giving ourselves fully to God, who desires to possess us, only to set us free from our miseries.

We must renounce, then, once for all, all our own interests and all our own satisfactions, all our own designs, and all our own choices, that we may henceforth be dependent only on the good pleasure of God, and resign ourselves entirely into His hands.

Article III

How subtlety and dissimvlation keep us far from God.

" The Holy Spirit, who is the teacher of wisdom, is averse to all disguise," says the wise man. We shall never make progress unless we walk sincerely before God and before men. Mankind are full of endless deceit. We disguise ourselves habitually from ourselves and from others. It is one of the faults which we are least willing to acknowledge. We ought never to make excuses or palliate any thing. These duplicities and artifices of self-love keep us far away from God.

A subtle soul, and one that employs policy and craft in dealing with its neighbour, forms scarcely a single design, conceives scarcely a single thought, which is not a sin, its habitual object being only to deceive others. Such conduct is one continued lie. It is in perpetual opposition to God, and seems to deny implicitly His providence over hearts.

We must never use stratagem or policy when treating with superiors, either respecting the arrangement of our employments, or on any other subject, or indeed on any occasion whatsoever ; for all this is but that fleshly wisdom condemned by our Lord. " The wisdom of the flesh is death. The wisdom of the Spirit is life and peace."