SPIRITUAL CONFERENCES
BY

FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER D. D.

Author of
“All for Jesus," “Growth in Holiness," “The Blessed Sacrament"
"The Foot of the Cross," “Bethlehem," etc., etc., etc.

LA RAISON SANS CESSE RAISONNE,

ET JAMAIS N’A GUÉRI PERSONNE.

NEW EDITION

THE PETER REILLY CO
131 North Thirteenth Street
Philadelphia, Pa.

Nihil Obstat
Joseph A. M. Quigley

Imprimatur

Censor Librorum
i® J. F. O’Hara, C.S.C.

Archiepiscopus Philadelphiensis
Feast oi Christ the King, 1957

TO

MY HEARERS
IN THE

CHURCH OF THE LONDON ORATORY
THIS VOLUME

IS DEDICATED WITH MANY AFFECTIONATE RECOLLECTIONS,

AND
A SENSE OF DEEP RESPONSIBILITY

CONTENTS
KINDNESS
I On Kindness in General ......................................
II Kind Thoughts .........................................................
III Kind Words ...............................................................
IV Kind Actions ...........................................................

PAGE

11
24
34
44

ON DEATH
I The Aspects of Death ...........................................
II The Characteristics of Death ......................
III Preparation for Death ........................................
IV A Death Precious in the Sightof God...............

56
74
96
112

SELF-DECEIT
I Simplicity .................................................................
II The Fountains of Self-deceit
........................
III The Varieties of Self-deceit.................................
IV The Characteristics of Self-deceit ...................
V The Remedies of Self-deceit ..............................
VI The Place and Hour When WeBecome True .

131
142
156
164
176
188

Why

so

Little Comes of Frequent Confession ...........

Weariness

in

Well-doing ................................................

196

213

Wounded Feelings ..............................................................

228

Confidence the Only Worship........................................

241

On Taking Scandal ............................................................

251

On

a

Taste

for

Reading Considered

as a

Help

in the

Spiritual Life .............................................................

The Monotony

of

Piety...................................................

260

273

Heaven and Hell ...............................................................

290

All Men Have

$2!

a

Special Vocation ................................

vil

PREFACE
During the Advents, Lents, and Months of Mary, I have been
accustomed to preach in the Church of the Oratory on points
connected with the spiritual life. These Addresses have been
very familiar, and also, from long personal intercourse with my
hearers, more intimate and affectionate than such Addresses
would have been under different circumstances. I enjoyed the
highest liberty which a preacher can have,—a tolerable certainty
that I should not be misunderstood, at least by those who habitu­
ally heard me; and of strangers and chance auditors I naturally
took no account.
As these Addresses had neither the formality of Lectures nor
the dignity of Sermons, I have been accustomed to call them
Conferences, using the word rather in a foreign than a native
sense. A selection from these is now presented to the reader, as
nearly in the form in which they were preached, as I could
remember.
It has been my custom to have the notes of them, very full
and detailed, prepared several weeks, often several months,
before delivering them. They were then revised before preach­
ing, and very often annotated immediately after preaching, when
necessary or desirable changes struck me in the act and fervor of
delivery. There is nothing which brings out any want of logical
sequence, or any disproportionate arrangement of thoughts, more
vividly than the act of preaching; and I have repeatedly profited
by this fact. The notes were then laid aside, some for two years,
some for one year, some for a few months, before I finally
revised them for writing, and at last wrote them out. I have
long adopted this custom with what concerned the Spiritual Life,
so as to secure myself from putting forth mere views struck out
in a heat, and also that I might convert the opinions expressed,
whatever their intrinsic value might be, into judgments ascer­
ix

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PREFACE

tained with care, matured by experience, and revised with jealous
repetition under various circumstances and in different moods
of mind.
There is a sort of general unity in the selection which occu­
pies this Volume, as the Conferences will be found on the whole
to apply to matters closely related among themselves, and proper
either to one stage of the Spiritual Life, or to stages which have
a dose affinity with each other. They embody, also, certain views
on the relation of grace to natural character, and on what may
be called the Natural Side of the Supernatural Life, rvhich I
regard as being of considerable importance in these times, and
to which I may hope to do more justice in a distinct w’ork. I have
purposely put them forward now in an unformal way, though
they lie as a complete and coherent system in my own mind.
The publication of these Conferences, though not an un­
willing one, is due to the persuasion of others. For I have been
held back by the fear, and indeed the certainty, that I could not
expect, among the general readers of a book, that safe interpreta­
tion of familiar affection, which makes even voice and look con­
tribute to secure me, with my habitual hearers, from being mis­
understood in the Chair of the Oratory.

The London Oratory

Feast of The Immaculate Conception, 1858

k

KINDNESS
I.

On Kindness

in

General

The weakness of man, and the way in which he is at the
mercy of external accidents in the world, has always been a
favorite topic with the moralists. They have expatiated upon it
with so much amplitude of rhetorical exaggeration, that it has at
last produced in our minds a sense of unreality, against which
we rebel. Man is no doubt very weak. He can only be passive
in a thunderstorm, or run in an earthquake. The odds are against
him when he is managing his ship in a hurricane, or when
pestilence is raging in the house where he lives. Heat and cold,
drought and rain, are his masters. He is weaker than an ele­
phant, and subordinate to the east wind. This is all very true.
Nevertheless man has considerable powers, considerable enough
to leave him, as proprietor of this planet, in possession of at
least as much comfortable jurisdiction as most landed proprietors
have in a free country. He has one power in particular, which
is not sufficiently dwelt on, and with which we will at present
occupy ourselves. It is the power of making the world happy,
or at least of so greatly diminishing the amount of unhappiness
in it as to make it quite a different world from what it is at present.
This power is called kindness. The worst kinds of unhappiness,
as well as the greatest amount of it, come from our conduct to
each other. If our conduct therefore were under the control of
kindness, it would be nearly the opposite of what it is, and so
the state of the world would be almost reversed. We are for
the most part unhappy, because the world is an unkind world.
But the world is only unkind for die lack of kindness in us
units who compose it. Now, if all this is but so much as half
true, it is plainly worth our while to take some trouble to gain
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SPIRITUAL CONFERENCES

clear and definite notions of kindness. We practise more easily
what we already know clearly.
We must first ask ourselves what, kindness is. Words which
we are using constantly soon cease to have much distinct meaning
in our minds. They become symbols and figures rather than words,
and we content ourselves with the general impression they make
upon us. Now, let us be a little particular about kindness, and
describe it as accurately as we can. Kindness is the overflowing
of self upon others. We put others in the place of self. We treat
them as we should wish to be treated ourselves. We change places
with them. For the time self is another, and others are self. Our
self-love takes the shape of complacence in unselfishness. We
cannot speak of the virtues without thinking of God. What
would the overflow of self upon others be in him the Ever-blessed
and Eternal? It was the act of creation. Creation was divine
kindness. From it, as from a fountain, flow the possibilities, the
powers, the blessings of all created kindness. This is an honorable
genealogy for kindness. Then, again, kindness is the coming to
the rescue of others, when they need it and it is in our power
to supply what they need; and this is the work of the Attributes
of God toward his creatures. His omnipotence is forever making
up our deficiency of power. His justice is continually correcting
our erroneous judgments. His mercy is always consoling our
fellow-creatures under our hard-heartedness. His truth is per­
petually hindering the consequences of our falsehood. His omnis­
cience makes our ignorance succeed as if it were knowledge.
His perfections are incessantly coming to the rescue of our im­
perfections. This is the definition of Providence; and kindness
is our imitation of this divine action.
Moreover, kindness is also like divine grace; for it gives
men something which neither self nor nature can give them.
What it gives them is something of which they are in want, or
something which only another person can give, such as consola­
tion; and besides this, the manner in which this is given is a
true gift itself, better far than the thing given: and what is all
this but an allegory of grace? Kindness adds sweetness to every

KINDNESS

13

thing. It is kindness which makes life’s capabilities blossom, and
paints them with their cheering hues, and endows them with
their invigorating fragrance. Whether it waits on its superiors,
or ministers to its inferiors, or disports itself with its equals, its
work is marked by a prodigality which the strictest discretion
cannot blame. It does unnecessary work, which, when done, looks
the most necessary work that could be. If it goes to soothe sorrow,
it does more than soothe it. If it relieves a want, it cannot do
so without doing more than relieve it. Its manner is something
extra, and is the choice thing in the bargain. Even when it is
economical in what it gives, it is not economical of the grace­
fulness with which it gives it. But what is all this like, except
the exuberance of the divine government? See how, turn which
way we will, kindness is entangled with the thought of God!
Last of all, the secret impulse out of which kindness acts is an
instinct which is the noblest part of ourselves, the most un­
doubted remnant of the image of God, which was given us at
the first. We must therefore never think of kindness as being
a common growth of our nature, common in the sense of being
of little value. It is the nobility of man. In all its modifications
it reflects a heavenly type. It runs up into eternal mysteries.
It is a divine thing rather than a human one, and it is human
because it springs from the soul of man just at the point where
the divine image was graven deepest.
Such is kindness. Now let us consider its office in the world,
in order that we may get a clearer idea of itself. It makes life
more endurable. The burden of life presses heavily upon multi­
tudes of the children of men. It is a yoke, very often of such a
peculiar nature that familiarity, instead of practically lightening
it, makes it harder to bear. Perseverance is the hand of time
pressing the yoke down upon our galled shoulders with all its
might. There are many men to whom life is always approaching
the unbearable. It stops only just short of it. We expect to trans­
gress every moment. But, without having recourse to these
extreme cases, sin alone is sufficient to make life intolerable to
a virtuous man. Actual sin is not essential to this. The possibility

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SPIRITUAL CONFERENCES

of sinning, the danger of sinning, the facility of sinning, the
temptation to sin, the example of so much sin around us, and,
above all, the sinful unworthiness of men much better than
ourselves,—these are sufficient to make life drain us to the last
dregs of our endurance. In all these cases it is the office of kind­
ness to make life more bearable; and if its success in its office is
often only partial, some amount of success is at least invariable.
It is true that we make ourselves more unhappy than other
people make us. No slight portion of this self-inflicted unhappi­
ness arises from our sense of justice being so continually wounded
by the events of life, while the incessant friction of the world
never allows the wound to heal. There are some men whose
practical talents are completely swamped by the keenness of their
sense of injustice. They go through life as failures, because the
pressure of injustice upon themselves, or the sight of its pressing
upon others, has unmanned them. If they begin a line of action,
they cannot go through with it. They are perpetually shying,
like a nettlesome horse, at the objects by the road-side. They
had much in them; but they have died without any thing coming
of them. Kindness steps forward to remedy this evil also. Each
solitary kind action that is done, the whole world over, is working
briskly in its own sphere to restore the balance between right
and wrong. The more kindness there is on the earth at any given
moment, the greater is the tendency of the balance between right
and wrong to correct itself and remain in equilibrium. Nay, this
is short of the truth. Kindness allies itself with right to invade
the wrong and beat it off the earth. Justice is necessarily an ag­
gressive virtue, and kindness is the amiability of justice.
Mindful of its divine origin, and of its hereditary descent
from the primal act of creation, this dear virtue is forever entering
into God’s original disposition as Creator. He means die world
to be a happy world; and kindness meant it also. He gave it the
power to be happy; and kindness was a great part of that very
power. By his benediction he commanded creation to be happy;
kindness, with its usual genial spirit of accommodation, now
tries to persuade a world which has dared to disobey a divine

KINDNESS

15

command. God looks over the fallen world, and repents that he
made man. Kindness sees less clearly the ruin of God's original
idea than it sees still that first beneficent idea, and it sets to
work to cleanse what is defiled and to restore what is defaced.
It sorrows over sin, but, like buoyant-hearted men, it finds in
its sorrow the best impulse of its activity. It is laboring always
in ten thousand places, and the work at which it labors is always
the same,—to make God's world more like his original con­
ception of it.
But, while it thus ministers to him as Creator, it is no less
energetic and successful in preparing and enlarging his ways as
Savior. It is constantly winning strayed souls back to him, open­
ing hearts that seemed obstinately closed, enlightening minds
that had been wilfully darkened, skilfully throwing the succors
of hope into the strongholds that were on the point of capitulating
to despair, lifting endeavor from low to high, from high to
higher, from higher to highest. Everywhere kindness is the best
pioneer of the Precious Blood. We often begin our own repent
ance by acts of kindness, or through them. Probably the majority
of repentances have begun in the reception of acts of kindness,
which, if not unexpected, touched men by the sense of their
being so undeserved. Doubtless the terrors of the Lord are often
the beginning of that wisdom which we name conversion; but
men must be frightened in a kind way, or the fright will only
make them unbelievers. Kindness has converted more sinners
than either zeal, eloquence, or learning; and these three last
have never converted any one, unless they were kind also. In
short, kindness makes us as gods to each other. Yet, while it
lifts us so high, it sweetly keeps us low. For the continual sense
which a kind heart has of its own need of kindness keeps it humble.
There are no hearts to which kindness is so indispensable as
those that are exuberantly kind themselves.
But let us look at the matter from another point. What
does kindness do for those to whom we show it? We have looked
at its office on a grand scale in the whole world, let us narrow
our field of observation, and see what it does for those who are

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SPIRITUAL CONFERENCES

its immediate objects. What we note first, as of great consequence,
is the immense power of kindness in bringing out the good points
of the characters of others. Almost all men have more goodness
in them than the ordinary intercourse of the world enables us
to discover. Indeed, most men, we may be sure, from glimpses
we now and then obtain, carry with them to the grave much un­
developed nobility. Life is seldom so varied or so adventurous as
to enable a man to unfold all that is in him. A creature who
has got capabilities in him to live forever can hardly have room
in threescore years to do more than give specimens of what he
might be and will be. But, besides this, who has not seen how
disagreeable and faulty characters will expand under kindness?
Generosity springs up, fresh and vigorous, from under a superin­
cumbent load of meanness. Modesty suddenly discloses itself from
some safe cavern where it has survived years of sin. Virtues come
to life, and in their infantine robustness strangle habits which a
score of years has been spent in forming. It is wonderful what
capabilities grace can find in the most unpromising character. It
is a thing to be much pondered. Duly reflected on, it might alter
our view of the world altogether. But kindness does not reveal
these things to us external spectators only. It reveals a man to
himself. It rouses the long dormant self-respect, with which grace
will speedily ally itself and purify it by its alliance. Neither does
it content itself with making a revelation. It develops as well as
reveals. It gives these newly-disclosed capabilities of virtue, vigor
and animation. It presents them with occasions. It even trains
and tutors them. It causes the first actions of the recovering soul
to be actions on high principles and from generous motives. It
shields and defends moral convalescence from the dangers which
beset it. A kind act has picked up many a fallen man, who has
afterward slain his tens of thousands for his Lord, and has
entered the Heavenly City at last as a conqueror, amidst the
acclamations of the saints and with the welcome of his Sovereign.
It is not improbable that no man ever had a kind action
done to him who did not in consequence commit a sin less
than he otherwise would have done. I can look out over the earth

KINDNESS

η

at any hour, and I see in spirit innumerable angels threading the
crowds of men, and hindering sin by all manner of artifices which
shall not interfere with the freedom of man’s will. I see also
invisible grace, made visible for the moment, flowing straight
from God in and upon and around the souls of men, and sin
giving way and yielding place to it. It is only in the deserts
that I do not see it, and on the tracts of shipless seas and the
fields of polar ice. But together with grace and the angels
there is a third band of diminutive figures, with veils upon their
heads, which are flitting everywhere, making gloomy men smile,
and angry men grow meek, and sick men cease to groan, lighting
up hope in the eyes of the dying, sweetening the heart of the
bitter, and adroitly turning men away from sin just when they
are on the point of committing it. They seem to have strange
power. Men listen to them who have been deaf to the pleading
of angels. They gain admittance into hearts before the doors
of which grace has lost its patience and gone away. No sooner
are the doors open than these veiled messengers, these cunning
ministers of God, have gone and returned with lightning-like
speed and brought grace back with them. They are most versatile
in their operations. One while they are the spies of grace, another
while its sappers and miners, another while its light cavalry,
another while they bear the brunt of the battle, and for more
than five thousand years they have hardly known the meaning
of defeat. These are the acts of kindness which are daily enrolled
in God’s service from the rising to the setting of the sun; and
this is the second work they do in souls,—to lessen the number
of their sins. There are few gifts more precious to a soul than
to make its sins fewer. It is in our power to do this almost daily,
and sometimes often in a day.
Another work, which our kindness does in the hearts of others,
is to encourage them in their efforts after good. Habits of sin,
even when put to death as habits, leave many evil legacies behind
them. One of the most disastrous parts of their inheritance is
discouragement. There are few things which resist grace as it
does. Obstinacy even is more hopeful. We may see Hoods of

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SPIRITUAL CONFERENCES

grace descend upon the disheartened soul, and it shows no symp­
toms of reviving. Grace runs off it, as the rain runs from the roofs.
Whichever of its three forms, peevishness, lethargy, or delusion,
it may assume, God’s mercy must lay regular siege to it, or it
will never be taken. But we all of us need encouragement to
do good. The path of virtue, even when it is not uphill, is rough
and stony, and each day’s journey is a little longer than our
strength admits of, only there are no means of shortening it.
The twenty-four hours are the same to everybody except the
idle, and to the idle they are thirty-six, for weariness and dull­
ness. You may love God, and love him truly, as you do, and high
motives may be continually before you: nevertheless you must
be quite conscious to yourself of being soon fatigued, nay, per­
haps of a normal lassitude growing with your years; and you must
remember how especially the absence of sympathy tried you, and
how all things began to look like delusion because no one en­
couraged you in your work. Alas! how many noble hearts have
sunk under this not ignoble weariness! How many plans for
God’s glory have fallen to the ground, which a bright look or a
kind eye would have propped up! But either because we were
busy with our own work and never looked at that of others, or
because we were jealous and looked coldly and spoke critically, we
have not come with this facile succor to the rescue not so much
of our brother as of our dearest Lord himself. How many insti­
tutions for the comfort of the poor, or the saving of souls, have
languished, more for want of approbation than of money; and,
though sympathy is so cheap, the lone priest has struggled on
till his solitude, his weariness, and his lack of sympathy have
almost blamelessly given way beneath the burden, and the wolves
have rushed in upon that little nook of his master’s sheepfold
which he had so lovingly partitioned off as his own peculiar work!
Oh, what a wretched thing it is to be unkind! I think, with the
thought of the Precious Blood, I can better face my sins at the
last judgment than my unkindness, with all its miserable fer­
tility of evil consequences. But, if we have no notion of the
far-reaching mischief which unkindness does, so neither can we

KINDNESS

19

rightly estimate the good which kindness may do. Very often a
heart is drooping. It is bending over itself lower and lower. The
cloud of sadness thickens. Temptations lie all around, and
are multiplying in strength and number every moment. Every
thing forebodes approaching sin. Not so much as a kind action,
not so much as a kind word, but the mere tone of voice, the
mere fixing of the eye, has conveyed sympathy to the poor suf­
fering heart, and all is right again in one instant. The downcast
soul has revived under that mere peep of human sunshine, and
is encouraged to do bravely the very thing which in despondency
it had almost resolved to leave undone. That coming sin might
have been the soul's first step to an irretrievable ruin. That en­
couragement may be the first link of a new chain, which, when
its length is finished, shall be called final perseverance.
Few men can do without praise, and there are few circum­
stances under which a man can be praised without injuring him.
Here is a difficulty. It is wise to take a kindly view of all human
infirmities, but it is not wise to humor them in act. Some men
can do without the praise of others, because their own is so
unfailing. Their vanity enables them to find self-praise sufficient.
Vanity is the most comfortable of vices. The misfortune is, that
nevertheless it is a vice. Some try to do without praise, and grow
moody and critical, which shows their grace was not adequate
for their attempt. Some do without praise, because they are all
for God: but, alas! it would not occupy us long to take the census
of that portion of the world’s population. Most men must have
praise. Their fountains dry up without it. Every one in authority
knows this well enough. He has to learn to praise without seem­
ing to praise. Now, kindness has all the virtues of praise without
its vices. It is equally medicinal without having the poisonous
qualities. When we are praised, we are praised at some expense,
and at our own expense. Kindness puts us to no expense, while
it enriches those who are kind to us. Praise always implies some
degree of condescension, and condescension is a thing intrinsically
ungraceful; whereas kindness is the most graceful attitude one
man can assume toward another. So here is another work it does.

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It supplies the place of praise. It is, in fact, the only sort of praise
which does not injure, the only sort which is always and every­
where true, the only kind which those who are afraid of growing
conceited may welcome safely.
Moreover, kindness is infectious. No kind action ever stopped
with itself. Fecundity belongs to it in its own right. One kind
action leads to another. By one we commit ourselves to more
than one. Our example is followed. The single act of kindness
throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and
make fresh trees, and the rapidity of the growth is equal to its
extent. But this fertility is not confined to ourselves, or to others
who may be kind to the same person to whom we have been
kind. It is chiefly to be found in the person himself whom we
have benefited. This is the greatest work which kindness does
to others,—that it makes them kind themselves. The kindest men
are generally those who have received the greatest number of
kindnesses. It does indeed sometimes happen, according to the
law which in noble natures produces good out of evil, that men
who have had to feel the want of kindness are themselves lavishly
kind when they have the power. But in general the rule is that
kindness makes men kind. As we become kinder ourselves by
practising kindness, so the objects of our kindness, if they were
kind before, learn now to be kinder, and to be kind now if they
were never so before. Thus does kindness propagate itself on all
sides. Perhaps an act of kindness never dies, but extends the in­
visible undulations of its influence over the breadth of centuries.
Thus, for all these reasons, there is no better thing which we
can do for others than to be kind to them; and our kindness is the
greatest gift they can receive, except the grace of God.
There is always a certain sort of selfishness in the spiritual life.
The order of charity rules it so. Our first consideration is the
glory of God in the salvation of our own souls. We must take
hold of this glory by that handle first of all. Every thing will be
presumption and delusion, if it is taken in any other order.
Hence, even while speaking of kindness, it is not out of place
for us to consider the work which it does for ourselves. We have

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21

seen what it does for the world. We have seen what it does for
our neighbors. Now let us see how it blesses ourselves. To be
kind to ourselves is a very peculiar feature of the spiritual life,
but does not come within our range at present. Foremost among
the common ways in which kind actions benefit ourselves may be
mentioned the help they give us in getting clear of selfishness.
The tendency of nature to love itself has more the character of a
habit than a law. Opposite conduct always tends to weaken it,—
which would hardly be the case if it were a law. Kindness, more­
over, partly from the pleasure which accompanies it, partly from
the blessing it draws down upon itself, and partly from its simili­
tude to God, tends very rapidly to set into a well-formed habit.
Selfishness is in no slight degree a point of view from which
we regard things. Kindness alters our view by altering our point
of view. Now, does any thing tease us more than our selfishness?
Does any thing more effectually retard our spiritual growth?
Selfishness indeed furnishes us with a grand opportunity, the
opportunity of getting to hate ourselves because of the odious­
ness of this self-worship. But how few of us have got either the
depth or the bravery to profit by this magnificent occasion! On
the whole, selfishness must be put down, or our progress will
cease. A series of kind actions turned against it with playful
courage, and selfishness is. I will not say killed, but stunned,
and that is a great convenience, though it is not the whole work
accomplished. Perhaps we may never come to be quite unselfish.
However, there is but one road toward that, which is kindness;
and every step taken on that road is a long stride heavenward.
Kindness seems to know of some secret fountain of joy deep
in the soul, which it can touch without revealing its locality, and
cause to send its waters upward and overflow the heart. Inward
happiness almost always follows a kind action: and who has not
long since experienced in himself that inward happiness is the
atmosphere in which great things are done for God? Furthermore,
kindness is a constant godlike occupation, and implies many
supernatural operations in those who practise kindness upon the
motives of faith. Much grace goes along with kindness, collateral

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graces more than sufficient in themselves to make a saint. Observa­
tion would lead us to the conclusion that kindness is not a native
of the land of youth. Men grow kinder as they grow older. There
are of course natures which are kindly from the cradle. But not
many men have seen a really kind boy or girl. In like manner,
as kindness in the natural world implies age, in the spiritual
world it implies grace. It does not belong to the fervor of begin
nings, but to the solidity of progress. Indeed, Christian kindness
implies so. much grace that it almost assures the exercise of
humility. A proud man is seldom a kind man. Humility makes
us kind, and kindness makes us humble. It is one of the many
instances, in the matter of the virtues, of good qualities being at
once not only causes and effects together, but also their own
causes and their own effects. It would be foolish to say that
humility is an easy virtue. The very lowest degree of it is a
difficult height to climb. But this much may be said for kindness,
that it is the easiest road to humility, and infallible as well as
easy: and is not humility just what we want, just what we are
this moment coveting, just what will break down barriers and
give us free course on our way to God?
Kindness does so much for us that it would be almost more
easy to enumerate what it does not do than to sum up what it
does. It operates more energetically in some characters than in
others. But it works wondrous changes in all. It is kindness which
enables most men to put off the inseparable unpleasantness of
youth. It watches the thoughts, controls the words, and helps
us to unlearn early manhood's inveterate habit of criticism. It is
astonishing how masterful it is in its influence over our disposi­
tions, and yet how gentle, quiet, consistent, and successful. It
makes us thoughtful and considerate. Detached acts of kindness
may be the offspring of impulse. Yet he is mostly a good man
whose impulses are good. But on the long run habitual kind­
ness is not a mere series of generous impulses, but the steadfast
growth of generous deliberation. Much thought must go to con­
sistent kindness, and much self-denying legislation. With most
of us the very outward shape of our lives is, without fault of ours,

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23

out of harmony with persevering kindness. We have to humor
circumstances. Our opportunities require management, and
to be patient in waiting to do good to others is a fine work
of grace. It is on account of all this that kindness makes us so
attractive to others. It imparts a tinge of pathos to our char­
acters, in which our asperities disappear, or at least only give a
breadth of shadow to our hearts, which increases their beauty
by making it more serious. We also become manly by being kind.
Querulousness, which is the unattractive side of youthful piety,
is no longer noticeable. It is alive because an ailing or an iso­
lated old age may bring it to the surface again. But kindness
at any rate keeps it under water; for it is the high tide of the
soul’s nobility, and hides many an unseemly shallow which ex­
posed its uninteresting sand in early days, and will disclose itself
once more by ripples and stained water when age comes upon us,
unless we are of those fortunate few whose hearts get younger as
their heads grow older. A kind man is a man who is never self
occupied. He is genial; he is sympathetic; he is brave. How shall
we express in one word these many things which kindness does
for us who practise it? It prepares us with an especial preparation
for the paths of disinterested love of God.
Now, surely we cannot say that this subject of kindness is an
unimportant one. It is in reality, as subsequent Conferences will
show, a great part of the spiritual life. It is found in all its regions,
and in all of them with different functions, and in none of them
playing an inferior part. It is also a peculiar participation of the
spirit of Jesus, which is itself the life of all holiness. It reconciles
worldly men to religious people; and really, however contemptible
worldly men are in themselves, they have souls to save, and it
were much to be wished that devout persons would make their
devotion a little less angular and aggressive to worldly people,
provided they can do so without lowering practice or conceding
principle. Devout people are, as a class, the least kind of all
classes. This is a scandalous thing to say; but the scandal of
the fact is so much greater than the scandal of acknowledging it,
that I will brave this last, for the sake of a greater good. Religious

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people are an unkindly lot. Poor human nature cannot do every
thing; and kindness is loo often left uncultivated because men
do not sufficiently understand its value. Men may be charitable,
yet not kind; merciful, yet not kind; self-denying, yet not kind.
If they would add a little common kindness to their uncommon
graces, they would convert ten where they now only abate the
prejudices of one. There is a sort of spiritual selfishness in devo­
tion, which is rather to be regretted than condemned. I should
not like to think it is unavoidable. Certainly its interfering with
kindness is not unavoidable. It is only a little difficult, and calls
for watchfulness. Kindness, as a grace, is certainly not sufficiently
cultivated, while the self-gravitating, self-contemplating, self­
inspecting parts of the spiritual life are cultivated too exclusively.
Rightly considered, kindness is the grand cause of God in
the world. Where it is natural, it must forthwith be supernatural­
ized. Where it is not natural, it must be supernaturally planted.
What is our life? It is a mission to go into every corner it can
reach, and reconquer for God’s beatitude his unhappy world
back to him. It is a devotion of ourselves to the bliss of the
Divine Life by the beautiful apostolate of kindness.

KINDNESS

II.

Kind Thoughts

Everywhere in creation there is a charm, the fountain of
which is invisible. In the natural, the moral, and the spiritual
world, it is the same. We are constantly referring it to causes,
which are only its effects. Faith alone reveals to us its true origin.
God is behind every thing. His sweetness transpires through the
thick shades which hide him. It comes to the surface, and with
gentle mastery overwhelms the whole world. The sweetness of
the hidden God is the delight of life. It is the pleasantness of
nature, and the consolation which is omnipresent in all suffering.
We touch him; we lean on him; we feel him; we see by him;

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25

always and everywhere. Yet he makes himself so natural to us
that we almost overlook him. Indeed, if it were not for faith,
we should overlook him altogether. His presence is like light
when we do not see the face of the sun. It is like light on the
stony folds of the mountain-top, coming through rents in the
waving clouds, or in the close forest where the wind weaves and
unweaves the canopy of foliage, or like the silver arrows of under­
water light in the deep blue sea, with colored stones and bright
weeds glancing there. Still, God does not shine equally through
all things. Some things are more transparent, other things more
opaque. Some have a greater capacity for disclosing God than
others. In the moral world, with which alone we are concerned
at present, kind thoughts have a special power to let in upon
us the light of the hidden God.
The thoughts of men are a world by themselves, vast and
populous. Each man’s thoughts are a world to himself. There
is an astonishing breadth in the thoughts of even the most narrow­
minded man. Thus we all of us have an interior world to govern,
and he is the only real king who governs it effectually. There
is no doubt that we are very much influenced by external things,
and that our natural dispositions are in no slight degree dependent
upon education. Nevertheless our character is formed within.
It is manufactured in the world of our thoughts, and there we
must go to influence it. He who is master there is master every­
where. He whose energy covers his thoughts covers the whole
extent of self. He has himself completely under his own control,
if he has learned to control his thoughts. The fountains of word
and action have their untrodden springs in the caverns of the
world of thought. He who can command the fountains is master
of the city. The power of suffering is the grandest merchandise
of life, and it also is manufactured in the world of thought. The
union of grace and nature is the significance of our whole life.
It is there, precisely in that union, that the secret of our vocation
resides. The shape of our work and the character of our holiness
are regulated from the point, different in different men, at which
nature and grace are united. The knowledge of this point brings

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with it not only the understanding of our past, but a sufficiently
clear vision of our future, to say nothing of its being the broad
sunshine of the present. But the union of nature and grace is
for the most part effected in the world of thought.
But I will go even further than this, and will venture to
contradict a common opinion. It seems to me that our thoughts
are a more true measure of ourselves than our actions are. They
are not under the control of human respect. It is not easy for
them to be ashamed of themselves. They have no witnesses but
God. They are not bound to keep within certain limits or observe
certain proprieties. Religious motives alone can claim jurisdic­
tion over them. The struggle which so often ensues within us
before we can bring ourselves to do our duty goes on entirely
within our thoughts. It is our own secret, and men cannot put
us to the blush because of it. The contradiction which too often
exists between our outward actions and our inward intentions
is only to be detected in the realm of our thoughts, whither none
but God can penetrate, except by guesses, which are not the
less offences against charity because they happen to be correct.
In like manner as an impulse will sometimes show more of our
real character than what we do after deliberation, our first thoughts
will often reveal to us faults of disposition which outward re­
straints will hinder from issuing in action. Actions have their
external hindrances, while our thoughts better disclose to us
our possibilities of good and evil. Of course there is a most
true sense in which the conscientious effort to cure a fault is a
better indication of our character than the fault we have not yet
succeeded in curing. Nevertheless we may die at any moment;
and when we die, we die as we are. Thus our thoughts tell us,
better than our actions can do, what we shall be like the moment
after death. Lastly, it is in the world of thought that we most
often meet with God, walking as in the shades of ancient Eden.
It is there we hear his whispers. It is there we perceive the
fragrance of his recent presence. It is thence that the first vibra­
tions of grace proceed.
Now, if our thoughts be of this importance, and also if kind­

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27

ness be of the importance which was assigned to it in the last
Conference, it follows that kind thoughts must be of immense
consequence. If a rnan habitually has kind thoughts of others,
and that on supernatural motives, he is not far from being a saint.
Such a man’s thoughts are not kind intermittingly, or on impulse,
or at hap-hazard. His first thoughts are kind, and he does not
repent of them, although they often bring suffering and disgust
in their train. All his thoughts are kind, and he does not
checker them with unkindly ones. Even when sudden passions
or vehement excitements have thrown them into commotion,
they settle down into a kindly humor and cannot settle other­
wise. These men are rare. Kind thoughts are rarer than either
kind words or kind deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking
about others. This in itself is rare. But they imply also a great
deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criti­
cisms. This is rarer still. Active-minded men are naturally most
given to criticize; and they are also the men whose thoughts are
generally the most exuberant. Such men therefore must make
kind thoughts a defence against self. By sweetening the fountain of
their thoughts, they will destroy the bitterness of their judgment.
But kind thoughts imply also a contact with God, and a
divine ideal in our minds. Their origin cannot be any thing
short of divine. Like the love of beauty, they can spring from
no baser source. They are not dictated by self-interest, nor
stimulated by passion. They have nothing in them which is
insidious, and they are almost always die preludes to some sacri­
fice of self. It must be from God's touch that such waters spring.
They only live in the clammy mists of earth, because they breathe
the fresh air of heaven. They are the scent with which the creature
is penetrated through the indwelling of the Creator. They imply
also the reverse of a superficial view of things. Nothing deepens
the mind so much as a habit of charity. Charity cannot feed on
surfaces. Its instinct is always to go deeper. Roots are its natural
food. A man’s surfaces are always worse than his real depths.
There may be exceptions to this rule; but I believe them to be
very rare. Self is the only person who does not improve on

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acquaintance. Our deepest views of life are doubtless very shallow
ones; for how little do we know of what God intends to do with
his own world! We know something about his glory and our
own salvation, but how the last becomes the first in the face of
so much evil neither theologian nor philosopher has ever been
able adequately to explain. But so much we are warranted in
saying, that charity is the deepest view of life, and nearest to
God's view, and therefore also not merely the truest view, but
the only view which is true at all. Kind thoughts, then, are in
the creature what His science is to the Creator. They embody
the deepest, purest, grandest truth to which we untruthful crea­
tures can attain about others or ourselves.
Why are some men so forward to praise others? Is it not
that it is their fashion of investing themselves with importance?
But why are most men so reluctant to praise others? It is because
they have such an inordinate opinion of themselves. Now, kind
thoughts for the most part imply a low opinion of self. They
are an inward praise of others, and, because inward, therefore
genuine. No one who has a high opinion of himself finds his
merits acknowledged according to his own estimate of them.
His reputation therefore cannot take care of itself. He must
push it; and a man who is pushing any thing in the world is
always unamiable, because he is obliged to stand so much on the
defensive. A pugnacious man is far less disagreeable than a defen­
sive man. Every man who is habitually holding out for his rights
makes himself the equal of his inferiors, even if he be a king;
and he must take the consequences, which are far from pleasant.
But the kind-thoughted man has no rights to defend, no self­
importance to push. He thinks meanly of himself, and with so
much honesty that he thinks thus of himself with tranquillity.
He finds others pleasanter to deal with than self; and others find
him so pleasant to deal with, that love follows him wherever he
goes,—a love which is the more faithful to him because he makes
so few pretences to be loved. Last of all, kind thoughts imply also
supernatural principles; for inward kindness can be consistent on
no others. Kindness is the occupation of our whole nature by

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the atmosphere and spirit of heaven. This is no inconsiderable
affair. Nature cannot do the work itself, nor can it do it with
ordinary succors. Were there ever any consistently kind heathens?
If so, they are in heaven now, for they must have been under
the dominion of grace on earth. We must not confound kindness
and mere good humor. Good humor is—no! on such an unkindly
earth as this it will be better not to say a disparaging word even
of mere good humor. Would that there were more even of that
in the world! I suspect angels cluster round a good-humored
man, as the gnats cluster round the trees they like.
But there is one class of kind thoughts which must be dwelt
upon apart. I allude to kind interpretations. The habit of not
judging others is one which it is very difficult to acquire, and
which is generally not acquired till very late on in the spiritual
life. If men have ever indulged in judging others, the very
sight of an action almost indeliberately suggests an internal
commentary upon it. It has become so natural to them to judge,
however little their own duties or responsibilities are connected
with what they are judging, that the actions of others present
themselves to the mind as in the attitude of asking a verdict from
it. All our fellow-men who come within the reach of our knowl­
edge (and for the most retired of us the circle is a wide one) are
prisoners at the bar; and if we are unjust, ignorant, and capricious
judges, it must be granted to us that we are indefatigable ones.
Now, all this is simple ruin to our souls. At any risk, at the cost
of life, there must be an end of this, or it will end in everlasting
banishment from God. The decree of the last judgment is abso­
lute. It is this:—the measure which we have meted to others.
Our present humor in judging others reveals to us what our
sentence would be if we died now. Are we content to abide that
issue? But, as it is impossible all at once to stop judging, and
as it is also impossible to go on judging uncharitably, we must
pass through the intermediate stage of kind interpretations. Few
men have passed beyond this to a habit of perfect charity, which
has blessedly stripped them of their judicial ermine and their
deeply-rooted judicial habits of mind. We ought therefore to

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cultivate most sedulously the habit of kind interpretations.
Men’s actions are very difficult to judge. Their real character
depends in a great measure on the motives which prompt them;
and those motives are invisible to us. Appearances are often
against what we afterward discover to have been deeds of virtue.
Moreover, a line of conduct is, in its look at least, very little like
a logical process. It is complicated with all manner of incon­
sistencies, and often deformed by what is in reality a hidden
consistency. Nobody can judge men but God, and we can hardly
obtain a higher or more reverent view of God than that which
represents him to us as judging men with perfect knowledge,
unperplexed certainty, and undisturbed compassion. Now, kind
interpretations are imitations of the merciful ingenuity of the
Creator finding excuses for his creatures. It is almost a day of
revelation to us, when theology enables us to perceive that God
is so merciful precisely because he is so wise; and from this truth
it is an easy inference that kindness is our best wisdom, because
it is an image of the wisdom of God. This is the idea of kind
interpretations, and this is the use which we must make of them.
The habit of judging is so nearly incurable, and its cure is such
an almost interminable process, that we must concentrate our­
selves for a long while on keeping it in check; and this check is
to be found in kind interpretations. We must come to esteem
very lightly our sharp eye for evil, on which perhaps we once
prided ourselves as cleverness. It has been to us a fountain of
sarcasm; and how seldom since Adam was created has a sarcasm
fallen short of being a sin! We must look at our talent for analysis
of character as a dreadful possibility of huge uncharitableness.
We should have been much better without it from the first. It is
the hardest talent of all to manage, because it is so difficult to
make any glory for God out of it. We are sure to continue to
say clever things so long as we continue to indulge in this analysis;
and clever things are equally sure to be sharp and acid. Sight is
a great blessing, but there are times and places in which it is
far more blessed not to see. It would be comparatively easy for
us to be holy, if only we could always see the characters of our

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neighbors either in soft shade or with the kindly deceits of moon
light upon them. Of course we are not to grow blind to evil;
for thus we should speedily become unreal. But we must grow
to something higher and something truer than a quickness in
detecting evil.
We must rise to something truer. Yes! Have we not always
found in our past experience that on the whole our kind inter­
pretations were truer than our harsh ones? What mistakes have
we not made in judging others! But have they not almost always
been on the side of harshness? Every day some phenomenon of
this kind occurs. We have seen a thing as clear as day. It could
have but one meaning. We have already taken measures. We
have roused our righteous indignation. All at once the whole
matter is differently explained, and that in some most simple
way, so simple that we are lost in astonishment that we should
never have thought of it ourselves. Always distrust very plain
cases, says a legal writer. Things that were dark begin to give
light. What seemed opaque is perceived to be transparent. Things
that everybody differed about, as people in planting a tree can
never agree what it wants to make it straight, now everybody
sees in the same light, so natural and obvious has the explanation
been. Nay, things that it appeared impossible to explain are just
those the explanations of which are the most simple. How many
times in life have we been wrong when we put a kind construction
on the conduct of others? We shall not need our fingers to count
those mistakes upon. Moreover, grace is really much more com­
mon than our querulousness is generally willing to allow. We
may suspect its operations in the worst men we meet with. Thus,
without any forced impossibility, we may call in supernatural
considerations in order to make our criticisms more ingenious in
their charity. When we grow a little holier, we shall summon
also to our aid those supernatural motives in ourselves which,
by depressing our own ideas of ourselves, elevate our generous
belief in others.
But, while common sense convinces us of the truth of kind
interpretations, common selfishness ought to open our eyes to

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their wisdom and their policy. We must have passed through
life very unobservantly, if wc have never perceived that a man is
very much himself what he thinks of others. Of course his own
faults may be the cause of his unfavorable judgments of others;
but they are also, and in a very marked way, effects of those same
judgments. A man who was on a higher eminence before will
soon by harsh judgments of others sink to the level of his own
judgments. When you hear a man attribute meanness to another,
you may be sure not only that the critic is an ill-natured man,
but that he has got a similar element of meanness in himself,
or is fast sinking to it. A man is always capable himself of a sin
which he thinks another is capable of, or which he himself is
capable of imputing to another. Even a well-founded suspicion
more or less degrades a man. His suspicion may be verified, and
he may escape some material harm by having cherished the sus­
picion. But he is unavoidably the worse man in consequence of
having entertained it. This is a very serious consideration, and
rather a frightening argument in favor of charitable interpreta­
tions. Furthermore, our hidden judgments of others are, almost
with a show of special and miraculous interference, visited upon
ourselves. Virtue grows in us under the influence of kindly judg­
ments, as if they were its nutriment. But in the case of harsh
judgments we find we often fall into the sin of which we have
judged another guilty, although it is not perhaps a sin at all
common to ourselves. Or, if matters do not go so far as this, we
find ourselves suddenly overwhelmed with a tempest of unusual
temptations; and on reflection conscience is ready to remind us
that the sin, to which we are thus violently and unexpectedly
tempted, is one which we have of late been uncharitably attribut­
ing to others. Sometimes also we are ourselves falsely accused,
and widely believed to be guilty, of some fault of which we are
quite innocent; but it is a fault of which we have recently, in
our own minds at least, accused another. Moreover, the truth
or falsehood of our judgments seems to have very little to do
with the matter. The truth of them does not protect us from
their unpleasant consequences; just as the truth of a libel is no

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S3

sufficient defence of it. It is the uncharitableness of the judg­
ment, or the judging at all, to which this self-revenging power is
fastened. It works itself out like a law, quietly but infallibly.
Is not all this matter for very serious reflection?
But, in conclusion, what does all this doctrine of kind inter­
pretations amount to? To nothing less, in the case of most of us,
than living a new life in a new world. We may imagine life in
another planet, with whose physical laws we may happen to
have a sufficient acquaintance. But it would hardly differ more
in a physical way from our earthly life than our moral life would
differ from what it is at present if we were habitually to put a
kind interpretation on all we saw and heard, and habitually had
kind thoughts of every one of whom we thought at all. It would
not merely put a new face on life; it would put a new depth to it.
We should come as near as possible to becoming another kind
of creatures. Look what an amount of bitterness we have about us!
What is to become of it? It plainly cannot be taken into heaven.
Where must it be left behind? We clearly cannot put it off by
the mere act of dying, as we can put off thereby a rheumatic limb,
or wasted lungs, or diseased blood. It will surely be a long and
painful process in the heats of purgatory; but we may be happy
if mercy so abound upon us that the weight of our bitterness
shall not sink us deeper into the fire, into that depth from which
no one ever rises to the surface more. But when we reach heaven,
in what state shall we be? Certainly one very important feature
of it will be the absence of all bitterness and criticism, and the
way in which our expanded minds will be possessed with thoughts
of the most tender and overflowing kindness. Thus, by culti­
vating kind thoughts we are in a very special way rehearsing
for heaven. But more than this: we are effectually earning heaven.
For by God’s grace we are imitating in our own minds that which
in the Divine Mind we rest all our hopes on,—merciful allow­
ances, ingeniously favorable interpretations, thoughts of un­
mingled kindness, and all the inventions and tolerations of a
supreme compassion.
The practice of kind thoughts also tells most decisively on

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our spiritual life. It leads to great self-denial about our talents
and influence. Criticism is an element in our reputation and an
item in our influence. We partly attract persons to us by it. We
partly push principles by means of it. The practice of kind
thoughts commits us to the surrender of all this. It makes us,
again and again in life, sacrifice successes at the moment they are
within reach. Our conduct becomes a perpetual voluntary forfei­
ture of little triumphs, the necessary result of which is a very
hidden life. He who has ever struggled with a proud heart and
a bitter temper will perceive at once what innumerable and vast
processes of spiritual combat all this implies. But it brings its
reward also. It endows us with a marvellous facility in spiritual
things. It opens and smooths the paths of prayer. It sheds a
clear, still light over our self-knowledge. It adds a peculiar delight
to the exercise of faith. It enables us to find God easily. It is a
fountain of joy in our souls, which rarely intermits its flowing,
and then only for a little while and for a greater good. Above
all tilings, the practice of kind thoughts is our main help to that
complete government of the tongue which we all so much covet,
and without which the apostle says that all our religion is vain.
The interior beauty of a soul through habitual kindliness of
thought is greater than our words can tell. To such a man life
is a perpetual bright evening, with all things calm, and fragrant,
and restful. The dust of life is laid, and its fever cool. All sounds
are softer, as is the way of evening, and all sights are fairer, and
the golden light makes our enjoyment of earth a happily pensive
preparation for heaven.

KINDNESS
III.

Kind Words

From thoughts we naturally pass to words. Kind words are
the music of the world. They have a power which seems to be
beyond natural causes, as if they were some angel’s song, which

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35

had lost its way, and come on earth, and sang on undyingly,
smiting the hearts of men with sweetest wounds, and putting
for the while an angel’s nature into us.
Let us then think, first of all, of the power of kind words.
In truth, there is hardly a power on earth equal to them. It
seems as if they could almost do what in reality God alone can
do,—namely, soften the hard and angry hearts of men. Many a
friendship, long, loyal, and self-sacrificing, rested at first on no
thicker a foundation than a kind word. The two men were not
likely to be friends. Perhaps each of them regarded the other’s
antecedents with somewhat of distrust. They had possibly been
set against each other by the circulation of gossip. Or they had
been looked upon as rivals, and the success of one was regarded
as incompatible with the success of the other. But a kind word—
perhaps a mere report of a kind word—has been enough to set
all things straight, and to be the commencement of an enduring
friendship. The power of kind words is shown also in the destruc­
tion of prejudices, however inveterate they may have been. Surely
we must all of us have experienced this ourselves. For a long time
we have had prejudices against a person. They seem to us ex­
tremely well founded. We have a complete view of the whole
case in our own minds. Some particular circumstances bring us
into connection with this man. We see nothing to disabuse us
of our prejudices. There is not an approach to any kind of
proof, however indirect, that we were either mistaken in forming
such a judgment, or that we have exaggerated the matter. But
kind words pass, and the prejudices thaw away. Right or wrong,
there was some reason, or show of reason, for forming them,
while there is neither reason, nor show of reason, for their de­
parture. There is no logic in the matter, but a power which is
above logic,—the simple unassisted power of a few kind words.
What has been said of prejudices applies equally to quarrels.
Kind words will set right things which have got most intricately
wrong. In reality an unforgiving heart is a rare monster. Most
men get tired of the justest quarrels. Even those quarrels where
the quarrel has been all on one side, and which are always

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the hardest to set right, give way in time to kind words. At first
they will be unfairly taken as admissions that we have been in
the wrong; then they will be put down to deceit and flattery;
then they will irritate by the discomfort of conscience which they
will produce in the other; but finally they will succeed in healing
the wound that has been so often and so obstinately torn open.
All quarrels probably rest on misunderstanding, and only live
by silence, which as it were stereotypes the misunderstanding.
A misunderstanding which is more than a month old may gen­
erally be regarded as incapable of explanation. Renewed explana­
tions become renewed misunderstandings. Kind words, patiently
uttered for long together and without visible fruit, are our only
hope. They will succeed. They will not explain what has been
misunderstood, but they will do what is much better,—make
explanation unnecessary, and so avoid the risk, which always
accompanies explanations, of reopening old sores.
In all the foregoing instances the power of kind words is
remedial. But it can be productive also. Kind words produce
happiness. How often have we ourselves been made happy by
kind words, in a manner and to an extent which we are quite
unable to explain! No analysis enables us to detect the secret
of the power of kind words. Even self-love is found inadequate
as a cause. Now, as I have said before, happiness is a great power
of holiness. Thus, kind words, by their power of producing happi­
ness, have also a power of producing holiness, and so of winning
men to God. I have already touched on this, when I spoke of
, kindness in general. But it must now be added, that' words have
a power of their own both for good and evil, which I believe
to be more influential and energetic over our fellow-men than
even actions. If I may use such a word when I am speaking of
religious subjects, it is by voice and words that men mesmerize
each other. Hence it is that the world is converted by the foolish­
ness of preaching. Hence it is that an angry word rankles longer
in the heart than an angry gesture, nay, very often even longer
than a blow. Thus all that has been said of the power of kindness
in general applies with an additional and peculiar force to kind

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words. They prepare men for conversion. They convert them.
They sanctify them. They procure entrance for wholesome coun­
sels into their souls. They blunt temptations. They dissolve the
dangerous clouds of gloom and sadness. They are beforehand
with evil. They exorcise the devil. Sometimes the conversions
they work are gradual and take time. But more often they are
sudden, more often they are like instantaneous revelations from
heaven, not only unravelling complicated misunderstandings and
softening the hardened convictions of years, but giving a divine
vocation to the soul. Oh, it would be worth going through fire
and water to acquire the right and to find the opportunity of
saying kind words!
Surely then it gives life quite a peculiar character that it
should be gifted with a power so great, even if the exercise of it
were difficult and rare. But the facility of this power is a fresh
wonder about it, in addition to its greatness. It involves very
little self-sacrifice, and for the most part none at all. It can be
exercised generally without much effort, with no more effort
than the water makes in flowing from the spring. Moreover,
the occasions for it do not lie scattered over life at great distances
from each other. They occur continually. They come daily. They
are frequent in the day. All these are commonplaces. But really
it would seem as if very few of us give this power of kind words
the consideration which is due to it. So great a power, such a
facility in the exercise of it, such a frequency of opportunities
for the application of it, and yet the world still what it is, and
we still what we are! It seems incredible. I can only compare it
to the innumerable sacraments which inundate our souls with
grace, and the inexplicably little modicum of holiness which is
the total result of them all; or, again, to the immense amount
of knowledge of God which there is in the world, and yet the
little worship he receives. Kind words cost us nothing, yet how
often do we grudge them! On the few occasions when they do
imply some degree of self-sacrifice, they almost instantly repay
us a hundredfold. The opportunities are frequent, but we show
no eagerness either in looking out for them or in embracing them.

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What inference are we to draw from all this? Surely this,—that
it is next to impossible to be habitually kind, except by the help
of divine grace and upon supernatural motives. Take life all
through, its adversity as well as its prosperity, its sickness as well
as its health, its loss of its rights as well as its enjoyment of them,
and we shall find that no natural sweetness of temper, much less
any acquired philosophical equanimity, is equal to the support
of a uniform habit of kindness. Nevertheless, with the help of
grace, the habit of saying kind words is very quickly formed, and,
when once formed, it is not speedily lost. I have often thought
that unkindness is very much a mental habit, almost as much
mental as moral; observation has confirmed me in this idea,
because I have met so many men with unkind heads, and have
been fortunate enough never to my knowledge to have come
across an unkind heart. I believe cruelty to be less uncommon
than real inward unkindness.
Self-interest makes it comparatively easy for us to do that
which we are well paid for doing. The great price which every
one puts on a little kind word makes the practice of saying them
still easier. They become more easy, the more on the one hand
that we know ourselves, and on the other that we are united to
God. Yet what are these but the two contemporaneous operations
of grace, in which the life of holiness consists? Kindness, to be
perfect, to be lasting, must be a conscious imitation of God.
Sharpness, bitterness, sarcasm, acute observation, divination of
motives,—all these things disappear when a man is earnestly con­
forming himself to the image of Christ Jesus. The very attempt
to be like our dearest Lord is already a well-spring of sweetness
within us, flowing with an easy grace over all who come within
our reach. It is true that a special sort of unkindness is one of
the uglinesses of pious beginnings. But this arises from an inabil­
ity to manage our fresh grace properly. Our old bitterness gets
the impulse meant for our new sweetness, and the machine can­
not be got right in a moment. He who is not patient with con­
verts to God will forfeit many of his own graces before he is
aware. Not only is kindness due to every one, but a special kind­

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39

ness is due to every one. Kindness is not kindness unless it be
special. It is in its fitness, seasonableness, and individual applica­
tion that its charm consists.
It is natural to pass from the facility of kind words to their
reward. I find myself always talking about happiness, while I
am treating of kindness. The fact is, the two things go together.
The double reward of kind words is the happiness they cause
in others, and the happiness they cause in ourselves. The very
process of uttering them is a happiness in itself. Even the imagin­
ing of them fills our minds with sweetness and makes our hearts
glow pleasurably. Is there any happiness in the world like the
happiness of a disposition made happy by the happiness of others?
There is no joy to be compared with it. The luxuries which
wealth can buy, the rewards which ambition can attain, the pleas­
ures of art and scenery, the abounding sense of health, and the
exquisite enjoyment of mental creations, are nothing to this pure
and heavenly happiness, where self is drowned in the blessedness
of others. Yet this happiness follows close upon kind words, and
is their legitimate result. But, independently of this, kind words
make us happy in ourselves. They soothe our own irritation.
They charm our cares away. They draw us near to God. They
raise the temperature of our love. They produce in us a sense
of quiet restfulness, like that which accompanies the consciousness
of forgiven sin. They shed abroad the peace of God within our
hearts. This is their second reward. Then, moreover, we become
kinder by saying kind words, and this is in itself a third reward.
They help us also to attain the grace of purity, which is another
excellent reward. They win us many other graces from God;
but one especially:—they appear to have a peculiar congeniality
with the grace of contrition, which is soft-heartedness toward God.
Every thing which makes us gentle has at the same time a
tendency to make us contrite. A natural melting of the heart has
often been the beginning of an acceptable repentance. Hence it
is that seasons of sorrow are apt to be seasons of grace. This too
is a huge reward. Then, last of all, kind words make us truthful.
Oh, this is what we want,—to be true! It is our insincerity, our

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manifold inseparable falseness, which is the load under which
we groan. There is no slavery but untruthfulness. How have
years passed in fighting, and still we are so untrue! It clings to
us; for it is the proper stain of creatures. We fight on wearily.
Kind words come and ally themselves to us, and we make way.
They make us true, because kindness is, so far as we know, the
most probable truth in the world. They make us true, because
what is untruthful is not kind. They make us true, because
kindness is God's view, and his view is always the true view.
Why then are we ever any thing else but kind in our words?
There are some difficulties. This must be honestly admitted. In
some respects a clever man is more likely to be kind than a man
who is not clever, because his mind is wider, and takes in a
broader range, and is more capable of looking at things from
different points of view. But there are other respects in which
it is harder for a clever man to be kind, especially in his words.
He has a temptation—and it is one of those temptations which
appear sometimes to border on the irresistible—to say clever
things; and, somehow, clever things are hardly ever kind things.
There is a drop either of acid or of bitter in them, and it seems
as if that drop was exactly what genius had insinuated. I believe,
if we were to make an honest resolution never to say a clever
thing, we should advance much more rapidly on the road to
heaven. Our Lord’s words in the Gospels should be our models.
If we may reverently say it, when we consider of what a sen­
tentious and proverbial character his words were, it is remarkable
how little of epigram, or sharpness, there is in them. Of course
the words of the Eternal Word are all of them heavenly mysteries,
each one with the light and seal of his Divinity upon it. At the
same time they are also examples to us. On the whole, to say
clever things of others is hardly ever without sin. There is
something in genius which is analogous to a sting. Its sharpness,
its speed, its delicacy, its wantonness, its pain, and its poison,—
genius has all these things as well as the sting. There are some
men who make it a kind of social profession to be amusing
talkers. One is sometimes overwhelmed with melancholy by

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their professional efforts to be entertaining. They are the bug­
bears of real conversation. But the thing to notice about them
here is, that they can hardly ever be religious men. A man who
lays himself out to amuse is never a safe man to have for a
friend, or even for an acquaintance. He is not a man whom any
one really loves or respects. He is never innocent. He is forever
jostling charity by the pungency of his criticisms, and wounding
justice by his revelation of secrets. Il n'est pas ordinaire, says
La Bruyère, que celui qui fait rire se fasse estimer.
There is also a grace of kind listening, as well as a grace of
kind speaking. Some men listen with an abstracted air, which
shows that their thoughts are elsewhere. Or they seem to listen,
but, by wide answers and irrelevant questions, show that they
have been occupied with their own thoughts, as being more in­
teresting, at least in their own estimation, than what you have
been saying. Some listen with a kind of importunate ferocity,
which makes you feel that you are being put upon your trial,
and that your auditor expects beforehand that you are going to
tell him a lie, or to be inaccurate, or to say something which he
will disapprove, and that you must mind your expressions. Some
interrupt, and will not hear you to the end. Some hear you to the
end, and then forthwith begin to talk to you about a similar
experience which has befallen themselves, making your case only
an illustration of their own. Some, meaning to be kind, listen
with such a determined, lively, violent attention that you are
at once made uncomfortable, and the charm of conversation is
at an end. Many persons, whose manners will stand the test of
speaking, break down under the trial of listening. But all these
things should be brought under the sweet influences of religion.
Kind listening is often an act of the most delicate interior mortifi­
cation, and is a great assistance toward kind speaking. Those
who govern others must take care to be kind listeners, or else
they will soon offend God and fall into secret sins.
We may, then, put down clever speeches as the first and
greatest difficulty in the way of kind words. A second difficulty
is that of repressing vexation at certain times and in certain places.

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Each man meets with peculiar characters who have a specialty,
often quite inexplicable, of irritating him. They always come at
the wrong time, say the most inopportune things, and make the
most unfortunate choice of topics of conversation. Their presence
has always something intrusive about it. You may admire, respect,
even like, the persons; yet you give out sparks when they touch
you, and explode if they rub against you. This is only one ex­
ample of many species of vexation which it is difficult to repress
in our social intercourse, and which it is the office of the spirit
of kindness to allay.
The unselfishness of speedily and gracefully distracting our­
selves from self is also singularly difficult to practice. A man
comes to us with an imaginary sorrow when we are bowed to the
earth with a real one. Or he speaks to us with a loud voice
and metallic laugh of robust health, when our nerves are all
shrinking up with pain, and our whole being quivering, like a
mimosa, with excruciating sensitiveness. Or he comes to pour
out the exuberance of his happiness into our hearts which are
full of gloom, and his brightness is a reproach, sometimes almost
a menace, to our unhappiness. Or we are completely possessed with
some responsibility, harassed by some pecuniary difficulty, or
haunted by some tyrannical presentiment of evil, and yet we
are called upon to throw ourselves into some ridiculous little
embarrassment, some almost fictitious wrong, or some shadow of
a suffering, for which another claims our sympathy. Here is
grand material for sanctification. Nevertheless such materials are
hard to work up in practice. It is weary work cleaning old bricks
to build a new house with.
These are difficulties; but we have got to reach heaven, and
must push on. The more humble we are, the more kindly we
shall talk; the more kindly we talk, the more humble we shall
grow. An air of superiority is foreign to the genius of kindness.
The look of kindness is that of one receiving a favor rather than
conferring it. Indeed, it is the case with all the virtues, that
kindness is a road to them. Kind words will help us to them.
Thus out of the difficulties of kind speaking will come the grand

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and more sufficient reward of kind speaking,—a sanctification
higher, completer, swifter, easier, than any other sanctification.
Weak and full of wants as we are ourselves, we must make up
our minds, or rather take heart, to do some little good to this
poor world while we are in it. Kind words are our chief imple­
ments for this work. A kind-worded man is a genial man; and
geniality is power. Nothing sets wrong right so soon as geniality.
There are a thousand things to be reformed, and no reformation
succeeds unless it be genial. No one was ever corrected by a sar­
casm; crushed, perhaps, if the sarcasm was clever enough.—but
drawn nearer to God, never. Men want to advocate changes, it
may be in politics, or in science, or in philosophy, or in literature,
or perhaps in the working of the Church. They give lectures, thev
write books, they start reviews, they found schools to propagate
their views, they coalesce in associations, they collect money, they
move reforms in public meetings, and all to further their peculiar
ideas. They are unsuccessful. From being unsuccessful themselves,
they become unsympathetic with others. From this comes nar­
rowness of mind. Their very talents are deteriorated. The next
step is to be snappish, then bitter, then eccentric, then rude.
After that they abuse people for not taking their advice; and,
last of all, their impotence, like that of all angry prophets, ends
in the shrillness of a scream. AVhy they scream is not so obvious.
Perhaps for their own relief. It is the frenzy of the disregarded
sibyl. All this comes of their not being genial. Without genialitv
no solid reform was ever made yet. But if there are a thousand
things to reform in the world, there are tens of thousands of
people to convert. Satire will not convert men. Hell threatened
very kindly is more persuasive than a biting truth about a man's
false position. The fact is, geniality is the best controversy. The
genial man is the only successful man. Nothing can be done for
God without geniality. More plans fail for the want of that
than for the want of any thing else. A genial man is both an
apostle and an evangelist: an apostle, because he brings men to
Christ; an evangelist, because he portrays Christ to men.

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KINDNESS

IV.

Kind Actions

There is always one bright thought in our minds, when all
die rest are dark. There is one thought out of which a moderately
cheerful man can always make some satisfactory sunshine, if not
a sufficiency of it. It is the thought of the bright, populous heaven.
There is joy there at least, if there is joy nowhere else. There is
true service of God there, however poor and interested the love
of him may be on earth. Multitudes are abounding in the golden
light there, even if they that rejoice on earth be few. At this
hour it is all going on, so near us that we cannot be hopelessly
unhappy with so much happiness so near. Yet its nearness makes
us wistful. Then let us think that there are multitudes in heaven
to-day who are there because of kind actions: many are there
for doing them, many for having had them done to them.
We cannot do justice to the subject of kindness if we con­
clude without saying something about kind actions and kind
sufferings. So let us think, first of all, how much we ourselves
in past life owe to kind actions. If we look back through the last
twenty or thirty years, it is amazing to consider the number of
kind actions which have been done to us. They are almost beyond
our counting. Indeed, we feel that those we remember are hardly
so numerous as those we have forgotten,—forgotten, not through
ingratitude, but because of the distractions of life and the short­
ness of our memory. Under what various circumstances, too, they
have been done to usl They have come to us together with blame,
as well as been the accompaniments of praise. They have made
our darkness light, and our light brighter. They have made us
smile in the midst of our tears, and have made us shed tears of
joy when we were laughing carelessly. They have come to us
also from all quarters. They have reached us from persons in
whom we might have expected to meet with them. They have
reached us from unexpected persons, who would naturally have
been indifferent to us. They have reached us from those from

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whom we had every reason to expect the opposite. They have
come to us from such unhoped-for quarters, and under such an
affecting variety of circumstances, that each one of us must seem
to himself to have exhausted the possibilities of kindness. The
thought of them all melts our hearts.
Now, every one of these acts of kindness has doubtless done
us a certain amount of spiritual good. If they did not make us
better at the time, they prepared the way for our becoming better,
or they sowed a seed of future goodness, and made an impression
which we never suspected, and yet which was ineffaceable. Graces
from God, kindnesses from men,—we seem to have stood all our
lives under the constant dripping of these beneficent showers. But
who can say if there were two showers, and if it was not all the
while but one, kindness being nothing more than a peculiar
form of grace? There is no great harm in confounding the two;
but, to be strict, grace is one thing, and kindness is another. Let
us content ourselves, then, with saying that kindness has again
and again done the preliminary work for grace in our souls. Let
us think, also, how little we have deserved all these kind actions,
not only so far as God is concerned, but so far as our fellow­
creatures are concerned also. There is no one who has not received
tenfold more kindness himself than he has shown to others. The
thought of all the kindness of so many persons to us sometimes
grows to be almost intolerable, because of the sense of our own
unkindness. These kind actions have been to us like importunate
angels. They have surrounded us almost against our own will,
and done us all manner of unasked good, of extra good, of good
apparently unconnected with themselves. From how many evils
have they not also rescued us! We know of many; but there are
many more of which we do not know. But in this respect, as well
as in others, they have done angels’ work in our behalf. To how
much good have they encouraged usl We know of much; but
there is much more of which we do not know. We can hardly
tell what we should have been had we been treated one whit
less kindly than we have been. Have we not sometimes been on
the verge of doing something which a life would have been short

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ίο repent of? Have not words been on our tongues which, had
we said them, we would willingly have lost a limb afterward to
have unsaid? Have we not vacillated in the face of decisions
which we now see concerned eternity as well as time? Can we
not now see in the retrospect steep places, down which we were
beginning to fall, and a kind act saved us, and at the time we
thought we had stumbled over a stone by the way? We are indeed
very far from what we ought to be now. But it is frightening to
think what we should have been, had parents, friends, nurses,
masters, servants, schoolfellows, enemies, been less kind than they
have been. All through life kindness has been bridling the devil
that was in us. The surprised and affectionate recollection of it
now is one of our greatest powers for virtue, and may easily be
made a fountain of interior sweetness within ourselves. Feeling
that we ourselves owe all this to the kindness of others, are we
not bound, as far as lies in our power, to be putting every one
else, on all sides of us, under similarly blessed obligations?
It is not hard to do this. [The occasions for kind actions are
manifold. No one passes a day without meeting with these for­
tunate opportunities. They grow round us even while we lie on
a bed of sickness, and the helpless are rich in a power of kindness
toward the helpful. Yet, as is always the rule with kindness, the
frequency of its opportunities is rivalled by the facility of its
execution. Hardly out of twenty kind actions does one call for
any thing like an effort of self-denial on our part. Easiness is
the rule, and difficulty the exception. When kindness does call
for an effort, how noble and how self-rew'arding is the sacrifice!
We always gain more than we lose. We gain even outwardly, and
often even in kind. But the inward gain is invariable. Nothing
forfeits that. Moreover, there is something very economical about
the generosity of kindness. A little goes a long way. It seems to
be an almost universal fallacy among mankind, which leads
them to put a higher price on kindness than it deserves. Neither
do men look generally at what we have had to give up in order
to do for them what we have done. They only look to the kind­
ness. The manner is more to them than the matter. The sacrifice

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adds something, but only a small proportion of the whole. The
very world, unkindly as it is, looks at kindness through a glass
which multiplies as well as magnifies. I called this a fallacy. It is
a sweet fallacy, and reminds us of that apparent fallacy which
leads God to put such a price upon the pusillanimities of our
love. This fallacy, however, confers upon kind actions a real
power. The amount of kindness bears no proportion to the
effect of kindness. The least kind action is taller than the hugest
wrong. The weakest kindness can lift a heavy weight. It reaches
far, and it travels swiftly. Every kind action belongs to many
persons, and lays many persons under obligations. We appro­
priate to ourselves kind actions done to those we love, and we
forthwith proceed to love the doers of them. Nobody is kind
only to one person at once, but to many persons in one. What a
beautiful entanglement of charity we get ourselves into by doing
kind things! What possesses us, that we do not do them oftener?
Neither is a kind action short-lived. The doing of it is only
the beginning of it; it is hardly the thing itself. Years of estrange­
ment can hardly take the odor out of a kind action. Hatred truly
has chemistry of its own, by which it can turn kind actions into
its choicest food. But, after all, hatred is an uncommon thing
as well as a brutal one; that is to say, comparatively uncommon.
Whereas it is not an uncommon thing for a man at the end
of half a century to do a kind action because one was done to
him fifty years ago. There is also this peculiarity about kind
actions, that the more we try to repay them the further off we
seem from having repaid them. The obligation lengthens, and
widens, and deepens. We hasten to fill up the chasm by our grati­
tude; but we only deepen it, as if we were digging a well or
sinking a pit. We go faster still. The abyss grows more hungry.
At last our lives become delightfully committed to be nothing
but a profusion of kind actions, and we fly heavenward on the
wings of the wind. There is a pathetic sweetness about gratitude,
which I suppose arises from this. It is a pathos which is very
humbling, but very invigorating also. What was the feeling which
was father in the poet’s mind to those exquisite verses?—

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"I’ve heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning:
Alasl the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning!"
But by this time an objection to the whole matter will have
come plainly into view. Indeed, to some it has already presented
itself before now. I have been aware of it throughout, but have
chosen to defer noticing it till now. It may be said that all this
implies a very unsupernatural view of the spiritual life, and lays
undue stress on what are almost natural virtues; that it refers
more to outward conduct than to inward experiences; that there
is too much of common sense in it and too little of mystical
theology. I might content myself with replying that a man cannot
write on more than one subject at once, neither can he bring in
the whole of ascetical doctrine when he is illustrating but one
portion of it. But there is something more in the objection, which
I can only answer by pleading guilty to the charge, and refusing
to be ashamed of my guilt. When we read the lives of the saints,
or ponder on the teaching of mystical books, we shall surely have
no difficulty in admitting that we ourselves are but beginners,
or at least men of very low attainments, in the matter of perfec­
tion. As such we are liable to two mistakes: I hardly know
whether to call them temptations or delusions. The first is to
think too little of external things. Do not misunderstand me.
I am not accusing you of paying too much attention to the cultiva­
tion of an interior spirit. It is not easy to do this. In our state
perhaps it is impossible. But what I mean is, that beginners like
to turn their eye away from outward conduct to the more hidden
processes of their own spiritual experiences. If we allow a begin­
ner to choose his own subject for particular examen of conscience,
he will almost always choose some very delicate and imper­
ceptible fault, the theatre of which is almost wholly within, or
some refined form of self-love, whose metamorphoses are exceed­
ingly difficult either to detect or to control. He will not choose
his temper, or his tongue, or his love of nice dishes, or some

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unworthy habit which is disagreeable to those around him. Yet
this is the rule of St. Ignatius; and surely no one will accuse
him of not cultivating an interior spirit. This, then, is the first
of the two mistakes which I attributed to men of low attainments.
They affect those parts of the spiritual life which lie on the
borders of mystical theology, and do justice neither to the com­
mon things of the faith nor to the regulation of outward conduct
This leads to hardness of heart, to spiritual pride, and to selfrighteousness. It has a peculiar power to neutralize the opera­
tions of grace and to reduce our spirituality to a matter of words
and feelings. A man will remain unimproved for years who
travels upon this path.
The second mistake is very like the first, though there is a
difference in it. It consists in giving way to an attraction toward
what is too high for us. It is not that we divide things into
outward and inward, and exaggerate the latter. But we divide
them into high and commonplace, and are inclined almost to
despise the latter. We fasten with a sort of diseased eagerness
upon the exceptional practices of the saints. Peculiarities have a
kind of charm for us. We try to force ourselves to thirst for suf­
fering, when we have hardly grace enough for the quiet endurance
of a headache. We ask leave to pray for calumny, when a jocose
retort puts us into a passion. We turn from the Four Last
Things as subjects of prayer hardly suited to our state of disin­
terested love. We skip like antelopes over the purgative way, as
if none but the herbage of the illuminative or the desert flowers
of the unitive way were food delicate enough for us. We enjoy
Father Baker while we think Rodriguez dry. In a word, we
traffic with exceptions rather than with rules. Hence the common
moral virtues, the ordinary motives of religion, the duties of
our state of life, our responsibilities toward others, the usual
teaching of sermons and spiritual books, are all kept in the back­
ground. We are too well instructed to speak evil of them, or to
show them contempt; but we treat them with a respectful neglect.
Thus our spiritual life becomes a sort of elegant selfish solitude,
a temple reared to dainty delusions, a mere fastidious and ex

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elusive worship of self whose refinement is only an aggravation
of its dishonesty. No saint ever went along this road. We can
only reach the delicate truths of mysticism through the common­
place sincerity of asceticism. We are never so likely to be high
in the spiritual life as when we seem just like anybody else.
The grace to be indistinguishable from the good people round
us is a greater grace than that which visibly marks us off from
their practices or their attainments.
Now, I believe that both these mistakes find an utterance in
the objection which I have noticed; and therefore, as being
peculiarly out of sympathy with both these errors, I willingly
plead guilty to the objection. I do think we are all in danger
of making away with the supernatural by having first used it
to destroy the natural. I could go on for hours illustrating this
mischievous tendency; but I must keep to my subject, and en­
deavor to show those who feel they cannot throw off the objection
so lightly as I do, what a very real connection there is between
this practice of kindness on supernatural motives, and the highest
departments of the spiritual life. Indeed, it would be difficult to
exaggerate the importance of kindness as an ally in our invisible
warfare. Naturalists say of the ant that the most surprising part
of its instinct is its genius for extemporaneousness. In other words,
it almost puts reason to shame, by the promptitude with which it
acts under totally new circumstances, its inventiveness in meeting
with difficulties of which it can have had no previous experience,
its ingenuity in changing the use of its tools, its power of in­
stantaneous divination as to how it shall act in unexpected con­
junctures, and its foreseeing judgment in hardly ever having to
make an experiment or to try two ways of doing a thing. Now,
there is something very like this in kindness. Spiritual persons,
who especially cultivate kindness, are singularly exempt from
delusions. Yet delusions form the most intricate and baffling
part of our spiritual warfare. But the instinct of kindness is never
baffled. No position ever seems new to it, no difficulty unforeseen.
It appears to be dispensed from the necessity of deliberating. It
follows the lightning-like changes of self-love, or of the tempter

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with a speed as lightning-like as their own. It sees through all
stratagems. It is forever extemporizing new methods of defence
and new varieties of attack. It always has light enough to work
by, because it is luminous itself.
Besides this, kindness has an intrinsic congeniality with all
the characteristics of the higher spiritual states. Kind actions go
upon unselfish motives, and therefore tend to form a habit of dis­
interestedness in us, which prepares us for the highest motives
of divine love. They also catch us up, like strong angels, into
the regions of sacrifice. Like God's goodness, they are constantly
occupied where there is no hope of repayment and return. Like
the shedding of the Precious Blood, they have an actual preference
for multiplying themselves upon their enemies. In like manner
as God acts evermore for his own glory, so kind actions, when
they are habitual, must very frequently be done for him alone.
It is their instinct to be hidden, like the instinct of his Providence.
Nay, God often rewards them by arranging that they shall be
unrequited, and so look only to him as himself their recompense;
and he shows frequently a most tender wisdom in arranging that
all this shall be without the sin or ingratitude of others. He
even shrouds our kind actions for us by letting us look stem,
or speak sharply, or be quick-tempered, in the doing of them.
I need not stop to develop all this. Who does not see that we
are here right in the midst of the motive machinery of the very
highest spiritual condition of the soul?
It may not be out of place, however, to lay down a few plain
rules for the doing of kind actions. I have said that the majority
of them require no effort; but when they have to be done with
effort, it is unkind not to keep the effort out of view. At the
same time, so that our humility may not be disquieted, we must
bear in mind that the being done with effort is no just cause
of disheartenment. We should never repeat to others our kind
actions. If we do, their heavenly influence over ourselves goes
at once. Neither does it simply evaporate: it remains a dead
weight. The soul has many heaps of rubbish in it, but none
more deleterious than this. When persons begin to thank us, we

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should playfully stop their thanks, but not stiffly or unrcally.
There are some men who would feel awkward and uncomfortable
if they were not allowed to pour out their feelings. Such men
we must not check. It is part of the discernment of good man­
ners to find out who they are, and the perfection of good manners
to be natural and simple under the operation of being praised.
Being praised puts us for the most part in a ludicrous position.
Either it mortifies us by a sense of inferiority, or it makes us
suspicious by a feeling of disproportion, or it unseasonably
awakes our sense of humor, which is always in proportion to the
honest seriousness of those who are praising us. The fact is, very
few people know how to praise, and fewer still know how to
take it. We should never dwell upon our kind actions in our
own minds. God is in them. They have been operations of
grace. He is shy of being looked at, and withdraws. When we
are tempted to be complacent about them, let us think of the
sanctity of God and be ashamed. Let us dwell on his attribute
of magnificence and be especially devout to it. We shall thus
keep ourselves within the limits of our own littleness, and even
feel comfortable in them.
Before we conclude our task, we must say something about
kind suffering. Kind suffering is in fact a form of kind action,
with peculiar rubrics of its own. But if all kindness needs grace,
kind suffering needs it a hundredfold. Of a truth, those are rare
natures which know how to suffer gracefully, and in whose en­
durance there is a natural beauty which simulates, and some­
times even seems to surpass, what is supernatural. To the Chris­
tian no sight is more melancholy than this simulating of grace
by nature. It is a problem which makes him thoughtful, but to
which no thinking brings a satisfactory solution. With the
Christian, kind suffering must be almost wholly supernatural.
It is a region in which grace must be despotic,—so despotic as
hardly to allow nature to dwell in the land. There is a harmonious
fusion of suffering and gentleness effected by grace, which is
one of the most attractive features of holiness. With quiet and
unobtrusive sweetness the sufferer makes us feel as if he were

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ministering to us, rather than we to him. It is we who are under
the obligation. To wait on him is a privilege rather than a task.
Even the softening, sanctifying influences of suffering seem to
be exercising themselves on us rather than on him. His gentle­
ness is making us gentle. He casts a spell over us. We have all
the advantages of being his inferiors, without being vexed with
a sense of our inferiority. What is more beautiful than considerateness for others when we ourselves are unhappy? It is a grace
made out of a variety of graces; and yet, while it makes a deep
impression on all who come within the sphere of its influence,
it is a very hidden grace. It is part of those deep treasures of
the heart which the world can seldom rifle.
To be subject to low spirits is a sad liability. Yet to a
vigorous manly heart it may be a very complete sanctification.
What can be more unkind than to communicate our low spirits
to others, to go about the world like demons, poisoning the
fountains of joy? Have I more light because I have managed to
involve those I love in the same gloom as myself? Is it not pleas­
ant to see the sun shining on the mountains, even though we have
none of it down in our valley? Oh, the littleness and the mean­
ness of that sickly appetite for sympathy which will not let us
keep our tiny, liliputian sorrows to ourselves! Why must we go
sneaking about, like some dishonorable insect, and feed our dark­
ness on other people's light? We hardly know in all this whether
to be more disgusted with the meanness, or more indignant
at the selfishness, or more sorrowful at the sin. The thoughts
of the dying mother are all concentred on her new-born child.
It is a beautiful emblem of unselfish holiness. So let us also hide
our pains and sorrows. But, while we hide them, let them also
be spurs within us to urge us on to all manner of overflowing
kindness and sunny humor to those around us. When the very
darkness within us creates a sunshine around us, then has the
spirit of Jesus taken possession of our souls.
Social contact has something irritating in it even when it is
kindliest. Those who love us are continually aggravating us,
not only unintentionally, but even in the display of their love.

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Unkindness also abounds, and is of itself vexatious. Something
goes wrong daily. It is difficult even for sympathy not to ex
asperate. Consolation is almost always chafing. We often seem
to have come into the world without our skins, so that all inter­
course is agony to our sensitiveness. What a field for sanctification
all this opens out to us! Then there is another sort of sweetness
under Gods visitations; and this shows itself especially in taking
all the burden we can off others. For the fact is that everybody’s
cross is shared by many. No one carries his own cross wholly. At
least, such crosses are very rare. I am not quite sure that they
exist. Now, kind suffering makes us habitually look rather at
what others feel of our crosses than at what we feel of them our­
selves. We see our own crosses on other people’s shoulders, and
overwhelm them with kindness accordingly. It is not we who
have been tossing wakeful all night that are the sufferers, but the
poor nurse who has been fighting all night against the sleep
of health by our bedside, and only with partial success. It is
not we, who cannot bear the least noise in the house, that deserve
sympathy, but the poor little constrained children who have
not been allowed to make the noise. For to children is there any
happiness which is not also noise? This is the turn of mind which
kindness in suffering gives us. Who will say it is not a most
converting thing? But then it must develop itself gracefully. We
must do all this unobtrusively, so as not to let others see it is
done on purpose. Hence it is that the saints keep silence in suffer­
ing. For the mere knowledge of what they suffer is itself a
suffering to those who love them. But suffering is a world of
miracles. It would fill a book to say all that might be said about
kindness under suffering.
Let us conclude. We have been speaking of kindness. Per­
haps we might better have called it the spirit of Jesus. What
an amulet we should find it in our passage through life, if we
would say to ourselves two or three times a day these soft words
of Scripture,· “My spirit is sweet above honey, and my inherit• Eccles, xxiv. 27.

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ance above honey and the honeycomb!” But you will say. per­
haps, "After all, it is a very little virtue, very much a matter of
natural temperament, and rather an affair of good manners than
of holy living.” Well, I will not argue with you. The grass of
the fields is better than the cedars of Lebanon. It feeds more,
and it rests the eye better,—that thymy, daisy-eyed carpet, making
earth sweet and fair and homelike. Kindness is the turf of the
spiritual world, whereon the sheep of Christ feed quietly beneath
the Shepherd’s eye.

ON DEATH

1. The Aspects of Death

Life is always flowing on like a river, sometimes with mur­
murs, sometimes without, bending this way and that, we do not
exactly see why, now in beautiful picturesque places, now
through bare and uninteresting scenes, but always flowing, and
with a look of treachery about its flowing, it is so swift, so voice­
less, yet so continuous. We naturally begin with life when we
come to speak of death. The aspects of death make us think of
the aspects of life. These last are easily summed up. They are
simple aspects,—aspects of a very terrible simplicity. All life and
all lives are travelling toward God. Time is sucking us onward
with an insidious rapidity, even when suffering or sameness
makes life seem to be going slowly. Time rushes, even when it
feels as if it dragged. All the actions of life are reparable, except
the last, and that is absolutely irreparable, even by any super­
natural process. Moreover, that last act—which is death—fixes
all the other actions of life, and gives them their final meaning.
That end of life is also the same to all, the same end to the most
variously adventurous lives. Such are the aspects of life. They
are aspects of death also. Life gives the character to death.
Death is the interpretation of life. The Sacred Writer makes bold
to say that he who always remembers his life’s end shall never
do amiss. The remembrance of death must therefore be a notable
feature in the spiritual life. We must study this death, the
remembrance of which is such an adversary to sin, such an aid
to holiness.
Let us consider, first of all, the act of dying. It is very simple
and very short. Yet all men fear it, and some fear it so much that
it casts a shadow over their whole lives. It is the separation
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of body and soul, the end of that long companionship between
them, which is a mystery we have never been able to fathom,
and which we should have imagined, if we had not been other­
wise taught, involved our very existence, our personality. We
can make no satisfactory picture to ourselves of a life without a
body. We only know that there is such a life, and that it is a
very wonderful one wherever it is lived, and that we shall one
day live it somewhere, remaining the same person that we are
now. But how the soul will disentangle itself from that compli­
cated body in which it now lives ubiquitously, we cannot tell.
We only know of certain conditions of the body which hinder
it from being the residence of life. Therefore the soul lays it
down, and speedily the rejected body flows away in atoms, first
the lighter, then the grosser, along that swift, changeful, inter­
weaving current of matter which girdles the whole world, and
is put to all manner of unexpected uses, and submits to millions
of unforeseen appropriations. Then, having thus served God
briskly and diligently with every one of its busy atoms through
all the ages till the day of doom, the body will recover itself
with a marvelous identity and be ours again at the general resur­
rection. Mother and child, husband and wife, never met on
earth with such ecstasy of love as the body and soul of the just
will meet at the resurrection.
This act of dying is, moreover, a punishment, and the most
ancient of all punishments. It is the Creator’s first punishment
of the sinning creature, invented by the Creator himself, the
first promulgated invention of his vindictive justice. It can
therefore under any circumstances hardly be a light one, whether
we consider the Being who thus punishes, or the thing pun­
ished, which is sin. Indeed, it is a penalty which nothing could
render tolerable to the creature, except the Creator himself
suffering it and diffusing the balm of his own death over the
universal deaths of men. It is true that men have desired to
die, and they have sinned by the desire, because it was the fniit
of an unsanctified impatience. Others have desired to die. but
then they were men who had also in them the grace to desire

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to suffer. Some have desired to die, because they pined for God,
and the pains of death were a small price to pay for so huge
a good; still, they were distinguishably a price. Some deaths
have been so beautiful that they can hardly be recognized for
punishments. Such was the death of St. Joseph with his head
pillowed on the lap of Jesus. Yet the twilight bosom of Abraham
was but a dull place compared with the house of Nazareth,
which the eyes of Jesus lighted. Such was Mary's death, the
penalty of which was rather in its delay. It was a soft extinction,
through the noiseless flooding of her heart with divine love.
Yet divine love is a sharp fire to all flesh which is not yet glorified.
Nowhere, then, has death altogether put off its penal character.
Martyrdom is a crown precisely because it is a cross also. To
us death is a punishment due on more indictments than would
fill a volume or could be recited between sunrise and sunset. Yet
youth, youth that is young in years, and older youth that is
young in holiness, are sometimes ill advised enough to speak
smartly and lightly about this great thing death. A punish­
ment, the oldest punishment, the punishment of God's own pure
invention,—we may not do otherwise than tremble at it. It
is a surprising mercy that we are even bidden to be hopeful.
Furthermore, this penal act of dying has ordinarily to be
performed at a time and under circumstances when, humanly
speaking, we are least capable of a grave and solemn action;
or else it is performed so suddenly that it hardly comes under
the notion of an act at all. Its natural season is when bodily
and mental weakness are both exercising their empire over us,
and when our will is as little free as it can be, remaining free
at all. It is almost an essential part of the punishment of death
that it takes us at a disadvantage. We want a strong body
undistracted by torture, an unclouded mind and a collected will
to do many things at once, a long work in a short time, a deli­
cate, perilous, manifold, multiform work, requiring a thousand
eyes, and a thousand hands, and a mind and a memory which
perfect calmness may multiply into a thousand memories and
a thousand minds. In a word, we never need to be more thor-

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59

ought y alive than at the moment when we come to die. In­
stead of which, the life is just going out of us. It is flickering
in a sort of second childhood. It is engrossed by the pains and
cares of this world. Earth never makes itself more imperiously
sensible to the soul than when in a few moments there will be
earth no more to us. Speaking naturally, the physical circum­
stances which bring about our death render all its other circum­
stances just the reverse of what we could have wished. But we
must not complain of this. It is the specialty of the punish­
ment. It is to be thought of and profited by, rather than lamented.
It belongs to all death. The death which has least of it, the
death which in itself is most free from this being taken at a
disadvantage, is a public execution,—as if, when men made
death their punishment of their guilty fellow, God withdrew
from it some of the frightening aspects which it has as his
punishment. Except martyrdom, an unjust public execution
would be the most commodious manner of dying, so far as the
arrangement of the outward circumstances of death is concerned.
Our forefathers believed, and probably not untruly, that
there were especial places which were dear to evil spirits, and
which from predilection they haunted from age to age. Who­
ever dwelt in such places, unless they were strong in the grace
of Christ, were harassed by these evil spirits, and were more
or less under their influence. There is no doubt that where
death is busy the evil spirits are busy also. A death bed is a
choice time and place for their presence and their machinations.
It is their last chance with the departing soul. If, alas! he has
been their willing prey for years, though as the life is so shall
the end be, yet they are not quite secure. Some great com­
passion of Jesus, some vehement prayer of Mary, some strong
sacrament, may break in upon the circle of evil which they fancy
they have traced around their victim. The possibilities of mercy
are a terror to them. They must be there to guard and claim their
own. If death comes at the end of a long and dubious struggle be­
tween good and evil, much more need is there for their activity and
their stratagems. Final graces are common every day, graces by

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which the dying soul is illuminated and fortified to make those
supernatural acts of repentance, fear, and love by which he is re­
united to God, and the Blood of Jesus triumphs at the last.
Salvation hung on the balance, and is now secured. From
such a death-bed the demons dare not to be absent. They have
the Guardian Angel to counterwork. They have the sacraments
to baffle. They have the early teaching of the faith about sin
and about contrition to suffocate. Alasl they are often enough
successful to make all their patient assiduity well worth their
while. Even with the faithful disciples of Christ they have a
chance,—a chance which they too often realize. There is such
a thing as a bad death after a good life. Men who have been
keeping to God, or seeming to us to do so, for a long while,
have visibly fallen away from him at the last. If it be but a
possibility, let it plunge us in silent fear. Even when the demons
are hopeless, they swarm around the dying bed, were it only to
harass the servant of our Lord. They may lead him into some
venial sin or some sad unworthiness, or diminish his merits or
lengthen his purgatory. It is the law of their fearful hatred to
be always working against the interests of Jesus. Thus it is that
where death is, there they are, wounded by heavenly presences,
irritated by sweet tranquil heroisms of humble faith, galled by
the powers of the Church, and thwarted by the grand energies of
the sacraments: nevertheless they are there, to see if perchance
they can make any irruption into the kingdom of light; and
their presence must be considered as wellnigh inseparable from
the act of dying.
Death is also not unfrequently a secret chamber in which
God appoints a private and special interview with his failing
creature. Sometimes it is to praise, and cheer, and to give us
an assurance and a foretaste of our bliss. Sometimes it is to
punish, mercifully, very mercifully, yet also, considering time and
place, very severely,—as if he partially judged us before the
time, that he might punish us on this side the grave. He has
perhaps been offended with particular acts of our past life,
and he has said nothing, but waited till now, and now he pun­

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ishes. Either he sends panics into our souls, or gives us a piercing
vision of these particular faults, or permits temptations, such
temptations as are congenial to those faults; or in some other
way he chastises us, and it is hard to bear, though it is a mighty
love. He thus makes death doubly a punishment,—a private
punishment as well as a public one. In many cases the death­
bed is thus a double one. There is the death-bed with the priest,
and the physician, and the friends around the ailing CTeature;
and there is the same death-bed in an inner room, where the
Father of all creatures is alone with his child, in communications
too intimate ever to be disclosed to living ear. We may well fear
this silent visit of our Eternal Father. Yet it is to be our joy to
live with him forever: let us bear, then, with filial submission the
pains which his compassionate but exceeding jealousies may give
us at that last hour of life.
Such is the act of dying, with the circumstances which
ordinarily belong to it. But we must not omit also to recount
some of its features, which are familiar to all of us, yet are
needful to the picture. The first is, that it is inevitable. It comes
to all. There is no escape. There are no exceptions. I remember
as a boy succeeding in persuading myself that I should not die,
and living for some years in that persuasion. It was not that I
thought myself better than others. But I fancied something
would happen,—the end of the world, or something. I was
not particular about my motives of credibility for what I was
so eager to believe. But the opposite conviction, which was not
forced upon me till my teens, brought with it a season of crushed
hopes and incessant hauntings, which I tremble to think of even
now. Perhaps all children have once had a half-formed delusive
hope that they individually will not die. With myself it is to
this day always an interesting truth—one that never palls,
never tires, never grows dull through familiarity, but is always
stirring and new and original—that death is inevitable. Different
things happen to different men. God never seems to repent
destinies. All destinies are individual. Each man has his own.
But it is the common destiny to die.

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Moreover, it is an act of which we have no experience,
because it is done only once. We may seem to all intents and
purposes to have died before. We may have believed we were
dying, and may have arranged ourselves with such self-col­
lection as we could. We may have made what we were sure
was our last confession. We may have been anointed, and had
the last blessing of the Church. Our eye may have closed, and
our head sunk back heavily into insensibility. But God knew we
were not dying. Probably the evil spirits knew we were not
dying. So that many supernatural realities were absent from
that seeming death, which will be present at our actual death.
Nol We have no experience of dying. This is the simple fact.
What follows from it? Something of great importance, which is
not without terror also,—namely, that, as we have no experience
of it, we can form no habit of it, and it is habit which at once
makes the thing to be done easier, and us who do it calmer in
the doing. But may not this be said of any important action
which is to be done for the first time? Yes! but then it is
another feature of death that with it there is no next time. It
has to be done but once. Every thing depends upon the doing of
it well. However it is done, well or ill, it is simply irreparable.
Once over, all discussion, deliberation, retrospect, discovery
of mistakes, fresh plans, are out of the question. It was one,
absolute, final, immutable act; and, now that it is done, it must
be left as it is, helplessly fertile of eternal consequences.
It also adds to the difficulty of dying with that tranquillity,
dignity, and preparation which we should desire, that the time
of it is uncertain. Age furnishes us with the merest probabilities
regarding it, which have a certain universal likelihood about
them, available to staticians, helpful to insurance-offices, capable
of feeding ambitious or mercenary expectations. But to the
individual they are in reality no probabilities at all. There is no
improbability in our dying this very next moment. Perhaps
we shall. Then, when the moment elapses, the next moment suc­
ceeds to the same possibility, nay, to a possibility increasing
continually into a greater likelihood. It is the hereditary prop­

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erty of all the moments of life, by night or by day. Sudden
deaths are far from uncommon. They also often come in batches
in the same neighborhood, as if there was an undiscovered law
about them,—which there probably is. Indeed, the freedom of
all human actions seems to have amplest scope in its sphere, and
yet to have a sphere, and to represent a law even though it
is not controlled by it. The statistics of crime appear to indicate
some such mysterious and unmanageable fact. So, then, there
is no such improbability of a sudden death. The known pecu­
liarities of our constitutions may increase the probabilities to us
individually, as, for example, if we have been threatened with
apoplexy or have a cognizable heart-complaint. On the other
hand, the extremest old age cannot be sure of dying the next
moment. Even when we are in our agony, science can only give
us an approximation to the length of its endurance. Thus it
is one of the universal features of death, to which even martyr­
dom and public executions are not infallible exceptions, that
the moment of death is uncertain. We may be rescued from
martyrdom, or our grace may fail, or rather our correspondence
to it, and we may save ourselves by apostasy. We may be par­
doned on the scaffold, or we may die before the moment of
our execution comes. Death is therefore universally uncertain.
If it gives us warning by an illness, it is a grace. If there is
a prediction of sudden death in the specialty of our constitu­
tions, that is a still greater grace. But further than this, death
spares none of us the full inconvenience of its uncertainty.
Let us now take a history of dying, and imagine it under
the most favorable circumstances. The man shall have notice
to die, time to die, and all the best circumstances of dying.
Let us assume it to happen in our own case. An illness comes
to us. From the first we perceive that it is of a serious char­
acter. We have feelings within ourselves so different from those
of previous illnesses that we cannot but account of them as
prophecies of death. We see our danger in the eyes of those
around us. We are fortunate in being surrounded by Christians:
and therefore, at whatever risk of actually hastening our death

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by agitation, we are told, gently but plainly, that the end is
come. Those who love us make a great sacrifice of themselves in
telling us this. It is the kindest of all kindnesses, although the
withholding of it would be cruelty and sin. Many souls are in
hell now from this selfish cruelty. Mothers have thus sent their
children there, not seeing that it was to spare themselves rather
than their children that they were so barbarously silent. Hus­
bands too there have been who lost their last chance, because
the love of their wives was but a covert selfishness. Oh, there
is little love on earth which puts the soul before the body.
We have received the announcement of our approaching
end with calmness, but not without considerable fear. God has
been our first thought. Happy for us if he has always been
so! We know that the great work is to be done with him down
in the depths of our own souls. We send for the priest, and
with such examination of conscience as we can, or, better still,
from notes prepared beforehand, we make a general confession
of our whole lives. We detest all our sins from the bottom of
our hearts, so far as we can be judges of our own sincerity.
We abhor them as offences against God, with an abhorrence that
involves the strongest purpose of not repeating them should
we be unexpectedly raised up from this seeming death-bed.
Indeed, years have already passed since we committed them.
So we trust here is evidence of our efficacy of purpose. Never­
theless we are so weak, are suffering so much from bodily pain,
and are altogether so tremulous and fluttered, that we cer­
tainly do not feel that sensibly keen sorrow which we had
beforehand hoped to feel. The priest, however, who has ques­
tioned us anxiously, is satisfied with our answers, and we are
absolved. In our lives before we have never doubted an abso­
lution; but now we would fain have something more like an
assurance of its validity. For consider what a brink it is we are
on! But it is still twilight. Faith is a light, but it is not open
day yet.
We make a profession of our faith, especially in the real
presence of Jesus with us in his sacrament of love. We doubt

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nothing. The pillow under our head is not a rest more pal­
pable than the truth of our dearest Lord’s Divinity is to our
soul, now grown heavy with the heaviness of death. We feel
we have never known our Blessed Lady till now, so manifest has
her maternal office become to us, so clearly is she one of the
nurses round our bed. Even dark things are plain now. Faith is
just going to dissolve like a mist. The boundaries of faith and
sight are ceasing to be defined. Truly we shall need faith in
purgatory; but it is under conditions there which give it the
certainty of sight without the bliss of the Vision. Furthermore,
we think if we have any enemies. None perhaps that we know
of; for “enemy” is a strong word. However, we forgive from
the bottom of our hearts any such that there may be, and all
who have ever wronged us, were it only to the amount of a
sarcastic speech or an unkind look. We also beg pardon of ail
whom we have ever offended in the heyday of our selfish health
and in the velocity of our success. We see more of this in our
memories than we were aware of. So we cleanse our hearts of
all little spites, jealousies, suspicions, vindictivenesses, unbeliefs,
distastes, prejudices, persuasions, hardnesses, unforgivingnesses, and
wants of sympathy, which we now see to have been fearfully
against charity. What evil plight we were in in this respect, and
we had not a suspicion of it! Thank God for this last sharp light!
But we are growing exhausted.
Nevertheless here is a great effort to be made. Our Lord
is coming, as our Viaticum. We must rally all the flagging energies
of our souls. We would kneel if they would only let us. We will
do our best. Alas! bodily weakness has gone too far. We have
managed to swallow, and we have sunk back with our eyes
closed, very tired, yet happy. Still, we remember sweeter Com­
munions than this Viaticum, more love, more heat, more sen­
sible union. Death is a great distraction. No doubt of it. We
are making but a poor thanksgiving. This also we have often
done better in lifetime. But they are rousing us now to receive
Extreme Unction. It is soft and soothing. Yet perhaps it
calls unconfessed sins to mind. We have certainly been more

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sensual and comfort-loving in our lives than we have ever
accused ourselves of being. But this is a sacrament of capacious
receptacles. There is no saying what grace it holds. We know
that in its abysses the relics and after-harvest of the sins of the
longest life are put away and buried with an eternal burying.
Singular sacrament of most indefinite magnificencel let me not
be defrauded of thee at the last!
There is time left. It is filled up with a variety of acts,
spoken or unspoken, as the case may be. Short acts of love of
God are multiplied continually, together with ejaculations be­
tokening our utter trust in the Precious Blood of Jesus. Acts of
sorrow for sin are also perpetually recurring to our lips, feeble,
perhaps, but sincere. We voluntarily accept death in penance for
our sins, and we humbly tell God so. We hardly know what
we say, but we mean by it all that it can be made to mean,
all diat he takes it to mean. Our tongue is swollen, and
our voice is as good as gone. We have no moisture to make
words with. But in the silent chambers of our hearts Holy
Names are echoing softly, as if they were the last whisperings
of grace, as if faith would die professing itself even though
none of those around could hear. Our confessor is less help to us
than we thought he would be,—as if we had got so near God now
that we were under his sole, or rather his immediate jurisdiction.
Yet also the confessor is of immense use, with his repeated
absolutions, his holy water, his signs of the cross, his mere
anointed presence, the character on his brow, his hands impreg­
nated with the odor of the Host. Long since, his suggestions
ceased to help us, because we had ceased to hear. Then we could
see his words shape themselves on his lips. Now that is gone:
there is a teasing blue film; now a darkness, and with it a pain­
ful desire for light, but no tongue to tell it with. Is everything
done? Are we ready? Nol now there are many things to say.
Alas! they cannot be said. There are many tilings to do,—so
many that some one must help us to put them in order. Orderl
that is what we want. We could put things in order once. Now
we have lost the power. What shall we do first? But what is this?

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Can the end be come? Earth is going, or we are leaving it whither
are we sinking? Will no one bear us up? It is growing light.
YesI the soul has left the body, and our last, or almost out
last, thought, as we went, was that there were still so many
things left to do. Yet this is death under its most favorable
circumstances,—in truth, the circumstances of the favored few.
So we believe it always is with all deaths, that the last object the
light of death falls upon is the manifest fact that there are
still so many things left to do. This, depend upon it, is one of
the invariable aspects of Christian death, that it comes a little
suddenly, a little too soon, when we were nearly ready but not
quite; so that we set off on that last journey, as on so many other
journeys, leaving something behind which we meant to take.
What is left behind always seems indispensable: the mercy is
that in reality it is not so. Our death had its sufficiency: it only
wanted its finish. But this is a law: all deaths want it. Yet it is a
want which makes the prospect somewhat more nervous.
Let us now consider some of the varieties of death, in order
that we may obtain a yet more complete idea of its manifold
aspects. It is probable that no two deaths are quite alike. Each
man’s death is individual, like himself, like his vocation on
earth, like his grace on this side the grave, and like his glory on
the other. Even such varieties of death as we can classify are
extremely numerous, and more than we have space to enter
upon here. We must content ourselves with selecting some of
the more common ones.
First of all there is sudden death. This is as if we were alive
at the end of the world, when Christ comes, and we die as we
are caught up into the air to meet him. Or, again, it is as
though we never died, but were judged without the intermediate
step of death. We lose death, so far as it is an opportunity. We
have a season of grace less than other men. Our eternal doom
is risked more fearfully than with other men. Death is a means
of salvation. Sudden death deprives us of this. Hence none but
an irreligious mind can ever desire a sudden death, although it
is very tempting so far as the momentariness of the physical

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pain is concerned, or the consecutive endurance of that long,
harrowing drama in many acts, of which death is so often com­
posed. But the importance of death is in its position, as the barrier
between time and eternity. Consequently our eternal interests are
the grand objects to secure; and, for the most part, the more
death puts us through, the more dying we have, the greater is
the likelihood of our making good the eternity beyond. Even
although a sudden death is not necessarily an unprovided death,
the Church makes us pray against both of them. We have not
only no right to be uncaged so swiftly, but it is unsafe also.
Indeed, we have already seen that all deaths arc sudden, and
that this suddenness, this surprise, is one of the disquieting
aspects of our last great act. We cannot afford, therefore, to
wish it less sudden than it is too sure to be. There is a deep
feeling in the minds of men that a sudden death is a judgment
from God. There is no doubt an equally deep truth, which this
feeling represents. At the same time, the rule is so far from
being invariable, especially since our Blessed Lord’s death, which
has given death quite a new countenance, that we may never
dare to attribute it in the case of others to their sins and to
God’s anger. They may be taken suddenly, as if by a swift blast
of compassion, from occasions of sin or from trying circum­
stances, which would be too much for their strength. Some per­
sons with a tendency to particular diseases fall down dead, and
yet these are hardly sudden deaths, because, if they have been
aware of that tendency, they have had preparation thrust upon
them all through life. Still, they have been deprived of an op­
portunity. Perhaps also a sudden death may often imply a long
purgatory, inasmuch as our last illness and death make a great
theatre for Christian satisfaction, to say nothing of the facile
indulgences which crowd round the children of the faith at
that last hour.
Opposed to this, we have lingering deaths, deaths of weeks
or months, like those of consumption, to which the Italians give
the name of “deaths of the predestinate,’’ a title which some holy
men, with a venturous trust in the divine compassions and a

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magnificent faith in the sacraments, have given to public execu­
tions. These lingering deaths, however, look more desirable
than they turn out to be for the most part in reality. The fact
is, they are too long. All things are best in moderation,—even
the allowance of time to die in. Lingering deaths seem to give
us ample time for preparation; but the truth is, they injure our
preparation by giving us too much. Many of the diseases which
imply such deaths are also especially subject to false hopes, to a
disbelief in the proximity of death; and this is a basis of many
perilous temptations. Moreover, we get callous as the process
goes on, and a valetudinarian love of comfort is by no means a
wholesome atmosphere to die in. The suspension of penance is
an awkward moment in which to accomplish the transit from
time to eternity. An unworthy desire of death grows upon us.
We look at it as a physical relief. We become impatient to die,
yet not impatient to see God; and for this very insensibility revela­
tions have disclosed to us that there is a special purgatory.
Furthermore, venial sins accrue very rapidly in these protracted
deaths,—sins of impatience, of immortification, of temper, of
selfishness, and of censoriousness about our nurses. We come also
to dispense ourselves too easily from ejaculatory prayers and the,
application of our minds to God. Our virtue softens before dying,
softens dangerously, and may need a sharp purgatory to anneal
it again. Indeed, these lingering deaths, while they seem to
mean a short purgatory, may often have to be followed by a
long purgatory, just because they themselves were so long. There
is no one familiar with death-beds who has not observed how
often the grace of dying well wears out before its time. For a
while the death promises to be more than good, to be saintly, to
be wonderful. Then it is as if grace had been given in material
quantity, so much to last so many hours, and the poor sufferer
outlives his grace, and dies at last, not, let us hope, a dubious
death, but by no means a death which it will be any pleasure
for us who love him to remember in the retrospect. It would
be unwise of us, therefore, to desire these very lingering deaths.
I believe all deaths to be mercies, since the day our Lord died,—

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mercies io the individual whose needs and peculiarities his heav­
enly Father knows. But, speaking of these lingering deaths in
themselves, they arc less desirable really than they seem.
Then there are deaths from violent pain. Each man probably
has a special dread of some particular disease; and this dread is
not unfrequently a prophecy of its fixing upon him at the last.
While we shrink from all great pain, we are all most anxious to
choose the kind of pain which is to be inevitable to ourselves.
When we have fallen into the power of a pain which we espe
dally shun, we arc like men whom a wild beast is holding down.
There is a sort of despairing horror which it is hard to change
into a religious disposition. Indeed, it is true of all pain that
it is more often a distraction from God than a memento of him.
Those things which make God most indispensable to us arc far
from being the things which most successfully drive us into the
arms of God. Love has always been a completer instrument
than fear. To be sanctified by illness is quite one of the rarest
phenomena of the spiritual life. Some of the greatest writers on
asceticism have noticed this. It is only high holiness which is
not distracted, lowered, and made animal by pain. A death from
violent pain, therefore, will only sanctify those who have a pre­
viously-formed interior spirit, which will enable them to bear
it rightly. While it is a terrible affliction to the bystanders, it is
often a mark of divine love. We may also believe that it fre­
quently stands in the stead of purgatory. In experience we see
that it is repeatedly accompanied by an unusual gift of contrition,
which is one of the clearest signs of predestination. It is some­
times also the lot of those who in lifetime have been too easy
with themselves in the matter of bodily penance; and then it
comes to them partly as a punishment, but much more as a
merciful opportunity making up in its single self for many
neglected opportunities. Those also who have wanted that
gentleness, childlikeness, and considerate affection which weak
health and constant bodily pain are made by grace to produce
are sometimes visited by this kind of death, in order that it may
produce a change in their souls corresponding to those qualities.

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The most we can say of such a death is, that it is a grand, hut
most difficult, opportunity of sanctification.
We now come to a quiet, easy death. This also, like the
long, lingering death, is less desirable than at first sight it appears,
though doubtless to multitudes it is an immense mercy, a special
tenderness of God. For there are some souls so fragile, they
look as if the mere act of dying will shatter them to pieces.
There are some characters which are weakly rather than im­
perfect; and it is such who are often as it were indulged by this
kind of death. It seems to be no augury of long or short purga­
tory, but appears sometimes as if it were the beginning of a not
very high place in heaven. It is also a common termination of
a life of suffering,—as if purgatory were already over, and death
on the other side of the judgment-seat rather than on this. A
life without great sins often ends with a death like this, and a
life with a very strongly marked vocation almost always so. For
such a life is a life of strong light, of definite consciousness, and
its grand result is a great gift of tranquillity; and to such men
death almost loses the character of death. It is a great action
which comes in their way, and is done greatly and quietly, with­
out drama and without emphasis. Certain forms of the spiritual
life are followed by such deaths. It has been curiously remarked
by St. Andrew Avellino,
*
that those who have a special devotion
to the Passion generally die quiet and sweet deaths, as Mary,
John, and Magdalen did.f Certainly it is remarkable that, while
most of those about our Lord died violent deaths, the three who
• Vita, 8vo edition, p. 59.
t It is remarkable that the death of St. John has been (he subject of some most
interesting special revelations. One is recorded by St. Bridget in the first chapter of
her fourth book, where St. John says to her, "After the Mother of God I passed from
this world by a most light death, because I had been her guardian." In the twentrthird chapter of the same fourth book, the Saint says that she heard our Blessed Ltd?
say to St. John, "God called you out of the world by a most light death. <prw f'irgo
Virgini fuit commendata." St. Gertrude also, in the fourth chapter <>' her fourth
book, speaks of her wonder at St. John's tranquil death, and of our Lord'» answer to
her questions, in which he says that he took John out of the world '··
jubilee. St. Mechtildis, in the seventh chapter of her first l»ook. enumerates as the
twelfth of the twelve privileges of St. John, that he died a painless death ■<*· alx·
the commentaries of Durandus de Sancte Angelo on St. Bridget, and the apprêta
lion of Dom Michel de Escartin to the Mystical City of Agreda.

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assisted at Calvary should have died so softly, as if already their
real death had been died there. Yet a quiet, easy death is not
without its dangers, such as drowsiness, inapprehension, unsuspcctingness, inaction, delusion, and the like. There are some
men whose energies and sensibilities seem always to go to sleep
when the rough cold weather of life comes on,—men who have
no winters, but who, like marmots in their burrows, live lives
of endless summers pieced together by this lying dormant in the
cold. They arc men who are no better for any thing which
happens to them, nay (which is almost a more hopeless feature),
are no worse for any thing which happens. To them what can
a quiet death be but a judgment? It is God letting them die
without awakening them. We may remark of all quiet deaths,
that they are not converting deaths, nor deaths for repentances
to be done in. Conversion must be done before, or it will not
be done then.
Let us consider one more variety of death,—death amidst
temptations. This is very terrible, yet not uncommon. It is very
often the end of a careless life, of a life negligent in details, which
contented itself with generals rather than particulars, and took
liberties with God, and made free with the precepts of the
Church, and was wanting in reverence and fear. Then, on the
other hand, it is sometimes also the end of a very holy life, espe­
cially if it is cut short in point of years. For years of merit may
be acquired in moments of death-bed temptations. Temptation
always accelerates the speed of grace. But this is eminently the
case on death-beds. God may visit his servants with such a death
in order to enable them to gain greater glory in heaven. Or it
may be that their spiritual life has been wanting in inward trials,
and that the mystical purgation of their spirits may not have
been complete, and therefore he vouchsafes to perfect their holi­
ness by this manner of death. On this side the grave Divine
Love has no crucible more delicate than this of a death amidst
temptations. Yet it is one which is most painful to the survivors,
because it is curtained round with impenetrable gloom, indeed,
with anxiety and dismay, if the temptations have lasted to the

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end. But in most cases it is not so. Just at last the cloud lifts, and
discloses a golden horizon with its outline clear and its edge
defined. Could we but bend over, what should we see but the
brightness of a blessed eternity, and the vicinity of an imme­
diate heaven, with no deep lake of cleansing fire between? Sad
as the first prospect of these curtains of temptation is to the
beholder, they cover some operations of grace which for gran­
deur and sublimity have no equals elsewhere. Moreover, they
are graces which are instantaneously efficacious. They turn lofty
diings in upon our souls in a moment. They fix and stereotype
all previous acquisitions of grace. They are the very beginnings
of eternal glory, desperately painful, like ecstasies, because they
are out of place and come before their time. But the high and
the low, how often do they lie together in the same coil, where
spiritual matters are concerned! These same temptations are
not unfrequently a penal retribution to easy and ungenerous
souls for neglecting certain portions of the spiritual life, and
especially for neglecting habits of mental prayer. Ahl how many
dry meditations are waiting for us at diat last turn in life, to
refresh our scorched souls with their unexpected dew! and how
many omitted and shortened meditations are also waiting for
us there, to sting us like scorpions, when we shall find the pain
least tolerable! There are many things which it is hard to face
in death; there are few harder to face than neglected prayer.
Such are some of the varieties of death. What the varieties
of result may be, which they each of them realize, is beyond our
sight. They are the first parts of eternity, indescribable, un­
imaginable. There may be some souls whom death runs far
onward into eternity, and some whom it leaves only at the edge.
All are safe with God. These, then, are the aspects of that great
phenomenon of death, not a foreign thing, but something which
we ourselves have to pass through. As the life is, so shall the
end be. Can we say less than that death is the whole significance
of life?

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ON DEATH
II. The Characteristics of Death

Death is an unsurveyed land, an unarranged science. There
are continual new discoveries being hourly made in it by all men
in person. All human actions are wonderful things. Each of
them seems to contain depths of miracle. As conscience is the
best inward evidence of God, so human actions are the best out­
ward evidences of him. But this last human act, which closes all
series of human actions, this act of dying, is the most fertile in
wonders. Its interest is intense from whatever point of view we
look at it, and we may be sure that no man, until he has died
himself, at all appreciates the marvellousness of death. Perhaps,
as I have said, no two deaths are quite alike; and the most delicate
shades of difference between one death and another would prob­
ably disclose to us more of the ways of God and more of the
capabilities of the soul than philosophy has ever taught. But we
never see death from the other side, from the eternal side; and
therefore we cannot do justice to it. It is not a mere date; it is
not simply the end of life. It is the confluence of time and eternity,
the transition of grace into glory. It is a divine punishment made
now into a most hidden operation of grace. Each separate death is
an undisclosed secret between the Creator and the creature. So
that, while we are studying death, it teases us to feel that we have
to confine ourselves to what is general, while the real wonder of
death is, more than is the case with most mysteries, in the details
and the particulars. All we know is, that justice and mercy seem
to come to us separately in life, whereas in death their operations
are combined and they are only one. Death belongs as much to
the eternity which it begins as to the life which it ends. Perhaps
more. In lifetime we can but feel death on its outside, and report
of its inward possibilities from its outward phenomena. Having
thus estimated our speculations at no more than they are worth,
let us pass from the aspects of death to consider its characteristics.
It has characteristic pains, characteristic temptations, char­

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acteristic graces, and characteristic joys; and we must study these
in order. To contemplate the pains of death is like looking for
the first time over some wide scene of savage and mountainous
desolation. The heights are hung with melancholy clouds. The
glens run up among the foldings of the hills, and are lost to view.
A mist lies over the stone-sprinkled ground, which is so girdled
with swamps as to be impenetrable. No man is wisely bold who
can think, without some fear, of the journey he must one day
make across that disconsolate region. Body, will, mind, affections,
even our supernatural habits, have, each of them, pains of their
own. With regard to the physical pains of death, we may suppose
them, from many analogies, to be unlike any other pains. The
separation of body and soul must itself be a strange, unbearable
distress, even if it be not a positive pain. The face works at that
moment as it never works at any other time. The eyes look as if
some woeful surprise was in the soul. To all appearance there is
something more than mere suffocation in the act of dying. At
the same time, it need not be that the physical pains of death
should be greater than any others, or that they should be great
at all. Experience and observation would seem to show that com­
paratively few persons die in much pain. Even where there has
been great agony nearly up to the last, the last itself has generally
been in peace and in comparative ease. Medical science teaches
us the same thing. It does not say death is not painful, but that
it is not very painful, and that most men suffer pains in life which,
for mere amount of pain, exceed the pain of dying. Even
physical fear, which would be itself a pain, is far less common than
we should have expected. Perhaps there is not much consolation
in this last feature of the case. For it would appear to intimate
that the hour of death is even less favorable than we supposed for
the transactions of the soul. No reasonable being, except under
strong grace, could possibly confront death without fear, unless
he were laboring under some deadness, dulness, or other prox­
imity to stupefaction, brought on by the sickliness of the act
itself; and such things as these do not promise well for that keen
view of sin, and self, and God, which efficacious acts of faith, love,

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and sorrow must imply. It shows also the intense necessity of the
powerful sacraments and benedictions of the Church, as supply,
ing and filling out those inward acts which the state of the soul
may render sluggish. Nevertheless, although the physical pains
of death are often spoken of in an exaggerated way, there are
possibilities enough to give us something like a feeling of dismay
when we consider them. Yet they are far the least important of
death’s pains.
It is to be apprehended, also, that our physical weakness will
give rise to a peculiar mental pain. We do not, for the most part,
fall into such a state of torpor as not to be sensible of the nature
of our position. We understand what death is. The light of our
faith is not dimmed. If sin, and self, and God, are not before us
with their old clearness, they are clearly enough before us to be
felt as overshadowing our souls. We have not become mere ani­
mals, though we seem on the road to it. Hence arises a peculiar
pain, from the knowledge and feeling that our minds and ener­
gies are not up to the mark, are unequal to the occasion. We see
a point close at hand, and we cannot reach it. We have a distinct
ideal, and may not realize it. We believe, but our belief falls a
little short. We grieve for sin, but our grief, like water poured
over a garden on a winter’s day, does not run into our souls, but
freezes on the surface. We love, but it is the brightness of love
without its fire. We know that a form of sound words is always
valuable, because, outward as it is, it is almost always an interior
help; but we feel now that we have to trust, rather more than we
like to trust, to the orthodoxy and accuracy of our acts of faith,
hope, love, and contrition. The wedding-garments in which we
have so often clothed our souls are found to have shrunk, just
when it is too late to alter them, and here is the Bridegroom
visibly riding up to the gate. We want so little, yet that little is
so hopelessly wanted. All this, we trust, will be much more in the
feeling than in the reality. Nevertheless the result of it will be a
feeling of impotence which will be most hard to bear, a sort of
spiritual nightmare, a train of thought during a fall from a preci­
pice, the sinking of a boat upon a shipless sea. It will be an in­

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ward sinking of soul, when we can least bear such sinkings Surely
it will make us sick at heart.
This is the mental pain which our present gives us. The con­
tribution of our past will perhaps be heavier still. The very dark­
ness which is around us will somehow concentrate the light on our
past lives. Who does not know that the hour of death is an hour
of revelations? We are already acquainted with the phenomena
of the growing sensitiveness of conscience. We know how we
come to see sin where we saw none before, and what a feeling of
insecurity about the past that new vision has often given us. Yet
death is a sudden stride into the light. Even in our general con­
fessions the past was discernible in a kind of soft twilight: now it
will be dragged out into unsheltered splendor. The dawn of the
judgment, mere dawn though it be, is brighter than any terrestrial
noon; and it is a light which magnifies more than any human
microscope. There lie fifty crowded years, or more. Oh, such an
interminable-seeming waste of life, with actions piled on actions,
and all swarming with minutest incredible life, and an element
of eternity in every nameless moving point of that teeming wilder­
ness! How colossal will appear the sins we know of, so gigantic
now that we hardly know them again! How big our little sins!
How full of malice our faults that seemed but half-sins, if they
were sins at all! Then, again, the forgotten sins: who can count
them? Who believed they were half so many, or half so serious?
The unsuspected sins, and the sinfulness of our ignorances, and
the deliberateness of our indeliberations, and the rebellions of
our self-will, and the culpable recklessness of our precipitations,
and the locust-swarms of our thought-peopled solitudes, and the
incessant persevering cataracts of our poisoned tongues, and the
inconceivable arithmetic of our multiplied omissions,—and a
great solid neglected grace lying by the side of each one of these
things,—and each one of them as distinct, and quiet, and quietly
compassed, and separately contemplated, and over-powering I v
light-girdled, in the mind of God, as if each were the grand sole
truth of his self-sufficient unity! Who will dare to think that
such a past will not be a terrific pain, a light from which there

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is no terrified escape? Or who will dare to say that his past will
not look such to him when he lies down to die? Surely it would be
death itself to our entrapped and amazed souls, if we did not see
the waters of the great flood rising far off, and sweeping onward
with noiseless but resistless inundation, the billows of that Red
Sea of our salvation which takes away the sins of the world, and
under which all those Egyptians of our own creation, those masters
whom we ourselves appointed over us, with their living hosts,
their men, their horses, their chariots, and their incalculable
baggage, will look in the morning-light of eternity but a valley
of sunlit waters.
The future also comes to us in the shape of pain. It is an un­
certainty; and uncertainty is hard to bear. The unspeakable great­
ness of the risk, the immensity of the interests at stake, the sense
of utter inadequacy so far as our own merits are concerned, and
our own sensible want of present energy, combine to make us
perhaps exaggerate the uncertainty of our position, while the
extreme nearness of the decision cannot but agitate us painfully.
God may give us, as he so often does, a grace of calm assurance,
which will counteract this agitation. But the agitation itself be­
longs to death as one of its proper pains, and we have no right to
reckon on the grace. As our past life is magnified by the nearness
of an all-holy judgment, so die mountains of eternity, like all
mountains, look higher as we approach them. The grandeur of
the reward almost dismays us. Can such things be for us? Are
we fitting company for angels and for saints? Are we, such as we
are, to go and sit down at the foot of Mary's dirone? Shall we in
another five minutes be clasping in speechless gratitude the
Wounded Feet of Jesus? Can our purity bear the blaze of God,
and not turn to ashes? Almost by force our eyes are turned away
from heaven. We look through the gloom in the direction of
purgatory. Even that “profound lake” is too good for us. Yet
how intolerable its pains! Its least pain, as seems most probable
from authorities, greater than all the accumulated pains of mor­
tals from Adam downward, its long, lingering delays, as revela­
tions certify, the practically infinite capabilities of suffering in a

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separate soul, the weariness of waiting for the Vision which intense
desire makes more weary than any weariness we can know of, these are our uncertainties in that direction. Then, in another
direction still, what unthinkable possibilities! The word of doom
will be spoken soon. God has known all along what it is to be.
A few more efforts in drawing our breath, and we shall know
it too.
These are the pains of death, such pains as we have seen
others bear, pains such that we can understand something of their
nature. But who can doubt that there are also unknown and un­
imaginable pains to be met with in that dark valley, of a new sort,
and which will not range themselves with other pains? These also
must we think of with fear, and trust God for grace to bring us
through them and for tenderness to measure them out to us in
exceeding moderation.
We come now to the temptations of death. Of course these
are very various, and a dying man may be tempted to almost any
sin. Nevertheless we are only to concern ourselves here with what
may be called the characteristic temptations of death. It cannot
be a matter of surprise to us that the chief among these are
temptations to infidelity. It is our faith which is saving us. It
is upon our faith that we are leaning our whole weight. It is
naturally there that the tempter will try us. Indeed, the natural
laws of our own minds, without any preternatural interference,
would lead us to expect these very distressing temptations. We are
trusting God just then for more than we have ever trusted him
before. Our trust in him is all we have left. We are concentrating
ourselves upon it. We can do but little ourselves, even in the way
of co-operation, or correspondence to grace. The most active,
and what is called edifying, death-bed is far more of a passive than
an active exhibition. The very demand made upon our faith
provokes doubt, while the extremity of its importance seems to
magnify the doubt. These temptations often come to those who
have been but little tempted in that way during life. If the absence
of the temptations has been due to the brightness of their faith,
the hour of trial comes now as an opportunity of higher sanctity.

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If it has been due to indifference «and an inadequate interest in
divine things, the temptations come now on a mission of punish­
ment and retribution, adding another huge risk to the other risks
with which the chamber of death is already so beset. But the cruel
refining of these temptations is more fiery to those who in lifetime
have been subjected to them, and who with a sort of half-pious
petulance and querulous exaggeration have dwelt upon them in
their own minds and spoken of them almost braggingly to others.
These men soon bring about a habit of such temptations, and
then earth becomes a hell, and life no longer a trial but a torture.
They lose that beautiful dismay in which the religious spirit is
ever standing, self-astonished, before the majesty of God. Losing
that, there is little else left for them to lose. But the retribution
at the hour of death is inconceivably dreadful.
So, again, boisterous, controversial minds seem likely to be
assailed by this form of temptation. Temptations against the
faith for the most part belong to narrow minds. They generally
betoken want of depth. Notv, boisterous minds are always nar­
row minds. They have generally fixed ideas, and if their fixed
idea goes, all else goes with it. They have all their lives wished to
be dictators, domestic or otherwise; and they can so little believe
that people will not elect them to that office, that they take to
clamoring, and even shrieking, as if they had lost all control,
when things go silently on as if they had neither pronounced,
acted, written, or made a sign,—indeed, as if they existed not.
In spiritual as well as in intellectual things, delicacy alone is
strength. When these men confront a broad eternal truth, and
confront it inside themselves, they find that they have fallen into
a perfect ambush of temptations against the faith. Men of great
activity are also subject to this trial. They have not made their
religion sufficiently a part of their mind or even of their heart.
It has been mostly in their eye and in their arms. In these days
especially our own activity often persecutes us. Some men are
positively hunted through life by themselves; and this strange self­
pursuit makes them not only a problem to others, but an amaze­
ment to themselves. A man who lets himself have too many things
to do is always a foolish man, if he is not a guilty one; and he is

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apt to be eaten up by his own business, as Actæon was by his
own dogs. On his death-bed he is alone. External things are
gone. There is his habit of activity, and nothing but his own
quality of faith left for him to exercise it on. He finds he has
never fathomed the commonest things in religion, and now,
with the ruling passion strong in death, he cannot rest, but
fathoms the shallows of his own soul and finds them bottomless.
These are the classes of men whom these temptations visit; but
they belong to the time and the place, and may visit all, even the
most unlikely souls.
Temptations to despair form another class of temptations
which belong to death-beds. But I believe them to be far from
common. Even approaches to despair, misgivings which seem as
if they could become temptations to despair, as if they could
develop into them, are not ordinary features in a death-bed to
any very great extent. In a certain degree they come to all, as
might be expected, and in any degree they must necessarily be
disquieting. But in their fully-developed state we may set them
down as extremely rare. They seem to spring from clearness of
faith combined with an absence of practical knowledge of God,
and they would appear to be the punishment of a self-trusting life.
Confidence in God is one of those elements of the supernatural
life which it is desirable should take also the form of a familiar
habit; and certainly he who knows his own sinfulness for the first
time, or the immensity of God’s mercy for the first time, when
he comes to die, may easily find despair to be the issue of the very
undoubtingness of his faith. We must, however, be careful to
distinguish between temptations to despair, and those strange
temptations to blasphemy of which we sometimes read. These
last seem to take rank among the mystical trials of souls which
are very high in grace, and whom God sees able to bear the ex­
treme heat of such refining processes. I remember something like
these temptations in a case which certainly arose from the effects
of stimulants given to the dying man, combined with the fulness
of his mind upon religious subjects; and partly the loss of his self­
control, and partly the sense that it was lost, and hence the effort

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to recover it, caused him to speak as he would not else have
spoken.
When the beginnings of despair, or at least trouble amounting
to more than misgiving, are perceived in the dying, those who
have intimately known such men’s antecedents have observed
that this is a trial of which two things are to be said: first, that it
is for the most part some way off from the act of death, at an
earlier period, and even before the agony; and secondly, that those
who are thus visited have been wanting in holy fear during their
lives. It seems as if fear had a lesson to teach which can only be
taught on this side the grave, and that those who will not spread
it over their lives must learn it by a vehement, hurried, and con­
centrated effort at the last. Indeed, we may say that there is noth­
ing in life which exercises a more blessed influence on death
than the prominence of holy loving fear in our intercourse with
God. Past fear is the smoothest pillow on which the head of the
dying can repose. With regard, then, to these temptations to
despair, books tell us that they are death-bed temptations; but
experience seems to show that they are exceedingly rare, except
in that mitigated form which we have just mentioned as the
penalty for over-familiarity and liberty with God. I have never
seen an instance of real temptations to despair, and should not
have mentioned them in this connection except through a legiti­
mate fear of differing from the consent of writers on the subject.
Then there is a class of temptations which belong perhaps
rather to the end of a serious illness than to death, but which so
habitually tease the dying that we cannot omit them. In the
greater number of cases death follows upon an illness more or less
long, an illness which has often worn threadbare our grace of
endurance. Patience, even if it remain substantially in the soul,
has put off its dignity, broken its silence, and taken to complain­
ing. Deep down in our hearts the merciful penetration of God
may satisfy itself that we are still conformed to his will, but our
conformity has lost its gracefulness. When death ensues after a
long illness, then these temptations, which in reality belong to
the illness, seem to form part of the process of the death-bed, and

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it is the solemnity of our danger which gives to these temptations
their peculiar vexatiousness. They are temptations to little sins,
to sins which shame us by their unworthiness, and also make us
suspect something greatly wrong in our inward dispositions be­
cause of their unfitness and unseasonableness. Among them we
may reckon a temptation to greediness, to selfishness, to talking
about self, to a greater amount of irritability than our sufferings
will cover in the way of excuse, to uncharitable suspicions, to
petulance with God, and to certain forms of untruthfulness. Who
has not seen how often these things dishonor the sick-bed which
is else giving evidence of so many graces and of so much presence
of God? It may well be doubted whether the moral significance
of these temptations is very considerable. Nevertheless earnest
men make fewer excuses for themselves when they come to die
than they were in the habit of making when they were in health.
They know well how fatal it is for a sick man to be indulgent
to himself. His friends are already running a risk of destroying
him by their indulgence: he will be lost if he is indulgent to him­
self. There is not a more universal characteristic of the saints
than their abhorrence of dispensations, growing as their need of
them and right to them are growing also. Besides, the proximity
of the intolerable purity of God, in which the dying he. brings
a light with it in which little faults seem positively great
ones. It is like faults in holy places or at holy times. A
sense of sacrilege goes along with die other malice of the sin.
To be greedy, for example, or to let a gust of anger make our
voice shrill, when we are so awfully near God,—this is sad misery.
When we stand round the beds of others, we rightly compassion­
ate these things. When we lie there ourselves, and thus demean
ourselves, our dispositions must rather be those of self-revenge
than of compassion. In truth, death is not a penance only: it is
a humiliation also. We must bear as part of it this way in which
the light of death illuminates the otherwise incredible frivolity
of our serious immortal natures. Age has hidden our childish­
ness: it has not changed it. Alas! years only took away the sim­
plicity of youth: they abated little, if any thing, of its childishness.

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We have also to remember, in connection with the character­
istic temptations of death, the especial assaults of the evil spirits
which form perhaps an invariable part of the last struggle of
every man. It is eminently the hour and the place of evil spirits,
because it is also eminently the hour and the place of the divine
compassions. But their assaults are not only more vehement and
concentrated at that time, but are also of a kind peculiar to the
occasion. This novelty springs from various causes. First of all,
the evil spirits have reserved their worst attacks for the last, when
the very novelty of them increases their likelihood of success,
inasmuch as they take us by surprise and out of the habits of our
previous spiritual warfare. Then, again, there are temptations
which would hardly be temptations except to the dying, and
these naturally make their first appearance at that time. Again,
the operations of grace are frequently new in the sanctification of
the dying; and the acuteness of the dark angels enables them to
find new opportunities in new graces. Lastly, the vicinity of God
gives a new force to all our motives, so that even old temptations
come in a manner and with an intensity which make them prac­
tically new. So far as we can judge from observation, it would
not be true to say that the most vehement season of satanical
assault in each man's life is his last battle on his dying bed. This
is by no means the case. I should doubt if it were so even with
the majority. But it is not unlikely to be so with a considerable
number. It is at least one of the terrible capabilities of death.
We ought all to expect—what is not improbable—that the assaults
of the evil spirits at the hour of death may be out of all propor­
tion to the temptations of our life. It is better to be ready even
for what may happen, when the risk is so tremendous and can
be run only once.
What is particularly to be observed, and also to be dreaded,
in these final assaults of the evil angels, is their terrible fitness
to our character. They are adapted to our weaknesses with al­
most inevitable skill. They are edged, proportioned, weighed,
clothed, disguised, and surrounded with plausible circumstances,
in such a manner that, if left to ourselves, we must perish. But

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the vilest of God's reasonable creatures is never so little left to
himself as when he lies down to die. He is never so importuned
by mercy, so almost cumbered with assistance, as he is then. If
we did not always see death as if it were an island in an ocean of
grace, we could not think without dismay of the horrible dexterity
of our spiritual enemies. Moreover, death brings out our char­
acter, and lays it open in its whole breadth to the machinations
of our unseen foes. Indeed, character is often brought out for the
first time in its fulness and completeness by death. We sometimes
see strange disclosures of this power in the deaths of children.
Perhaps the souls of infants are as full-grown as those of mature
men, only their material instrument, the body, is not equal to the
task of their development. Certainly many children's death-beds
look as if this were the case. Thus the Church sings of dear St.
Agnes, the little martyr of thirteen, Infantia quidem computa­
batur in annis, sed erat senectus mentis immensa. If it were so.
would it not throw light on the mystery of baptism and its in­
fused habits, and also invest children with a dignity which would
influence us in their education? This may have been in the minds
of those theologians who held that children committed venial
sins very early, and, dying in venial sin only, underwent a long
purgatory because their parents never dreamed of their needing
*
assistance.
With adults, at all events, there can be no doubt as
to this amazing development of character by death, nor of the
opportunity which it affords to the evil spirits. Nevertheless we
must remember also that these assaults of the evil angels seldom
last quite up to the act of death. Satan delivers his battle at a
somewhat earlier period, and then is bidden to draw his forces
off, and there is peace. The actual end of most men is in peace,
however the battle may have gone.
Finally, we must say of the temptations of death, as we said of
its pains, that there are doubtless unknown and unimaginable
ones, which no man has ever returned to tell us of. Those who
• Arriaga, torn. 3. disp. 10, n. 53; also the revelations of Elizabeth of Schonaug.
lib. 2, cap. 18; also the life of Marina d'Escobar ap Siurium. Tract vi. cap. 2, n. 12
and 13; and other writers who treat of the question of men dying in original anti
venial sin only.

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have been raised to life again by the saints do not seem to have
been allowed to make revelations. Their experience had perhaps
been intentionally withdrawn from their memory. What we can
see for ourselves is this,—and, although it is but an outside, it is
much to see,—that souls who have had small experience of spir­
itual things in lifetime are often put through vast experiences
in the rapid processes of death, which would have occupied years
in the slower successiveness of life.
So far we have only spoken of the unilluminated side of
death; or. at least, the light which has been thrown upon it is
but like the redness of a sunset on a bare seaside. But if death has
its characteristic pains and temptations, it has also its characteristic
graces and joys. We will begin by considering its graces. Grace,
like all heavenly things, is given to concealment. Its simplicity
loves disguise, and its beauty is almost of too delicate a nature
to arrest the eye. Thus we shall not be surprised if, while the
pains and temptations of death stand out boldly and almost
coarsely, the graces of death appear less prominent and occupy
less room in the picture. There is one grace which seems to be
hardly ever absent from Christian death-beds. It is the grace of
light. The intellectual self-sufficiency of the world, impersonated
in all its grandeur in Goethe, may need to cry out in piteous
anguish for light, "more light.” It was the natural death-song of
the world-poet. But the humble believer is more likely to be
bewildered with his light than to need more. The stars grow
brighter as the night darkens. As the lights of earth are put out
one by one in the midnight of death, the countenance of heaven
makes plainer and plainer revelations. From one point of view
death is all darkness; from another, it is a land of light. We see
better than we did before. We understand better. We recognize
more surely what has to be done, and we perceive how to do
it. Our increased knowledge of the sinfulness of sin brings with
it a deeper hatred of it and a more satisfactory contrition. Our
nearer view of God raises the fervor of our love. Faith seems
almost to be changing its character, and begins to have some­
thing of sight in it, even while it continues to be strictly faith.

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We learn to judge ourselves beforehand with something of
that searchingness, that remembrance, and that zealous purity
wherewith the All-Holy is to judge us presently. Each doctrine
of our faith, each mystery of our Blessed Lord, each saint and
angel whom we have loved, shines out in the heaven above
us like a new and magnificent luminary. Sometimes the light
overflows the soul whose profound recesses it has filled, and
breaks out into actual sights, into flashes of celestial visions,
into starry incursions of the impatient glory which is drawing
the veil from behind, into sounds which scatter showers of light
as they resound, into touches, tastes, and fragrances which
come to us in beams of light and make us give forth light our­
selves. By means of all this light, common souls are often ad­
mitted then into the mystical world, who had in lifetime no
antecedents whatever of the kind. It is true there are dark deaths,
dark deaths which even saints have died, the aspect of whose
magnificence was all turned heavenward, so that we could not see
it. But these are the rarest of deaths to the humble and penitent
believer; and even then how glory-streaked is the darkness, how
little like what we really mean by darkness, much more a pavilion
of clouds in which the soul is invisibly caressed by God!
All grace brings with it a supernatural heat, but some graces
in a much greater degree than others, and the same graces more
efficaciously at some times than others. There are often graces
in life which seem to be nothing but illumination. They en­
lighten the mind without appearing to touch the affections.
They illustrate our duty without fortifying the will to do it.
They are dry graces. No dew falls with them. So that there
appear to be graces which have no unction, but only make a
cold bright day in the soul. Sometimes this separation between
the light and heat of grace may be real. More often it comes to
pass from the uncongenial state of our own souls. A hard heart
and a bright mind,—who has not felt the unhappiness of this, if
he has ever tried the spiritual life at all? But the graces of death
seem to bring with them great heat, which makes them more
than usually efficacious. It is as if we were standing nearer, as in

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truth we are, to the fountain of all grace, the eternal fountain
of divine fire. God’s love of us looks as if it grew more pitiful,
more mother-like, because of our extreme necessity. He pleads
more, and threatens less. He entreats where he used to command.
He kisses instead of speaking. He knows well that endearments
have wrung confessions of guilt and sincere promises of amend­
ment from those whom no sternness, nor even pain, could have
drawn to any such acknowledgment, much less inspire into them
any such dispositions. The very circumstances of death league
themselves auspiciously with this heat of grace. There is a
pathos about every thing, which melts ourselves, as well as the
by standers. Our physical weakness brings a facility of weeping,
which I cannot think is altogether without its influence in
softening the heart; for what physical thing about us is only
physical? Thus the most trivial motives of love and sorrow tell
upon us with a new force. The tenderness which we so often
see in the dying, the intensity of their natural affections deepening
almost as their absorption in God deepens also, the courtesy of
those who were naturally abrupt, the softness of those who were
cold and unimpassioned in manner, the gracefulness of those
whose goodness never did itself justice from the want of being
graceful,—all these mellowings of character, these evening lights
and shadows of the heart, which make us feel as if we had never
adequately loved those whom we have most dearly loved until
they come to die, are the consequences and exuberances of that
heat of grace which characterizes a holy death.
There is a sense in which even the sacraments may be called
characteristic graces of death. One of them,—Extreme Unction
—belongs of right to the act of dying, or the proximate peril of it.
But the same remark holds good of the Confession and the
Viaticum. No one has ever yet fathomed the sacraments. We
may confidently assert that a great residue of graces has escaped
the penetration of the devoutest theologians. We can hardly
magnify them over-much. Alasl we must believe that not all
sacraments administered to the dying are valid. The outward ad­
ministration and the inward dispositions are not invariably con­

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joined. Nevertheless we cannot but believe that, on the whole,
the administration of a sacrament is a strong probability in favor
of its validity, strong enough to warrant that universal sense of
the faithful, which leads them to think so hopefully of those
who have died with the rites of the Church. It seems to belong
to the providence of God that it should be so. If the honor of
Jesus be dear to us, the honor of the sacraments must be dear
to us also; for in nothing is he so much implicated. Moreover,
to the dying the special graces of the sacraments appear to be­
come more special. We express this when we call the Communion
of the dying by the wonderful title of Viaticum. Has any one,
even the highest saint, ever taken out of any one sacrament the
whole of the grace which it contained? Did any one ever in the
longest life exhaust the treasures of his Baptism? It is the im­
perfection of our own dispositions which puts limits to the sancti­
fying efficacy of the sacraments. But the dispositions of the
dying are visibly quickened to a degree which amazes us, and
are probably quickened in reality to an extent of which we
have no conception, so that the sacraments sink into them like
water in loose ground, and go down to an unusual depth.
The presence and assistance of our Lady, St. Joseph, the
angels, and our patron saints form a very world of grace, which
is like an enchanted land. We have sounds from inside, and
voices speaking of such strange, penetrating sweetness that they
infold our spirits in wondering silence. We see light out of deep
places, as it were the reflection of the lights of a great city on
the swarthy clouds of night. The echoes of music come from
afar, such music as must be to the dying like anticipations from
heaven. Sometimes we neither hear nor see, but the dying them­
selves betray it in their broken talk, or we see it in their eyes
like points of brightness without form or shape. Js there
one of us who does not expect to be in that world himself when
he comes to die? Have not bargains passed between each of us and
the inhabitants of heaven, in the fulfilment of which we put
more trust than in the honestest contract upon earth? This
supernatural thronging of celestial beings round our death-beds

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is another form of the love of God. It is full of graces; but
what those graces are, or like to what, we do not know. The
time will come when it will all be matter of fact to us, and it will
make death such a glory and a sweetness that it will be one of
the pleasures of eternity to be perpetually calling it to mind.
As we have said of the pains and temptations, so also must
we say of the graces, of death, that there are others, unknown and
unimaginable, peculiar graces out of God’s reserved treasury,
for such as have believed and have not presumed. At that hour,
and in that act, faith gathers exotic graces of strange, marvellous,
many-sided virtues. For what is death to the believer but the
falling—and in all falls there is a risk—into the hands of the
unknown goodness of our God.
Last of all, we have to speak of the characteristic joys of
death. This is a very interior world, into which we can hardly
feel our way except by the actual sensibilities of death. Things
are joys to the saints which are not joys to us. Things are joys
to us when we are more than commonly filled with the presence
of God which at ordinary times are not joys at all, perhaps even
wearinesses. So doubtless there are many joys to the dying which
are joys to them because they are dying. As we approach death,
if we approach it as Christians should, we begin to enter into
the dispositions of the saints. God is more present to us, per­
haps, than he has ever been in life, except on a few great occa­
sions. Moreover, the joys of earth have faded from us. They
have ceased to be joys. It is irksome to think of them now,
both because they are so unsuitable to our present state, and
also because they have at this distance a look of waywardness,
and childishness, and, indeed, almost of sin. We are more
sensitive, therefore, to the touch of supernatural joy. For ex­
ample, there belongs to our condition a partial inability to sin.
There are many sins which we can no longer commit, and many
which we have no temptation to commit. This is like a faint
beginning of heaven. It is enough to be a joy to us that the
mere possibilities of sin are on the move, that any capability of
offending God has become dead already. It cheers us on. It

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melts our hearts. It is a fresh spring of love within us. To be
unable to offend God again is part of a saint's desire of heaven.
It comes nearer to disinterested love.
The past, also,—that fearful, fertile past, out of which we
have seen all manner of chilling fears come forth, like clouds
rolling in from the sea,—it will become like a spice-island
breathing its aromatic odors over the deep. Two things partic­
ularly in our past will give us joy. The first is our fear of God.
The more of fear in life, the more of joy in death. Oh, it is a
happy thing to have feared God, to have feared him exceedingly!
It is at the last as if we had paid him some fixed amount, and
had to pay no more, of the tribute of our fear,—that clinging
fear which, without ceasing to be fear, is a height of love as well,
—and now that fear could be fear no longer, but glided into
familiarity. Every tremor of fear which we have felt in life seems
to have earned a thrill of joy for us when we come to die. To
love God is the beginning, middle, and end of all things. Yet,
somehow, fear is sweeter to us in the retrospect than love. Bold­
ness frightens us when we come to die; and fear we see then was
the wise humility of love. If we would die sweetly, let us fear God
exceedingly. They who have lived lives of fear are the likeliest
to die deaths of ecstatic love.
The other thing in our past which is now a source of jubilee
is the confidence we have placed in God. That we have trusted him,
that we have trusted no one but him, that especially we have
not trusted ourselves, that we have tried to trust him always and
utterly,—this it is which makes our soul sing songs in death which
might stop the world to listen and ravish the spirits of the angels.
We have known no reckonings up of merits. We have gloried
in grace. We have dwelt on die sounding shores of the sea of the
Precious Blood. We have thought great things of God s good­
ness. We have not known what it was to doubt his fidelity or
to demur to his decrees. We have flung ourselves under the march
of his sovereignty. We have abandoned ourselves to his grandeur.
We have loved the darkness of his ways, and begged him not,
in condescension to any weakness of ours, to destroy by indulgent

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brightness the beauty of his night. So we have gone through life,
while life was an unusual problem to us, so incurably full of
joy, and yet so wearifully devoid of interest. It was always morn­
ing with us,—morning in youth, morning in middle life, morning
when middle life was past. All our life was morning. We loved
its brightness; but we wanted rest, and joy was not restful. We
saw that with others it was evening early in life. How tranquil
they seem! we used to say. Will it ever be evening-time with
us? As God wills, so only it be never night, the night in which
no man could work; for at least there is no rest, no Sabbath,
there! Thus we have lived lives without doubts, without ques­
tions, without strong wills, lives of confidence in God, a confidence
so intimately part of ourselves that we have almost doubted
whether it were natural or supernatural, swift, gushing lives,
helplessly jubilant, almost persecuted by our own joy. This is
what comes of confidence in God. But confidence and fear are
almost one thing rather than two, when we speak of God. He
that fears most trusts most. He that trusts most fears most. To
none is death so little of a change as to those whose life has been
one long, unbroken confidence in God.
Thus the present is a joy to us in our partial inability to sin,
and the past is a joy to us in its retrospect of confidence and
fear. Then there is another joy, 5vhich is partly of the present
and partly of the past. In our past lives we may have had many
external faults. They might not be greatly culpable in the sight
of God, but they were very offensive to others, and particularly
discomforting to ourselves. We were beset with them, and
nothing that we could do to cure them seemed to make any
impression upon them. Whether God allowed them in order to
keep us humble, by hiding our gifts from ourselves as well as
from others, we cannot tell. All we know is that they were a
disagreeable cloud round us, and a standing shame, which led
us to despise ourselves. They were often sins; but they were al­
ways littlenesses, even when they were not sins. Now suddenly
they are gone, vanished, burned away in some insensible fire.
It is not merely that the outward opportunities of them are lacking

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to us. We feel that the things deep down in our character which
represented these faults and were evidences of them, shadows
cast by them, are gone also, and gone without warning, gone at
once. We see this often in the deaths of the young. Death seems
to do for them at once what years of struggle would have failed
to do. There is in them such an unclothing of faults, such a
winning maturity of purified age. We could not have thought
so much beauty of character could have comported with such
external faults. But what a lesson is this to the living as well as
a joy to the dying! What a world of the unsuspected truths of
charity, and mysterious accuracies of ingeniously kind inter­
pretations of conduct, does it not open out before us! It is as
if purgatory were visibly doing its work in the soul while it yet
lived on earth, so passive does the operation seem, and yet per­
formed with such amazing swiftness as belongs not to the slow,
imperceptible action of those unmeritorious fires.
The future, too, brings troops of joys, like angelic bands, to
the dying bed. There is a joy rvhich has to do with the present,
yet lies on the confines of the future, and whose blessedness the
past enhances as it were by contrast. It is the actual nearness
of God. It is no slight bliss for one whose spirtual life in years
gone by has always taken the form of the worship of God's
sovereignty, to find himself sensibly in the grasp of that resistless
power. He trembles with exceeding fear. How can it be other­
wise, with the nervous, puny, fragile creature in so great a hand,
and with the fingers actually closing over him? Yet in his fear
there is a breathless joy. He is on the verge now of learning by
experience that which hitherto has been but a sweet faith,—how
the omnipotence of God is the measure of his goodness. Through
life he has been pushing his way to God, and the distance made
him faint and down-hearted. Now he is close to his attainment.
All things round him are vibrating because of the extreme vicinity
of God. The strong earth is being unanchored, and is drifting
away from under him, and underneath all is God. There is a
trouble as of a coming earthquake, but it is in truth the approach
of God. He comes as if he came from far, as if he were in haste

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and must be gone again presently, and we feel his breath upon
us in the dark, and in another moment he will have carried
us away, almost into the distance of immensity, and we shall
have found a home somewhere in his illimitable power.
Then our joy becomes still more a thing of the future. We
rejoice in the future hope of eternal company with Jesus. We
do not distinguish among the various blessednesses of heaven.
We see it all in indistinct unity, as contemplative souls see God
in contemplation. Heaven is one thing,—to be eternally with
Jesus. We thought we had already had a great devotion to the
Sacred Humanity in our lifetime; but then we find we have hardly
know its sweetness, its loveliness, its dearness. Just as, when
death beautifies the characters of those we love, we feel as if we
had never known them before as they deserved, and as if till
now we never suspected how much we should have to lose in
losing them, so now the beauty of Jesus grows upon us like a
glorious dawn; and, though we have desired him and thirsted
for him all our lives, it is as if we had never known till now
how much we were to gain in gaining him. Words cannot tell
the novelty of Jesus to the dying. The joy of that novelty, what
less can it be than part of the eternal amazement of our happy
souls in heaven?
Then, last of all, there is the joy in death itself, which we
cannot understand, because it is out of sight, an unexperienced
joy. We know it from the dying. Perhaps there is some sweetness
in the act of dying, heretofore unimagined, and coming to it
from the fact that our Blessed Lord has died. Or perhaps it is
a joy to us to find death all so much gentler than we had ex­
pected. Those last words of the great theologian, Suarez, always
touch me deeply, when he looked up at the very last, and said,
as if in some gratified surprise, “I never thought it was so sweet
to die!” We think of those twenty-one closely printed, doublecolumned folios, diffusive, exuberant, and full of unction, filled to
overflowing with deep, and calm, and wise, and many-sided
thoughts of God and of the things of God. But one thought was
not there, that should have been, one of deepest significance to

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men to know, and yet he had not attained thereto,—one thought,
unthought then, but of deeper significance than thousands of
his others which we could ill spare, the one which was to be his
last thought, and the crown of all his thoughts, his mind as he
took the first step into eternity:—"I never thought it was so
sweet to die!”
The poets, then, were not so far wrong in their images of
death. The summer sun shining on those motionless green
billows of the grassy graveyard, the fragrance of the lime-flowers
tranquilly depending in the windless air, the under song of the
bees in the blossoms, the quiet sky overhead so blue, and the
spire pointing its untired finger up to the Throne of God, so
softly curtained in the infinity of that yielding blue,—these out­
ward images were not without their inward truth for those who
die their deaths well by dying them in Christ. Deaths are being
died somewhere every moment. But it is not a melancholy
thought. Every hour—we feel it most at evening—it is like
balm to our spirits to think of the busy benevolence of death,
ending so much pain, crowning so much virtue, swallowing up
so much misery, pacifying so much strife, illuminating so much
darkness, letting so many exiles into their eternal home and
to the land of their Eternal Father! Oh, grave and pleasant
cheer of death! How it softens our hearts, and without pain
kills the spirit of the world within our hearts! It draws us toward
God, filling us with strength, and banishing our fears, and
sanctifying us by the pathos of its sweetness. When we are weary,
and hemmed in by life, close and hot and crowded, when we are
in strife and self-dissatisfied, we have only to look out in our
imagination over wood, and hill, and sunny earth, and star-lit
mountains, and the broad seas whose blue waters are jewelled
with bright islands, and rest ourselves on the sweet thought
of the diligent, ubiquitous benignity of death!

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ON DEATH

III.

Preparation

for

Death

Life, as no one can doubt, is more important than death.
If death lias a great influence on life, the influence of life on
death is still greater. In fact, the work of death can only be
done safely in life. There are exceptions, to show how God can
stretch his mercy, and also to magnify the efficacy of grace. But
as the good life is worth nothing, so far as eternity is concerned,
unless it is crowned by a good death, so a good death, though not
impossible, is the exception where the life has not been good.
Still, though an exception, it is possible, and therefore from one
point of view we may say that death looks more important than
life. Nevertheless it may only be a seeming; for who knows
whether some good thing among much evil, something striven
for and clung to, even where there appeared no signs of strife,
may not be the secret cause of those prodigious interventions of
grace which occur sometimes in the deaths of sinners? Perhaps
also such interventions have never happened to those who pre­
sumed upon them beforehand and deliberately delayed turning
to God through a profane confidence in the graces and oppor­
tunities of death. But the practical truth is that which teaches
us at once the most sober and solemn view of life,—that every
single thing we do is actually making death either harder or
easier.
Death, therefore, is not an isolated action. Time and eternity
are riveted in it. Life is not secured without it. Eternity is
ratified by it. This is obvious; for death is at once a part both of
life and immortality. Yet men often speak as if preparation
for death were a distinct spiritual exercise, and nothing more than
that. They know, of course, that all life is a necessary prepara­
tion for death; but they do not realize it. They answer rightly
when they are questioned; but the truth does not always rest
clearly in their minds. Whether we think of death or whether
we forget it, whether we serve God or neglect him, life, in spite

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of us, is all the while a minute and detailed preparation for death.
It seems almost absurd to dwell upon what is so plain. Neverthe­
less the too exclusive regarding of preparation for death as a
distinct spiritual exercise is productive of much harm.
Whatever habits of thought tend to make death appear a
thing by itself, a detached act, tend also to make strictness of
life seem less needful. Insensibly, even men who are not sinners
come to lay too much stress on death, and to consider it as a
process for straightening crooked lives. They would shrink with
horror from saying that a good death would do instead of a
good life. Yet practically an idea with something of a similar
spirit grows up in their minds, and lowers their standard of
holiness, and lulls their vigilance, and relaxes their concentrated
attention to the details of conscience. The very love of God helps
to deceive them, when they have once thus begun to deceive them­
selves. The immensity of his graces in death, the wonders of his
sacraments, the intervening jurisdiction of his Blessed Mother,
and the authentic conversion of great sinners at that eleventh hour,
throw a glory of its own round death which cannot be denied,
but which, on the contrary, our reverence must sedulously mag­
nify as one of the characteristic abysses of the divine compassion.
Rightly viewed, it is an incentive to greater strictness. Nothing
makes strictness more attractive or more imperative than the
evidences of God’s love. In proportion as we love him, we fear
his justice. In proportion as we love him, we appreciate his
sanctity. But we know that there is no corruption more pesti­
lent than the corruption of that which is most excellent; and thus
it comes to pass that the malice of men has always found in the
greatness of God’s love a motive for presumption. But is the
love less true? Or is it meant that we are to shut our eyes to it?
Or are we to become unreal, and put away from our practice
doctrines which belong to the theory of the faith? Is not all
doctrine practical? Is it not the first use of dogmatic theology
to be the basis of sanctity, while controversy is but its fiftieth
or its hundredth use? He who separates dogmatics from ascetics
seems to assert this proposition, The knowledge of God and of

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Jesus Christ was not meant primarily to make us holy,—or
this other maxim, that holiness has no necessary dependence upon
orthodoxy. While, therefore, we urge upon men the influence of
life on death, we must not go too far, nor put out of view
those signal graces by which God appears sometimes to contradict
our teaching. As I said before, rightly viewed, they are incentives
to strictness, not pretexts for presumption. There may be excuses
for inadvertent souls, of which in our narrowness we have no
idea, and to them the extraordinary graces of death may come.
But we are in the light of the Holy Ghost, under the empire of
grace, with a conscious inward life, and more or less of sweet
experience of God: what have we to do with those strange
awakening graces at the last? They will cheer us in our present
penances, but they will throw no soft, hopeful shadows over
our present negligence.
All life, then, is a preparation for death, whether we think
of it or not, quite independently of any intention of our own,—
a preparation as ceaseless and inevitable as the currents of thoughts,
speech, and action, which, noisily or silently, are flowing from
us at all hours. There are thus three kinds of preparation for
death. The first is the entire series of life, which is actually and
efficaciously preparing for us, according to common rules, the
sort of death we are to die. Every thing we do will turn round and
face us at the last, as well as follow us over the grave to judg­
ment. Of this preparation we have said enough. The second is
the conscious and intentional fashioning of our lives generally,
with a view to death, with a deliberate reference to its last end;
and the third is what we may call the special preparation for
death, consisting of particular spiritual exercises, retreats, and
penances, which have death for their exclusive object. Something
more remains to be said of the second, or general, preparation
for death, before we can consider the third or special preparation.
It is the way of worldly people to make too little of death.
The bravery of life seems to them a nobler thing. It is a greater
power; and power is the object of their admiration. It is the
genius of literature to abhor the imagery of death. The thought

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of death tends to make men timorous, and selfish, and little.
There is an amount of truth in all this. There is a certain want of
grandeur in religious details. Spirituality keeps us sorely down
among our corruptions. A positive precept seldom has an im­
posing aspect, and obedience to it will often look trivial and
unworthy. Nevertheless preparation for death can hardly avoid
being one of the occupations of life, and an occupation stretching
over a great deal of its surface. Death is an unknown act.
It happens only once. It is inevitable and necessary. There is a
universal uncertainty in every thing connected with it. Yet
every thing is infallibly fixed by it to all eternity. These are
the commonplaces of death; and every one of them is a sufficiently
cogent argument for the wisdom of making all life a general
preparation for death. It is plain our preparation must be
general as well as special, remote as well as proximate. To make
all life a special and proximate preparation for death would
in most cases be not only unpractical, but incompatible with the
highest purposes of life. Yet a conscious general preparation
should be lifelong and unintermitting.
There are degrees in this general preparation. In some souls
it occupies more room than in others. This may depend upon
natural disposition, or it may depend upon a peculiar attraction
of grace, or it may depend upon the degree to which Providence
has encompassed our lot in life with unbroken or successive
sorrows. Certainly with some this lifelong preparation for death
becomes the peculiar form of their whole spiritual life. When
this arises either from natural character or from besetting sorrow,
it ought to be altogether disallowed. It is not an authentic
spirituality. It plays into the hands of sentimentality. It de­
generates into mere moody, luxurious, self-indulgent dramatizing
of what is far too serious to be played with as a depth of feeling
or an interesting pathos. There are very few to whom such a form
of devotion is at all suitable; and while the characteristic of it.
where it is the instinct of grace, is its safety, on the other hand
its peculiarity, as a growth of disposition or a consequence of
sorrow, is precisely its unsafeness. No one, therefore, must choose

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it for himself as the one form of his whole spiritual life. When
self-chosen, it is most likely to prove a delusion leading to laxity
by unmanning us for all real penance. There is no vigor in
uncheerful penance, no cheerfulness in penances which nature
seeks, and no penance at all in the indulgence of heaviness and
gloom.
But there are some whom the Holy Ghost seems to call to this
manner of the spiritual life. They are mostly souls of a grave
cheerfulness, often with a natural turn for humor, and distin­
guished by active habits rather than contemplative. The spirit
which is formed in them leads them to rest long—often for
their whole lives—in the exercises of the purgative way, even
when the deepest part of their soul is in the unitive. It is per­
haps this tendency which makes such a form of spirituality so
peculiarly safe, and as exempt as any fashion of spirituality can
be from the entanglements and mockeries of delusion. It leads
men also to make much of faith, of the gift of faith, and of the
common things of the faith. This is not only another source of
safety, but it also forms in us a childlike spirit, which is an earnest
of many graces, of the higher as well as of the lowlier sort. Finally,
this method of spirituality causes us peculiarly to cultivate the
fear of God, and to find large room and free space for our souls
in the exercise of the examination of conscience. For examination
of conscience where it ministers to liberty of spirit, which it is far
from doing in all cases, is one of those compendious spiritual
exercises which of itself can make saints. There is plainly a
gravity, a solidity, a security, about this form of the spiritual life,
which is much to be admired. Nevertheless we must remember
that all this is only true of it when it is a genuine attraction
of grace, a vocation and not a choice.
We shall best understand in what particulars the general
preparation for death consists, by drawing a picture of the kind
of life which usually meets its punishment upon the death-bed
and in the penal regions beyond. We need not speak of a life
of open sin, whether of rebellion against God, or of worldly
inadvertence of him. Such a life speaks for itself, tells its own

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tale, explains itself, and is intelligible at first sight. We will take
a life which is a very ordinary type, a life of considerable efforts
after good, of decent fréquentation of the sacraments, of an
unevenly conscientious discharge of relative duties, of very rare
mortal sin, and of a struggle to keep in a state of grace which,
if not unremitting, is at least the rule rather than the exception.
We may hope that such a life will end in salvation. We cannot
do more than hope, but we have great grounds for hope. This
life must be our lowest type. But there are other types which
improve upon this, some more and some less; and all these we
may include in our description. Now, there are sundry features
in these lives which are visible foreshadowings of trouble at
the last, of disconsolate death-beds. In truth, we the survivors
should have need to be disconsolate if such lives ended without
trouble or issued in undoubting calm, and still more if they
ended in triumphant assurance. Each of the lives will not present
all the aspects: it is enough if it has some one or more of them.
The first thing we observe in such men is their lukewarm­
ness. Lukewarmness is a thing which has many degrees, ranging
from nearly hot to nearly cold; and the men we are speaking of
are generally in some one of these intermediate degrees. They
have their seasons of fervor. Who has not? But their own
acknowledgment about themselves is, that, as a rule, they are
tepid, below the mark in devotion and practice, more or less
annoyed by religion, making themselves much at home in the
world, and feeling, in spite of a higher feeling, that, after all,
supernatural things are but an inevitable intrusion. These
feelings do not in themselves constitute lukewarmness; but they
do constitute it when unresisted and unfought against. It is not,
however, necessary to be at our ease under them in order to be
lukewarm: it is sufficient that we succumb, however uneasily,
and succumb for some considerable length of time. Uneasiness
is no consoling proof that we are not really lukewarm. Then,
again, such men are careless with the sacraments. They make but
a perfunctory preparation for confession. Their examination of
conscience is hardly adequate, and. which is a more serious

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matter, they take but little pains with their sorrow, and less with
their purpose of amendment. Sorrow for venial sins requires
a good deal of looking after. Besides this, they make little, if any,
preparation for communion, and that little is of a formal and
spiritless kind; and the character of the thanksgiving is the same
as that of the preparation.
Furthermore, these men are much given to wasting time. Wast­
ing time is the fault of almost numberless varieties of lives. Nearly
every man has his own way of wasting time. Idling, dawdling,
frittering, gossiping, dreaming, procrastinating, sleeping, recreat­
ing, playing with our work, trivial activity, these are only some
of the commoner forms of wasting time. Yet wasted time is a
vengeful thing, and stings terribly at the last. It diminishes the
chances of a successful end. The less criminal forms of worldliness
find acceptance also in the lives we are considering; and worldli­
ness is at the least spirit-wasting in the forms in which it is
most innocent, if indeed in any form it be innocent at all.
Changeableness in devotions, and a general want of system in the
spiritual life, is another characteristic of these lives. Many things
may be said of this; but it is only our business now to enumerate
it as one of the things which strew death-beds with thorns.
Selfishness, and want of alms-giving, and that common fault
of self-willed eccentricity in alms giving, these also disquiet men
at last, disquiet them when they are almost sickening with the
desire of peace. Last of all, there is a want of penance in such
lives, which is laying up terrible things for the end. Some time or
other penance will find us out. He is truly an unhappy man
whom it finds out for the first time at the last. Under the head
of penance we should specially include the keen appreciation
and habitual indulgence in very little bodily comforts, the
having many things in the day which are half necessary to us
and the absence of which ruffles and deranges us. He that is a
slave to liliputian comforts will find a giant behind the curtains
of his death-bed who is not unlikely to strangle him in the weak­
ness of that hour of retribution.
Now, a life the opposite to all this is what may be termed a life

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of general preparation for death, a life which has avoided on
the whole these seven things,—lukewarmness, careless sacraments,
waste of time, worldliness, changeableness in devotions, selfish
scantiness of alms giving, and want of penance. These are the
seven prophecies of unquiet and distressing deaths, deaths that
may end well, but deaths that run fearful risks in coming to
their end. To hang the whole weight of our eternity over the
precipice of death is not courage: it is madness.
If the material world is beautiful for its wisdom and its
power, the spiritual world is yet more beautiful for its mercy
and its compassion. But there are some mysteries which are ap­
parently exceptions to this rule of predominant mercy, mysteries
of vindictive justice, not the less full of the shining of the Divine
Perfections, but which we cannot admire with the same peace,
because they overawe our souls. To feed undismayed upon the
beauty of God's justice is a bliss reserved for another state. Our
fear for ourselves and our love for others alike impede the full
course of that heavenly joy in our present condition. Yet we
must not omit to study these mysteries of justice merely because
they are so full of doubt and fear. In truth, the fear of God
can be seldom abused so as to do us grievous harm, and almost
all of us stand more in need of fear than of love, though our
need of both of them is sadly great. We shall be least secure
against these visitations happening to ourselves if we wilfully
refuse to contemplate them. The terrible mystery at which I
am now hinting is the bad deaths of those who have once been
good, and good for the greater part of their lives, sometimes
good almost up to the end. Theophilus Raynaudus has a treatise
in his works with the hideous title of "A bad death after a good
life.” It proves to be a commentary on the history of Judas.
Now, this is a phenomenon in the science of death which we
must need consider. Mercy has its good deaths after bad lives,
its death-bed repentances, its snatching of great sinners out of
the very jaws of the fire, those sudden and to our eyes capricious
interventions of grace which seem to encourage the presumption
of inconsiderate beholders, but which, to the eye of reverent

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faith, one while magnify the sovereignly of grace, another while
illustrate the empire of the Mother of God, another while il­
luminate the grandeur of the gift of faith, or yet another while
light up as by a flash the incredible abysses of the divine com­
passion and predestination. So in like manner the jealousy of
God, the sharpness of his vindictive justice, have these bad deaths
which follow lives of so much good. We must now inquire into
these terrific manifestations.
First of all, it is obvious to remark that these lives have
been seemingly good rather than really good. Judas, they say,
had a secret fault corroding all his life, and this is a sufficient
explanation of his awful fall. I fear the matter is not so easily
settled as this. No one surely can doubt of Judas having had
a true vocation to the apostleship, considering that our Lord
himself called him and conferred that office upon him. Yet it
was a dignity and a grace unequalled, except by the Divine
Maternity, the wardenship of St. Joseph, and perhaps the office
of the Precursor. What gifts and virtues, what inward beauties
and rare heroisms, are not implied in this vocation to be one of
the Incarnate Word’s selected twelvel Yet how terrible the endl
Again, it may be urged that this is only saying that a good life
without perseverance is unavailing. Only saying! But, alas! how
many say this, and do not realize the tremendous doctrine it
contains! A man may give up all that is bright and attractive
in the world. He may wed himself to the almost insufferably
dull work of the priesthood, a work of unintermitting toil, of
predominating failure, of unthanked weariness, of responsibili­
ties so many and so hard that they are forever accumulating
sin, and full of possibilities and occasions of falling from which
he would otherwise have been free. He may persevere in this
course blamelessly—mark the word, blamelessly—for fifty years,
the jubilee of his priesthood; and then he may fall, and death
leap out of its ambush upon him while he is fallen, and, behold!
he is the hopeless victim of eternal ruin. We need not say more
of this than that it is a theological possibility. It is enough that
it is so much as that. Certain appalling revelations of the saints

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make it more than this. They give names and dates, and speak
o£ facts; and their look of authenticity is intolerable. It is more
than curious, too, that intellectual wisdom should have been
the distinguishing gift of some of those examples, which history
puts before us, of deaths that look so nearly hopeless that we
cannot think of them without dismay. Witness Solomon, Tertullian, Origen, and Hosius, those startling monuments which
mercy has bidden justice raise in sight of the wayfarers of the
earth. It may also be said, and we cling to the thought, that
sometimes these deaths are temporal and not eternal punish­
ments, as with the man of God in the Old Testament, whom
the lion devoured. There are some probabilities, and an asserted
vision, of Solomon’s salvation; and Benedict XIV. tells us that
no one’s perdition seems undeniably predicted in Scripture, so
as to come near being a matter of faith, except that of Saul.
Nevertheless, when we have made the best of it, what remains
is horrible enough. The mere fact that such deaths are theo­
logical possibilities, that it does not belong, as far as we can see,
to the providence of God to hinder them, and that the saints
speak of such deaths as having actually happened, is full of teach­
ing which we had better learn. Our eternity depends on the
state in which we are when we die. Thus, the words are great
words to say, a bad life with a good death is secure, while a
good life with a bad death is perdition. The hour of death, its
time, manner, and circumstances, form one of the most, per­
haps positively the most, decisive of God's providences upon us.
I should not have dared to say this, were I not confident that
in what has gone before I have guarded against the possibility
of false consequences being deduced from it. We can hardly
conceive that these bad deaths after good lives are common;
but we are left in uneasy ignorance as to how common they
may be. It is true we knew beforehand that we were to pass
the time of our sojourning here in fear. It is true we know that
such a death must be altogether our own fault in not corre­
sponding to grace. Every man has far more—not only more,
but far more—grace given him than is enough to save him.

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Nevertheless a fearful mystery is involved in so dire a dispensa­
tion, whichever of the three classes of persons to whom it may
happen we regard. Look at men who have been really mortified
and good for years, and have not persevered, or at men who
have been under delusions all along, and have come at last not
to be able to distinguish between delusions and the truth, or
again at men who have begun well, and who have not more
than an unquiet suspicion that they have got into a rut of slovenli­
ness, of tepidity, of formal sacraments, of infrequent prayer, and
of taking liberties with God; and, lol they have not strength to
fight through the last hours, and to hold on to the edge of heaven,
but fall fluttering into the sheer abyss. We live in a world which
has such things among its phenomena. Surely we are fools if
our lives are not such as to take these things into account.
But these awful visitations have their roots and origin in our
own conduct. What has been described above as general prepara­
tion for death would infallibly secure us against them. If we
could be allowed to sec one of these startling deaths with all its
antecedents laid bare, so that we might trace its fibres and rami­
fications, we should see how one of them began on one day under
certain circumstances, and another on another day at such-andsuch a place and in the company of such-and-such a friend. These
were little, indistinguishable beginnings, thread-like, feeble,
turned aside by the least obstacle, which an ejaculation would
have withered or an absolution snapped; and, beholdl now they
are huge roots of death! They were not watched; they were not
checked. Here is a carelessness about little things which began
one summer holyday years ago. Here is an interruption of exam­
ination of conscience which took place in an illness, and the
practice was not resumed afterward, and hence a want of selfknowledge. Here we came out of a trial, and brought with us a
shadow of a spirit of self-trust, and it has waxed to something
colossal, something like the sin of Lucifer. There was an en­
joyable time at the seaside with a large circle of free conver­
sation, and there we slipped into a habit of criticizing others,
and hence these mortal sins against charity. It often struck us,

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as we read books, to pray especially for the gift of final persever­
ance. But we never did so. How were we to know that that
transient thought was an angel’s bidding, or a pleading of the
Holy Ghost? Yet who can tell the irreverence of making sure
of one of God's greatest gifts without so much as taking the trouble
specially to ask for it? We have been fostering some secret fault,
like Judas. But its beginnings were in an unworthiness which
was hardly sin. We knew we had better not do it, and we did it.
How few persons think themselves at all covetous! Yet surely
more than half of those who live in the world have some tendrils
of that subtle idolatry twining round their hearts. It is one of
those vices of which the unlikeliest-looking souls are often the like­
liest to be guilty. Insensibly we have acquired the habit of taking
our own advice and acting on our own opinion. Who could have
believed that the things should have come of it which have
come of it? We have thought—alas! how many rich people seem
to think so—that alms giving was a counsel, and not a precept;
and mercy now is absent from the last end of those from whose
lives works of mercy have been absent. Who thinks himself a
hypocrite? Surely we have not been hypocrites. Yet all through
life we have been deficient in thorough sincerity with Cod.
So the divine mercy is wandering somewhere over the earth,
or is perhaps lingering somewhere with the head of some dying
lifelong sinner in its lap, and is not here, where we are dying:
indeed, it is almost everywhere but here,—ubiquitous, yet not
including in its ubiquity the death-chamber of us who once
served God, who once had spiritual sweetnesses, who once were
encompassed with the softly-glowing signs of predestination, and
who now are dying, and are going whither we have unfortunately
made too sure that we could never go! From all this, general
preparation for death would have saved us. Light is a responsi­
bility. The brighter our light, the deeper is the darkness which
our light will make if we turn it into darkness. It is the old.
the simple, and the sufficient truth,—if we do not take pains,
and great pains, and persevering pains, there will be cruel dark­
ness round us in the hour when we shall most need light.

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We have still to consider what is called special preparation
for death. This is one of the most satisfactory predictions of
final perseverance, and has always entered deeply into the spir­
itual life of holy men. This special preparation consists of a
variety of pious exercises having a direct reference to death
and to the obtaining the grace of dying holily. First of all, it
is obvious that this must be the subject of special prayer. There
are few prayers which may be unconditional. St. Philip used
to say there was only one prayer that he always made without
any condition: it was that unborn children might live to come
to the grace of baptism. In like manner we may pray uncondi­
tionally to die in the faith and fear of God. We may do so,
because death is so great an act, because it is certain to be
God's will it should be well done, and because the Church
teaches us so to do. Every Hail Mary contains a prayer for a
good death, and among other things included in the final
petition of our Lord's Prayer, who can doubt but that a good
death is not among the least significant? It would not be hard
to show that each separate petition of the Our Father is in itself
a prayer for a holy death. If final perseverance is a grace apart,
and not merely the last link of a chain, which happens to come
last in order of time, and if it is a grace we cannot merit, it must
necessarily be part of the fear of God to make such perseverance
the subject of daily and special prayer.
There are also certain outward practices, which saintly men
have been in the habit of using for this end. Among these we
may enumerate some act or ejaculation on lying down to rest,
which is the daily similitude of death, formal acts of acceptance
of death as a divine penance, made from time to time, medita­
tion on the Four Last Things, and an occasional day’s retreat
for this express purpose. One of these practices I would venture
emphatically to recommend. It is the frequent repetition of
the Acts of the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity,
with great attention paid to the exciting of the requisite interior
dispositions along with the orthodox form of words. To these
should be added Acts of contrition. We are apt to acquit our­

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selves with a sort of facile formality of that which we do so
often that it comes to be almost mechanically done. This is the
chief difficulty in saying the Divine Office. Portions of it slip
off our tongues more swiftly almost than thought, so that it
speeds away like the unnoticed sand in the hour glass, less under
our control than we should wish it to be. These acts of faith,
hope, charity, and contrition have visibly a special power at death.
To one used to them in life, and not used to them as a mere
fragment of catechism, they are next door to priest and sacra­
ments. If we trust to them as mere fractions of catechism, they
will be worse than unhelpful. The thing to be aimed at is the
habitual advertence to the interior dispositions at the time we
pronounce the words.
There are some practices mentioned in spiritual books which
at the least cannot be universally or indiscriminately recom­
mended. They are such as these: laying ourselves out in bed
like corpses for a few moments, assisting in spirit at our own
funeral, going mentally through the ceremony of our own Ex­
treme Unction. Souls are so very different, that we can never
say of any thing which a good man has recommended that it
will not be good for other souls. We cannot too often remember
that the only approach to a general rule in spiritual direction is,
that there is no general rule in the matter. Rules which seem
the most general are no more than approximations. But, I con­
fess, my instincts are against these dramatic representations. I
should be so afraid of their turning into sentimentality, and of
men being made unreal by thus playing at death. Death surely
has empire enough over the imagination. It is something else
than the imagination which needs kindling, in connection with
that dread mystery. I say this diffidently: for Bellecius strongly
recommends some practices of this kind. For myself, I found
that they distracted me from the thought of God, and did not
make me serious. Yet Bellecius is especially a solid writer.
We considered, at the beginning of this Conference, that form
of the spiritual life which resolves itself wholly into preparation
for death. There is something akin to this in special preparation

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for death. Besides formai practices for this end, we may dwell
upon certain parts of the spiritual life, and give them a certain
degree of prominence, with a particular reference to death. But
these things neither occupy the whole breadth of our spirituality,
nor are unintermitting exercises. We allow a special reference to
death to impart certain characteristics to our spirituality. One
of these is that recommended in Scripture,—to be always afraid
of forgiven sin. This gives a great solidity to virtue. Abiding
sorrow for sin is one of the safest grandeurs of holy souls. A
single caution may be required. This sorrow should be for the
most part general, not too much descending into particulars,
for fear of scruples which always make the will languid. There
is something very satisfactory about a soul which is characterized
by this fear of forgiven sin. Another interior practice is, making
death a light to live by, or, in other words, doing every thing
as we shall wish to have done it when we come to die. This
exercises a salutary influence over our examinations of conscience
and our preparations for confession. We perform these duties
each time as if it was to be the last time. Things done in that
spirit are for the most part done well. In like manner other
parts of the spiritual life may be made to bear especially on
death. The rule to be observed is briefly this,—to dwell on
whatever leads us to make less of the physical terror of dying,
and more of whatever renders death transparent and shows us
God beyond. We may lawfully be afraid to die because it is a
punishment: but it would be better if we could fear it exclusively
as settling forever our relationship to God.
Then, again, there are certain things which it is devout to
do for a hundred other reasons, but which have a special virtue
with regard to death. In proportion as we fear death, we shall
naturally lay stress on these things and give them a prominence
in our practice. For instance, it is obvious that charity to the
dying, praying daily for those who are in their agony all the
world over, and performing personal works of mercy to them
when it is in our power, are special preparations for our own
death. Blessings beget their own kind of blessings. In natural

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things one kindness brings a like kindness. Still more in divine
things do blessings rove the world in groups and families, making
much of their own kindred. The same may be said of charity to
the souls in purgatory, especially by self-sacrificing generosity in
the matter of Indulgences. There is something in both these
devotions which is congenial to a happy and a holy death.
Lastly, there are two things which are still more special in
the way of preparation for death. The first is an habitual looking
to the Most Holy Mother of God as having a very peculiar and
distinct jurisdiction over death-beds. The Church points this
out to us again and again, in hymns and antiphons, as well
as in the Hail Mary. The revelations of the saints, the teaching
of devotional writers, and the universal sense of the faithful,
unite in proclaiming the power which God has given her in this
particular respect. Some have spoken of it as the reward which
Jesus has bestowed upon her for her heroic presence with her
broken heart on Calvary. Others have said that it belonged to
her as queen of mercy, because the hour of death is so wonder­
fully mercy’s hour. All agree that death-beds form a department
of the Church—if we may speak so familiarly—which belongs
to her officially. We should therefore be out of harmony with
the Church if this consideration did not practically enter into
our devotion to our Blessed Lady. The experience of all who
grow in holiness is that they grow also in tenderest devotion and
deepest reverence for our Blessed Mother. We are always learning
her anew, and so beginning to love her as if what we had felt
for her before was hardly worthy of the name of love. As the
rest of our devotion to her grows, so also must our dependence
on her aid in our last hour grow within our hearts. We shall
pray to her more fervently about it. We shall make compacts
with her, to which we shall assume her consent, that either by
herself or by her angels she will fortify us by her presence at that
dread moment. We shall intrust our fears to her, and leave to
the management of her maternal solicitude every one of those
circumstances of death, the very least detail of which is to us of
such surpassing interest.

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The second thing I alluded to is perpetual thanksgiving for
the death of Christ. All holy deaths come out of his. If he had
not died, how should we dare to die? He is the Creator. He
invented the punishment of death. He also must suffer it. It
was his own law of love. He has enlarged the gates of death
and hung lamps over them. It is strange how the elder saints
dared to die. No wonder they speak of it so awfully, as if it led
into such terrible darkness, and looked like an end of all things,
almost like an extinguishing of immortality. Great was their
faith, these old patriarchs, kings, and prophets. But how different
is death to us! Christ has died. A new creation were surely a
less change. As death was the peculiar punishment invented by
God for sin, so was the death of our Lord—precisely his death,
and nothing else—the peculiar price exacted by the Father for
the redemption of the world. Thus the death of Jesus is the
life of every one of us. We live because he died. How marked
a feature, then, in all our prayer must be thanksgiving for the
death of Christi It must be, if such a thing could be, the uni­
versal special devotion of all Christians. Moreover, it was by
his death that we succeeded to his Mother, as our inheritance.
Thus the death of Jesus is entwined with our deaths. Thanks­
giving for his death is the best prayer for our own. As the Father
fixed precisely on his death as the price of our salvation, so must
our devotion fix precisely on his death as the object of our love
and praise.
We have said enough of preparation for death. Men’s faces
looking into a sunset are golden: so are our lives when they
look always into the countenance of coming death.

ON DEATH
IV.

A Death Precious in the Sight

of

God

The union of fear and desire is a beautiful worship, modestly
befitting the creature, and reaching with venturous reverence to
the perfections of the Most High. To have no fear of God is

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to be not only without love of him, but without knowledge of
him also. To be without the desire of God would be almost worse
than to rise against him through despair of reaching him. as
the reprobate do in their hopeless land. God is jealous of this
desire. We read of a very holy Jesuit, that he revealed to his
companions that he had been detained for some time in purga­
tory because in his death the desire of God had not been suffi­
ciently prominent. In the fourth book of St. Bridget's Revela­
tions she mentions that she was shown a third region of purgatory,
where there was no pain of sense, but only the pain of loss; and
she was told that souls were imprisoned there who in lifetime
had not had an ardent desire of God. In the same book she
also tells us that, when she was praying for the soul of a certain
hermit who had recently died, our Blessed Lady appeared to
her, and told her that he would have entered heaven immedi­
ately if he had not been wanting in the vehemence of his desire
of God. St. Mechtildis, in the fifth book of her Spiritual Grace,
speaks of the same region of purgatory, where there is only the
pain of loss, the pain arising, as a soul detained there described
it to her, from the very burning of that intolerable desire which
had been so cold and remiss in life. This union therefore of fear
and desire is especially to be looked for in the matter of death.
Not to fear death is a slight to him who made it our special
punishment. Not to desire death is an indifference to him
whom we can only reach by passing through it.
There are some who are haunted by a fear of death. Its physi­
cal horrors are continually before them. They dread the pain.
They shrink from the darkness. This fear rises at times almost
to a panic. It has often had its rise in some circumstance of
early life, or in some defect of early teaching. It is sometimes the
result of morbid nervousness. But this is not the fear of death
to be cultivated. No good comes of it. To be scared is not to
be afraid with any reasonable or fruitful fear. No fear is a godly
fear which fastens so intensely on the physical pains of death.
Then there is another fear of death, which belongs to those
who are not right with God, and who are procrastinating, if not

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their repentance, at least their fervor,—as if there were, or could
be, such a thing as procrastinated fervor! It is not the bodily
pains of death which frighten these men. It is the uncertain
issue. It is the being reluctantly dragged up to the settlement of
a question which it is the crying sin of their lives to leave un­
settled. The theology of death is all a blind mist to them. They
can see nothing more than that it is a dark leap into the awful
unknown, the outer chaos which to men who do not meditate
seems to girdle the world of matter and sense. Plainly, there
can be no sanctification in such a fear as this. The fear of death
which is desirable, the fear of it which is almost indispensable to
holiness, is rather the fear of God than the fear of death, the fear
of God localized as in a shrine, determined to a particular time,
as if it were a ritual in which he would make some dread but
gracious manifestation of himself. This fear is full of grace,
and is hardly capable of excess. This is what we are to aim at.
This is the fear which glorifies death-beds, the beginning of
that ecstatic fear which makes the angels tremble so blissfully
before the Throne.
But there is an ordinary, natural, simple-hearted, Christian
fear of death, which is lower than this, and is not only blame­
less, but full of materials for good. Sober piety cannot be without
this fear. The old must fear death, because it is so near. Its
shadow is already on them, and they shiver because the sunshine
is intercepted. The expectation even of a coming good becomes
a painful fear when the event is close at hand. The young fear
death, because preparation for it is so uncongenial to their
habits of thought and time of life. They dwell in brightness,
and they have not proved yet how thin and wan a shining earthly
brightness is. Experience has not told them yet how really
autumnal is the very spring of youth. The sinner fears death,
because his penance is not done yet; and the preacher only irri­
tates him when he says that the longer death is delayed the less
likely is he to die repentant. The lukewarm fear death with an
instinctive, almost prophetic, fear, both because to them the act
itself is so often terrible and doubly penal, and because such

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souls so easily make final shipwreck there. The good fear it,
because the risk is so much the more anxious now that the prize
seems the more possible. We strain hardest for things which
are almost but not quite within our reach. Moreover, humility
always calculates against itself, and therefore a slight exaggera­
tion in the fear of death is almost a feature in true devotion.
Some men do not fear death, some even of good men, of men
more than good, coming near to the saintly. Such a disposition
may be a work of grace. Grace is many-sided, and works by means
of opposites with astonishing facility. Yet this absence of the
fear of death is extremely undesirable, and greatly to be sus­
pected. It is not unlikely to be a delusion; and if it is a delu­
sion, it is one of peculiar danger. This fearlessness can only be
safe when it belongs to great heights of sanctity. We should
pray hard not to be of those who do not fear death; for such
souls, with common attainments, are not easy to be saved.
But from the fear of death let us turn to the desire of it.
What we have said of the fear of death we may say also of the
desire of death, only we should say it still more emphatically,
that the desire which is part of holiness must be rather a desire
of God than a desire of death. World-weariness is a blessed thing
in its way, but it falls short of being a grace. To be weary of
the world is very far from being detached from it. I am not
sure that there is not a weariness of the world which is itself a
form of worldliness. World-wearied men often think and speak
of death in a poetical, voluptuous way, which is most ungodly.
They talk as if the turf of the churchyard were a bed of down,
as if the grassy ridge were a pillow on which to lay our tired
heads and slumber, and as if the grave were a cradle in which
we should be rocked to sleep as the earth swayed, and so voyage
unconsciously through space, like a sleeping child in a ship
at sea. None but atheists could speak thus of death, if those who
so speak really weighed their words. Such men habitually regird
death as an end, and not as a beginning. It has been observed
of intellectual men, that such talking of death is often a symp­
tom of incipient mental aberration. It is certainly true that happy

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men more often desire death than unhappy men, and desire it
more strongly, and that their desire is more truthful and more
holy. An unhappy man desires death rather than God. He de­
sires it with a kind of heathen despondency. He quotes the
Odyssey and the Æneid. The pathetic imagery of those poems
is more congenial to him than the straightforward realities of
Christian theology. He fixes his eye morbidly on death; but he
is anxious it should not look over death and beyond it. Whereas
a happy, light-hearted, sunny-spirited Christian man, who has
no quarrel with life except its possibilities of sinning, somehow
feels its burden more than the unhappy man, who clings to life
with a sort of morose, sulky enjoyment. Yet, while the happy
man feels its burden, his happiness inclines him to be eager
for beginnings rather than to be impatient for conclusions. Thus
death is to him less the end of life than the beginning of eternity.
He desires God rather than death; for it is the gift of a joyous
heart to find short ways to God from the most unlikely places.
The desire of death, then, may be a great grace, and imply
very much. But it must be when the soul is really athirst for
God, and only looks wistfully at death as the portal it must
pass to reach him,—just as an impatient traveller sees nothing
but the mountain-pass or the harbor-mouth. Yet this desire may
also be a delusion, and often is so. In those who are actually dying,
it may be a physical effect of exaltation from drugs, or a kind of
inebriety of fear. In these cases we do not like to see it in those
we love; but fortunately it has not much of a moral character
about it. It is rather one of the dishonors of our flesh, one of
those indignities of dying from which so few death-beds are en­
tirely free. In the case of the living, the best test of the desire
of death is the one already given,—namely, whether it is rather
God than death that we desire. At the same time, it is perfectly
lawful to desire freedom from pain, to sigh for rest, to long
for deliverance from cares and responsibilities, to be weary of
sorrow and weary of endurance, and, above all these things, to
yearn for the inability to sin. But then these wishes must not
be all, nor by themselves. They must coexist with the desire of

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God, and that desire must be sovereign and predominant. Of
course it were better if God alone were our desire. This is what
we must covet; but we are speaking now of what is safe and
lawful. One remark, however, applies to all desire of death: it
must be invariably mixed with fear. A moment will come, and it
oftenest comes some time before death itself, when, if the desire
has been from God, he will himself withdraw the fear. Men do
not often seem to be afraid in the very act of dying. Either there
is an unexpected facility in dying, or a peculiar grace. Fear leaves
even the most timorous before the moment comes in which they
have most to fear. These, then, are two gifts which we should
long for,—the fear of death and the desire of death. It is not likely
they should ever be equally balanced in any soul; but for my
own part, calculating all things, I would rather the fear should
predominate over the desire. Perhaps the two dispositions have
their appointed hours, and it may be that die one flows when
the other ebbs. If it is so, we may be sure that the high-tide of
our desire is fixed by the high-tide of our fear. He will desire
most who has feared most. Of all saving things, fear, if it is not
the most fertile, is at least the most undeluding.
Assuming, then, that we have rightly and safely both feared
death and desired it, let us next consider what we look like
when we are dying. What are the phenomena which we exhibit
to the eye of God, as well as to those who are mourning round
us? It is plain that God sees much more than men see, much
more than we ourselves are conscious of; and this last is far more
than men see. It appears to be one of the trials of the dying
that they cannot make themselves understood. In death, as at
other times, the penetration of God is, on the whole, in our favor.
He sees our evil as men cannot see it; but then he sees also
the infirmities of a created nature as creatures themselves can
never see it. He perceives extenuations where men either per­
ceive them not or mistake them for aggravating circumstances.
On the whole, therefore, God’s knowledge is on our side; and
the purblind unkindness of our fellowmen presides over a less
gentle tribunal than the spotlessness of his unspeakable sanctity.

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His very justice is largesse compared with the sympathy of men.
His love would be straightened in the widest allowances of their
charily. For the present, then, we would rather think of what
men see in us when we are dying, than of what God sees. What
do we look like to men when we are dying?
It is hard to lay down general rules in a matter wherein
there is so much diversity. Some men look like their old selves,
some as if they had got a new self. Some deaths are touching,
because they are so simply what we should have expected before­
hand. Others are startling, because they are such amazing revela­
tions. Most frequently men look new in dying. Death discloses
whole regions of unexplored character. Life has not at all drawn
us out as it might have done. We all go to our graves unknown,
worlds of unsuspected greatness. In truth, life is but a momen­
tary manifestation of us. The longest life is too narrow for our
breadth. We are capable of a thousand positions, and life has
only placed us in two or three. Our probation is but a specimen,
a sort of matriculation-trial for the career of eternity. We divine
from it, rather than judge by it. It is thus that the dying so
often surprise their friends, and leave them in as much amaze­
ment as if they had seen a visible glory round their brows. Some
men, like the dolphin, only show their brightest tints in the act
of dying. These are close characters, deep hearts, but niggardly
in outward demonstrations, men whom few have loved, and who
have not been valued rightly even by those who valued them.
Some men die grandly who have lived pusillanimously. Others
live hiddenly and only publish themselves in death. Others have
been dark all their lives, begin to grow luminous as they die,
and die at the moment when a whole universe of light seems
on the point of bursting from them. In truth, it does burst, but
on the other side, mingling its light with the splendors of eter­
nity. St. Philip tells us how astonished he was more than once
with the majesty of a freshly-imprisoned soul.
Sometimes childhood returns in death, both with its evil
and its good. Old habits revive, habits that had been overlaid
by the contrary habits of long years, or which grace seemed

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to have extinguished. Now, which habits shah have possession
of the man as he steps into eternity?—the more natural habits of
earlier life, or the painfully-acquired habits of more careful years?
It seems as if it were a problem. Surely it cannot be so in
reality. There is also a strange, acute working up of the guilt
of youth, as if faults had never been repented of, or as if absolu­
tions did not penetrate much below the surface. Sorrow does
not give us either the free time or the disengaged attention to
study the matter; else we might learn wonderful things about
the soul from the phenomena of death-beds. Even the possibilities
of our characters seem at times to unfold themselves before us
when we die. Our capabilities of evil assume fearful shapes, fear­
fully definite, and overwhelm the soul with hideous visions. It
is as if our conscious life went deeper down into our souls than
it had ever done before, as if death were hunting it from earth
over chasms and into caves, and all at once it faces some hith­
erto unsuspected possibility of uncommitted sin,—like coming
suddenly on a precipice and looking over when we have lost our
way among the mountains in the night. But so it is, that in one
way or another death exposes the barrenness of some natures and
the richness of others; and this last is more particularly the case
with women. Perhaps, upon the whole, feminine character is
more undeveloped in life than the masculine.
But there is one phenomenon of the death-bed which deserves
particular attention, both because, in appearance at least, it is
so common, and also because it is so distressing to the witnesses.
I allude to that half-conscious stupidity, which is so often drawn
like a veil around the faculties of the dying. Who has not seen it?
Who has not chafed in its presence, when it dared to cling like
some dishonorable cloud round the noble spirits of those we
loved, whose mountain-heights deserved to shine calm, erect,
and clear in the glory of the setting sun? Yet much of this
may be only seeming, like the processes of thought in a drowning
man, so vivid, clear, and, if we may so word it, simultaneously
consecutive, when he is suffocating, and only flinging wild, con­
centrated, glaring looks to the bank for help. The experience of

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persons whom the saints have miraculously cured at the last
moment of life seems to go that way. Death, after all, is a dark­
ening and a disappearance of those we love, and we must be
content to take it so. It is only a question of more or less,—
where the darkness shall begin, and what it shall eclipse first. To
the others who have loved the dying and who have gone before
him, it is not a darkening, but a dawning. Perhaps to them it is
the brightest dawn when it has been the most opaque and color­
less sunset on the side of earth. Great operations of grace may be
hidden under this apparent stupidity; and, on the other hand,
great interior trials may be experienced during it. It may only
pervade the tabernacle of flesh, while, underneath it, the soul may
be living a life of precipitate quickness in some new and filial
intercourse with God.
*
If the stupidity is real, it may be itself a penalty, one of those
unconscious penalties which in the things of God are so terrific.
As I have said of sudden death, it may be like never dying, and
so losing that most gracious chance, a chance gracious for many
other reasons besides its being the last. Yet, after all, it is but
antedating death, as madness may do a score of years before we
die. To all practical intents we have died when the stupidity be­
gan; and if, like an evening storm, it clears off before night falls,
then is it another chance for us, as if a saint had raised us up by
miracle for a little while. Who has not seen how profoundly calm
the mind is which raises itself out of a stupor to perform the act
of dying? At the worst it only shows, as all things else that have
to do with death, that we must get our dying done before we lie
down to die, so far at least as may be. For, alas! there will be al­
ways much left to do, always much which suddenly seems allimportant and yet now must actually be left undone.
Such is our look when we are dying. Now, how does God
look on us? "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his
saints.” All things considered, this is not a revelation we should
have expected. There is much to surprise us in it; and yet, when
• May I venture to say that, from materialistic habits of mind, some medical
writers have made too much of this stupidity?

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we have fed long upon its consolations, we are surprised again to
find how it falls in with our idea of God, and how it illuminates
his perfections. It is so familiar to us now, that it is not easy fen­
us to realize how strange it has a right to be. Death is the penalty
of sin, the chosen punishment, the choice of God himself. Mercy
may mingle with punishment. In God s punishments, even the
hopeless one, it mingles largely. But that these punishments
should be precious in the sight of God is something more than
this, something beyond what we could have expected, something
which is full of mystery. Death is touching. There is an inevit­
able poetry about it, of which no horror or disgrace can wholly
strip it. The Creator is touched with the woes of his creatures.
There is a pathos in death, as of a setting sun. But it is not merely
compassionate sympathy which the sight of his servants’ deaths
draws forth from God. They are precious in his sight. Ignoble
as they are in the world’s eye, the creature’s dishonor, its most
repulsive feebleness, the shame of his physical misery, God does
not simply bear with them, or condescend to nurse us through
them. They are precious in his sight. They are his jewels, a
something in creation which he keeps for himself, a tithe paid
him which he lays up in heavenly storehouses. Surely it is because
Jesus was to die, and the Cross has made the punishment an honor
to such as make their deaths a Calvary. That blessed death is the
vast sunset in which we all sink to rest. It lingers on earth’s hori­
zon till the day of doom, and we all set in it, encompassed with
a mellow glory which is not our own. Death was precious to God
of old, because Jesus was to die. It is precious to him now, because
Jesus has already died.
God’s attitude toward death, therefore, is something very
peculiar. He seems, not exclusively, but very singularly, to con­
centrate his creative love upon it. This is the case whether his
love takes the form of seventy or of indulgence; for death-bed
severity is often deepest love, by being the anticipation of a justice
which is a thousand times more tolerable on this side the grave
than on the other. He sometimes waits till death to reward past
endeavors, to remove dryness, to withdraw temptations, or to give

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a long-contested victory over some besetting fault, such as un­
charitableness, unbelief, injustice, or a hard heart. Then, on
the other hand, he sometimes puts off our interior trials till death,
and sanctifies us then with a rapidity which is the extremity of
suffering. Sometimes he waits till then to punish carelessness and
venial sin. Some men are less likely to fail under a weight in the
hour of death, while to other men it is the likely hour for failing.
Our Father’s love learns from his wisdom how to dispose things
in the gentlest way. On the other hand, he often fulfils only in
death the prophecies of our past lives, especially the prophecies
of our early years; or he lets us learn then, for the first time, that
a work has long been done in our souls which we have regretted
as undone and longed to have it done. Some he blindfolds in
death, that not a breath may tarnish their humility. Others he
floods with light, that they may throw themselves the more fear­
lessly into his eternal arms. None of his servants does he disap­
point in death. All find riches there more than they looked for.
both in kind and in degree. What is precious to himself he makes
unspeakably precious to us. Faith cannot so misread the signs
as to be mistaken. The Creator has felt the exile of the creature a
burden, if I may dare to say so, as well as the poor creature itself.
Like other fathers, he wants his children home. Thus he has a
predilection for the hour of death. Of all the hours of life, it is
most his. So in it his love is special, and where love is special,
justice is special also.
What kind of deaths, then, are those which are more particu­
larly precious in his sight? A saint’s death is a work of divine art,
accomplished by supernatural skill and flushed with the glow of
eternal beauty. No two are alike, and all are beautiful. We
can but select some specimens from the various multitude. The
first may be the death of those who have always been dying to
themselves. They have adopted this for the form of their spiritual
life, as St. Andrew Avellino did. It is a death like the death of
Christ, the death of Him who “pleased not himself.’’ It is the
last act of a life which has been death all through, the last death
of a thousand deaths. There is a harmony between death and

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such a life as this, which makes music in the ear of God. For the
most part, the less a death stands apart from the foregoing life,
the less it is a detached and separate mystery,—the more has it
a look of completeness and perfection about it. This is in truth
a very blessed death.
Then there is the death of desire, the kind of death our
Blessed Lady died. This belongs to souls to whom God is every
thing, and to whose simplicity nothing is any thing except God.
He has not shared their love; he has sovereignly possessed it. They
were sick of all the glorious world, because God was not wholly
in it. It had no attractions for them, because God was their one
attraction. He fed them with his choicest gifts; but they sickened
even then, because his gifts were not himself. He was jealous, and
they were jealous also. They will make bold with him rather
than go without him. They are all for him. He also must be as
if he were all for them, theirs and only theirs. So the years dragged
on with them. They were prompt and brisk, and knew not how
they could be so. They were dying all the while they were living.
Their life was so completely in him that it was almost fictitious
as an earthly life. They trailed themselves wearily to life's edge,
and then languished for a while, and afterward, like men bound
hand and foot, these helpless captives of divine love fell over into
eternity.
Then there is the death of humility. This is a death full of
worship. It is a magnificent profession of faith. It praises God.
Part of its beauty is in its being so suitable to a creature. It is full
of the knowledge of God, and teaches his greatness by the shining
light it casts upon it. The soul dies in the attitude of adoration,
and is found already prostrate before the Vision which beams
upon its sight. We should have thought it was a death which
angels would especially delight to see. It pleads no merits. It
rests upon no services. It covets the least blessings of the Church
as eagerly as if it had nothing else divine about it. It has a special
devotion to the sanctity of God, and longs to be clean, and even
cleaner, and impossibly clean, before the sight of his unblemished
majesty. It counts on nothing but mercy. When it doubts, it does

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not so much doubt the vastness of God’s compassion as it sus­
pects some special impossibility of its own forgiveness. It is the
death of the child, who dies looking into his father’s face. How
beautiful the smile of infantine contentment which settles there
the moment after!
Then, again, there is the death of detachment, a death which
is hardly a death, because there is nothing to die to, nothing to
be loosened from, nothing to leave behind. It is more like a
translation than a death. The soul has either never rooted itself
in earth, or has unrooted itself long since, so that it has died
spiritually before it has died physically. What is left for such a
deadi to be, except an act of love? It is the performing of a
sacred ritual rather than the paying of a penalty. It is rather the
peaceful ceremonious fulfilment of a precept than the trembling
endurance of a punishment. A hard life makes an easy death.
But what life is more hard than one of detachment? A man who
is detached is no longer a child of earth: he is an angel entangled
in mortal flesh. He is living in heaven already; only he lives there
blindfold, and sees not the Vision yet. Men like these,—how
peacefully they die! They die with natural ease, as if they were
used to it and had done so many times before. It almost seems
as if there was too little pomp about their end. If we have not
some spiritual discernment, a feeling almost of dissatisfaction
comes over us, as if they might be under some delusion, and were
not making enough of death. Detachment is the hardest of all
spiritual phenomena to understand, while it is one of the simplest
to express in words. But the deaths of detached souls are dear
to God. Hence it is that the deaths of the poor are often so
precious in his sight. Poverty is in itself so pregnant with bless­
ings, that even material poverty surrounds itself with benedictions
for which it has not striven. God loves to have his creatures loose
and unrooted. There is not a more wondrous earnest of a happy
death than that rare sweetness of an uprooted yet still blossom­
ing old age. In all the gardens of the Church there is no blossom
more heavenly than that.
Let us speak of one more death, and then close our list. Let

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it be the death of saintly indifference. This is a death so ob­
scurely veiled in its own simplicity that we can hardly discern its
beauty. We must take it upon faith. It is the death of those
who for long have been reposing in sublimest solitude of soul in
the will of God. All complications have disappeared from their
inward life. There is a bare unity about it, which to our unseeing
eyes is barren as well as bare. All devotions are molten in one.
All wishes have disappeared, so that men look cold, and hard,
and senseless. There is no glow about them when they die. They
die in colorless light. They make no demonstrations when they go.
There is no pathos in their end, but a look—it is only a look—of
stoical hardness. They generally speak but little, and then it is
not edifying, but rather on commonplace subjects, such as the
details of the sick-room, or news about relatives; and they speak
of these things as if they were neither interested in them nor
trying to take an interest. Their death, from the very excess of
its spirituality, looks almost animal. They lie down to die like
beasts, such is the appearance of it,—independently, as if they
needed none of us to help them, and uncomplainingly, as if
fatalism put them above complaining. They often die alone,
when none are by, when the nurses are gone away for a while.
They seem almost as if they watched the opportunity to die alone.
As they have lived like the eagles of the mountain-tops, so like
the eagles they mostly die high up, without witnesses, and in the
night. This death is too beautiful for us to see its beauty. It
rather scares us by something about it which seems inhuman.
More of human will would make it more lovely to us; for what
is there to be seen when the will of the saint has been absorbed
long since into the will of God? Like the overflow of some desert­
wells, the waters of life sink into the sand, without a tinkling
sound to soothe the ear, without a marge of green to rest the eye.
These are the deaths which are especially precious in the sight
of God. But far lower deaths than these are precious to him also.
Were it not so, there would be little consolation for ourselves.
Our attainments must be other than they are, or we must look to
dying in lowlier places and in more ordinary ways. It is hard

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not to have some wishes about our own death. Neither is it at
all clear that such an absence of wishes would be more perfect for
such as we are. The wishes of the creature seem often to move
the love of God. Mercy not unfrequently appears to have fixed
upon no road of her own, but waits for us to lead, and she
will do our bidding. Is it certain that even in the saints the
supernatural has altogether suspended the natural? In us at least,
to be natural is almost a grace, and to be natural with God is
quite a grace. The supernatural purifies and ennobles the natural
in most good hearts, and does not altogether kill it. But I will
take leave to doubt this total extinction of nature even in the
saints. So we may blamelessly wish wishes about our own death,
and our wishes shall only give more gracefulness and more sin­
cerity to our conformity of will with God.
First, then, we should wish—indeed, do we not already un­
conditionally pray for it?—to have all the usual sacraments, to
be surrounded with every benediction of the Church which
belongs to the soothing pageantry of the last hour, the unbroken
presence of a priest of the Most High, frequent absolutions, and
St. Peter’s last act of indulgent jurisdiction. We can spare none of
these things,—not so much as one drop of holy water. Dying souls
are as thirsty as the desert-sands, and will drink in all dews of
heaven which may be allowed to fall upon them. We would have
relics of the saints about us or in the room, so that we might
as it were be touching the hem of their garments, as well as
multiply the number of angels in our room; for must not angels
always be sentinels where relics are? We would have our Blessed
Lady present, and St. Joseph, according as we understand them
to have promised that they would be. We do not ask to see or
hear them. We think of what we are, and shrink from such
petitions, though to make them might not be unhumble. Only
at least let us have the real protection of their presence, with
as much or as little of the sensible joy of it as shall seem fitting
to the divine condescensions. Our patron saints and angels too
we would have to be present there, and we would even make
bold to supplicate for the human-hearted Raphael, so safe a

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comrade on a long and unknown journey, and for the affec­
tionate St. Michael, who is the viceroy of purgatory and will one
day present us at the court of heaven.
We would wish for the use of reason to the last. Ready to
obey, we would even plead with those who might wish, for the
lulling of our pain, to give us opiates at the last. Let us go to
God with the full possession of our reason. We are ready to
submit, if God wills it otherwise. He may take us in our sleep;
but we would rather not. Nay, we know that delirium has come
sometimes as an answer to holy prayers, that so the graces of a
glorious death might be shrouded from the eyes of men. No such
prayers belong to us. We would ask for entire consciousness, so
that our last breath might end an intelligent act of love. Yet we
would not lay too much stress on this. We would rather leave
to God all that is physical about our death. We only ask for
this, because we think it is a blessing which may haply be some­
thing more than physical. This may be imagination. We are but
children in the sight of God. He finds a worship even in the
foolishness of our desires, and is not impatient.
The grace which of all others we covet for our last hour is
that of perfect contrition. We would have the fear of sin, which
has haunted us through life, grow yet more perfect when we
come to die. We must all die in love, if we would die well. But
there are many loves, and we should choose to die in contrite love.
There has always seemed to us a special attractiveness about con­
trition. It seems to come out of a special devotion to the Attri­
butes of God. No form of holiness is so winning as that which
is based on an abiding sorrow for sin. We would long, therefore,
for a grand contrition at the hour of death. Perhaps then we
shall fear purgatory more keenly than we fear it now. There are
some who do not fear it, but think of it only as a piece of un­
merited good fortune. In truth, it is so, when we think of the
dark possibilities. Yet it is more than this. It cannot be well not
to fear it. We shall most likely have better discernment when we
come to die; and we shall then fear all punishments of God,
because of the burning of our desire to see his face, which is

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the unspeakable thirst of dying souls. Has any dying man ever
spoken joyously of his approaching passage into purgatory? 1
have neither read nor heard of any. Such is rather the language
of those who are far off from it, with all their undipped abilities
to sin upon them. It would sound harsh on a death-bed, and
offend our pious instincts. Thus the desire to go at once to God
may give a new value to contrition in our eyes when we come
to die. Indeed, if it be reverent, for to be particular with God
goes near to an irreverence, we would ask to have so vehement
a sorrow for our sins that its intensity might be the proximate
cause of our death, that we might die a minute or an hour sooner
than we should have died had our sorrow for sin been less. But
this is perhaps too magnificent a grace for us.
Then, also, we would desire not to die what is called a tri­
umphant death. Grace may triumph over us. Our end may be a
signal triumph of God’s mercy. But for ourselves all triumph is
unmeet, unless for some special end God so ordained it. Gertrude
of Adelhausen, a Dominicaness, laughed out loud all through her
agony, and died laughing; so inebriated was she with love of God.
St. Mary d’Oignies sang loud and clear three days and nights
before she died, because the Holy Ghost had given her such a
gift of jubilee. St. Elizabeth of Hungary turned her face to the
wall, and sang without moving her lips, as if a nightingale were
in her throat, and died thus singing in her ecstasy. But these things
are not for us. If ever in life we should be real, and might hope
to be so, it would be at the hour of death. Yet there is unreality
even there. We can act, and be affected, even then, and our
drama and our affectation may not be faultless. Then there are
inculpable unrealities to which bodily weakness exposes us, and
these are not moral, but we shrink from them very greatly in
the prospect. Delusion is everywhere, until we have parted com­
pany with the Deceiver and gone to live in the light of God.
Triumphant death-beds appear to be encompassed with delusions.
We had rather even that our death should be mostly silent, lest
even in the conscious utterance of edifying words we should

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get from under the weight of God's fear and out of the sense
of his presence. It is hardly unloving to wish what those we leave
behind will like least and will find even painful; it is not unloving
when the occasion is so great as that of death and the interests
at stake are the substantial things of our eternity. WË may even
wish what our last words might be. It is not unchildish so to do.
It is the spontaneous utterance of our devotion. Perhaps we should
desire, with frequent invocations of holy Names, with frequent
commendations of our spirits into our Father's hands, to say at
last, as expressing all, Sancta Trinitas, unus Deus, miserere mei.
Perhaps we have already wished too much.· But we are ready
for any other will of God. As to the when, the where, the
how, and the with what pain, we are to die, we have no wish
about all that. We leave it all to God. He knows what is best.
We will have nothing to do with death merely as a physical thing.
To us it shall never be any thing else but the gateway of our
Father’s house.
We are never tired of that old picture from that first of all
the Gospels, the book of Genesis, the picture of the Creator
brooding over his own creation, as if in survey of it and in com­
placency, and pronouncing it very good. It is always new to us.
almost the more new the more it is familiar. So is it sweet to
think of the same Creator bending and brooding over the beau­
tiful death-beds of those who die in Jesus, as if the beauty of
them was precious to him, as if each of them was another faithful
portrait of his dear Son, another translucent depth of Calvary
imaging his own perfections. God is the Creator: death is his
own invented punishment, the sternest old historic monument
on earth: and he, the Creator, has died himself: and now look
at him, pathetically outpouring all this love over us his timid,
dying creaturesl Is it not almost a reverent joy for us to think
that we have still one action left to do, which will be precious
• Thus, for instance, when St. Gertrude, out of devotion to the Blessed Sacra­
ment. prayed that she might have to swallow nothing, whether food or medidne.
after the Viaticum, our Lord said he disapproved the prayer.—Λην/βί. lib iii cap. S5.

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in the sight of God? Is it, then, only a fear and trembling, and
not a joy as well, that we know that the messenger of death,
near even if he still be out of sight, is swiftly now with sound­
less footfall stealing up to us? There is a quiet, sweet anxiety
to die, which makes our lives more diligent, and is exceeding
happiness.

SELF-DECEIT
I. Simplicity

Self-deceit is perhaps the most uncomfortable and disquieting
subject in the whole of spiritual theology. Why, then, should we
speak of it? For that very reason. The spiritual life is a reality,
by far the most real of all realities, because it is our intercourse
with God on the most momentous of all interests. It cannot help
being real, real with a reality which must often be felt as an
important and inopportune yoke upon our frivolous nature.
Yet, if we are in earnest about saving our souls, (and it would
be fearful indeed not to be in earnest about such a matter,) we
should not look about in the spiritual life for smooth things and
easy sayings, but for true things and sincere sayings. Some people
pride themselves on their principle of getting out of the way of
frightening things, and consider it the height of discretion to keep
such matters at arm’s length, and to be very solemnly severe upon
books and preachers that profess to deal in them. Such persons
are simply insincere, and we must make no account of them.
They are worth very little in the sight of God, and therefore
their example is worth nothing to us. They must be judged
after they die, and it is greatly to be suspected that the judgment
will throw a somewhat disconsolate light over this eccentric discre­
tion of theirs. On the whole, the judgment is an exceedingly awk­
ward time for finding out mistakes, particularly indiscreet discre­
tions,—for many reasons which it is not of consequence for us
to go into, because, not holding the opinions of these persons,
we are not likely to fall into their mistakes, whatever other mis­
takes may befall us.
We are very much in earnest with God. We desire to advance
in his ways. So we make up our minds to grapple with this
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ugly subject of self-deceit and take a very close view of it, believing
that the unpleasant operation will be of the greatest service to
our souls. Many souls have unquestionably been lost altogether
by self-deceit. Many more have fallen far short of the purposes
of God upon them. In the case of all of us, numbers of graces
have been wasted through not meeting with correspondence, and
most frequently that want of correspondence has been attributable
to self-deceit. A disease from which almost everybody suffers, and
whose consequences may easily be so ruinous, claims an honest
investigation from those who desire to be honest both with God
and self.
Untruthfulness is a very odious thing. It is the most offensive
and provoking charge we can make against another. Men of
honor consider that it is an imputation which can only be washed
out with blood; though what sort of honor this is, is perhaps
difficult to say, and more difficult still to discern how blood
cleans it when it has been stained. Anyhow, it is unpleasant to
shed the blood of a fellow-creature, and to most men considerably
more unpleasant to shed their own; and hence the determination
to run this double risk shows how odious the charge of untruth­
fulness is to the hearts of men. But this is part of the world’s
self-deceit, that is, of everybody’s self-deceit. We would fain per­
suade ourselves that untruthfulness is very rare. Else why should
we murder our companion merely for attributing to us something
very common? Either we have persuaded ourselves that it is not
very common, or we are so bent on persuading ourselves of it that
we have made up our minds to shoot any man who raises the
question in our own case. Duelling, however, is manifestly not
a counsel of perfection. So we want nothing more of it than this
proof how odious the charge of untruth fulness is to the human
heart.
But, unfortunately, this untruthfulness is not rare. It is the
commonest of all miseries. It is as universal as the consequences
of the fall. A truthful man is the rarest of all phenomena. Per­
haps hardly any of us have ever seen one. It is far from unlikely
that we have not. Thorough truthfulness is undoubtedly the

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m

most infrequent of graces. The grace of terrific austerities and
bodily macerations which has characterized some of the saints,
the grace to love suffering, the grace of ecstasy, the grace of martyr­
dom, all these are commoner graces than that of thorough truth
fulness. The fact is, we are all of us thoroughly untruthful, those
of us most so who think, ourselves least so, those of us least so
who think ourselves most so. The first step toward being truthful
is the knowledge that we are far from it; for out of that knowledge
follows the hatred, the determination, and the aim which bear
us on toward truthfulness. We have no idea how untruthful we
are until we come to examine ourselves. We must not, therefore,
be content with a general admission of guilt; but we must go
into ourselves, and ferret out the whole of the misery and cor­
ruption. It is worth while spending two-thirds of our life in
doing this work alone, trying to be less of liars than we are.
Rude words! yet not unfriendly ones, as the issue will show.
It is of little use to plunge into this repulsive subject of self­
deceit, unless we are conscious to ourselves of a manly determina­
tion to make a thorough work of it. Whoever has not got that
had better read no further, or else he will mistake what is said.
A man always makes a mistake if he applies to himself what is
meant for another. It is to be feared that there is a great deal of
promiscuous physicking of ourselves after our neighbor’s pre­
scriptions, in the spiritual life. It is not less ruinous to the
constitution of the soul than a similar practice would be to the
constitution of the body. Whatever is said here is meant only for
honest people: to dishonest persons it will mean something quite
different, and be by no means beneficial. Furthermore, it is of
little use to plunge into this repulsive subject of self-deceit, unless
we take up, as a standard or ideal, some notion, even though it
be a negative one, of Christian simplicity. The acquisition, then,
of this inadequate idea of Christian simplicity shall be our first
occupation, and we will try to obtain it by an analysis of its
impediments.
Christian simplicity, or holy truthfulness, consists in three
things, each of which is a good deal rarer than a black swan is

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out of Australia. It requires, first, that we be truthful with our­
selves, secondly, that we be truthful with others, and, thirdly, that
we be truthful with God.
There are certain ways of becoming truthful with self which
are at once infallible and indispensable. We shall see if we
have acquired the virtue by seeing if we have taken the means
to acquire it. The whole inward corruption of our nature is
neither more nor less than the raw material of self-deceit. The
malignity of our corruption is in its falsehood; and the person
we are most interested to deceive is self. With what success
we accomplish this, the whole world can testify. Now, if we
are in earnest in undeceiving ourselves, we must be taking real
pains to acquire self-knowledge. Unless we know ourselves, and,
as far as may be, the ins and outs of our very complicated and
inconsistent nature, we are clearly in no position to act truly.
But it is not easy to know ourselves. On the contrary, it is the
hardest thing in the world. Are we really, then, taking pains
to acquire a knowledge of self? Are we honest in our examina­
tions of conscience? Are we punctual in them? We may fairly
suppose there are not many men trying to save their souls, of
whose daily regularities a brief examination of conscience is not
one. Now, what is our regularity in this respect, and our ac­
curacy, and our diligence, and our real view of its importance?
If we are not taking pains to know ourselves, we may be quite
sure we are not truthful with self. We can hardly be taking pains
without knowing it; for this, unfortunately, is a matter in which
the pains are very unpleasant, and it is only wounded men in
battle who are sometimes unconscious of unpleasant things.
It is of so much consequence to know ourselves, where re­
ligion is concerned, that if we not only do not take any pains
after self-knowledge, but even rather get out of its way, we can
hardly blind ourselves to the fact that wc are not in earnest
about our souls. But who gets out of the way of self-knowledge?
It is plain enough that many take little pains about it. Idleness
is the most natural thing in the world. But who gets out of the
way of it, that is, takes pains to remain in ignorance about him­

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self? Nearly every one. There is scarcely a man or woman on
their way, as they think, to holiness, who does not habitually
do this, and in more ways than one. Here is one way. People
go on, as if on purpose, in a dim, misty, confused manner.
They suspect, perhaps, that they do not prepare for confession
as carefully as they ought to do. They have a vague feeling
that there is neither enough examination nor enough pains
about contrition, and that the exuberant graces of the sacrament
are certainly realized in the most partial way, and the sacrament
itself perhaps risked. They are always intending to look into
the matter, and never doing it. Some time or other they will,
but, somehow or other, they can never do it today. They are
not sure of the evil. The removal of it, therefore, is not a plain
duty. For perhaps, after all, on inquiry, it may be found there
is nothing to remove. By shirking the self-knowledge, they keep
at arm's length the obviousness of the duty; so that they seem
to gain by thus defrauding themselves. Now, almost every one
has some such woeful uncertainty resting on his conscience
about some part of his conduct, most often those parts of his
conduct which have to do with the practices and observances
of the spiritual life, such as prayer, mortification, sacraments,
and the like. Thus, a man has a veiled muffled feeling that he
is neglecting bodily mortification to such an extent as to be very
unsafe for his soul. Yet he will not call this feeling to account,
and unmuffle it, and see what it is worth. He could do this very
easily. See how any one else could do it for him! Are you all
right about bodily mortifications? “I do not feel quite sure
about them.” True! but it is not exactly a matter to have any
doubt about. “Why! it is a long question! there is a great deal
to be said.” Certainly! there is a good deal to be said about
most questions; but why not say it? “Not prepared just now."
Well! but is it a matter which will wait? Either you are leading
a mortified life, or you are not. Five minutes' honest self­
inspection will tell you at once: and if not, why. you can settle
forthwith as to the amount of change you must make in your
present softness, and then go on. But no! this is a style of

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spiritual direction far too matter-of-fact for most of us. Indeed,
we are by no means clear that it is not rude and unfeeling. We
cannot have the plasters pulled off our wounds in this way. There
is a certain sort of comfort in a fog, especially for shy men.
They are less visible. So we go on with half a dozen grave matters
resting unsettled and misty and unargued, in a kind of un­
speakably slow interior court of chancery. But how, with all
this, we can think ourselves true or manful, it is not quite
easy to see. It is a sad annoyance when others find us out, for
it mostly lowers their opinion of us; but the saddest annoyance
of all, to our poor nature, is to find ourselves out; for, if we
lose self’s good opinion, we are forlorn indeedl The worst of it
is, that there is a time and a place when and where detection
is inevitable. A wise option is that which chooses the less dis­
agreeable rather than the more disagreeable.
Here is another way in which people are dishonest with them­
selves, either from the dislike of exertion, or from a suspicion
that investigation will compel them to commit themselves to
God, or definitely deny him something, both of which they are
equally anxious to avoid. It is quite common for men to persist
in a course of action without being sure of their motives, even
with an indistinct suspicion that their motives are not adequate
or trustworthy. This is peculiarly the case where charity may
possibly be concerned. There are many instances in which, from
what we know of ourselves, it is probable beforehand that some
amount of jealousy, dislike, rivalry, triumph, or other unworthi­
ness may mingle with our motives, and thus not only vitiate a
whole series of actions, but even be superinducing a new habit
of uncharitableness, or strengthening an old one, and also hinder­
ing all other growths of grace in the soul, so long as this canker is
allowed to remain. The same may be said of the works of mercy
and charitable enterprises in which we engage. If we have the
slightest reason to distrust our motives, the slightest reason to
doubt whether the glory of God, if not unmingled, be at least
uppermost in our hearts, we ought resolutely to scrutinize our
motives, not merely because of the ruinous loss of merit which

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we are incurring, but also because of the positive damage done
to our soul, and the destruction of works in it which former
operations of grace have constructed.
Do we make our faults a subject of sober and mature reflec­
tion? There are times certainly when it is not well to do this,
times of temptation, discouragement, and scruple, when our
spiritual guides would wisely prohibit our doing so. But, on
the whole, must it not be a necessary part of every good man's
religious occupations? If our great object is to save our souls,—
if our faults are the sole impediments to this,—if, moreover, they
are subtle, false-spoken, apt to disguise themselves, expert at
putting on the semblance of God,—if, furthermore, they come
to life again when they have been killed, and that by the most
clever and unexpected resurrections, and that they have such
vitality that some of them, certain forms of self-will to wit, can
never be put to death even by the saints,—if all these ifs are
true, we shall surely be in bad case if the mature consideration
of our faults is not one of the steadiest and most consistent busi­
nesses which we transact in the spiritual life. But it is not the
fashion—for it appears that nowadays we may save our souls
fashionably or the reverse—to talk as if everybody was scrupulous,
sensitive of conscience, delicately self-suspicious, and distressingly
susceptible of divine inspirations, and therefore entitled to the
utmost lax limits, which the old theologians, with a kind of
edifying and grave ill humor, hardly consented to allow to souls
miserably diseased with an exaggerated scrupulosity? Thus ladies
who go to balls, theatres, gay watering-places, and the like, who
deny themselves none of the personal luxuries and comforts of
the nineteenth century, who find piety very much squeezed in
the pressure of a London season, and yet do not very well see
how to make more room for it,—these, forsooth, are to be sup­
posed to be so many incipent Gertrudes or Teresas! We muse
not set them to examine their consciences too carefully, because
of the extreme sensitiveness they exhibit to their own faults,
nor to mortify themselves, because of their already inordinate
appetite for discomforts and macerations. Their voluntary social

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arrangements are the tyranny of indispensable circumstances,
claiming our tenderest pity, and to be managed like the work
of a Xavier or a Vincent of Paul, which hardly left those saints
time to pray! Their sheer worldliness is to be regarded as an
interior trial, with all manner of cloudy grand things to be said
about it! They must avoid all uneasiness; for such great graces
as theirs can only grow in calmness and tranquillity! It is lucky
we may still make a poor drunken Irishman uneasy; for thus
we have a chance of saving some souls at least, though of a truth
not these London souls. There were old saints in the Middle
Ages,—that St. Bernard for example, surnamed the Mellifluous,
he of the honeyed tongue, who, if he had in a leisurely way
contemplated some of these moderns on their path to perfection,
would have given them a taste of his honey after this fashion:—
Sir or Madam, strain every nerve to keep out of hell, which me­
thinks you will not do in this manner; and do use your common
sense for a moment to remember that you are dealing with God,
who is not “mocked!" A speech, apostolic, and perhaps brutal,
which would cause fainting-fits, followed by a most reasonable
disgust, and be generally condemned in the present day. The
fidget is, whether, after all, our modern way is the right way;
for if the road should end, and heaven’s gate be found not to
be at the end, the condition of these sensitive susceptible souls,
which have required so much smoothing and calming, would be
undeniably awkward, and, it is to be feared, helpless.
Once more: there is hardly a man or woman in the world
who has not got some corner of self into which he or she fears
to venture with a light. The reasons for this may be various, as
various as the individual souls. Nevertheless, in spite of the variety
of reasons, the fact is universal. For the most part, we hardly
know our own reasons. It is an instinct,—one of the quick in­
stincts of corrupt nature. We prophesy to ourselves that, if we
penetrate into that corner of self, something will have to be
done which either our laziness or our immortification would
shrink from doing. If we enter that sanctuary, some charm of
easy devotion or smooth living will be broken. We shall find

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ourselves face to face with something unpleasant, something
which will perhaps constrain us to all the trouble and annoyance
of a complete interior revolution, or else leave us very uncom­
fortable in conscience. We may perhaps be committed to some­
thing higher than our present way of life; and that is out of
the question. Religion is yoke enough as it is. So we leave this
corner of self curtained off, locked up like a room in a house
with disagreeable associations attached to it, unvisited, like a
lumber-closet where we are conscious that disorder and dirt are
accumulating which we have not just now the vigor to grapple
with. But do we think that God cannot enter there, except by
our unlocking the door, or see any thing when he is there, unless
we hold him a light?
This is one branch of Christian simplicity, to be truthful
and earnest and real with ourselves. The second is to be truthful
and earnest and real with others. Now, in order to attain to this,
we must, first of all, act as little as may be with reference to the
opinions of others. There is a great deal of self-will in the world,
but very little genuine independence of character. All imitation
of others is more or less an untruth. We are ourselves, and we
must act as ourselves, and be like ourselves, and consistent with
ourselves; and this is hardly what any of us ever are. We go
about like weather-cocks, ascertaining for ourselves and indi­
cating to others the outlying quarters from which the wind comes.
We have no ascertained principles of our own. This leads us into
endless petty untruthfulnesses. It makes us seem hypocrites when
we are not so; because weakness is apt to look like hypocrisy. No
one acts naturally who imitates others; and no one in the long
run is truthful to others who is not natural with others. A dis­
cernible self, even if it be an unsatisfactory self, is a grand, genu­
ine, vigorous, and wholesome truth, with a strange and gracious
propensity to be very humble, as truths always are.
In the second place, if we wish to be truthful with others,
we must avoid explaining and commenting on our own actions
in conversation. For either we must make our conversation like
a regular confession, or we must convey an untrue idea of our­

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selves. Let us take one instance. What is more common for us
to say than, “I assure you I did such-and-such a thing entirely
because so-and-so?” Now, we know very well that never, since
we were born, have we ever done one single action entirely for
any one single motive. So that here, quite unconsciously, we may
be laying claim to a very high and rare grace, to which only a
few even of the canonized saints have attained. A man hardly
ever comments on his own actions or explains his own motives
without being false. The mere omission of his bad makes the
enunciation of his good an untruth. He puts himself into a
position from which it is scarcely possible for him to extricate
himself without damage to his genuineness and simplicity. Yet
no one called him into that position. It is only once in a thousand
times, at least in the common affairs of life, that a man is called
upon to comment on himself. Nobody wants his comment.
People care much less for him either way than he likes to suppose.
In truth, it is egregious vanity, pompous self-importance, the
itch of self-defence, the identifying of personal feeling with the
glory of God, or some other similar absurdity of human little­
ness, which leads him into it. Avoid, therefore, all such com­
ments and explanations. ’‘Least said soonest mended” is never
more true than in conversations which turn on self. Why is it
that reserved men are so peculiarly given to self-defence? Because
close men are hardly ever simple men, and self-defence or self­
commentation are growths inseparable from unsimplicity.
Indeed, in the third place, we ought to make self as little
as possible the subject of conversation, even in the less dangerous
form of straightfonvard narration. Falsehood comes of it some­
how, and the sense of having forfeited grace, and gone down in
our own estimation as well as that of others, and (which is more
serious) of having grieved the Holy Ghost. This is so undeniably
everybody’s experience, that it need not be dwelt upon.
In the fourth place, in order to be truthful with others, we
should avoid having secrets, and still more avoid becoming the
depositary of the secrets of others. Nobody will ever be per­
suaded of this as long as the world lasts. However, truth has to

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be said, even when the saying of it is too plainly useless. Secrets
arc nearly the most mischievous things in the world, and almost
the most unnecessary. A secret once set upon its course through
the world gathers venial sin to itself, as the rolling snow-ball takes
up snow. How few things are there which really need be secrets!
How much fewer which, being secrets, need be confided to others!
Unless clear duty is there to sanctify it, he who confides a secret
to another has laid a burden on him, led him into temptation,
fettered his childlike liberty of spirit, and impaired the presence
of God in his soul. This is a serious indictment But secrets are
the garments which of all others self-importance most affects. To
be told a secret is the delicatest of flatteries. The teller and listener
both grow in their own esteem and in each other’s. They become,
like Pau-Puk-Keewis, “larger than the other beavers,’’ which is
always a pleasant operation to vain nature, though sometimes,
as in Hiawatha, entailing uncomfortable consequences. But now
look at your own past life: have not secrets, especially the secrets
of others, made you petty, narrow, pusillanimous, conceited, un­
truthful, unsimple, and out of God’s presence? Depend upon it,
there is nothing in the world that will more effectually entangle
you in unreality than an unnecessary secret. Great-minded men
have few secrets.
We must remember, also, that the want of truthfulness with
others reacts upon ourselves, in the way of blinding us with
regard to our own motives and characters. Those who deceive
others always end in deceiving themselves. Thus we shall never
be truthful with ourselves unless we are also truthful with others.
Thirdly, and lastly, simplicity requires that we should be
truthful with God. It is almost startling to speak of such a thing,
because of the horror of supposing an opposite line of conduct
possible. Yet, alas! it is not only possible, but common. We
know how God sees through and through us. We know how
bare and odiously intelligible to him are all the subterfuges of
our deceit and misery. We know how his eye rests upon us inces­
santly, and takes us all in, and searches us out, and, as it were,
burns us with his holy gaze. His perfections environ us with the

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most awful nearness, flooding us with insupportable light. To
his eye there is not only no concealment, there is not even a
softening shade, or a distance to subdue the harshness and veil
the unworthiness. Yet, for all this, to be straightforward with
God is neither an easy nor common grace. Oh, with what un­
utterable faith must we believe in our own falsehood, when we
can feel it to be any thing like a shelter in the presence of the
all-seeing Godl
We take liberties with him, for want of a holy fear. In unpre­
pared petitions, in slovenly sacraments, in cursory self-examina­
tions, in distracted meditations, in outward posture, in inward
recollection, in the way in which we postpone him to other things,
we make free with his immense majesty. We try to hide from him
our want of filial confidence. We know how stupid the attempt is.
We are well aware that we cannot hide from him; but we keep
our knowledge within us, and will not let it come up to the
surface in the shape of practice. We are determined not to realize
his terrific greatness, his overwhelming sanctity, or his tingling
nearness; and so in numerous little deceitful ways we do not treat
him as the God in whom our understanding believes. It is a
shocking thought, to be unreal with God; yet we all of us are so,
to a most frightening extent. God help us! We are living in
a world of the most bewildered and complicated untruthfulness;
but it is to be our eternal joy to stand revealed in the blaze of
unutterable Truth and revel in our want of concealment forever!

SELF-DECEIT
II. The Fountains of Self-deceit

We have seen what Christian simplicity requires. Our next
inquiry must be into the fountains of self-deceit. They are four
in number,—the rarity of reliable self-knowledge, self’s power to
deceive self, self letting itself be deceived by others, and self
deceived by Satan.

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No wonder that reliable self-knowledge is rare, when so few
take pains to acquire it. There are few even who honestly desire it.
There are but few men in the world who desire painful things,
however salutary they may be; and self-knowledge is both painful
in the acquisition and painful in the possession. It is incredible
how little honesty there is among religious people in religious
matters. Many are earnest in their desires to escape hell, but
very few to grow in grace or to please God. Perhaps a man in
the course of a life of fifty years may meet three people who
make God their first object; and he will be lucky to meet three.
Yet almost every one claims to be preferring God before all
things. What a mass of unwholesome delusion, then, must the
religious world be! It is. A supernatural formalism outside, with
natural principles of action inside, and a thoroughly natural
system, or rather quackery, of spiritual direction to keep things
comfortable and respectable,—alas! it were devoutly to be wished
that this definition embraced less than it does.
How very little do even good persons know themselves! Much
of what they think is the work of grace about them is simply the
providential accident of their circumstances. A man has a very
right horror of worldliness, for example, and he thinks—perhaps
even thanks God—that he has no tendencies that way. Much evil
he has, and is conscious of having, but not this. His circumstances
of life change. He becomes rich, or gets into different society,
or his health improves and he can do what a while ago he could
not do; and, behold! he finds himself worldly, not growing worldly
by a process and under temptation, but worldly without any
change at all, with a readymade worldliness, which he has had in
his heart all the while. A man cannot be angry in a fainting-fit:
so this man’s wordliness could not develop itself in his old cir­
cumstances. It was there nevertheless. Hundreds of people are
thoroughly worldly, worldly to the backbone, who flatter them­
selves they have no taste for the world at all. The fact is, we know
so little of ourselves, and of the almost inexhaustible possibilities
of evil which we have got shut up within our souls. Is not life at
every turn making unpleasant revelations of self? But they are

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revelations; and that is note-worthy. Yet what sort of wisdom is
it for a man to shun these revelations because they disquiet him,
when it will so concern him in the day of judgment to have known
them? A spiritual life without a very large allowance of dis­
quietude in it is no spiritual life at all. It is but a flattering super­
stition of self-love. But fancy a spiritual system which is to make
everybody at ease and comfortable, and takes the banishment of
the uncomfortable as its grand principlel It would be laughable,—
indeed, intrinsically it is laughable,—only we cannot laugh be­
cause it is such a terribly serious thing for a soul to go wrong in
its doom.
Now, it is of the last importance to observe that with good
persons the stronghold of worldliness is in this absence of reliable
self-knowledge. They have right views about worldliness, and
their hearts also are in a great measure right about the matter.
They do not wish to be worldly if they could help it. They may not
be prepared to go such lengths in the direction of self-sacrifice
as might be well. Nevertheless they are prepared to go some
lengths; and that is well. Yet they are worldly, or they become
worldly, from the want of self-knowledge. As to the fact, that can
hardly be a question. Is it not the standing scandal of the world,—
that strange medley of worldliness and devotion which is so
common among professedly pious people, that the world, which
does not take a particularly accurate view of the matter, pro­
nounces it to be universal? We have prayers and fine dress, alms
and luxurious extravagance, sacraments and love of eating and
drinking, humility and exclusiveness, spiritual conferences and
the worship of great people, balls and communions, benedictions
and private theatricals, works of mercy and a scheming to push
advantageous connections, interior life and fine furniture,—all
mingled up in such close union and inextricable confusion that
we might lecture on the matter the whole year round, as the
nineteenth-century improvement of old-fashioned spirituality, and
yet I fear the censorious world would be too stupid to be con­
vinced that all this was apostolical, evangelical, scriptural, after
the mode of the saints, and such like. Whether we are in fault for

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giving this scandal, or the world for taking it, is of no consequence
here. As a matter of fact, scandal there is, given ot taken. The
reason of the fact is the want of reliable self-knowledge. Worldli­
ness is an immense number of allowable details issuing in an
unallowable end. This is partly from the accumulation, and partly
from the hold the details have on our affections. Things which
are not wrong in themselves become wrong when they stand be­
tween us and God, unspeakably wrong when they usurp God's
place in our hearts. We do not see the real malice of the separate
component parts of worldliness, because we do not really know
ourselves, and are thus unable to estimate the bad effects, or even
the peculiar effects, which make this or that licit amusement be­
come inexpedient in our case, or a certain amount of it down­
right poison. In the analysis of worldliness, we have to do with
questions of kind and questions of degree. Any thing like a safe
judgment in either of these two classes of questions is impossible
without self-knowledge. In a word, the secret power of worldli­
ness is in our ignorance of ourselves, not an unsuspecting ignor­
ance, but an ignorance with a bad conscience, which we will not
force to learn its crabbed lesson of self. All supernatural prin­
ciples and all religious manliness are based on genuine, reliable
self-knowledge. Give that conclusion leave to do its work in your
soul, and you will see what a change it will bring abouti
The second fountain of self-deceit is self directly deceiving
self. There are many ways in which this unhappy end is com­
passed. Vanity is one of the most universal. We all put an
absurdly high price upon ourselves. The mercury always stands
too high in us, and indicates wrongly, unless grace holds it down
by main force. Even when we have too much sense to speak,
we are always inwardly commenting upon our own actions in a
most partial manner, and often with a very ingenious and far­
fetched partiality. We cherish our own plans, until it is hard to
see how God can have any glory at all beyond the sphere of our
own influence, except in other spheres very far away. But the
spheres which confine on our own are mistakes, and ought never
to have been there at all. Our vocation is to absorb them. This

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is our view. There is nothing too extravagant for the vanity of
our self-love. It docs not know an exaggeration when it sees it.
Like some Oriental languages, its commonest expressions arc hyper­
boles. We should all make open fools of ourselves through vanity,
if it were not for three things. First of all, many of us are saved
by knowledge of the world, which always carries on famous war­
fare against selfs absurdities. Secondly, many are rescued from
exposing themselves, because they have a turn for humor and
a keen sense of the ridiculous. Thirdly, grace saves some, by
teaching them to put down within themselves those inordinate
risings of self-importance which would else expose them to the
contempt of others, though it is not for that reason they are to
put them down. An honest, humorous sense of ridicule is a
great help to holiness. Perhaps nature does not contribute a
greater help to grace than this.
Then, again, we deceive ourselves by dwelling on self; for
self, by a law of its own nature, must needs see itself erroneously.
The mother can see no imperfection in the babe she is fondling.
In her eyes the most hideous little creature is charming. But
self nursing self,—the fondest mothers are no match for it in this
respect. Brooding on self is a sort of spiritual opium-eating.
Nothing but phantasms can come of it. It is through this brood­
ing on self that we arrive at another way of deceiving ourselves;
and that is by confusing, almost without seeing it, feelings with
facts and desires with practices. In other words, self-love knows
how to blend most skilfully its ideal with its realization of its
ideal, so that not only shall nobody else know what is theory and
what is practice, but even self shall not be able, at least with any
thing like assurance, to discern between the two. Multitudes of
souls live through life in a bright haze of this kind, and only get
into the clear light as they land on the other side of the grave.
We deceive ourselves also by palliating what is acknowledgedly
wrong. There is almost always a running commentary of secret
self-excuse passing through our minds. We admit certain actions,
or more frequently certain omissions, to be wrong. But we con­
sider that there is something quite peculiar in our circumstances,

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which makes them less wrong in us than they would be in others.
Sometimes it is our temperament, sometimes our health, some­
times our position, sometimes the provocation we have received.
Sometimes we pardon ourselves with the very gentlest of repri­
mands, because we feel that the good points of our character are
on the other side of us, as it were, and that this particular failing
has the misfortune to light upon the barren or the weak side of
us;—and whose character is either complete and equable? So we
must think of our opposite good points, by way of comfort and
compensation. This method of self-deceit is akin to the practice
of putting off the time for a closer acquaintance with our own
motives. At present we have a great deal to do; and it is always
indiscreet in the spiritual life to take upon ourselves more than
we can accomplish. We have manifest faults enough to fight
against, so we will adjourn the day for a more thorough search
into self. It is as if we said that we have so much writing to do
we have really no time to go out to buy paper or ink. The result
of all these various forms of self-deceit is spiritual blindness,—
a blindness which always has the additional misfortune of think­
ing that it sees.
The third fountain of self-deceit is self letting itself be de­
ceived by other things or persons, by things or persons external
to itself. It is not always easy to distinguish this process from self
deceiving self; but there is a difference. When we lay ourselves
out for praise, or even very obviously acquiesce in it. we are
letting ourselves be deceived by others, often without any fault
of theirs. We do not plead guilty to half the amount of love of
praise which we have in us. It is quite preposterous even in the
humblest of us. We live lives of prayer and sacraments, and yet
are all the while itching for praise. Who ever saw any one that
was not? The gravest, sleekest, most pompous of men smooth
themselves down and unbend themselves in glossy patronizing
benevolence under the siren breath of praise, like the swell of a
summer sea when the gentle south wind blows. Cold men thaw
with an amusing reluctant eagerness under the same operation,
and dignity descends even to playfulness under the resistless attrac-

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lions of praise. Silent men, however, are the grand lovers of
praise. They are ruminating creatures: self is the cud they chew,
and, strange to say, they do not find it bitter. Like thirsty camels
in the desert who suck up the muddiest water with relish, so we
with praise are almost regardless of its quality. No matter how
absurd, how unmerited, how exaggerated, or from what feminine
or childish incapacity of just appreciation it may spring, wise and
grave men among us drink it down. We set a value upon it, and
attach an importance to it, and feed on its scraps, in a manner
which ought to make us thoroughly ashamed of ourselves. All
we require is that certain rules of good taste should be ob­
served by those who administer this sweet spoon-meat to us
grown-up babies. But these rules vary with national character.
An Irishman must be praised differently from an English­
man, and an American and a Frenchman differently from both
and from each other. But praised we must all be, or we shall sulk.
Monkeys can look grave when they scratch each other. But then
they are monkeys. We are men, gifted with reason: how is it we
do not smile at an operation which is really so absurd? Because
we do not know ourselves. Who ever knew an eminent lover of
praise who did not imagine he was peculiarly above public
opinion? Or who ever knew a man that boasted of his independ­
ence of the judgments of others who was not servile, and base,
and touchy, and fawning, and deceitful, and vain? After all, we
are monkeys, and we only grow into men by knowing that we are
not men yet.
We compel others to deceive us by the way in which we talk
to them about ourselves. This especially applies to religious con­
versation, and to all talk about our own characters and peculiari­
ties. Now, here we have an alternative. Either we ought to keep
our inward life much more secret than we do, or we ought to let
it be much more unreservedly known. The middle course is
practically to tell lies. The right thing is not to talk about self
at all. All self-talk is wretched and mean. Yet it would be diffi­
cult to name a practice of Christian perfection harder than the
avoiding of it. If we have ever made a real effort to hold our

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tongties about ourselves for any considerable length of time, we
have found out that there may be some things which look easy
and yet are next door to impossibilities. Nevertheless, if we will
talk of self, we ought to say much more than we do. If we tell
people how our hearts warm with love of God, we ought also to
tell them how these same hearts are cheered by having nice things
to cat and drink. If we make known our practices of prayer, we
ought also to make known our attachment to handsome furniture
and becoming dress. If we say how much time and money go to
visiting and relieving the poor, we ought also to say how selfish and
inconsiderate we are toward our servants, in the matter of their
health, comfort, temper, sensibilities, and the like. If we publish
our good side, we ought also to publish our bad side; else we are
practically telling an untruth, making people believe that we are
far more noble-minded than we really are, and so causing them,
by praise, respect, and admiration, to react upon ourselves in the
shape of self-deceit.
Alas! the idolatry of domestic affections is another way in
which we let ourselves be deceived by others. Everybody is thought
so good in his own family. Men must be notably bad to have the
honors of this household canonization withheld from them. It
is like living in air drugged with luscious incense. Conscience is
half stifled in it. This is a chief delight of home to our poor con­
ceited nature. It is one of the first principles of the spiritual life
that each man should be in his own sight what he is in the sight
of God, and nothing more. Yet there are few women, and fewer
men, who are not in their own sight what they are in the sight
of their family. It is, moreover, to be feared that God s point of
view and the family point of view are very far from identical in
most cases. We fall into a sort of happy optimism in our families,
which is marvellously unsuspicious of its own absurdity. We
laugh at tombstones, and there is reason for it. They tell queer
tales sometimes. Yet, after all, it is only the simple-heartedness
of sorrow which thus promulges to a critical world what is really
the judgment of all families upon their members. But when we
leave the home-circle, which praise, exaggeration, blindness, and

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carcss keep so warm and nest-like for us, what can the presence of
God feel like, but a cold, cutting east wind against which no furs
and wrappers are adequate protection? Oh, how many saints are
spoiled, how many souls unmanned, how many high things
brought low, by the sweet effeminacies and ingenious adulations
of domestic admiration and family worship! Reality has no worse
enemy than this sweetest and most enticing of deceits. No wonder
the saints have always treated as unpardonable what looks to us
the most pardonable of all delusions, because it is the most
amiable,—the graceful blandishments and soothing flatteries of
home.
Spiritual books are outward things, and they also can make us
unreal. No soul spins a grosser web of self-deceit around itself
than the one that habitually reads spiritual books above its spir­
itual condition, or in any other way unfitted for its existing cir­
cumstances. Common states of prayer look uncommon to the man
who is always reading books of mystical theology. Converts par­
ticularly are always mistaking common graces for uncommon
ones. Indeed, mystical theology can be made into a sham more
easily than most things that are real. If we are forever reading
of pure and disinterested love of God, we soon come to think
that our love for him is such as we read of. Heroic thoughts are
infectious, and we soon swell with them. But they will not do
duty for heroic deeds. They only give an air of sentimentality
to our religion, when we are not making any real effort to act
upon them. When a spiritual book does not mortify us and keep
us down, it is sure to puff us up and make us untruthful. Its
doctrine gets into our head, and we commit follies. A man who
finds the popular commonplace spiritual books dull and unim­
pressive has great reason to suspect his religious state altogether;
and of one thing he may be quite confident, that his feeling of
dulness in the common books shows he is not up to the level of
high books.
Another way in which we let ourselves be deceived by others
is by seeking guidance where we expect least contradiction. How
honest hearts can be so dishonest as they are, is a mystery which

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meets us at every turn in the spiritual life; and here is one of the
most glaring examples of it. The Church does not oblige us to
have spiritual directors. It imposes nothing more upon us than
sacramental confession. If we put ourselves under a director, it
is our own act. We do it in order to gain some spiritual advantage
by it. Who could believe that any one would go and entangle
himself in a whole system of insincerity, and allow himself to be
almost irrevocably lost in the bogs and fens of self-deceit, knowing
all the while, as he must know, that his intentions are not godly
and his motives not of the right sort? Yet so it is. Men seek spir­
itual direction partly that they may be deceived, and partly lest
they should be awakened from their self-deceit. They look
around. They fix upon the least independent judgment or the
least vigorous judgment they can discern; and to that judgment
they assign their spiritual direction. What they want is a ghostly
father who will let them alone, who will hardly ever take the
initiative, whose direction will confine itself to words, whose
direction will be simply passive, whose yoke will be of outward
observances rather than of inward strictness, who will caution
rather than rouse and hold them back rather than spur them for­
ward. Yet is there any man, who has had any thing whatever to
do with souls, who was ever lucky enough to find one soul in a
thousand which needed holding back? Now, if the Church com­
pelled us to have a spiritual director, it is quite intelligible that
our clever corruption should seek for some venerable King Log,
and set him over itself; but, as the whole thing is voluntary, is it
not amazing we should take so much trouble for such very un­
satisfactory results?
But let us suppose our spiritual director chosen: how do we
behave to him? Do we give him any thing like fair play? I ought
rather to say, Do we give our own poor souls any tiling like fair
play with him? Can we ever remember having put one single
question to him with perfect honesty and thorough straightfor­
wardness? Have we not always shaped it, and worded it, and
emphasized it, for some ulterior end? Have we not half made
up our minds on most subjects before we have consulted our guide,

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and has not our aim rather been to elicit such a verdict as we wish
than to know his calm and dispassionate and uninfluenced judg­
ment? All this is wild work,—God being considered, and the
soul, and eternal possibilities! In these days of railway-frauds, we
are always hearing of accounts being "cooked.” Now, I have no
very clear idea of how to “cook” accounts, and should hardly
know how to set about it, from want of experience in accounts
altogether; but I greatly suspect that what we do with our state­
ments to our spiritual directors is to "cook” them.
Am I bitter and sarcastic? If so, I assure you it is with much
love and the most earnest of intentions. I feel as if I wanted to
do you some good and could not get at you, as if there were a
waving veil of cobwebs between your souls and my hand, and,
when I strike it, it yields, and waves about, and gets into my own
eyes, and there is no tearing it. This is vexatious; and I do not
know how far to be serious, lest, being serious, I should become
angry also. So bear with my foolishness. See if I do not say some
sensible things in the course of it, which, if I had said gravely,
would have been less sensible. I would give any thing to do with
you what I want. It would bring you a little nearer God. Do not
be annoyed with my frivolous way of doing it. Yet perhaps you
had better be a little angry. I am sure to be able to make you think
if I can put you moderately out of temper. You are out of temper
now, because of what I have said of your intercourse with your
directors. It is a sore subject. It is the soreness which has made
you angry. But you know very well that your spiritual direction
is little better than a farce, and that it is so because of your own
ungenuineness with your directors. Most of you had better have
no directors than direct your directors so adroitly as you do.
From spiritual directors I pass to the devil. Perhaps an abrupt
transition; but not so, when you come to think of it. For when
self-deceit comes to feed upon spiritual dainties, the evil one can
never be very far off. This brings me to my next division, self
deceived by Satan. It would require a separate dissertation to
divide the blame, according to justice and equity, between self
and Satan: so that part of the question shall go untouched. Satan

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deceives us in many ways,—too many ways for us to enumerate
now. He deceives us by instigating good men to over praise us.
These good men do it out of the abundance of their natural kind­
ness, or on the compulsion of their charity, or from the self­
vilification of their own humility. How little they suspect what
they are doing! Praise people as little as you can consistently with
kindness; for you never run a greater risk of doing the devil's work
for him than when you praise people. Nevertheless you must
praise others sometimes. We cannot go on without it. Vanity
is as universal a law of the mental and moral worlds as gravitation
is of the material. We shall all of us expire of inanition if we are
not praised. It is one of the gases necessary to action: some of it
we must have; the less the better.
Satan has also another power, of a much more serious kind.
He can raise strange mists within our souls, disturbing and dis­
coloring self. How he does it I do not know; but of the fact there
is no doubt. I greatly suspect he could not do it if we did not play
into his hands in some way and furnish him with the materials.
The consequences, however, of this mist are terrific. Distances
are confused, shapes swollen, light darkened, darkness lightened,
what ought to be hidden shown, what ought to be shown hidden;
a complete fata morgana! Disagreeable subject! you all know it
well enough. I must either say a great deal about it, or very
little. So, as I have not the heart to say much, I shall now say
no more.
Another of his wiles is to fill us with indiscreet and unseason­
able aspirations,—indiscreet, because they are out of all propor­
tion to our grace, and unseasonable, because they are especially
unbefitting our present condition. Strange to say, there is some­
thing congenial between grace and nature. Hence it is that certain
forms of holiness come almost natural to a man, suit his disposi­
tion, elicit the excellences of his individual character, and trans­
form his nature rather than supplant it. Then, again, there are
other forms of holiness, which in particular souls seem to have
occult affinities with evil. With them they are akin to temptations.
They leave the weak places in the soul unguarded, and develop

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what rather requires subduing. They arc not meant for those
souls, but for others. Now, all God’s work everywhere is a work
of order: and therefore the devil finds his account in disturbing
this order; and in the spiritual life he cannot more effectually
accomplish this than by filling devout people with indiscreet and
unseasonable aspirations.
A mischief which is confined to ourselves is a very great mis­
chief. But it is not half so bad as a mischief which compromises
us with others. This last tends to the irremediable. Nothing is
positively irremediable out of hell. The worst evil never gets
beyond the tendency to be so. But this tendency is bad enough.
Now, see how the devil draws us on beyond mere aspirations. He
entangles us in unsuitable good works. Why, one might almost
prefer a sin to this. Observe the almost, if you please. There is
nothing like an unsuitable good work for keeping us back from
God. It enlists against him all that is best and least selfish in our
nature. Set an active soul to contemplate, and one of two results
will follow, hypochondria or worldliness. Immerse a contempla­
tive soul in business, and you will have either melancholy or delu­
sion. Bend a person to much mental prayer, when they ought to
be spinning at home or bustling about in the garrets of the poor,
and you will produce a self-righteous, inflated, stupefied simula­
tion of interior holiness, which would ruffle the good humor of
an angel. Keep a soul in hospitals or on ladies’ committees, which
ought to be alone with God, and, although the evil you do by it
will be less than in the former case, you will frustrate the soul’s
vocation, risk its salvation, and indirectly spoil a good many plans
of charitable beneficence.
Last of all, our spiritual enemy is always enticing us to speed.
This is the fatallest of fatal tilings. Are there any of you who once
were different from what you are now? Are there any who mourn
over a delicacy of conscience which has grown callous and hard,
over the cold ash-strewn hearth where the flames of divine love
once burned but are now extinct, over a nearness of God which
has gone back like an ebb-tide down the sands, over a hundred
great graces once within reach, but now mere words never to have

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realities? IE it is so, has it not for the most part been speed which
has done all the mischief? There are few saints more remarkable
in the history of spiritual theology than St. Francis of Sales. He
is a kind of French Revolution in spirituality. It is hard to see
where he got all his traditions from. Many, we know, were from
St. Philip. But the connection between modern society and his
modest innovations is very striking. We seem to see exactly for
what ends he was raised up, and of what he was the apostle. There
is an originality about him, as an ascetical writer, which ought to
be well weighed. But could we select any one thing he was sent
to teach us which is more remarkable than the duty and the wis­
dom of slowness? He teaches as one from God, seldom giving
reasons for what he teaches, and, when he does give them, somehow
the reasons have nothing like the divine cogency of his axioms.
Fénélon’s letters are St. Francis of Sales reasoned out, the Bishop
of Geneva with the metaphysics put into him and perhaps some­
thing of the saint left out. To be slow, this is what St. Francis
and Fénélon teach, and what you must learn. There are endless
reasons for it. I will only mention the one which connects the
duty with the avoidance of self-deceit. It is this: speed, in spiritual
matters, is always followed by darkness.
The power of the kingdom of sin rests simply in self-deceit.
The picture, you think, is gloomy. I grant it. Yet not dishearten­
ing. It is the old story. You will not serve God out of love, and
then you abuse preachers for unsettling you. You want unsettling.
I wish I could unsettle you. I wish you had the grace to be un­
settled. Digging does good. It loosens roots, and lets in sun and
rain. What can be more vexatious than an obstinate shrub which
will not grow? It always reminds me of souls,—so stiff, and con­
centrated, and dull, and pert, and self-satisfied in its yellow prim­
ness. A simple, childlike love of Jesus always goes safely through
these dangers of self-deceit, almost without being aware of their
existence. There is something intensely sickly about the spiritual
life. It is nothing but unbandaging, examining sores, bandaging
them up again, smelling-salts, rooms with blinds down, and I
know not what dishonorable invalid isms and tottering conval
*

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esccnces. It seems to me no slight temptation to love Go<l with a
headlong love, in order that one’s soul may not be sickened with
these degrading symptoms or valetudinarian sensations of the
spiritual life, but live a robust, out-of-doors kind of religious exist­
ence. Yet many people like to be ill,—specially to be ill in mind.
It shows how little the thought of God is in them; for that thought,
grave, kindly, sober, earnest, is an inexorable exorcism of all
sickliness.

SELF-DECEIT
III.

The Varieties

of

Self-Deceit

If the varieties of grace are numberless, the varieties of self­
deceit are wellnigh able to match them. We shall get a step fur­
ther into our disagreeable subject by glancing at some of these
varieties, selecting those which we meet with the most commonly
in daily life. There are, in fact, seven species, which we may
name the fundamental self-deceits, as one or other of them seems
to lie at the bottom of every possible modification of delusion.
There is, first of all, the self-deceit which takes no advice.
Every one knows that the delusions of the spiritual life are so
amazing as to be incredible. A man neglects the duties which
God has given him to do, and spends all his day in church, and
yet imagines himself a special favorite of God. Even monks and
nuns can mistake singularity for perfection. There is a false
modesty and a false humility, a deluded penance and a deluded
prayer. Delusion is everywhere; and yet, to us looking on, it is
unaccountable how the victim does not at once see through the
delusion. Now, in a great number of cases, all these worlds of
delusion are created by the self-deceit which takes no advice.
Taciturnity has its good points. Who can doubt it? Silence is
more often expedient than speech in a world so extremely foolish
as ours is. Then there are some dispositions which are not at all
tempted to talk, but tempted—for it is a veritable temptation—

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to hold their tongues. These are men who, unlike Solomon, have
never happened on a right time to speak. So they make plans,
cither with no counsellors but themselves, or with only such as they
know to be at best but selves at second hand. Their plans grow
into them, and length of time is mistaken for maturity of delibera­
tion. These plans twinkle and oscillate through their prayers,
and so at least seem to have the light of a quasi-divine sanction
upon them; and with all conceivable respectability, and without
one external admonitory symptom of self-seeking, these men have
at last come to mistake self-opinionatedness for judicious reserve,
through the self-deceit which takes no advice. This form of self­
deceit tends very rapidly to become incurable; and when it has
once taken hold of a man, he can only be roused up by a rare
miracle of grace, and most often is not roused up at all.
Then there is a self-deceit which is always taking advice, and,
what is perhaps worse, always taking it of everybody. This vice
belongs to men who have as many directors as a king has privy
counsellors, men whose weakness of character is such that they
publish their plans in confidence to every one they meet, and
have to end, as it were, of sheer necessity, by taking no advice at
all, because the persuasions on the right hand are so completely
neutralized by the dissuasions on the left hand that the man's
mind becomes almost a blank. There are the men—we see them
daily—who are always undertaking things, and who never succeed
in any thing they undertake. Yet this universal confidence re­
posed in all mankind is not only consistent with the most mulish
obstinacy, but is not unfrequently an actual development of it.
Among English people obstinacy and weakness almost always go
together. Who ever saw a weak man who was not obstinate, a
weak man who was really docile, and did not find out at last that
he was not an Englishman? This perpetual and indiscriminate
voracity of advice is also a form of self-importance: and who ever
knew a weak man of any nation who was not self-important? But
when we regard this endless seeking of counsel as a delusion, as
one of the varieties of self-deceit, we soon discover that no little
dishonesty mingles with its weakness. A man who is always asking

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advice suspects himself of being in the wrong, even if he does not
go further than suspicion. A real uneasiness of conscience lies
at the bottom of it all; and consequently, if he is not trying to
make himself comfortable in a state of things which he half
knows ought to make him uncomfortable, there is something
more or less hopeful in his case, even in spite of the dishonesty.
For a grain or two less of dishonesty, and the suspicion might
become a salutary self-distrust. Yet, in order that this process
may take place, it is necessary that he should hold his tongue.
But here is the difficulty. For the more he talks and asks and com­
municates, the more the dishonesty grows. He is throwing dust
in his own eyes at every word. The more obstinate he grows, the
more eloquently is he persuading himself of his own docility.
Every additional counsellor makes him less able to discern the
truth. Every step he takes brings him nearer to the doing of his
own will. Some men are snares to others; this man is a snare to
himself. At last complete confusion ensues, and the total eclipse
of self-ignorance, and the chaos of entangled vacillation. The
man’s life may now be pronounced a decided failure, as a life; but
his salvation of course remains possible, and if a man saves his
soul, we may be content to let him fail in all else. Besides, of what
good to the world would any success have been which such a man
could have by any possibility achieved?
Then we have for our third variety the complacent self-deceit.
Where this exists, it seems born with a man. Nevertheless we
need not despair of straightening even the twists we bring with
us into the world, though it is a more difficult matter than
straightening what outward circumstances, and even habitual
sins, have bent. Some men have a strong faith in themselves,
which no number of mistakes or misfortunes can shake. Experi­
ence is unpersuasive to them. Practically speaking, their own
infallibility is the fixed point of their compass. Whatever else
moves, that cannot move. Whatever else is called in question, that
must not be. There is always a quiet optimism about them. It is
quiet, because it cannot conceive the possibility of doubting
itself. There is an external reason for every failure, which no fore­

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sight could have calculated, and against which no prudence could
have guarded. If what they have done was not simply and
absolutely the best thing, it was the best for the time and place
and circumstances. Indeed, they consider themselves entitled to
additional credit precisely because they consented to waive
the best thing and humble themselves to circumstances with the
wise condescension of discretion. These are men with whom all
tokens are providential and all interpositions miraculous. They
fail without knowing that they fail, because all things look so
providential in their particular case. They see the government
of the whole world before them as in a panorama, of which they
are the centre. Their affairs are God's final causes. Their piety
takes the shape of inspirations, and what is natural about them
has a ruinous tendency to extravasate into the supernatural.
Their devotion can never run long in a common groove, nor,
indeed, in any one groove at all. Their dreams even sometimes
become motives of action. Hence they are wayward and change­
able. They are not only receiving inspirations every moment,
but even cross-inspirations. But they take this very easily, almost
as if it were a feature of divine guidance. They see no difficulty
in the matter. What is change in others is no change to them.
In truth, they are so unchangeably changeable that it is quite
easy for them to believe themselves consistent, systematic, and
lovers of principle, when everybody else thinks them not to be
depended on in the commonest matter. Such men listen to advice
with all the composure of self-righteousness, with almost a pathetic
appearance of patience, as if they were carrying a cross and sharing
in the mortifications of the saints. For how improper to advise
them! Their position, their name, their antecedents, all should
have guaranteed them from the impertinent simplicity of advice;
and the quarter from which the advice has come is just the quarter
from which it ought not to have come. But they bear it with
admirable meekness, remembering how hidden and unsuspected
all goodness for the most part is in this naughty world. Perhaps
we may say of these men, without offending charity, that they are
not very likely candidates for the honors of canonization. Yet

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perhaps a great number of them expect their lives will be written.
But we have another form of self-deceit, which is censorious.
There are men who are always so sure they are in the right that
they set themselves up as a standard by which to judge others.
So undoubting is their self-confidence that they are not conscious
they arc making any uncommon claim to the confidence of others,
when they thus put themselves forward as a standard. To abstain
to do so would in their estimation be an act of false humility. As
a man lives a man’s life all the day long without particularly
adverting to the fact that he is not an angel or a beast, but simply
a man, so these persons are judging others all the day long, with­
out adverting to it, as if they came into the world for the sole and
express purpose of judging others and the wonder would be if
they did any thing else. They would rather advert to the excep­
tion of not judging, than to the continuity of censoriousness
which makes up their life. But, while the complacent self-de­
ceivers habitually reflect with pleasure on their own being in the
right, the less amiable, though really more practical, censorious
self-deceivers prefer to contemplate with satisfaction the fact that
others are in the wrong. The latter, therefore, are less to be loved,
while at the same time there is much more real work to be got
out of them. It is astonishing how accurate their unfavorable
judgments of others are. It is as if practice conferred a skill upon
uncharitableness which gave it almost the unerringness of a sci­
ence. Thus they make fewer mistakes than the complacent self­
deceivers. For the world is really a very bad world, and most
people are in the wrong; and there is a kind of reputation to be
got by always prophesying dismal things, and a kind of influence
to be obtained by frightening others with our sarcasm and detrac­
tion, and even a kind of success, which to an unamiable man is
better than none, in getting out of the way of a scrape into which
others fall. Few men, even among good men, aim at any thing
high in life, and a few crumbs of success are nourishment enough
to souls that can swallow a sea of flattery. These censorious men
are generally calm and tranquil, because of the unshaken placidity
of their self-confidence. Hence they have for the most part a

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great dislike of enthusiasm. It is contrary to the genius of the
critical spirit to be enthusiastic. A man’s heart gets cold if he does
not keep it warm by living in it; and a censorious man is one who
ordinarily lives out of his own heart. In matters of religious de­
tail these men have an instinctive aversion to liberty of spirit, and.
while they indulge themselves to a dangerous amount in liberty
of practice, they are severe upon liberty of spirit in others. They
are men who cannot easily understand what another man can
inwardly be like who acts from love; and hence they think liberty
of spirit to be only an unblushing proclamation of that infre­
quency of prayer, perfunctoriness of examination of conscience,
and tepidity of sorrow for sin, which they themselves keep secret
as the realities of their own interior life. A rigorous theology is
one of the cheapest modes of respectability; and he who represents
the road to heaven as hard to others is most probably leading an
easy life himself. A censorious man is either under the voluptuous
dominion of self-indulgence or the unworthy subjection of human
respect. Yet this is one of the commonest forms of self-deceit.
It is, moreover, hard to cure, because its heart is inaccessible. It
seems almost to require the shock of a great sin, which, by shatter­
ing the lordly edifice of self-respect, may let in upon the soul the
light of salutary shame.
There is a fifth variety of self-deceit, which is ambitious. Ambi­
tion aims at a distant object, which can only be obtained slowly.
Yet it is by no means a patient quality. While it feeds patience
perhaps more than any other vice does, it has by no means a fair
share of it. It is a quick, impetuous, impatient passion, perpetu­
ally overreaching itself in its calculations, and peculiarly liable
to mistake the means for the end. This ambitious self-deceit con­
founds single actions with formed habits; and if by more than a
common impulse of grace a man has been able in one instance
to do something generous for God, this self-deceit leads him to
suppose that he has already acquired a saintly habit, toward
which this action has been the first step only. Contrary experience
irritates rather than undeceives him. He grows petulant with
God. He has adopted practices of devotion which are above the

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level of his attainments. He has ventured upon a familiarity in
prayer, which he conceived suited to his perfection, but which has
been in his case, however holy in itself, simply prejudicial to his
reverence. He dares to speak complainingly to God. He would
fain contemplate, without the previous pains of assiduous medita­
tion. He would love suffering, but he has spared himself in the
matter of bodily mortification. He would serve God with a purely
disinterested love, but he has never been half sorry enough for
his sins. He passed through the earlier stages of the spiritual life
at a bound, and leaped into high things, and has starved his soul
upon mysticism when he would have grown fat upon common
piety. Here is altogether a very incurable case, and not a very
uncommon one! But what is the man’s end? He began by imitat­
ing the saints in what was inimitable, and he ends by giving up
religion under discouragement. He commenced by being vora­
cious of the supernatural, and he finishes by finding the common
exercise of faith a difficult attainment.
Then there is the self-deceit which is scrupulous. It is odious
to have to speak of it. The older we get, the less good can we see
in scruples. Experience and age both convince us that the look of
respectability which we once thought there was about scrupulous
men was a mere delusion. They all turn out badly. Huge con­
tinents of puerile conceit are being discovered in their souls
every year. They are eaten up with that unassuming assumption,
which is the most wicked of all the varieties of censoriousness.
Their selfish pusillanimity is intolerable. They are a pest which
religious society might almost blamelessly combine to get rid of
by summary extinction. Their good is all on the surface and
wears no better than the bloom on a plum. This is a form
of self-deceit which Satan very much affects. It does his work
as he would have it done. It perversely fixes his attention on
wrong things, that is, on things which it need not particularly
attend to, and it does this exclusively. Meanwhile, it is perfectly
unscrupulous in things which are a scandal, or a ruling passion,
or an occasion of sin, or a besetting temptation. On the whole, it
pays very little attention to its behavior to others, or to their

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feelings. It is snappish, and sour, and uncongenial, and intract­
able; and all this foolish people sometimes put down to sanctity.
It has in its nature a deep well of tranquil self-exaltation, and on
the surface it has the fidgets in religion. It has never done any
good in its lifetime, and never will do any; but it has made such
a noise about the good it was one day going to do, that it has got
more credit for its intention than a man often gets who quietly
does the real work. These are tiresome men, good to try our
tempers, but otherwise such as we like to know of at a distance,
as possible, probable, or actual, like the wild beasts in Africa. A
man who has duties to such people is unfortunately placed in life.
Lastly, there is the self-deceit which is falsely humble. It has a
great affinity to the scrupulous self-deceit, but perhaps comes more
near to be incurable. It is true that self-deceit is a mark both of
intellectual and moral weakness. But then there are few char­
acters in the world which have not at least one point at which
they are both intellectually and morally weak. With some the
intellectual weakness comes from the moral; with most the moral
comes from the intellectual. We must not, dierefore, be surprised
at finding apparently strong and clear characters which are never­
theless the victims of this extremely foolish self-deceit which arises
from false humility. Every one feels that humility is pre-eminently
the saintly virtue, and therefore every one aims at mastering it.
But it is uncommonly difficult to master, while it seems almost
impossible to nature to go on believing itself so little good as it
must believe itself so long as it believes itself not to be humble.
Hence something must be done in order to shorten the process
of its acquisition. Unfortunately, some of the saints have occasion­
ally spoken ill of themselves. Whereupon we also will speak ill
of ourselves, not in the least believing what we say, and still less
conceding any right to others to believe us. Every man in the
world has his little circle of flatterers, just as an insect has its
parasites. These are either foolish enough or insincere enough to
be pleased with our self-abuse; and we, finding it a cheap heroism,
are by no means economical in the matter. But this self-abuse has
a remarkable tendency to produce spiritual blindness. It does not

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seem to be so much a disease superinduced upon the soul's eye,
as a positive wearing away of that by which alone the soul can see
at all. a destruction of its very power of seeing. Its blindness is
complete when it has come to believe, as it does at last, what it
says against itself, and what it began to say only from conceit and
affectation. A man in this state is ignorant of that which of all
things in the spiritual life it is most necessary for him to know,—
his own want of courage. This is because his false humility never
allows him to try himself. He thinks, in his artificial self-abjection,
which has now become real without becoming true, that he ought
only to attempt low things for God; and therefore he does what is
below his strength, without trying what is level with it or above it.
Yet, mean-spirited as it grows, this self-deceit is not without a kind
of pride in its safety and discretion, while it does not see at all its
peculiarly odious form of ungenerosity. All deluded souls will be
much surprised at the day of judgment; but we should imagine
the greatest and most painful surprise of all is that which awaits
the soul self-deceived by false humility.
These are the seven varieties of self-deceit with which direction
has to deal, with such patience as it can command, fighting man­
fully with irritability and despair. There are, however, manifold
interminglings of these varieties, which are the greatest puzzle
in spiritual direction, and also the greatest tortures which self
can inflict on self. There is, in fact, no entanglement in creation
like the entanglement of self-deceit; and there is this peculiarity
about all its varieties, that they are all of them swift diseases, tend­
ing to become so very soon, and at such early stages, very difficult
to cure.

SELF-DECEIT
IV.

The Characteristics of Self-Deceit

It requires some amount of pious bravery to go on making
a more and more intimate acquaintance with this offensive phe­

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nomenon of our fallen nature. But it is of incalculable conse­
quence to us to do so. I feel that I have tried your patience, and
that I have no right to expect you to listen to me with more than
a half-angry forbearance. Yet I cannot help hoping that we are
both of us getting very earnest in the matter; and, after all, do you
not find that there is always a peculiar pleasantness in every thing
we do for God, no matter how we shrink from the thing in itself?
We are very bad, full of littleness, full of inconsequence, and very
foolish; and in nothing do we show our foolishness more than in
the matters of the spiritual life. When we meet with an accident,
we are not exactly angry with the surgeon who sets the broken
limb and washes the gravel out of the wound and makes us
tremble with pain while he does it. Yet there is perhaps a dash
of anger toward him in our mind, and without any reason at all
we think a greater degree of skill would have inflicted a lesser
degree of pain. Yet this feeling continues only while the pain has
risen for a moment above bearing-point. So, when we are inclined
to be angry with our directors, (which we all of us very often are.
and a reasonable director expects it at our hands), we must en­
deavor only to be angry with him as we are with our surgeon.
A hurt man is almost inevitably angry. It is foolish to be angry
with him for being so. So, if you begin to ask yourselves why I
have chosen this repulsive subject, why I dwell upon it so long,
and why I sometimes seem to speak banteringly on what must be so
serious if it be only as much as half true, you will soon get more
angry with me than is expedient for yourselves. I have tried to do
a disagreeable thing in the least disagreeable way I could; but
whatever must be disagreeable at best always seems unnecessarily
and wantonly disagreeable. Nevertheless, however unreasonable
and petulant we may all of us be, we are really in earnest with
God, and are content to force our way through the remainder of
our investigation with the hope of something for his glory coming
out of it at the last. This, you see, is nothing but a piece of selfdefence, probably containing some amount of self-deceit. If you
perceive it, I shall be more pleased than ashamed; for you will
listen to me less fretfully when you see how I fall under my own

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lash. When a man makes a fool’s cap for others, it always looks
more at home on his own head than on theirs.
We have spoken of the varieties of self-deceit. Yet we cannot
dispense ourselves from a scrutiny of the characteristics of all
self-deceit, as such. In the last section we split it into subdivisions;
now we must regard it again in its unity as a coherent and con­
sistent whole. The first characteristic of self-deceit which strikes
us is its seemingly boundless power, as compared with other
temptations which by their own nature are more partial. Indeed,
it is something more than a temptation. It appears to be a law
of our soul’s infirmity, a law inevitable to our present condition,
and which grace itself cannot altogether repeal. For, just as mat­
ter and body have their inseparable infirmities, so spirit and soul
have theirs. Its genius is universal, and thus, like the air, gives
no warning of its presence. Temptations follow in the train of
certain circumstances, and those circumstances warn us of the
temptation that is bearing down upon us, just as the sudden
darkening of the sea-fog in one place warns the navigator that
an iceberg is approaching. But self-deceit is everywhere. It is a
sort of caricature of grace. It goes before and it follows after; it
suggests, and it confers, perseverance; it underlies our actions like
the earth, or overarches them like the sky; it walks by the side of
them, or it fuses itself into them; it praises them in self-love; it
reproaches them out of a false conscience; it gives us a light to
see by, and the light blinds us; the two opposite states of activity
and repose are equally suited for its operations; it hides itself
and shows itself with alternations as indistinguishable as the vibra­
tions of a humming-bird’s wings. Intolerable companion! always
in step, never fatigued, indifferent to hill or vale, to wood or
swamp, to town or field, to land or sea, forever invisibly mocking
and mimicking the gait of our beloved Guardian Angel, and
entrapping us into blind plots to bailie the intelligent kindness of
that dear fraternal Spirit! Life becomes irritating with this con­
sciousness attached to it. No one can bear to be dogged. More­
over, this self-deceit is always triumphant, always on the laugh,
always making game of us. Change as we will in natural things,

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we are equally its prey. Nay, it almost grows with our grace.
Grace gives it new opportunities, fresh theatres, and opens to its
spiteful glee a delighted diversity of fresh experiments. I believe
that there is often more self-deceit in a religious than in a secular;
yet I suppose it is the grandest thing in the world to he a religious.
Most aggravating self-deceit! It is so elastic: who can punish it?
It is like whipping the air. It is such a confirmed optimist: who
ever humbled it? It is almost embarrassed by its own success. But
let us keep up our spirits, and be hopeful. We shall see, by-andby, that this, like other dark subjects, has a bright side also, bright
enough, even if not very bright.
A second characteristic of self-deceit is its deep-seated in­
veteracy. Repeated victories over it seem to give us no habit of
victory over it. No amount of mortification seems to cow it. On
the contrary, all the measures taken against it appear to invigorate
it. It finds its way everywhere, and flies under pressure, unharmed
and whole as quicksilver. It cannot be gathered up, held fast,
submitted to any operation, or detached from the various circum­
stances of life. One moment concentrated and the next moment
diffused, it baffles all pursuit. Vigilance does little to help us. To
watch it makes us wise about it, as watching the stars helps us in
theorizing about them while it gives us no control over them in
their paths. We never grow expert in our warfare with it, because
it hardly ever attacks us twice quite in the same manner. Indeed,
attack is a wrong word to use. Even strategem hardly expresses
the peculiarly quiet initiative which self-deceit takes in all things.
It is passive, or rather active in the same way in which any corro­
sive matter is active. It does not affect war but peace. It wants
to live quietly in our lives, or, rather, to live our lives for us and
be a kind of soul to us. It is this peculiarity which enables it to
be so inveterate. Many bad things are inveterate in us. but none
is so inveterate as this.
Then, in the next place, we must note its ability to put on the
appearance of good. No wonder the devil's prime-minister should
possess so much of the devil's chief talent. Yet we hardly do justice
to this characteristic of self-deceit when we call it an ability to

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assume the disguise of virtue. For it always wears it. It is its
normal state, its law of gravitation, something essential to its
being. If it looked evil, we should never be deceived by it. I hope
there are few men in the world who deliberately, and without the
disturbing force of passion or temptation, choose evil with the cer­
tainty that it is evil, and in spite of that certainty. I do not believe
that any creature out of hell chooses evil because it is evil. But,
even if it were so, there is no self-deceiving here. It is the hardness
and audacity of conscious malice. Self-deceit is that which makes
us do the devil's work, believing, though not always with an en­
tirely honest faith, that it is God’s. The incomparable perfection
with which self-deceit can put on endless disguises, and hardly
ever be found out in any of them, is the grand characteristic of its
inauspicious genius. How it can look persuasive in startling
attitudes and natural in novel positions, alas! we all know too
well. It is a thing we can never sufficiently admire. It were to be
wished that our fear was always equal to our admiration. There
would be a much lower average of shipwrecks among immortal
souls.
But it has a weak point. There is comfort in the thought.
This weak point is another of its characteristics. This is its sore­
ness when touched,—though it is for the most part very hard to
touch. It escapes unharmed from our touch, but it sensibly winces
under the pain of it. There are some noxious creatures in crea­
tion which, by sound or odor, or the betrayal of some other
animal, are mercifully compelled to disclose their dangerous
proximity to us. This is one of the footprints of God's love in
natural history. Now, this characteristic of self-deceit is a parallel
case. There are a hundred dangers in self-deceit,—it would have
been truer to have said a thousand,—but none of them is so great
as its concealment. Hence the compassion of its being made to
betray itself by its sensitiveness when touched. We have all of us
certain ways, practices, habits, attitudes, tricks of conduct, which
no one can blame us for without putting us out of temper. We
ourselves hardly know why it should be so. Why should we be
unmoved when an unfriendly tongue touches some mode or

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manifestation of our conceit, and explode like gunpowder when
it touches some other, which is neither more guilty, nor—which
is to be chiefly considered from this point of view—more disgrace­
ful or more ridiculous? We cannot tell. Very often we cannot
analyze it when our attention is called to it. Generally speaking,
it is a betrayal of self-deceit, a discovery of the utmost moment
to us, and one to be fearlessly followed up without delay. This
sensitiveness of self-deceit is a fortunate characteristic of the vice,
or, rather, an ingenuity of Providence. It is the rattle in the
snake’s tail, sounding when for the snake's purpose it should be
silent. Let us take care to search the bush whenever we hear the
rattle. Half our bites would have been saved if we had always
done so.
The coexistence of self-deceit with so much good is another of
its characteristics. It has a genius for alliances. All are natural
to it, and fall in with its purposes and extend its influence. Its
power of combination is incredible, until observation and experi­
ence bring it home to us. It can amalgamate with things which
have apparently repugnant, or even antagonistic, qualities. But it
tends especially to ally itself with good. It selects the best of every
tiling, and fastens by predilection on that which is most excellent
In many instances good drowns evil when by the help of grace it
comes to be in excess. But the quantity of good only freshens
self-deceit, while on the other hand the smallest quantity of its
poison disturbs the greatest quantity of good, and a moderate
quantity of the evil is able even to neutralize an enormously dis­
proportionate amount of good. Hypocrisy is generally short-lived,
unless it has some amount of piety along with it. So self-deceit
purposely abides in the neighborhood of good in order to be fos­
tered and kept warm. Thus we have always to regard the amount
of our grace as some index to the amount of our self-deceit, and
this is in itself a disheartening consideration. Akin to this char­
acteristic, perhaps simply a manifestation of it, we must notice
also that quiet partnership with the sacraments into which this
decei. intrudes itself. There is even a peculiar form of it belong­
ing to frequent confession; and our corruption can make frequent

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communion an actual hotbed of self-deceit. I dare not go further
into these questions, unless I went into them completely, and, if
it were possible, exhaustively; and therefore I content myself with
this dismal indication of them.
Self-deceit increases with our age. This is another of its char­
acteristics. Some weeds grow in our souls by what appears a
chance. Others die, if peculiar circumstances do not nurture
them. Some are planted there by a single act of sin, an act which
had neither parents nor children, neither antecedents nor con­
sequences, so far as we can see; and they remain hardly green,
barely not dead, and never grow at all. But self-deceit is an
inevitable growth. The broadening of life is the widening of our
faculties for deceiving ourselves. Simplicity is the only thing
which is fatal to self-deceit. If we could be perfectly simple, we
could inflict a mortal wound upon the monster. But life mul­
tiplies things. It entangles our motives. It distracts our attention.
It complicates our daily conduct. It bewilders us by its rapidity,
its versatility, its contradictoriness, its imperiousness, its fertility.
All these things are prolific of new possibilities for self-deceit; and
self-deceit fills them as air fills a vacuum, silently if allowed its
own way and time, with a report if compelled to act suddenly and
under distress. Only of this we may be sure, that the fountain
flows more copiously each succeeding year, and that, unless grace
is evaporating the waters as they spring, life is but a match be­
tween grace and self-deceit, in which the latter will be victorious,
and all that grace can do is to delay the hour of its own defeat.
It is one of those operations of grace which must be a complete
one in order to be decisively triumphant. In almost all its other
operations grace has a fair triumph even in comparative failure.
But I doubt if it is so here.
But what is true in the life of nature is true also in the life of
grace. For it is another characteristic of self-deceit, that its en­
ergies are quickened as people rise higher in the spiritual life.
It has always been a melancholy truth, which no experienced
ascetic has ever thought of gainsaying, that the higher operations
of grace are more subject to delusion than the lower, except the

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very highest, which have to do with the soul’s uttermost union
with God. This arises from their being more out of proportion
with our infirmity and vileness; while those highest operations of
all are nearly exempt from delusion, because, although they are
still more disproportioned to our littleness, they bring with them
more sovereign succors and more overwhelming transformations
of grace. We are more easily able to manage common grace; and
the highest graces easily manage us, because they liken us to them­
selves. But the higher graces, which stand midway, are replete
with delusions precisely because they are not high enough to
counterbalance of themselves the disproportioned weight they
lay upon us. Very few even of those aiming at perfection rise
above these middle graces. Hence it is practically the common
rule, that the higher men rise in the spiritual life the more sub­
ject they become to the insidious operations of self-deceit. Interior
mortifications are higher than bodily mortifications, and they are
especially liable to this deceit. The broad fact of bodily pain is
something palpable to feel our way by, and the pain itself dis­
abuses us of as much self-deceit as the infliction of it can bring
into us. But it is not so with the higher mortifications. So with
prayer. The more nearly it comes to the confines of what is
passive, the more liable it is to delusions. So with peculiar or
definite prayers, such as to be thought ill of; they furnish us with
endless opportunities of going wrong, even while they open
almost interminable avenues of grace. However, there is a sort
of collateral consolation in this. The growth of self-deceit may be
an index of growth in holiness; and in a land of such Egyptian
darkness even what looks like light cheers the eye; and a chance
almost has the value of a reality when all chance seemed gone.
But this is not all. Self-deceit seems actually to thrive on
prayer, and to grow fat on contemplation. Prayer leads us into
a new world,—a world where a different language is spoken, where
the forms of the scenery are different and seen in a differentlytinted atmosphere. We are not used to this, and easily make mis­
takes. There are no deceptions in nature to compare with those
of light. We misjudge distances and sizes; we see things inverted.

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and even discern things which have nothing but a fantastical
existence. It is a principle no less true in theology than in
natural science, that light only gets color by shining through
darkness. In the world of prayer there are colors which we cannot
easily assign rightly to the object or the atmosphere; there arc
splendors which dazzle, and which by dazzling mislead. Habit is
the only safety with supernatural things; and by the time we
become habituated to one set of supernatural objects the ascen­
sions of grace have raised us into another. In the spiritual life
we are always changing our sphere. It would not be life, but
stagnation, were it otherwise. This is not the place to enter
upon so large a subject; but it would not be difficult to show that
all the phenomena of prayer, its dangers, its peculiarities, its
reactions on the soul, its associations, and even its blessings, are
singularly capable of affording nutriment to self-deceit. As a
matter of fact, no man who has watched himself well has failed
to observe the way in which prayer, regarded as a habit, is beset
by self-deceit.
In connection with this, we must notice another of its char­
acteristics, which is the opportune and instantaneous manner in
which it seizes on fresh graces and diverts them to its own ends.
The power of a temptation is mostly in its timeliness. With a
nature so weak as ours, so peculiarly unable to withstand sur­
prises, that which is well timed, either for good or evil, is almost
irresistible. The empire of self-deceit rests in no slight degree
upon the way in which it times every move. It is cautious and
calculating, clear of eye and patient of temper. It never pre­
cipitates any thing. It is never before its time, as the passions
so often are. For the passions are continually overreaching their
own ends, and baffling themselves by the animal vehemence of
their impulses. They succeed rather by their obstinacy than by
their skill. But self-deceit is delicate, diplomatic, noiseless, wary
even in its swiftness, and does every thing to a nicety. It works
like a chemist, cleanly, finely, measuredly, and for the most part
minutely. Its very gracefulness is the grace of a man who is con­
scious that he is intruding and must make a title out of his manner.

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Then, when this timeliness of self-deceit is applied to the in­
crements of grace which we are continually receiving, the danger
and misery of our position become obvious. We seem to be in
receipt of a good income, for our dividends are both regular and
large. But, in truth, it is not all our own. Self-deceit levies a large
income-tax, and it is paid insensibly as our new graces come, so
that we never know how much less rich we are than we seem
to be. Only we know that we are considerably poorer. The
discreet management of our grace is one of the most difficult
subjects in the spiritual life. We must have Conferences on it
some Lent or other.· Here it is enough to record it as a
grievous and distasteful fact, that self-deceit does in fact take the
bloom off our fresh graces as they come, so that our pining souls
hardly ever taste a grace in all its own unhandled freshness. The
fruit has been fingered, and the sugar in it has begun to ferment.
Thus self-deceit infests nature, and it infests grace. At one
moment it is busy in one of these worlds, at the next moment in
the other. Thus it is another of its characteristics that it is, in
some persons habitually, and in others at particular times, almost
indistinguishable from natural character. I have said before that
it is an inevitable growth: but a growth of what? Truly, of
natural character, in a subject weakened, unhinged, and over­
balanced by sin. Thus there is a necessary connection between
our natural character and our own mode of self-deceit, although
it would be as intolerable as untrue to confound the two things
together. Yet this connection enables it not only to time itself
to our weak moments and to fasten on our weak points, but also
to assume the look of our disposition so completely that we may
be unable to recognize ourselves. Then here is the danger.
Almost every man considers his natural character, or some part
of it, to be practically a necessity to him. He concedes to his
disposition at least a limited right to lay down the law to him.
He cannot resist this; he cannot overcome that. He assumes these
• These Conferences on the Management of Grace have now been delivered.
Lent of 1858.

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as acknowledged facts in his government of himself, or rather
management of himself. For, unluckily, self-government is little
else but management. Here we arrive at that fountain of self­
dispensation upon which so many souls make shipwreck, who
cannot discern between want of trust in nature and want of trust
in grace, between confidence in self and confidence in God. Then
self-deceit intervenes, and, with an adroitness which we should
admire if it were less pernicious in its effects, insinuates itself
into the privileged parts of our character, into the dispositions we
have made up our minds to humor, and so becomes our law of
life. We lie to ourselves, and make that lie our law. We had
better say no more on that head.
We have to add to the characteristics of self-deceit, already
enumerated, the manifoldness of its forms. We might almost say
that its forms are as countless as the insects of the earth, and that
each form is a species by itself. So versatile and so individual is
each man’s self-deceit. It is as it were the essence of the subtlety
of evil in each man’s mind, combining with every thing; and no
two of its combinations are alike. Who can ever learn thoroughly
a spirit so protean as this?
The invisible and distracting speed of its changes is another
of its characteristics, intimately connected with the former. Who
could pursue the electrical stream as it runs round the earth
twenty-two times in a second? Yet self-deceit could outstrip it
far in speed. There are no measures to the speed of thought.
There are few thoughts gifted with such speed of self-originating
logic as those by which we daily deceive ourselves.
To this we must also add the humiliatingness of self-deceit.
There is a shame quite peculiar to the tight thraldom in which
it holds us, whenever we come to perceive it. There are no men
who shrink more instinctively from self-knowledge than those
who have once detected themselves in self-deceit. They cannot
bear that shame over again. The detection has changed them
in some respects. They are better men for it. Yet in some other
respects, unless they have great grace, they are worse men also
for the self-conviction. As men say at insurance-offices, they are

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better lives, but their health is no better. This is especially the
case with beginners in the spiritual life. When they are first
turned loose into the grand prairies of asceticism and the vast
forests of meditation, they fall into spiritual gluttony, and mis­
take unwieldiness for growth in robustness. They ought to have
been sent out, as we used to hear in old years of farmers turning
their cows into cloverfields, with tight girths of rope round their
stomachs lest they should eat till they burst. Then by this glut­
tony men find themselves out. All habits of lying are humiliating:
what must self-lying be? So they give up the whole matter in
disgust, and turn moderate, and take to comfort, and lead unsatis­
factory lives, and go to purgatory for years to expiate their discre­
tion. The end of some is farther and more fatal than that.
A man always thinks he must change himself when he changes
his circumstances, or change his whole self when he is called
upon to change any part of himself. This is why men are always
puzzling us by contradicting their antecedents. This is why
lawyers are so inaccurate when they turn authors, and mathe­
maticians talk so badly. So with these poor fellows, whom the
shame of self-deceit drives into a life where there is no possibility
of hypocrisy, because there is no show of piety.
There is one characteristic more, which results from a con­
templation of all the others. It is the peculiar antagonism to God
which distinguishes self-deceit. He is absolute truth: it is the
meanest falsehood. He is simplicity: it is confusion. He is light:
it is darkness. He is merciful: it is unsparing. It belongs to us
as creatures not yet transformed into his image. It is the grand
complicated result of sin. It works against God, under ground
and above ground, in every soul and at every turn. It enables
nature to taint grace. It teaches sin how’ to avoid repentance.
Its apostolate is to dissuade from perfection. It shifts the rudders
of lives, and sets them on rocks or on the sands. It is the source
of almost all the bad steering in life, and it is no slight propor­
tion of wrecks which are attributable to bad steering. It takes
the bloom off God's glory which it cannot steal. It spoils death­
beds, and then dies happy.

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Moreover, this is a domestic enemy, who can never be put to
death while we live ourselves, but, amid all other trials, and in
addition to them, is to be held down in an uncomfortable, strug­
gling captivity. Every thing is food to it. Poisons nourish it.
Mortifications strengthen it. Prayer fattens it. Sacraments make
it bright and happy. There is but one way to deal with it, which
is to starve it; and the danger is lest, while we starve it, we
starve our own souls also. Well may we pine for childlike sim­
plicity and royal truth. God is true, and every man a liar. Yet
consolation is in sight. There is one other characteristic of self­
deceit: we have enumerated fifteen; this will make the sixteenth.
It is that there is one thing, and one only, with which self-deceit
appears to be nearly incompatible, or with which at least it can
only be combined by being immensely weakened; and that is
abiding sorrow for sin, the beautiful grace of contrition.

SELF-DECEIT

V.

The Remedies

of

Self-Deceit

Is there any thing substantial in creation? Is there any 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 petty, and we see it in all its undisguised petti­
ness when our minds are introverted upon it. It takes the fresh­
ness 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, while 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

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more repulsive the nearer we come to it, the more offensive the
more we handle it. Moreover, all things turn to delusion! Prayer,
sacraments, mortifications, sallies of divine love, things in them­
selves fresh as the leaping cataracts 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 every thing 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 spirit 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 fretful­
ness, his girlish jealousy, his ungraceful aptness to take offence,
his love of nice cookery, his anxiety about his health, his refer­
ence 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

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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 changing my mind. But I
believe I was right, and I still keep to it. We will settle, there­
fore, that self-deceit is certainly reparable. Now, as to the spir­
itual 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 expecta­
tions, 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, selfabasement gives us heart. Strange it should be so; and 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 in­
voluntary gesture, against which at other times it is on its guard.
Thus the mere knowledge 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 having said so much of this evil

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without pointing out a definite plan of cure. For what has been
already said enables us the more easily to recognize this selfdeceit when we see it, and also indicates to us the localities in
which it is most likely 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 any thing 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 colors to the blos­
soms. The want of light will even turn the course of nature, or,
rather, will frustrate its designs. Some animals cannot develop 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 indefi­
nitely, 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 sim­
plicity 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

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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, be­
cause its ordinary nutriment is an antidote, 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 bile, 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 concentrat­
ing the whole power of the soul on purity of intention exclusively,
cannot be indiscriminately recommended 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 un­
happiness, 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 phan­
toms, rife with delusions. So, if seeking to make our intentions
for God’s glory always actually entangles our conduct instead of

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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 ex­
cessive 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 out­
ward and the inward, upon the evenness of which all sobriety in
asceticism depends. 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 ex­
periments 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 quickly, it is better to come up quickly, without
having 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 some­
thing has gone wrong, especially when he has detected himself

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in a spiritual dishonesty. But it is a temptation, not an impulse
of giace. 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 favorite 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 wc
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 pecu­
liarly 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 faith’s eye clear and steady. Now, the tactics of selfdeceit are to harass our hope. Entanglement, complication, in­
distinctness, 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 honorable 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 glit­
tering gold and on our unsoiled banner flapping like slow flashes
of lightning in the bright beams, with our trumpets braying

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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 good-humored 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 writing 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 ex­
ceedingly, and appeared to be 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 occa­
sions 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 without even vicissitudes
of brightness; and up and down this he has the comfort of walking
fearlessly, bcause there is no ambush there for self-deceit. But
the remedy of self-distrust, now in question, is the distrusting
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. Ex­
perience soon shows us that in all such inward convictions of our

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being in the right there is a garrison of self-love. Meanwhile, the
practice of especially distrusting ourselves in these inward assur­
ances 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 yet 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 otherwise should have done; and quietness is always
an unfavorable circumstance for self-deceit. Slow action is
often a favorite field for self-deceit, almost more so than
ver)' 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

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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 something more than this. The Creator's
image is on the 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 long time together, there
is a sympathy in our souls 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 neighborhood of God is
the native land of truth. Moreover, every thing 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
unfavorable to self-deceit, and meditation on the Divine Perfec­
tions is a perennial source of holy fear and self-abasing adoration.
It is to be remarked also, and a curious remark it is, that rever­
ence toward God makes men natural and simple toward each other.
There is a modest yet unabashed naturalness of manner, which
occasionally distinguishes spiritual persons, into whatever com­
pany 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 grows
upon us, and ends by exercising a sort of fascination over us.
We shall generally find that the devotion of such men is marked
by a forcible attraction toward 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 breed­
ing 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 trem­
ulous reflections. So with us the Eye of God eclipses the world's

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eye. If we become deceivers (and surely this is die ordinary
process) by acting always under a consciousness that men's eyes
arc upon us, whatever distracts us from that baneful conscious­
ness 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 un­
intermitted 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 him­
self, our actual Lord, in all the awful reality of that most peculiar
eucharistie 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 animals, 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

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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. Par
ticular examination of conscience—that which is technically
called particular—is the hound with which we hunt self-deceit
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 de­
stroy 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 be­
come about our own spiritual state. Religious talk is a very feast to
self-deceit. We must also endeavor to walk purely by faith. Every
thing about our devotion should be as inward as is discreetly
possible. We must not go by what chance advisers tells 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 overmuch. 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 re­
member, too, that censoriousness, bad enough always and any­
where, 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.

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But above all things let us beware of one grand error It is
that of thinking, from the delusions and entanglements of the
spiritual life, that God is as it were insidious, that he beguiles us
into committing ourselves and then stands by his bargain re­
gardless of our infirmity. There is often an appearance of this
in some of the complicated situations in which an almost inevit­
able self-deceit has placed us. Sometimes there comes a complica­
tion 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 there­
fore 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 dis­
tressing of our temptations to think thus unworthily of the
straightforwardness of God’s parental love.

SELF-DECEIT
VI. The Place

and

Hour When We Become True

Shall we ever be real? Shall we ever put off this teasing,
clinging falsehood which adheres to all we do, and say, and
suffer, and are? Our souls manage to disentangle themselves out
of our bodies; but it is a sharp process. Perhaps the process of
extricating ourselves out of the meshes of self-deceit will not
only be like that other process, but may be nothing less than a
part of it. If we look at what is practically success, then self-deceit
may be regarded as curable. If we look at absolute success, there
is no cure for it short of death, which is obviously an extinction
rather than a cure. The knowledge that self-deceit is never com­
pletely overcome only makes us pine the more for heaven and
for the far-off springs of everlasting truthfulness. Earth cannot

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do all the work. Something must still be done beyond the grave,
or in the act of descending into it.
But is it so? Will nothing make us real? Think of sorrow,
and of how many cloaks it strips the soul. True. Sorrow is one
of God’s most ablebodied laborers. It does great things, and
works thoroughly what it has to work. But it cannot cope with
self-deceit. It is not its line. On the contrary, it often only
increases our power of deceiving ourselves. There is a vast deal of
unreality in most sorrow. It muffles our conscience. One mo­
ment it puts our soul into studied positions, and the next moment
it throws it into confusion. It holds a mirror to us, in which we
see ourselves caricatured. The image is often exaggerated, al­
ways distorted. Consolation degenerates rapidly into flattery.
Bodily comforts creep in, and no one turns them from the door.
Prayer tends to be peevish. The atmosphere of the house is the
spirit of dispensations. The temperature in which mourners
dwell, except the mourners among the poor, is always relaxing.
Hence it is that in sorrow we so commonly lose sight of God and
so unsuspiciously magnify ourselves. Too many of us have to
look back on seasons of grief rather as breaks and interruptions
in our spiritual life than periods of luxuriant and at the same time
hardy growth. Even when sorrow sanctifies, it does not deliver
us from self-deceit. It has no gift that way. Glorious sorrow!
alas! we treat it very ill. For not unfrequently, so far from
its making us more true, it seems like a joint conspiracy of God
and self and our friends to deceive us the more completely. Yet
this is not sorrow's fault, but ours.
Will joy, then, make us true? No! Perhaps it may deceive us
less than sorrow; but it deceives us grievously. There are cer­
tainly some natures which expand in the sunshine, some char­
acters which undo their folds and uncrease themselves in the
presence of strong heat and bright light. With such persons
joy seems to unlock the heart like wine, and a heart that has
been once opened is not soon closed again, joy has even sancti­
fied some souls altogether. But this is not the common lot. nor
would it have that effect on the multitude of men. Joy suits ad

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mirably those whom it suits at all; but sorrow suits the greater
number. We are all of us no doubt indebted to joy for many
bright thoughts of God; and certainly he whose thoughts about
God are the brightest will suffer least from self-deceit in the
long run, though he will have varieties of self-deceit peculiar to
himself. Let us grant, then, that with some men, and those
more numerous perhaps than is generally supposed, joy does
more than sorrow. Hortatory books will not concede this to us;
but of course it is their profession to be dismal, and we will
assume it in spite of them. Nevertheless the delivery from self­
deceit is not among the gifts of joy. Even when it seems to help
us to serve God better, and not only seems but actually does so, it
hides from ourselves our own poverty of pure disinterested love.
It is hard to believe that spiritual sweetness, if not all our own,
is not in part our own. It is hard to believe that our heart, which
feels so hot amid those heavenly ardors, is in reality hardly
warmed through, and that if God withdraws his gift we can be
wellnigh as mean and selfish and cowardly as we were before.
We soon begin to think that we love God disinterestedly and
serve him for his own blessed sake, and that the fear of hell
or the hope of heaven are motives to which we need not now have
recourse. But the repeated disenchantment of that idea is one of
the most familiar discomforts of the spiritual life. When the
joy goes, the disinterestedness goes also. The languor of our
reaction is often also the fault of joy, because it has all along
been deceiving as to the real amount of solid love of God which
there is in us, and so the spirit of elation has stolen upon us.
and men after spiritual elation are as broken and haggard as
opium-eaters when the effect of the drug has passed away. Selflove everywhere! 1 am angry with myself for seeing it in so
many places where it should not be: I could wish to think it
was an hallucination peculiar to myself. Look at that beautiful
sight, that exquisite piece of spiritual statuary. It is the joy of
a devout soul, running over with sunshine, its very look giving
out a sort of silent inward music, pouring itself out in almost
passionate gratitude before God. The soul, the Guardian Angel,

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the emblems of spiritual graces, the Throne in front of which
the worship is, how wonderful a group! Yet my jaundiced eye
persists in seeing there—self worshipping self, even while it wor­
ships God.
Will suffering deliver us from the thraldom of self-deceit?
No! It would not be a universal remedy, even if it did. For
suffering is by no means so universal as men often take for
granted it is. Suffering is a very dignified word. It imports a
great deal more than the little pains of life or the ordinary
sorrows of humanity. In these smooth times a great proportion
of men go to their graves without having had what could rightly
be called suffering. They have outlived those whom it was natural
they should outlive. Death has, perhaps, not altogether kept his
incursions within these bounds. They have had two or three
serious illnesses in threescore years. There have been the failings
of age, following upon a more or less arduous application to their
professions. But on the whole their heritage has been tranquillity.
They have had a modicum of pain, an allowance of annoyances,
a sprinkling of dissatisfactions and disappointments. But this
does not amount to suffering. The fact is that those who have
hearts noble enough to suffer are a minority of mankind. Most
men are too selfish, or too elastic, or too easy-going, or too
concentrated, to suffer from any event in life, short of those
thunderbolts which only fall now and then in the experience of
a neighborhood. Moralists overshoot the mark when they exag­
gerate the misery of the world. Men of the world feel the un­
reality of this prosing, and laugh at it, and despise religion, to
whose account they put it.
Indeed, all this wailing about the wretchedness of the world
is but the threadbare pathos of an old-fashioned pastoral. It is
worn out. No one is moved by it, unless indeed it makes men
bad by irritating their common sense against religion, which has
no ally one-half so valuable as common sense. The fact is. the
world is a very bright world, and, all things considered, an ex­
tremely satisfactory world, so far as comfort is concerned. The
wonder is—nay, the misery is—that it can be so comfortable

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when it is so sinful. However, the practical fact is that in these
days nobody believes the other view. They taste the world, and
smack their lips; for it is very sweet. If the world was so ob­
viously miserable, moralists would be spared the trouble of their
exhortations. Men are not so bent on being miserable that they
need to be threatened with hell-fire for willfully expatiating
in dismal and repulsive wretchedness. Why warn us so vehemently
against the unhappiness of the world, when that very unhappiness
will keep us from it more effectually than all these admonitions?
In truth, the moralists themselves do not believe their own teach­
ing. Look at them. They utter their lamentations, and enjoy
themselves. It is the ascetics who are right, and not the moralists.
For the ascetics admit the charms of the world, and are timid
and nervous about them. They say of the wickedness of the
world what moralists say of its wretchedness. They are dis­
mayed by its attractiveness. This is the true view, and even the
man of the world admits the truth of it in his heart. Some day
that heart may be softened by a sense of the world’s wicked­
ness, while it is only hardened now by the preaching of the world’s
wretchedness.
Thus, even if suffering were a deliverance from self-deceit,
it would be a much less universal remedy than we need. But in
truth, though suffering is an angel from God, and does the work
of justice in such a manner as to make it more like a work of
love, our own vileness is so great that the results of suffering
upon us are more frequently humiliating than otherwise. It is
often too strong a medicine for our weakness; and this may be
the reason why the compassion of our heavenly Father in so
many cases withholds it. When he punishes, he punishes far
below our power of endurance; and, when he comes to heal our
souls, he spares us even in the bitterness of his remedies. Have
you ever suffered yourself? Then did you not find how suffer­
ing concentrated you upon yourself? It was so hard to be un­
selfish, so hard to think for others, so almost impossible to legis­
late for them. There was in you a backwardness to make sacrifices
to others, which would have been incredible to you before the

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suffering came. You never dreamed you were so completely your
own centre as the suffering proves you to have been. Even God
is to revolve round you. You look at him as a power that can
lighten your load, or as a fountain of consolation, or as a
source of miraculous strength, or as one to whom you may law
fully complain. But in your own mind God has reference to
you, not you to God. Was it not so? But is not this going deeper
into the thickets of self-deceit, instead of getting out upon the
open plain?
Moreover, when interior vigilance is suspended, self-deceit
is left unresisted. At best we are resting on our arms, while
self-deceit never rests at all. It is a great thing for a general to
be able to do with little sleep; and the devil finds his account in
his characteristic wakefulness. Yet I hardly know a rarer grace
than inward vigilance in suffering. Suffering wearies us. We
cannot keep up so many combats on all sides so unintermittingly.
Like a burn, suffering calls our vital heat to itself, to the spot
injured. Our other limbs grow cold. Our heart is dangerously
drained. Meanwhile, there is no such generosity among our
spiritual foes as that they should grant us a truce, and not harass
us in front while suffering is charging us in the rear. But, by
wearying us, suffering also blinds us. If we do not perceive
this in ourselves, we do not fail to notice it in others. Nothing
strikes us so much in our intercourse with suffering persons,
and in our most intimate ministries to them, as their blindness.
We do not know which to admire most, the amount of their
delusion, or its unsuspecting tranquillity. A time of suffering is
for the most part a time of unreality. Suffering there will not
extricate us from that which its tendency is rather to increase.
Will death deliver us from self-deceit? It will come nearest
of all things to doing so. Being dead will deliver us. but not the
act of dying. But can we be unreal when we are dying? The
experience of death-beds is at hand with a melancholy affirmative.
How far it is conscious unreality or unconscious, how far. that
is to say, it is a moral act, is another question. But there is no
doubt that even good persons can be somewhat dramatic in death

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The dying bed can be the boards of a playhouse. We can act
even then and there. The desire to please which is so deep in
our nature appears even then, and animates the desire to give
edification. The old Roman is not the only one who has gathered
his toga around him to die gracefully, though it was but a
heathenish grace to seek. Indeed, perfect simplicity is not com­
mon on a death-bed, unless it be a rapid ending. Grace seems to
wear out, and ignoble self shows through. But not unfrcquently
there is much more acting than this implies. Perhaps it may in
some degree be referable to a sort of habit of playing at dying,
which is occasionally recommended in pious books, and which
pleases certain minds. When a man has been inventing last words
for years, rehearsing the manner of receiving the last sacraments,
and making pictures for himself of a modestly triumphant end,
it is difficult to suppose that all this imaginary scene-making will
not appear to a certain extent even in the presence of the grim
realities. On the whole, it comes to this. If in life we have
already tried to be real, death will show us how little we have
done. If we have not made that trial in life, we shall only be
startled by waking up to die, and then die before the amazement
is past and we can collect ourselves. Alas! few men die more
than half awake.
What, then, will make us real? The Face of God will do it.
The first kingly touch of eternity will not only wake us, but it
will heal us also. Self-deceit is the king’s evil of the soul, and
the Sovereign’s hand alone can cure it. The self-knowledge
flashed upon us by the glance of Jesus at the judgment will in
one moment unclothe the soul of all untruth fulness and clothe
it in its vesture of immortal truth. The utter self-abasement
caused in us by the ravishing beauty of the Godhead will be the
ultimate truth of our created natures.
Clearly, then, the nearest approach to this which is possible on
earth will be our best defence against self-deceit; and the nearest
approach to it is the serving God out of personal love. Love—
not all love, but divine love—has a specialty to make us real.
Communion with God eats away our unreality, something after

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the fashion of a sacrament. We catch simplicity as part of the like­
ness of Jesus; and it is his likeness which love fastens on. When
we look out of ourselves in loving faith, our inward processes are
fewer in number and amazingly simplified. But their majesty
is only enhanced by their simplicity. When our interior life is
reduced to a single operation of grace, it is then that we are safest
When many things are going on in us at once, there is little
growth, and much self-deceiving. We must look out to God, pass
over to him, lean upon him, learn to be one with him, and let
love of him burn love of self away, so that our union may be
effected. Out of God all is unreal. Away from God all is untrue.
Untruthfulness is the condition of the creature. How painfully
we feel, when we are at our best estate, and even better people
than ourselves when they are at their best estate, that we are help­
lessly pretentious, indeliberate unrealities, unintentional hypoc­
risies! It is a sober cheer that the time will come to all of us when
we shall play parts no more, neither with others, nor with our­
selves, nor yet with God.

WHY SO LITTLE COMES OF FREQUENT CONFESSION

We go to confession every week, and we are what we are. If
we think soberly of this fact, it is about as great a mystery as any
which either nature or grace can show us. Confession is a stu­
pendous work, in which God and man combine to do great things.
We take pains with our confessions. We use at least ordinary
diligence with our examinations of conscience. We pay particular
attention to our dispositions. We receive absolution. This hap­
pens weekly, and we remain what we are. If any thing is worth
inquiring into, this is. Instead of going through the mystery in
order to arrive at its explanation, I will give the explanation first,
and consider the mystery afterward. For the explanation is prac­
tically of much greater importance to us than the mystery itself.
One is a mere fact; the other is a lesson. If we are really in earnest
about our souls, there is no lesson we have more need to lay to
heart than the one which explains the little fruit which comes
of frequent sacraments. The lesson is, that holiness depends less
upon what we do than upon how we do it.
This axiom, then, is to be our text: Holiness depends less
upon what we do than upon how we do it. It sounds common­
place enough; but it has sufficient matter in it for the study of a
life and for the practice of eternity. In spiritual things the good­
ness of the matter is of more consequence than its novelty. So do
not let us scout this trite remark. In devotion it is better to be
safe than to be original.
Reading the life of a saint is a very edifying thing. But, when
we have read many hundreds of saints' lives, we begin to see a
great deal which we never saw before. We learn a wisdom from
them which no single life of a saint can give. The peculiarities
of saints drop out of sight. We see them as a whole, as a class,
as a species. We perceive what is common to them all, and what
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is the foundation of sanctity in them all. This is of lay more im­
portance to us than their individual examples. It also leads us
much deeper. It is getting another sight of God from a fresh point
of view. It is a kind of Bible, written historically like the Old
Testament. It is a Summa of theology. What I want to do now
is to call attention to one only of the very many spiritual char­
acteristics of the saints, looked at as a body. Of course there are
exceptions, exceptions which will rise to everybody's thoughts.
But they are really so few that they barely suffice to prove the rule.
The characteristic is, that on the whole the saints did few things.
Be sure of the truth of this before you grant it; for you will find
that a great many things follow from it. What I assert, then, is
that the saints, as a class, did few things. Their lives were by no
means crammed with works, even with works of mercy. They
made a point of keeping considerable reserves of time for them­
selves and for the affairs of their own souls. Their activity was
far more contemplative than we in these days are inclined to sus­
pect. They were men who were not overhidden by publicity.
They were men whose devotional practices were few in number,
and remarkably simple in method. On the whole, their lives seem
very empty of facts, disappointingly empty. I am almost afraid
to pass on to any thing else, lest you should not have time to mas­
ter this statement as I should wish. It will take us years to realize
the importance of it.
The lives of the saints often innocently deceive us in this
respect,—especially those lives which are modelled on the
Processes of Canonization. A chapter on a saint's heroic charity
will perhaps overwhelm us by its crowded facts, multiplied occu­
pations, incessant movement, almost incompatible offices, super­
human activities, and the like. We forget it represents fifty or
sixty years, of twelve months each. But if we turn to the chapter
on the saint’s gift of prayer, we find he spent four or five hours
a day in prayer, or seven, as Suarez did, or ten, as St. Francis Borgia
did. Then we see that, even without giving the saint any time
to eat or sleep, his prayer left him no time in the day for as much
activity as modem life demands of most of us. Check the chapter

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on charity by the chapter on prayer, and you will get some
notable results about the saints.
But I proceed. Many saints have been made saints by one
thing.· The sanctity of many has been consummated in its very
beginning. To these, conversion has been the same thing as per­
severance. St. Anthony of the Desert and St. Francis of Assisi are
examples of this class of saints. Hence it was that the great feature
of their holiness was its extreme simplicity. St. Francis’s manner
of prayer by repetitions may be quoted as an instance of this char­
acteristic simplicity. Think, again, of what St. Alphonso and
others say of a single Communion, that it is enough of itself to
make a saint, or what the Blessed Leonard of Port Maurice says
of gaining Indulgences, that one practice is a certain road to
sanctity. We are too much given to swallowing our graces without
chewing them. We do not extract from them one-half the sweet­
ness, one-half the nourishment, one-half the medicinal virtue,
which God has deposited in them. We are too quick with them,
too impetuous in the use of them. We do not develop them. I
believe the clear knowledge of what grace is, its nature, its habits,
and its possibilities, would destroy half the lukewarmness in the
world; for I suspect full half of it comes from impetuosity and
precipitation, from human activity, and a want of slowness before
God.
The saints, as a body, do few things. Some saints have been
made saints by one thing. One Communion is enough to make
a saint. These are specimens of the hidden wisdom of the saints.
What it comes to is that the only important thing in good works
is the amount of love which we put into them. The soul of an
action is its motive. The power of an action is neither in its size
nor in its duration, though both these are very considerable
matters. But its power is in its intention. An intention is pure
in proportion as it is loving. Thus, you see, what we want is not
many actions, but a great momentum in a few actions. If we
• Bellecio enumerates among these SS. Martin. John the Calybite. Gualbert
Francis Borgia, and Francis Xavier. Solide Vertu, part iii. chap. ii. art. iii. sect. 2.

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could give an equally great momentum to a great number of
actions, so much the better. But the fact is that we cannot. Actions
trip each other up when they are crowded. No one has the use
of his arms in a crowd, and very little use of his legs. His voice
is all that is free, and that is not very audible; and in heavenly
things the voice is a most singularly unhelpful part of us. Devo­
tions even prey upon each other, eat each other up, and then lie
dormant because they are gorged. In good deeds we cannot unite
number and momentum. We must choose between the two; and
there can be no hesitation in our choice. One stone that we can
throw into heaven is worth a thousand that fall short of it and
tumble into homeless space. In truth, we have thrown stones
enough into space already. It is sad to think of where they may
have got to by this time. Old-fashioned people talk in an un­
comfortable way of a certain pavement of hell. There is no doubt,
then, that the principle of number must go to the wall. We make
our election of momentum. Momentum is purity of intention.
Purity of intention is love.
We must not fall into a mistake here. It is true that, as a gen­
eral rule, great loves gives a facility in doing hard things. But
I am not speaking of a heroic love. I am speaking of such a love
as you and I may soberly persist in exacting from ourselves, con­
sidering all the grace we receive. Love which is sufficient to give
momentum enough to an action to carry it to heaven may not be
sufficient to make a hard thing easy to do, neither need it be
accompanied by any sensible sweetness. Indeed, in most cases
it is not. Nay, I will go further. It is not by any means clear that
heroic love devours all the repugnances of nature with sufficient
rapidity to give even saints a habitual facility of action in hard
things, any more than it always makes the flames of the martyrs
cool and refreshing and the teeth of the wild beasts as gentle as
embraces, although it has done so to some. But it is perfectly
clear that even heroic love is by no means universally accompanied
by sensible sweetness in its exercise. It is often very heroic when it
is driest, and most heroic when it is not so much as conscious of
its own existence. Hence we must not distrust our actions or

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devotions because they have not this sensible sweetness, neither
must we make such sweetness the test of our purity of intention.
It is no part of real momentum. We must be the more careful
to bear this in mind, because in mere natural activity facility and
sweetness are full half the momentum. If this were to be the case
in religion, piety must begin in sentimentality, grow in excite­
ment, and perfect itself in frenzy. There would be no help for it.
Christian enthusiasm is a very sober sort of determination. It
does not consist in neglecting calculations, but in running im­
mense risks in the face of very disheartening calculations. We
agree, then, to throw sweetness overboard, wistfully indeed, but
quite understanding what we are about.
Now, this doctrine of intention gives a peculiar character to
all our actions. We see that their value does not depend upon
their size or age altogether, or even chiefly. They have to do with
God, to whom, because he is infinite, nothing is great and nothing
small. Greatness and littleness are not his standards. Thus the
capabilities of our humblest actions have something in them which
approaches the inexhaustible. Or, at least, they are of such a
nature that grace can use them almost inexhaustibly. Who, in
the inner space of his own soul, has ever known what an unfolded
grace is like? We have given our graces neither time nor room.
Their capabilities are immense. This is one of the things which
makes holiness so difficult. We are always falling so far short of
our grace. Take the saying of the Angelus three times a day.
What is it but saying a short prayer when a bell rings? Yet years
of saying it, with great love, with intense attention to God, with
an interior spirit of jubilant thanksgiving for the Incarnation,
would take us half-way to heaven. Nay, one such saying of it, if
we came to that, could merit heaven. This illustrates the inex­
haustibleness of grace. Then is it not true that the saying of the
Angelus is really a very considerable difficulty? When the bell
startles us, how far we find ourselves to have been from God, by
the very fact that we hardly get back to him before the prayer
is over! We are thrown into a bustle. We sometimes hardly know
what we are saying. If some one interrupts us by coming into the

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room, we do not know where we left off. No devotion can be less
satisfactory to us. Yet, when it is over, how the study, or the con­
versation, pieces itself naturally and painlessly on to its ante­
cedents, as if there had been no Angelus, while there was some­
thing positively painful in the effort we made to put ourselves
together for the act of prayerl Perhaps the Angelus is often rather
a fountain of venial sins, or slovenliness, than a prolific source
of merit, as it ought to be. The good it has done us has often
come rather from the external admonition which it is, than from
its being an act of interior worship. It seems to me uncommonly
difficult to attain to a satisfactory saying of the Angelus. It so
soon degenerates into praying against a bell. The difficulty I find
in saying the Angelus always shows me more than any thing else
the immeasurable distance between holy persons and myself. It
illustrates to me the way in which a man must possess himself,
and be recollected, and always ready to give the due momentum
to his actions, and therefore how few they should be, in order that
he may have time and room, not so much to do what he has to
do, as to do it well.
It is only in exceptional cases that coolness and calmness are
compatible with having much to do. Multitude is not simplicity.
Things that are done for God should be done very cleanly. They
must be shapely as well as vigorous. What a beautiful thing,
doubtless, was the Angelus of St. Francis of Sales! There was more
in it than in a week of our devotional failures. When a man has
to make a great effort, he must carefully put himself in a position
to make it. The saints threw immense effort into their least
actions. Immense efforts cannot help being limited in number.
Hence the saints were men of few actions and of few devotions.
Their power was love; their touchstone, pure intention. They
concentrated every thing upon their intention. They made it do
duty for every thing else. It was their compendium of holiness.
When we, who are not saints, want to be better than we are. we
add a new devotion, put on an additional mortification, undertake
a fresh work of mercy, or give more liberal alms. All this is most
excellent. But, as an animal betrays itself by its instincts, however

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long it may have been domesticated, so we, who may be always
reading the lives of the saints, betray by all this that inadequate
view of holiness which belongs to the imperfection of our love.
Our first impulsive notion of greater sanctity is some form of addi­
tion. The only variety is in the choice of what wc shall add. The
saints live in a roomy day, a day of few actions; they lessen these
few as their fervor increases, perhaps make them still fewer by
way of advancing more rapidly, and then throw' harder, that is,
fling a more nervous, energetic inward life into what they do.
This appears to me the whole account of the saints. To begin,
therefore, to follow' the saints, we must repudiate the addition­
theory.
Now that we have got together this little collection of facts
and principles, our next step must be to apply them to the results
of frequent confession. They may all be summed up in one
sentence:—The saints were men who did less than other people,
but who did what they had to do a thousand times better.
What, then, is confession? It is one of our actions. Or, rather,
it is a mixed act, partly by God and partly by man. It belongs,
therefore, to the supernatural order. It is an action of immense
significance, of superhuman power, and, it may be, of incalcu­
lable worth. The very fact of its combining in itself the agencies
of the Creator and the creature is enough to show us of what
value and consequence it is. If a few common actions done per­
fectly are enough to make saints of us, what may we not say of a
few perfect confessions? Yet we go to confession weekly, and are
what we arel Literature is a power on earth, and a power in the
natural order, whose importance it is not easy to exaggerate. Dif­
ferent nations have had their literatures. Each nation has had
various schools of literature at different times. They have stood to
the progress of civilization in the double relation of cause and
effect. They have stamped epochs. They have been dominant, or
nearly dominant, over the manners and morals of their times.
They have therefore indirectly decided the eternal destiny of
multitudes of individual souls. Yet no one school of literature,
nor all its schools put together, can compete with a single good

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confession in beauty or importance. Philosophies have risen and
fallen on the earth, and have reigned successively, and have
reigned energetically; and each system thought itself die perfec­
tion of the world and the solution of the grand difficulty. Yet the
homeliness of one good confession is a better thing than the
subtleties of the most profound intellectual system. No revolu­
tion, though it may uncrown a king and emancipate a people,
is of so much consequence as a good confession, though, alas! it
supplies multitudes of souls with superabundant matter for con­
fession. No one must underrate the importance of scientific dis­
coveries. Not only may the wider distribution of comfort and the
elevation of the temporal well-being of the world depend upon
them, but happiness and morals are often implicitly concerned in
them. Yet no discovery that was ever made can compete in real
intrinsic importance with a good confession. Nevertheless all this
is a feeble and inadequate way of attaining a true notion of the
grandeur of confession.
Confession is an act of faith on the part of the creature. It is
also an act of the most concentrated worship. It is a breaking with
the world, and a turning to God. It is a triumph over millions of
evil spirits of huge power and, comparatively with us men, of
unbounded intellect. It is the beginning of an eternity of in­
effable union with God, and confers the right of beholding the
Invisible face to face. A man sees in a fellow-creature as sinful
as himself, perhaps even evidently more unworthy, the form and
features and real jurisdiction of the Incarnate Son of God. He
kneels at his feet as if he were divine. He narrates to him the most
secret shames and hidden sins of his soul. He submits to his ques­
tioning, as if he were the absolute and ultimate Judge of all the
earth. He listens with meekness to his reproof, as if it were God
himself who spoke. He leaves to him the fixing of his punish­
ment. He gives him rights over the arrangement of much of his
external life. He makes this narration of his sins with a profound
sorrow, a sorrow which is based on no mere human disgrace, or
forfeiture of worldly honor, or ruin of temporal interests. It is
not even based only on the fear of divine punishments without

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some admixture of divine love. He is sorry with a sorrow to which
neither all the power nor all the wisdom of the world can help
him, but which is itself the supernatural gift of God. His sorrow
involves a detestation of his past sin, which is another gift of God.
It is accompanied also with a firm determination never to offend
God again, a determination which chooses between the will of God
and the liberty of sin, and elects God’s will, whatever cost it may
be found to involve. This energetic determination is the thing
which he has taken most pains about. Neither has he come to it
without study, effort, and diligence. Nevertheless it is God’s gift
rather than his own attainment. His act thus completed, with
much help and interference on the part of God, God himself
begins his exclusive part. One of his creatures, a fallible as well
as himself a guilty judge, pronounces some few words, and
straightway, though invisibly and spiritually, there falls from the
veins of Jesus a shower of the Precious Blood, shed hundreds of
years ago and resumed three days after it was shed, and bedews
the sinner’s soul. All his guilt is done away instantaneously. His
state is completely changed. Manifold works arc done in his soul,
such as the reinfusion of certain supernatural habits, the revival
of dead merits, and a communication of the divine nature. His
change can only be paralleled with that of a devil into an angel.
All heaven is stirred at the event. It is the special subject of an
angelic jubilee. No angel or saint could have done it, or even
have applied it as instruments. It is the immediate action of the
Creator on the soul of his creature. This is a modest description
of a good confession, kept very much within bounds, and which
might have been heightened by many other seemingly miraculous
phenomena. In its measure and degree, without the reinfusion
of habits, and sundry other changes, the same supernatural ap­
paratus attends upon the confession of venial sins. God is not
less active, nor grace less mysterious in the act. Yet this is the
act which we with God perform weekly, and are what we arel
Now, from such an action as this what results might we not
expect? We can only compare it to baptism or to martyrdom, one
of which permanently changes our state and impresses an abiding

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character upon our souls, and the other admits us to the immedi­
ate Vision of God. Indeed, there are many analogies between
these three actions. But let us moderate our expectations. We
should at least expect great things to follow from a valid con­
fession; we should look for marked changes and enduring results.
In truth, such results would seem unavoidable. The action in­
volves so very much on our part, and holds in itself such a vast
amount of divine agency, that, if it be valid at all, it must go forth
on its way conquering and working miracles. Let us take any
saint we please, and consider the build and fashion of his holiness.
Let us measure the height of his prayers, the depth of his humility,
the breadth of his love, the length of his austerities. Surely less
grace than goes to a valid confession might, were it handled
judiciously, accomplish as much as this. If a valid confession can
send a life-long sinner and a public criminal from the scaffold to
the bright inner heaven, surely also the making of a saint is within
the compass of its capabilities. But now multiply these valid con­
fessions, the valid confessions of us who are aiming at a devout life
and are taking very considerable pains about it. Multiply our
years by fifty. Perhaps we have made between one and two thou­
sand valid confessions. For each confession we have reverently
prepared; for each we have examined our consciences and excited
our sorrow; for each we have taken peculiar pains and made
hearty prayer for our firm purpose of amendment; each has been
gloriously crowned by absolution. Now, would it not be mon­
strous to say that these thousand or two thousand grace-miracles
had made no visible change in us, had left us substantially what
we were before, and had done nothing more than possibly prevent
us from having become something worse? Would it not shake a
man’s faith to be told such a tiling? If this were true, must not
grace be altogether a romance, and the sacraments mere rubrics or
postures? Neither can we fall back upon the supposition of the
invalidity of all these confessions. For I am speaking only of
careful confessions, of the confessions of people who are very
much in earnest, who are not taking things easily, who do not
indulge in liberties with God, and who are making a great point,

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and a distinct point, of sorrow for venial sins, while they are also
solicitous to a scruple about their purpose of amendment. If such
confessions are not valid, then none in the world arc.
But let us come down from the heights of our imaginary ex­
pectations. What, as a matter of fact, are the actual results of a
thousand good confessions? We have a tolerably clear remem­
brance of what we were twenty years ago. Now, as to the general
improvement of our character, what have all these confessions
done? Is diere much palpable change? Is the change solid? Is its
amount at all proportioned to the amount of supernatural agency,
to the quantity of the Precious Blood, to the immediate operation
of die Eternal Creator upon our souls? Again: what has been
die result of all these confessions in the way of power over the
venial sins and culpable unworthinesses which we have been
perpetually confessing? Are we more masters of ourselves than
we were? Are we much more masters of ourselves? Is our growth
in self-mastery at all adequate to the expenditure both of God
and ourselves in a thousad confessions? Let us take our tongues.
It is plain that a man who makes his meditation in the morning,
and does not govern his tongue during the day, is a religious sham.
Surely a man who confesses, week after week, to want of govern­
ment of the tongue, and who governs it not a whit better in the
succeeding weeks, ought not by common laws to be far off from
being a hypocrite. Yet we should be afraid of laying down any
such axiom, lest we should only be sanctioning a law not merely
against ourselves, but by which if men were judged they might
as well cease to hope. For what has our experience been, the
experience of a thousand confessions, in this very particular?
Again: what have our thousand confessions done for us in the way
of increase of fervor? Is the retrospect from this point of view at
all more satisfactory? I dare not go on, lest we should lose heart
too much. The road to all amendment lies through some disheartenment. But this is so unusually disheartening. Then let us
speak gently. The result of our thousand confessions has not been
in all respects what we should have expected beforehand. Their
influence has been hardly up to the mark. There has been dis­

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appointment in the matter, invariable, even if not excessive.
But there is no kindness in landing us in a difficulty, unless
we are also shown how to get out of it. What is the cause of the
results of frequent confession falling so far below our most
reasonable calculations, nay, even below our lukewarm expecta­
tions? We are sincere. We are diligent. We have faith. We have
carried our faith, our diligence, and our sincerity into our con­
fessions. What, then, is lacking? What is the secret want? Purity
of intention. A short answer, yet a very broad one. This is the
whole account of the matter, the reading of the riddle, the light
in the dark place. We have not looked simply, and only, and
always, to God.
We shall prove this to ourselves by examining our own motives.
Much practical good will also come of the examination by the
way. We do not do justice to our own insincerity. We know we
are not simple; but we hardly know how very far we are from
simplicity. Let us look, then, at the different motives which pre­
vail in our minds at different times, when we go to confession;
and let us remember that it is not so much with these motives in
themselves, but with these motives as dominant, that we are find­
ing fault. Sometimes it is rather low spirits than sin which send
us to confession; and this also with a very considerable admixture
of self-love. We want comfort and consolation, because we are
downcast; and we know that both those spiritual luxuries are
for the most part to be found in confession. We have begun of
late to feel a little lonely. God has become a little short of being
sufficient. Nobody has praised us for a long while. We want a
little quiet spiritual flattery. We believe we can get this from our
confessor. Either he is very kind, and indulgent, and prone to
talk long, and given to consolation, or at least we can open our
hearts to him in so piteous a way, making our confession a sort
of elegy, with a dash of exaggeration, that we are nearly sure,
unless he is unusually preoccupied, to elicit from him the honey
of which we stand in need. It will disagree with us to a certainty.
Experience has taught us that. But it can be set right in another
confession, a confession of a different species.

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Sometimes we have a general feeling of being all wrong with
God. It is not so much from having some definite fault upon
our consciences as from an equable and universal tepidity. It is
like the feeling of an invalid before he is washed in the morning.
It is a strange and peculiar discomfort. Confession is the bath
of the hot dry skin and superficial fidgetiness of the soul. So we
go to it to recover the sense of being right with God. We half
know that what is wanted is more prayer, more honesty in mor­
tification, a little more decisive separation from the world, and,
above all, an instantaneous putting into execution of good resolu­
tions, which have been hanging about us for weeks past only par­
tially resolved. But all this involves a good deal; and really we are
spiritually so weak just now that discretion suggests that we should
take things easily. Confession, at all events, will give us for the
time what a little smart severity with ourselves would give us
permanently. So we will go to confession first of all, and discuss
the question of severity later on.
Some of us think a great deal of our director’s judgment of us,
and by watching him we manage to get a side-view of it which is
tolerably correct. Now, this judgment of us we consider to be
not quite the thing. If it does not need reversing, it calls for re­
vision. We, honest souls! have no self-love in the matter. We do
not want him to think better of us than we deserve. Indeed, he
had better think a little worse of us, because it would be rather
sanctifying, and we look forward to being saints some time. But,
as he has to direct us, it is really of importance to our best interests
that he should at least take an accurate view of us; and, somehow,
if this view of us were a trifle more accurate it would be con­
siderably more favorable. But what shall we do? We cannot argue
the matter with him. He would at once put that down to wounded
feeling. He would not give us credit for the dispassionate state
of mind in which we really are. We must use God’s sacrament as
a sort of stratagem. We must shape our confessions so as to in­
sinuate into his mind the view we would have him take. We must
adroitly anticipate his objections. We must involve his answer
in our question. We must glide in a very general way over what

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209

is likely to strenglhen his present prejudices. We can even accuse
ourselves of something wrong in feelings which he would wish us
to have, but which he thinks us without. All this must be done,
and may be done, without any positive untruth; and it should be
done with all the air of innocence and guilelessness. To-be-sure,
it is sad having to make such a use of a very grave and reverend
sacrament. To be diplomatic and contrite both at once is a little
hard. Still, the necessity is so urgent, the end in view so good,
that we must tolerate with a graceful patience the discomfort of
the means.
It may be that our time has come for going to confession, and
therefore that we go, not driven by any interior necessity, by any
desire to be more closely united to God, or to be more and more
thoroughly washed from our iniquities. It is the day for confes­
sion: and therefore we go. We run a risk now of an invalid con­
fession. However, we avoid that, by taking the usual pains with
our examination, our sorrow, and our purpose. Still, it remains
true that we go chiefly because it is our time to go. Let me make
an observation here. It is hard to do well the things that we are
doing constantly. Certainly. But experience shows us that these
things do not tend with equal propension at all times to become
mere formalities. Like other temptations, the temptation to be
formal has its seasons, its departures and its returns. So there
are times—for which we can see no reason, only so it is—when
the sacraments incline to become formalities. Now, at these sea­
sons we must not be content with our usual pains; we must take
unusual pains, because the unusual pains are necessary then to
get us up to the common point to which at ordinary times the
usual pains can take us. Thus, a meditation of ten minutes before
the Blessed Sacrament, on the sanctity of God, or on the necessi­
ties of our souls, if added to our usual diligence and preparation,
would put the vigor we need into our confession of routine. But
enough of this. Confessions of routine want a treatise to them
selves.
Some of us get into a way of never looking at confession by
itself. To us it is simply part of the preparation for communion.

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Of course we know that confession is a sacrament by itself; but
we do not know it with an energetic practical knowledge. It is to
us practically part of another ceremony. Few people do justice
to the mischievous tendency of this mistake. It is fertile in evils
to the soul. It even goes to the length of blunting our faith at last.
It interferes with our perception of the necessity of grace. It
diminishes our motives for loving Jesus, by confusing them. It
takes off the edge from our hatred of sin. It operates unfavorably
on our humility, by leading us to dwell too much on our privileges
and too little on our responsibilities. It even lessens our apprecia­
tion of God's goodness, by leading us to dwell on it apart from
the sense of our own wretchedness. We must look at confession
not as a whole, but as a part. There is a propriety in confession
going before communion. But confession is an awful sacrament
in itself, with separate proprieties of its own, deeply to be revered,
and almost dreaded, because of the tingling realities of its contact
with God.
Sometimes—and this is a common fault in converts—people
go to confession only for the purpose of direction. They use a
great sacrament merely as a handle or occasion for something else,
for another purpose, a good purpose, indeed, but a very inferior
and subordinate one. Thus they put aside all thought of the
absolution, or rather it does not come to them to think of it. They
have probably not taken so much pains with their examination,
their sorrow, and their purpose of amendment as they should
have done. They have not realized God's peculiar presence in
the confessional, because they have not come to confession as a
sacrament. Hence confession often disappoints them, and they
lose their devotion to it as a sacrament. Their irreverence has
been unconscious and unintentional; but it has not been the less
an irreverence, and they suffer for it in their souls. They have
come to talk, or they have come to listen. They have not come to
confess. Thus they confess, not invalidly, but unworthily, not
discerning the Precious Blood and its special sacramental dispensa­
tion there. Experience shows that there are few things more
difficult to implant in converts than a real faith in confession as a

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sacrament, and a grave, humble advertence to the sacramental
character of the action in which they are engaged. We must be at
great pains in teaching them this, more especially if they have
been in the habit of going to confession while they were outside
the church, as it is precisely these persons who take the greatest
liberties with the sacrament. This often interferes very seriously
with their becoming fervent catholics. Plainly it is the old leaven
still at work: self is the centre, and not God. Direction is more
attractive to them than confession.
Sometimes we go to confession because, having sinned, we fear
the punishment of our sins. It is a most excellent reason for going
to confession; nay, more than excellent, it is imperative. We want
to shorten purgatory. We want to be in a condition for gaining
plenary indulgences. Two most excellent wants,—so excellent
that a man has reason to suspect his whole piety to be a delusion
if he has them not. It is very hard also, while under the pressure
of a sense of sin, not to let this motive be not merely present, but
dominant. Nevertheless we had better take some little pains to
hinder its being so. Without losing hold of that motive, we can
push a little deeper by prayer and effort, because prayer and
effort will both bring the grace to do so. We can put ourselves in
God’s presence, and look at his side of the question. We can wish
to have our souls cleansed for the sake of God's glory as well as
our own safety. At any rate, the avoiding of hell and the short­
ening of purgatory must not have the action all to themselves.
Some room must be left for higher things. There must be some
loving devotion to the sanctity of God, in order to do well what
we do validly.
These are specimens of the intentions with which we too
often go to confession. Self-love, varying as it does in almost
every soul, can vary them indefinitely. Each of us best knows
his own dishonesties. The conclusion seems to be that we do not
habitually go to confession looking simply, and steadfastly, and
exclusively to God. The consequence is that very little, com­
paratively speaking, comes of our frequent confession,—so little
that we can bear its littleness no longer, and are determined there

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shall be a change. The advice, then, is to do fewer things, and do
them better, taking more pains with our purity of intention. Do
we not often ask ourselves why so few souls are perfect? Surely
the answer is, That they are kept back by many things, but by
few things so much as by the too great number of their prayers
and spiritual exercises. They do too much to do it well. Their
life treads on its own heels all the day long. They are so pressed
by all they have taken upon themselves, that they get into a
hurry, and so raise a dust as they go; and this dust hinders them
from seeing God.

WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING

In the world of the soul there are sometimes shadows when
there are no clouds. It continues clear and blue overhead, but
the brightness has passed away. We cannot tell how the shadow
began, or from what quarter it came. It will go as it came, with­
out apparent cause, perhaps without observation. These inward
shadows have mostly their significance. Sometimes they herald
the coming of an unusual grace. Sometimes they warn us of the
approach of an unusual trial. Yet this last is only another form
of grace, because it is the occasion of many graces. Sometimes
they come and go, and we see no results. Nevertheless the soul
has suffered, and there are results. But, whether these shadows
prophesy graces or portend trials, they are in themselves times
of temptation, and require both skill and care in their manage­
ment. These temptations are very apt to take the form of weari­
ness, that weariness in well-doing against which the apostle warned
the Thessalonians, and which in their case, as it is in ours, was
likely to follow upon excitement,—although our excitement
need not, like theirs, arise from an immoderate interest in unful­
filled prophecy and the thickening signs of the end of the world.
It is of this weariness in the spiritual life that we are now to
treat: and let us, first of all, endeavor to put it before ourselves,
as we have doubtless experienced it in our own souls. We may
describe it as follows. We are not aware of having shifted our
position. We do not recall any graver sin than usual, into which
we have fallen. There is no notable change in our external cir­
cumstances. Nevertheless an imperceptible languor has been for
some time creeping upon us. We see it in the retrospect: but we
did not see it at the time. Prayer has become an effort. Its sweet­
ness, even its repose, has gone from it. A general disinclination
to good works is added to this general disrelish of spiritual exer­
213

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cises. Our little mortifications lie like dead weights upon us.
The most sacred actions seem likely to degenerate into routine.
We feel the immense importance of an effort, but have no heart
to make one. There have been times when we have thrown off far
greater burdens, but this one is too much for us. We still have
religious sentiments, but this is pretty nearly all the religion we
have which is sensible. The light appears to go out from the
things of faith. They are blotted and confused. Our own con­
science eludes us. We have no grasp of it. The power appears to
have retreated from the sacraments. We have fallen, we know
not how, into a state which has no little affinity to unbelief. It
seems to us that we really can go on no longer. Perseverance is
hopeless. Nothing has come of the past. Less is likely to come
of the future. The present is vacuity. We thought we loved God.
Poor soulsl are we sure we do not love him still? Alas! we might
manage to die now; but dying is not the difficulty; the difficulty
is—to go on living. What! another twenty years of morning
meditations, of morning, noon, and night particular examens,
of daily recitations of the divine office, of daily resistance to
temptations, of daily defeats by the same petty unworthiness!
Does it not seem impossible? But what if matters should grow
worse? What if we should come to disbelieve? What if we should
at last commit a mortal sin? Intolerable prospect! Intolerable
weariness! Here we are succumbing, not to our passions, not to
temptations, not to ponderous crosses, but simply to a feeling of
being tired! A while ago, and all things were clear. Notv we are
like men trying to read small print by strong moonlight. There
is light enough, but not the right kind of light. We cannot
be very far off from despair. Yet what a deadly calm there is
about us! We are like men in a nightmare, frantic because we
cannot throw off a load which has no real existence; or, like
men sinking into a lethargy, whose fingers open and let fall that
which they are in the act of grasping.
I think we have put matters at the worst now. I hardly think
I have overstated the evil. However, I have not understated it.
Of course it is serious, but it has no right to be disheartening. It

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may seem superfluous to talk of courage to a man who is already
cowed. I ought to reason with you first. But is it not generally
the case that the most consoling thing in spiritual difficulties is to
go well into them and to study them thoroughly? Even without
any professed consolations, they always seem much less formidable
afterward. It is just the same in controversy. If you will not let
people prose their own length about their difficulties, conviction
rarely follows. But, in nine cases out of ten, a man who has talked
his fill about his objection finds that he has already answered it
himself, and, with some show of fight for consistency's sake, easily
surrenders, and surrenders reasonably. Nevertheless let us take
this comfort at starting. Is not our state in its results the same
with an interior trial through which Job was made to pass?
“Who will grant me," says he in his anguish,· “that I might
be according to the months past, according to the days in which
God kept me? When his lamp shined over my head, and I walked
by his light in darkness? As I was in the days of my youth, when
God was secretly in my tabernacle? And now my soul fadeth
within myself, and the days of affliction possess me." The trial
of a faded soul! It is hard to bear. But Job bore it, came safely
to his end, and lies now in the bosom of his heavenly Father. It
will be so with us. Doubt not.
Let us think first, then, of the probable or possible causes of
this weariness. Most things are adequately explained by their
causes. I am inclined to think this weariness comes more often
from not advancing than from any actual faults. It is said that
not to advance is to be going back in the spiritual life. I would
venture to doubt the entire accuracy of this statement. When
a man is endeavoring to get out of sin, it may be that every step
which is not forward is a step backward. Also in the spiritual
life it may be true that all present delay makes future progress
more difficult, and so less probable. But surely there are many
persons whose whole life is spent at a stand still. It is not that
they are standing still themselves, but that their efforts just enable
Cap. xxix., xxx.

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them to maintain their ground, and no more. It is like rowing
a boat against a stream. There is sufficient effort to counter
balance the force of the stream, but not sufficient to surmount it.
The result is that the boat remains opposite the same place, not
in spite of the rowing, but in consequence of the rowing. If the
rower ceased, he would be carried down the stream; if he exerted
himself more, he would make way up it. It may be said that
the continuance of the effort is a great thing, and is substantially
progress. It is a great thing certainly. It is forming habits. It is
augmenting merits. It is keeping in a safe position. But it can
hardly be called progress, at least in the ordinary sense of the
word progress. Lancicius says that not to increase our kinds of
venial sin is progress. It is progress in the sense of keeping on
the road to heaven, but assuredly it is not progress in the ordinary
acceptation of the word. It is not even full correspondence to
grace; for the impulses of grace are always onward, always for­
getting what has been attained, always leaving that which is
behind, as the apostle tells us. Now, monotony is disheartening;
and when we are out of heart we are at once weary, however little
we have labored. If we go on rowing, and we have not passed
that tree on the bank all the while, we are discontented with
ourselves; and to be discontented with ourselves is also instantane­
ous weariness. The sense of abundant grace falling upon us, and
no results following, or very inadequate results, is sure to fatigue
us in die long run, and to bring on peevishness, and then vexation,
and then discouragement. Moreover, there are few of us who can
do without success. The fountains of self-love are not self-supply­
ing. Natural activity cannot fast; it is much if we can get it to
abstain. Whatever amount of effort may go to maintain us in
the same spot, it is not success. We get disgusted; and disgust
implies weariness. Thus it is that the mere fact of not advancing
does in most cases account for that feeling of being tired, which
unnerves us and is a real hindrance to us in the pursuit of holiness.
We must not, however, forget that many of the phenomena of
the spiritual life spring from physical causes. Our body can go
wrong short of illness, short of ailment. It is a very delicate and

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capricious instrument. The reaction after hard work; different
seasons of the year; individual constitution; very slight atmospher­
ical disturbances; all of them tend to bring forth many moral re­
sults, without the intervention of actual pain or positive malady
This is a very difficult subject to handle. It is full of dangers. We
are all of us too much inclined to make concessions to our bodies.
Reliance on comforts is quite incompatible with true liberty
of spirit. The worship of health is one of the most efficient and
extensive causes of lukewarmness and indevotion. At the same
time, the fact is true that our soul is very much dependent on
our body. If we begin attributing to supernatural causes, whether
to the operations of grace or to the wiles of Satan, what is really
a matter of nerves or of digestion, we are soon in the land of
mischievous delusions. We become discouraged when we have
no need to be so, and elated when we have no right to be so.
We believe our inner self to be the theatre of much that is not
going on there at all, and our self-knowledge becomes clouded
by exaggeration.
But the important thing to be considered is that our physical
difficulties have to be sanctified just as much as our spiritual diffi­
culties. Bodily disturbance is no dispensation from duty until
it begins to be something like an incapability, or at least until the
attempt to discharge the duty would be an imprudence. This is
the common mistake. Granted that our evil temper comes just
now from nerves or indigestion; but not granted that it is on
that account to be any the less combated. The monstrous assump­
tion, which we most of us make, is that this corporal annoyance,
which accounts for our irritability, or any other sin, also excuses it.
For this there is not a shadow of proof. To account for a thing
and to excuse a thing are two vastly different processes. Charity
may use such an assumption in our judgments of others, in order
to justify the ingenuity of its benignant constructions. But we
cannot use it as a plea for self-acquittal, and rarely even as an
argument for diminution of self-punishment. If we once so much
as begin to do this, we have not merely taken a step off the right
road, but we have fallen over a precipice. The same reasoning

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obviously applies to mental unwellness, to sorrow, vexation, mis­
fortune, uncertainty, the sense of injustice, wounded feelings,
or the chafing of responsibilities. These harassments are the
sources of many things which go wrong in the spiritual life. But,
while they account for them, they do not excuse them. For these
bodily and mental necessities and infirmities are just what we
have to defend ourselves against and bring into subjection to
grace. At the same time, we shall be more simple, childlike,
genuine, and straightforward, when we attribute the discomforting
phenomena, without surprise, to these natural causes; than when
we fancy all manner of supernatural possibilities which have no
real existence in our case, and the thought of which is in itself
enough to do us harm, because it engenders in us a kind of
confused and underground feeling that we are suffering, or being
put through, something in common with the saints. Now, it is
plain that weariness is just the kind of misery which bodily dis­
turbance or mental anxiety would be likely to produce. For
both body and mind chafe the soul; and chafing makes it fretful;
and fretfulness is near of kin to weariness.
At the same time, I am far from denying the almost incessant
action of the Evil One upon our souls in the spiritual life, or
from confining it the higher and more unusual conditions of
those aiming at perfection. It is not the saints only who fight
with devils. We all do so. Or if we do not so, it is because we
already belong to Satan and are his property. There is no doubt
that our weariness is very often from this prenatural source; and
it must be acknowledged that the thought is a very discouraging
one. Yet it is foolish to expect that there should be no discourage­
ment in the lifelong effort to win heaven. There are worse things
in spirituality than discouragement, bad as it is. But perfect
humility alone is exempt from it. We must be content, therefore,
to feel that the Evil One has great power over us, even against
our own will, but that he cannot force us to sin. He can only
make us suffer. God is our Father; and so he that is for us is
greater than all those who are against us. There are perhaps no
infallible signs by which we can tell when our languor comes

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from this preternatural source. But we may generally suppose
that such is its origin, when we feel it in spiritual things and not
in other things, when it comes on us instantaneously, when it
affects the exercises of the interior life more than the discharge
of external duties, and when it keeps palpably increasing without
any visible cause to which we can refer it. Still, even when we
suppose our weariness thus to come upon us, we are neither to
struggle less determinedly against it, nor to imagine that we
ourselves are to be forthwith acquitted of all blame in the matter.
Not unfrequently this weariness is a punishment for past sin
When the Holy Ghost is grieved, the soul is weary. An intermit­
tent piety is especially punished in this way. If we are easy in
allowing outward interruptions to break in upon our usual devo­
tions, if for slight ailments we suspend our ordinary prayers,
if we permit anxieties and occupations to make us omit our
fréquentation of the sacraments, and, above all, if we are not
punctual and systematic in our examinations of conscience, the
feeling of weariness comes upon us as we return to them. In
the ordinary course of things, perseverance implies freshness.
Yesterday is an impulse to to-day, and to-day will be an impulse
to to-morrow. Being pious by jerks is common enough, but it is
sure to be a failure. Excitements may awaken us out of sin.
but they cannot constitute real progress.
But of all the faults which are punished by this weariness,
the most common, and the one which has most affinity to its
punishment, is the want of recollection. Dissipated thoughts,
exuberant, unweighed words, an impatience under solitude, dis­
tracted prayers, objectless frittering away of time, passive, half­
unconscious dreaming,—all this is want of recollection. It loosens
our hold upon God. It blunts our sense of his presence. It unmans
the soul, and relaxes all its powers, as if we had swallowed some
deleterious drug. Even in our solitude we may be unrecollected,
for silence does not of itself insure recollection. We may have
dissipating pursuits. We may read too much, or too variously. We
may forget Thomas à Kempis’s advice, that we had better be
content to be ignorant of many things. We may spread our atten­

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tion over too wide a surface. We may load our minds with too
great an abundance of images. We may even insensibly let the
thought of God do duty for direct prayer to God. Certainly, when
a man is alone he has to hold his tongue; and the mere holding
of our tongues is the cessation of two-thirds of the venial sins of
our lives. Nevertheless contemplative vocations are rare, and
when a man has not such a vocation, solitude, which is any thing
more than occasional, dissipates him more than work will do. It
is easy to unspiritualize our solitude. We know that we have
done so when we become unbusinesslike in our devotions. An
intolerable fit of weariness is at hand. We must be almost as
quick as lightning, like sailors in a squall, if we would get ready
to meet it safely, or, rather, to bear it safely, for it comes upon
us mostly from behind. If it is occasionally a prophecy of the
future, it is most often a child of the past.
Self-will also has a peculiar power to bring on this weariness.
I do not mean self-will in religious things only, but a course of
self-will even in things indifferent. There is something especially
corrupting in the following of our own wills, however trifling the
things in which we follow them may be. This is why St. Paul
tells us to do every thing for the glory of God. This is why
kindness is such a help to piety, because it gives us an external
motive in almost all the social or domestic occurrences of the day.
To have no master is to be a slave. The despotism of liberty is
the most degrading of all despotisms. It vilifies all that is noble
and generous in our nature. It is incompatible with magnifi­
cence of action. The grandiloquence of self-praise is the highest
eminence it can reach. Moreover, of all despots, self-will is the
most base-born, and has also the fewest acquired capabilities of
governing. It is this which makes superiorship so seldom sancti­
fying, and superiors so hardly saved. Oh, how little-minded any
superiority makes us! If it made us narrow-hearted as well, we
should be hopeless. If, then, you let self-will ride you, even in
things indifferent, it will gallop you to death, and you will be
good for nothing for weeks afterward.
Then, again, there is a weariness which is the mere weariness

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of perseverance. There is something in perseverance which is
uncongenial to the caprice and instability of our nature. To judge
from what we see, perseverance even in the uniformity of sin is
difficult, notwithstanding that our corrupt propensities incline us
in the same direction. Still more, then, is this the case with perse­
verance in a line of conduct, which is always more or less of a
constraint, because it is an incessant warfare. There is a monotony
in well-doing, and it is not a monotony of success. The same
resolutions, the same efforts, the same partial failure, the same
round of humbling experience, which has become as familiar
to us and as uninteresting as counting a hundred,—these things
when they go on for years, and are stripped of all excitement,
which is as oil to the wheels of our natural activity, begin to
bear very hard upon us. Instead of growing easier, as a habit
in natural things does, piety grows harder. It seems as if the
burden increased with the numerical sum of years. Sometimes
circumstances combine to render it almost intolerable. We are
like men hanging over a cliff. Our whole weight hangs upon our
fingers, and they are grasping a rock which their own moisture
renders every moment more slippery. We feel that if some
unexpected succor does not come, our destruction is but an affair
of minutes. The tide of grace is not uniform. It has its neaps
as well as its springs. We have for the most part no idea how
large a proportion of our continuance in devotion is due to grace,
and not to our own efforts. If the tide of grace ebbs unusually
low for a time, it is quite a terror to us to see how little we have
to do with our own goodness, how little absolutely, and how much
less than we heretofore conceived was possible. It is a wholesome
terror. The feeling of utter dependence upon grace is half perse­
verance. Our confidence in God is always in proportion to our
want of confidence in ourselves. Our helplessness is the hopeful
feature of our grace. Nevertheless, these ebbs of grace, these ap­
pearances of our perseverance being worn through and thread­
bare, are trying moments. In mercy, they generally last but a
little while. But when they come in middle life, when the fervor
of our beginnings is past and spiritual habits are not yet mature.

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they arc especially hard to bear, and we seldom pass through
them without a loss.
Then, last of all, there is no doubt a weariness which is alto­
gether supernatural, wholly an operation of grace, or, at the least,
a divine permission. God sends it to us not so much as a punish­
ment for sin, as one of the processes by which our soul is to be
cleansed and fitted for higher things. It is also true that these
divine visitations are not confined to contemplative souls, or only
accompany the more delicate and less common operations of grace.
They are perhaps more common than we suppose. Nevertheless
they are rare. All I need observe about them here is that there
is no necessity we should know when our weariness is directly
from God. Indeed, it is generally an essential part of the trial
that we should not know it. It is not necessary to know it, because
the knowledge would not alter our manner of dealing with it.
It would only be a comfort. It would not be required in order
to moderate our discouragement. For if the trial came to us as
an operation of grace, it would probably bring with it a degree
of humility which would counterbalance the discouragement.
These are the sources from which this feeling of weariness
may proceed. Let us next look at the mischief which it does.
It makes us leave off good works, or suspend spiritual exercises.
It breeds in us a spurious kind of prudence. Because we feel a
burden, we argue that we have taken too much upon ourselves.
We have committed ourselves to God indiscreetly. We must draw
back while we can. We must abridge our hours of prayer. We
must strike off some of our little mortifications, because, though
very little, they are exceedingly tiresome. We reason like men
who think they need not keep Lent, because fasting weakens them
and more or less tells upon their health, which of course it was
meant to do within certain bounds. It is in our seasons of weari­
ness that we come down the mountain a little, and put ourselves
on a slightly lower level, and applaud our timely discretion.
Alas! many slight descents come to make a considerable descent
in time, and we, who began with determining to be saints,—
where are we now?

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When weariness does not cause us to leave things off, it leads
us to do them badly and perfunctorily. We think our fatigue and
adequate dispensation from vigilance and recollection,—as a
man who is preaching a Lent does not trouble himself so much
as usual about distractions in saying Office. Now, what if it
should be true in the spiritual life that the not doing of a thing
at all, provided it is not of obligation, is a less evil than the
doing of it badly? I should not wonder if it were so. Indeed, I
am inclined to suspect it is. At any rate, the ill doing of a good
thing is a very great evil. For it not only renders unmeritorious
those works by which we might greatly merit, but it makes them
also perfect nests of venial sins. Moreover, such fraudulent doing
of God’s work has a special curse attached to it in Scripture, and
is full of grave consequences to the soul.
Furthermore, weariness makes us impatient of God's company.
Holiness is the companionship of God. It requires a renovation
of the heart by grace, the infusion of heavenly instincts, a complete
revolutionizing of our natural tastes, an unearthly appreciation
of things, before we can taste this company of God and find it
sweet. There must be a great change in us before he can be our
resting-place. We need conversion. We require strengthening
with that “perfect" or “principal” spirit of which David speaks
in the fiftieth Psalm. Now, it is our spiritual tastes which are
the first things for weariness to vitiate. God becomes dull to us.
He is uninteresting. He is undemonstrative. He cannot be in
the wrong, because he is God. But he is not positively attractive.
How ever was it that we took such delight in prayer? That over­
powering sweetness,—was it not simply a physical affair? That
little dawn of love of suffering which began to lighten in our
hearts,—was it not some foolish delusion? That delicious feeling
of sinking lower and lower in the sense of our own unworthiness,—
was it not all a mistake, or perhaps a dream? We not only cannot
feel as we felt before, but we cannot believe that we ever felt so
before. Converts sometimes do a blameless wrong to those who
are still unconverted, because they cannot even in thought make
themselves masters of their old position. So we cannot understand

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now the relation in which we once stood to God. On the con­
trary, though we dare not put it into words so plainly, his
vicinity has become an annoyance to us. His very condescension
frets us. We would be peevish in our prayers, if we dared. We
almost repent we ever went so far with him. Is not this a misery?
To be weary of God, to turn away with impatience from our
eternal home, to have taken the bloom off this world and to be
sick of the other! We tire of Him, never to be tired of whom is in
itself our everlasting bliss! Oh, if we die in the attempt, we must
push on. We cannot be quiet for an hour under the pressure
of such unblessed fatigue as this.
But this leads further. It leads into that endless, hopeless
business of seeking consolations and recreations outside of God,
and, shortly afterward, far away from God. I sometimes think
that to be near God but outside of him is to be at a greater distance
than when we are far away from him, as we speak in the spiritual
life. To wish to be comforted by any one but him is always a
sad misfortune, and very often a positive sin. But to turn away
from him, and seek in creatures what Ave profess not to have
found adequately in him,—this is surely of all miseries the nearest
to a state of sin. As 1 said, it is an endless and a hopeless business.
There is no end to it, because it is a search which can never find,
a chase which can never come up with its prey, a journey which
has no termination. Like bees among distasteful flowers, we fly
from one to another, hardly lighting, merely tasting; but the
honey which we taste is drugged. It stimulates, or intoxicates, or
makes us drowsy. Thus our taste becomes more and more vitiated.
We are just as far as ever from finding what we sought, but we
are immeasurably farther from what we have left. Strange to say,
creature-consolation becomes more of a necessity to us the less
we are satisfied by it. The more completely we despair of finding
it, the more obstinately do we persist in seeking it. It is a kind
of spiritual debauchery, which at last will leave the soul a perfect
wreck, with all its powers of self-recovery gone, and with no pos­
sible hope except in a miracle of grace, the only likelihood of
which is in that peculiar love of God which seems to be only the

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more patiently excited by the special unlovingness of our desertion of him. When we see a soul in such a state as this, we in­
voluntarily hold our breath, as when we see a man upon the
verge of some perilous height. What, then, should we think and
feel if our own soul is consciously travelling that way?
This vain research of creature-consolation, like all failures,
and more than most failures, makes us peevish with others. We
wreak our disappointment upon them, as if they were to blame
because they were creatures and could not do what God has
reserved to himself alone the right of being able to do. Peevish­
ness, as usual, brings with it the feeling of a bad conscience, and
any thing like true prayer becomes almost impossible. In this
state of perpetual irritation we soon become disgusted with our­
selves, and this disgust is so little like an humble hatred of ourselves
that it is incompatible with it. It is the very antipodes of humility.
It borders closely upon despair, which, rightly considered, is
nothing more than the extinguishing of humility. But we cannot
live in such a state as this. It would be too unbearable. We must
restore peace of some kind to our soul. We must sweeten our
dispositions by some means or other. This leads us yet a step
lower. We give in to natural repose. We seek compensation in
bodily comforts for what we suffer in spiritual things. Self­
indulgence gives us a kind of amiability,—spurious indeed, and
perhaps only temporary. Yet it serves for the moment, and we
are content. This is the end of our feeling of weariness. It has
not so much torn open our spiritual life as unstitched it. But
it has done this completely. The old original leaving of our
bodily comforts was our first step toward union with God, and
here we are arrived at them again. Who, then, will dare to leave
unwatched, or passively to bear, this insidious feeling of being
tired, which comes to such an evil end at last?
But, before we conclude, we ought to say something on the
treatment of this weariness. This will not take us long, because so
much has been implied already. We must remember, first of all,
that our struggle against it must be equal, whatever the source
of the weariness may be; because the danger is equal, whatever

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may be the excuse. We must not fret and toss under it, like
a sick man who cannot sleep; but still we must not be passive.
In the next place, we must watch with an exceeding jealousy
against all worshipping of health. The encroachments of this idol­
atry are very' insidious. No other angel of darkness simulates an
angel of light so well. None can argue so well, or talk so reason­
ably, or so successfully feign the excellences of moderation and
discretion. Nevertheless all spiritual writers agree that it is one
of the most common, as well as most fatal, enemies of devotion.
When it has established itself, weariness is its first-born. Health
has of course to be considered, because it not only involves our
external work, which represents our duties to others, but it also
rules our interior life, which is our intercourse with God. On the
whole, in cases of doubt, it is safer to decide against health than
for it. But the safest thing of all is to follow the dispassionate
judgment of others, provided that on the one hand our questions
are put fairly and are not mere fishings for particular answers,
and on the other that we have not chosen a guide who through
good nature or indifference will always ratify the demands of our
own softness. Yet this is hard to do; for, after all, the sick man
is the only man in most cases who understands what he suffers,
better than either priest or physician. Yet we know that if he
made this his rule of action with his body he would soon be
dead; and the case is the same with the treatment of his soul.
It is a custom, which many have practiced with advantage
when this weariness has been upon them, to bind themselves by
vows for extremely short periods,—vows to get up at a certain
hour in the morning, or to examine their conscience for a given
time before going to bed, or to persevere in that thing, whatever
it may be, which the feeling of weariness makes us imagine just
then to be impossible. But this also is a rule which can only
be followed under advice. We must also regulate our actions
very carefully. Punctuality, always a thing of huge importance
in the pursuit of perfection, is now indispensable. It has become a
matter of life and death. We must be quiet and not precipitate,
steady and not intermittent. We must deal firmly with ourselves,

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but it must be a very gentle firmness. We must consider our
weariness either as a punishment to be endured reverently, or
as a suffering to be borne in union with the Passion of our Blessed
Lord. Above all, we must fix our energies courageously on it,
and not allow ourselves to underrate its importance. What we
have already said will surely persuade us to this most cogently.
For we have seen that it first of all undoes old and long habits of
good, secondly that it leads to a nausea of spiritual things, and
thirdly that it pushes us to the distinct abandonment of the higher
level we took at first, and to the taking of a lower one, which will
most probably have also to be abandoned in its turn.
But it is a great trial, and I wish I could console you more
efficaciously under it. It is a very real suffering. Nevertheless
we must either push on, or give up the strife. As to this last, I do
not say, Who will dare to do it? but rather, Whose love of God
will let him do it? It is cruel to drag a man up and down a
room after he has been overdosed with laudanum, while he is
moaning with weariness and entreating to be allowed to lie
down and sleep. Yet it is one of those cruelties which are part
of the imperiousness of mercy. So we must let ourselves be shaken,
and forced onward, and pricked with needles, if need be, and
beaten as though we were flagging beasts of burden. I take it
for granted that we are clear about our not doing as much for
God as we very well might do. Let us hold on, tired as we are.
We shall be less tired when we come to our second wind, if we
may be allowed so to name that second fervor which is so often
granted to the lukewarm, and which spiritual writers too much
ignore. Life is short. The thing is—to be ready to die, and to
be free from reproach at that dread hour; and is there one of us
who would quite like to die, doing as little for God as we are
doing now?

WOUNDED FEELINGS
The geography-books of olden times used to speak of regions
of the globe, land or ocean, where monsters dwelt and storms
were always raging, where sun and moon, and wind and wet, and
day and night, and the four seasons, kept neither times nor rules,
and set at naught the laws of meteorology, and where mysterious
magnetic influences reigned, beyond man’s understanding or con­
trol. They were spots which superstitious mariners might people
with attractive horrors, and to others, if they were less interesting
than the real wonders of physical geography, they had an air
of mysterious horror round them, which is not without its attrac­
tion still. The world of wounded feelings is like one of these
fabulous worlds of old geography. It follows no rules. The needle
ceases to point to the north. It lies apart from all analogies. It is
a region of unreasonable things. It is full of contradictions and
of confusions. Every thing which happens in it is unexpected
from the very fertility of its lawlessness. There is hardly such
a thing as humanity in it. It is peopled by individual souls, and
each soul is a species by itself. Is there much practical good,
then, in penetrating into the centre of that anomalous world? Is
there any chance of its vagaries being reduced into a science? Per­
haps not. Yet observation will teach us a great deal; and we
have hardly a right to say that there is nothing to be said of a
region which most men cross in their way to heaven, and which is
precisely the region which those who are most capable of perfec­
tion cross at its broadest place, and so are longest in crossing.
I suppose there are few men in life who have not at times,
or once at least, sat down and wondered whether life were worth
the living. If we will not let faith speak, there is a great deal to
be said on both sides. Faith tyrannizes over the question so com­
pletely that it ceases to be a question in her presence. Upon the
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whole, however, men seem to like life. I infer this, not only
from their reluctance to part with it, but from their evident zest
in living. The most unhappy man I have ever seen—I see him
now in my mind’s eye—obviously relished his life exceedingly.
The least tolerable thing in life is perhaps its monotony. Some­
how the life that is fullest of attractions comes to drag at last.
Almost all lives have got a lame limb. Nevertheless, if we strike
a balance between living and not living, it is in favor of living,
with such a surplus that it is not worth while going back to
look for errors in our summing. No conceivable errors would put
the total the other way. But here is a remarkable thing, that gifted
lives are those about which we may most reasonably doubt
whether they are worth living. Gifts bring with them an in­
heritance of pains,—as if they were out of place in a fallen world
like this. The extreme delicacy of any one sense brings with it
more additional annoyances than extra pleasures. Fineness of
perception, delicacy of taste, keenness of appreciation, liveliness
of imagination, excessive sensitiveness of feeling,—all diese things
bring exquisite pleasure with them; but, in a world whose con­
stitution has been deranged by sin, they expose us to continual
shocks and jars, which often more than counterbalance the enjoy­
ment. This is only what we should expect. Obtuse people feel
less than others. They feel sin less, and the disproportionateness
of things, and the host of minor evils which haunt life from its
beginning to its end. Nevertheless all these gifts are great helps
to perfection. Some spiritual writers have spoken of some of them
as if they were indispensable. Certainly of some of them it is
true that, where saints have not had them naturally, grace has
infused them. It is of one of these things that I am going to
speak to you now, a great help or a great hinderance in the spir­
itual life, a source of peculiar pleasure and a cause of peculiar
pain in the natural life,—easily-wounded feelings, the gift or the
curse of sensitiveness.
Sensitiveness is neither a virtue nor a vice. But it is not on
that account less intimately connected with the spiritual life. As
years go by, their varying circumstances gradually disclose to us

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depths and peculiarities of our own character, which are deeply
concerned with holiness yet are not in themselves either virtues
or vices. They are capabilities of both, and can with equal facility
lend themselves to either. They are points in our character at
which we begin to go wrong, or at which grace exhibits a pre­
dilection to graft itself. Thus they are strengths as well as weak­
nesses. Sensitiveness is one of the most important of these things.
I do not see how sublime virtue can be reached without it, while
on the other hand we behold every day into what depths of
incalculable meanness it can plunge great minds, affectionate
hearts, and strong characters. It is the secret cause of one-half of
the disedifying inconsistencies of religious people. It rules us more
powerfully than any of our passions. It absorbs our character into
itself, until it alone almost becomes our character. It makes every
thing in life exquisite and exaggerated. Our pleasures and our
pains are both exquisite. It belongs especially to affectionate dis­
positions; yet it is not the same thing as tenderness. We must be
careful not to confound them. Tenderness comes much nearer
to being a virtue. But sensitiveness without tenderness is a very
terrible thing. When separated from it, sensitiveness is for the
most part allied with cruelty, and cruelty is a complete disability
to be a saint. Cruel men are more common than we might have
supposed; for modern society exhibits great facilities and con­
veniences for cruelty. Many men are tyrants in the secret domestic
relations of life, who are not only bland and yielding in society,
but even charm us by a manifestation of humility, which is not
simulated, neither is it altogether unreal. Cruelty and humility
often combine very strangely. Nay, what too often is domestic
life, because of this cruelty, but a veil behind which lie intermin­
able regions of unhappiness, trodden wildly or trodden wearily by
unsuspected thousands every day?
Sensitive men are also very quick and keen in their sym­
pathies; but these sympathies are very narrow. Generally speak­
ing, such men can only sympathize with sorrows which they
themselves have passed through. Their hearts cannot outgrow the
circle of their own experience. They are often not large-hearted

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men, neither are they forgiving men. There is, indeed, much
narrowness both of mind and heart about sensitiveness when it
is not found in combination with other things. It is always de­
generating into umbrageousness, and so darkening the heart,
unless that heart is peculiarly blithe and sunny in itself. A man
who is sensitive without being elastic is a false character, and
will always be found on trial far worse than he seems. Last of
all, a sensitive man is generally disinclined to an interior life.
Whether it is that all probing is so painful to him that he shrinks
from it, or that he has a wider experience than other men of his
power of self-delusion, or that he finds outward kindness a
charity so difficult to him that he overvalues it, so it is, that we
mostly find very sensitive men highly impatient of an interior
life, and almost inclined to treat it with contempt. It irritates
them so strangely that we may be sure there is something in it
which is deeply uncongenial to them. At the same time, as we
shall see afterward, sensitiveness confers almost a microscopic
power upon the conscience, and so enables us to perceive the
finer shades of evil and to correspond to the more delicate opera­
tions of grace. For the present, let this be enough as a general
description of sensitiveness and its affinities.
It is a common gift in its ordinary degrees, but very uncom­
mon in its highest degrees. But in almost all hearts the amount
of liability to wounded feelings is hardly credible beforehand.
It is sufficient completely to obscure our judgment, to deceive
our affections, and to make us forget proprieties in our outward
demeanor. Men are constantly placing themselves in false and
foolish positions under its influence. They can only avoid this,
either supematurally through great grace, or naturally through
a keen sense of the ridiculous, which is one of our greatest
safeguards through life. Sensitiveness is therefore, on the whole,
a common phenomenon in the spiritual life, so common as to
justify our making it the subject of a separate investigation.
Λ11 hearts quiver when they are touched. If some do not. there
are only exceptions enough to prove the rule. Piety, if any
thing, keenly quickens this natural sensitiveness. Indeed, in its

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earlier stages it quickens it almost to a morbid extent. This
is one of the unlovelinesses which cling about recently-converted
people. It makes their devotion only a new capability of cen­
soriousness. Thus the mortification of it becomes one of the
primary duties of the spiritual life; and the intense suffering
which this causes is the ladder by which we climb higher.
I wish to call your attention to this matter, not only because
it is a very practical one, but also because I think we hardly
do justice to sensitiveness. We speak of wounded feelings as if
they were far more wrong than they are. We confound them
with die consequences which follow from them when they are
not under the dominion of grace. Our own attainments are
perhaps too low to enable us to estimate the magnificent fruits
of wounded feelings when they are consecrated by grace. Our
tone about wounded feelings is given to be exaggerated, exag­
gerated condemnation. This leads to many evils; but two espe­
cially,—scrupulousness and discouragement. Theology tells us
that our Blessed Lord’s Body was especially formed for suffering.
In like manner we should suppose that his Sacred Heart was
sensitive above all other hearts. It is this which carries the
sufferings of his Passion deeper down than we can follow them.
Our sensitiveness, as well as our other characteristics, must be
exalted into a conformity with his. Let us look at it, therefore,
with fairness and moderation. If wounded feelings are a foun­
tain of venial sins, they are also a capability of great holiness.
They do not want killing: they want supernaturalizing. Perhaps
it is not possible for us to make ourselves obtuse; but it is an
enormous mischief even to try to do so. If we succeed, then we
have stereotyped our present lowness in grace, and have gained
nothing but a worthless diminution of some of the noblest pairrs
of life. Thus the mortification of sensitiveness is a peculiar
process. It is not a blunting, or stunning, or putting to death of
sensitiveness, as it is with vices. But it is a brave making use of
the torture of our wounded feelings to get nearer God and to be
kinder to men. What we have to avoid is the common error of
blaming the feelings, instead of blaming consequences which

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would never come of them if we corresponded to our grace.
We must bear in mind at all times this peculiarity of mortifying
our wounded feelings, as distinguished from other mortifica­
tions. This is not a mere subtlety, or a piece of metaphysical
straw-splitting. I giant that there is a legitimate prejudice
against refined distinctions; but we cannot do without them in
the spiritual life. Coarseness and roughness spoil every thing
there. Simplicity is the highest grace, and the last reached;
and what is simplicity but an almost incredible supernatural
refinement?
Sensitiveness affects us in various ways. It makes us fanciful.
We imagine offence has been intended where it was never
dreamed of. It constructs entire imaginary histories upon what
is often no foundation at all. Even where there is a basis of
truth, it builds upon it more than it will bear. It magnifies and
exaggerates things. It puts the wildest constructions upon inno­
cent actions. It mistakes indifference for intensity. It imagines
subtlety where there has only been carelessness. It throws a
monstrous significance into a chance phrase, and then broods
on it for years, literally for years. From being fanciful we pass
to being suspicious. Where we do not see phantoms, we are
sure they are lying in ambush. We start at shadows. We make
all life like riding a mettlesome horse by moonlight, when there
are shadows at every turn; and there are few things more irksome
or more irritating. Our mind is crowded with suspicions. We
forget God. We become distracted in prayer. We are hardly able
to distinguish between what is shadow and what is substance.
We give shadows the power to harm us, as if they were sub­
stances. It is difficult to say whether we grow more intolerable
to ourselves, or to those around us. From being suspicious we
pass to being umbrageous. We grow moody and bitter. We add
sulkiness to our suspicions. There is no dealing with us. If an
offender begs our pardon, we do not forgive him. We discover
some new offence in the very act. He had no right to beg our
pardon. He put himself into a position of superiority by doing
so. We are angry with him for it. It is just like him. It is a

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piece of conceit and forwardness. He should have waited till we
made the advances. We will not believe he is sincere. On which­
ever side men take us, they will find us equally unmanageable.
They will meet with nothing but rebuffs. Now, what grace,
what conceivable Christ-like thing, can grow in such an atmos­
phere as this?
But shadows distort the bulk of things. So, when we are
umbrageous, all our feelings connected with the subject-matter
which annoys us are disproportionate. This leads us into all
manner of mistakes. We attach the wrong things to the wrong
persons. We do not know where to take our aim, the outline of
the shadows is so swollen and uncertain. We make people think
we are much worse than we really are. When we come forward
of our own accord, we do so in an ungraceful way. When, on
the contrary, men come upon us, ouï' manner is startled and
menacing. Hence comes excitement, excitement which by
morosely brooding over itself becomes a sort of subordinate
madness. Then it is that we become almost incurable. For
then it is that we become as sure that we are in the right as
if it had been revealed to us. The proofs of the unkindness of
others are overwhelming. We put our evidence together, and
get up our case against our best friend, it may be, or at least
against an unhappily offending friend, as a barrister gets up a
case against a murderer. The excitement burns our judgment
into us, as the fire anneals the porcelain and fixes the pattern
and the colors. We shall never change our minds now. Then
come the sins, outstreaming like a mountain-torrent,—thoughts,
words, actions, manifold displays of outward irritability. Every
one of these is most likely irrevocable. We have dropped a mere
word of bitterness, and it clings like a stain to the poor offender
for life. It maims his power of doing good. It throws a shadow
over his sunshine. We stand between God and him. Yet per­
haps the offence was imaginary, or perhaps it was nothing like
so great; and, after all, what was it when weighed against past
kindnesses? We have now got very far. We have come in sight
of hatred. It is possible now for us to hate. Possible; yet is

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not the mere possibility terrific? Oh. who can set bounds to
the unmercifulness of a sensitive man?
This is the bad side of things. Here is plenty of occupation
for a holy self-revenge. There is abundance to mortify in all
this. We must be very unsparing of ourselves. Λ touch will not
cure the matter. We must hold the caustic firmly, and press
it hard, and keep it long on the place, even while we tremble
and are on the brink of fainting. We must remember we have
come in sight of hatred in our own souls, and no panic is out of
proportion to such a terror. We may plead our health, as being
in a great measure to blame for these ugly developments of our
sensitiveness. Very likely this is true. It often seems as if men
had only a given quantity of grace, a given quantity of patience
for example; and the endurance of pain draws upon the bank
till it breaks, and we have no patience left to pay others with, in
the little rubs and affronts of daily life. Indigestion will make
even a bright-minded, limpid-hearted man umbrageous. But
the truth of all this is no defence, and only a poor extenuation.
But, at any rate, it is no exemption from the obligation of
mortifying these wounded feelings. We must be swift also, as
well as unsparing. We must work day and night, as men do
on the railway when a bridge has broken down. All traffic
between heaven and ourselves is interrupted till we have got
the ruin out of the way. Those grim laborers by torchlight
in the thick darkness of night, they are our models in this
desperate task of mortifying our wounded feelings.
I do not think that sensitiveness is an evidence of our fallen
state, but only that certain developments of it are so. On the
contrary, I believe that in itself it is a grand gift, and that he is
most fortunate who is most sensitive. Yet it runs into what is
wrong so swiftly that it always seems wrong, and therefore
causes us more unhappiness than it need do. The quickness
to feel an unkindness, the tenderness which makes us shrink
before we are touched, the subtlety which causes us to fancy
unkind intentions when there were none, the delicacy which is
almost crushed by little roughnesses,—these are evidently with­

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out a shadow of sin. They are not moral actions. They are both
involuntary and indeliberate. They are our character and con­
stitution. Grace may change and elevate them, may fortify them
with a gift of the Holy Ghost, and counterbalance them by
making us love God more fervently and care for his interests
more exclusively. But, meanwhile, they are not wrong in them­
selves. Moreover, the first moments of our sensitiveness, the first
ideas, the first imaginations, the first impulses, are wholly free
from sin; and many persons would be much happier if they
could always bear this in mind. We are cast down if we feel a
tiling with exceeding keenness, which is in reality a feeling we
cannot help, a feeling which, if it is to be overcome, can only
be overcome gradually and in the long run, as the result of
continuous processes of grace. Our self-annoyance ought not to
begin till we proceed to act upon our sensitiveness, whether in­
wardly by deliberate thoughts and that brooding which is a
proximate occasion of sins against charity, or outwardly, by
word, manner, or action. Neither is the undiminished keen­
ness of feeling to be regarded as any proof of immortification;
yet how often are people overwhelmed with sadness because they
have mistaken it for one!
In order to understand in what the mortification of our
sensitiveness consists, let us take a case. Some shadow has come
between us and one whom we love, and whom we continue to
love in spite of the shadow. The shadow broadens, lengthens,
thickens, we hardly know how. Words of his are reported to us.
They have a dubious, if not an unkind, sound about them.
We are stung, and the pain is so great that we wince under it.
We know very well that words taken out of their context are
ver}' different from what they are in it. Experience has taught
us that reported words are hardly ever exact; and, even when
exact, they put on a new character by being separated from
manner, tone, look, and circumstances. The unkindness of
reported words is more often from the mind of the reporter
than from the mind of the original speaker. A man given to
report things is never a kind man. He is no better than a bird

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of prey, given to feed on the garbage of the baser parts of our
poor nature. We know all this. Nevertheless we are stung with
the words. They rankle. There was poison on the arrows. Then
come some actions or looks of our friend which admit of an
unkindly interpretation. Our first impulse is to interpret them
by our own pain at the former words. Like the roots of trees,
it is the nature of a misunderstanding to entangle itself as it
grows. It is its instinct to outgrow the possibility of ever being
explained. It is easier to cut out a cancer than to disengage from
the heart a misunderstanding which has once had time to harden
there. The shadow, then, still continues. We do not speak.
But our friend is, unconsciously perhaps, causing us the most
exquisite torture by nearly every thing he says or does, or is re­
ported to have said or done, with regard to us. Now, let us also
suppose that, while we have been thus wincing, we have been
forcing ourselves intellectually to believe that no unkindness was
intended, that we have checked ourselves sharply whenever we
have caught ourselves brooding on the matter, that we have
punished in ourselves any imaginary speeches, indictments, or
defences which our imagination has indulged in, that we have
accused ourselves sedulously in confession of every thing which
had the slightest aspect of uncharitableness, that we have not
allowed ourselves to express our sensitiveness in complaints or
in actions, that we have prayed more than ever for him who is
the cause of our suffering, and that, when we could so without
giving him pain or discomfort, we have humbled ourselves by
telling him of those inward feelings which must seem to him
exaggerated and absurd, even if not petty, base, and mean.—let
us suppose all this, and then, though our sensitiveness is as lively
as ever and our pain as sharp, we have been by God s grace
mortifying it to good purpose. It is truly miserable work. For
the very struggle defiles us. Our inward life is all thrown into
disarray, and kept so perhaps for months or years. There are
many cases in which we cannot speak, cases in which speaking
would make matters worse. There are many misunderstandings
which we shall only lay down, where so many other burdens

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are laid down, just on this side of the judgment-seat. Hearts
are often sundered in this life, whose love of each other is grow­
ing secretly beneath the shadow of a misunderstanding; and
die unexpected growth will be one of the sweet surprises of
eternity. Meanwhile, if we have done what has been described
above, we arc not only without sin, but we have earned merits,
and have gone heavenward by strides rather than by steps.
We have acted nobly, as our infirmity and littleness may lawfully
count nobility. Yet years of this inward strain may not, perhaps,
allay our sensitiveness one iota. When we lie down to die, we
may have the same feeling of being flayed alive which we have
now. It is not always so, but it is often so. Some men grace
makes blessedly insensible; other men it makes more tender
and susceptible. I would rather have this last gift than that
odier blessing.
In the process of mortifying our sensitiveness we must also
bear in mind that the sensitiveness of each one of us is peculiar.
We share it with no one else. It is individual. It is part of our
idiosyncrasy. We may resemble this man rather than another.
But a resemblance is all. No man’s sensitiveness is quite the
same as another man's. It depends on combinations of char­
acter, which nature does not appear ever to repeat exactly. We
must therefore learn our own. This is of importance in two
ways. Things may be wrong in others which are not wrong in
us; and the knowledge of this will sometimes save us from dis­
couragement. Again: things may be excusable in others which
are inexcusable in us; and the knowledge of this will hinder our
defending and dispensing ourselves where we have no right to
do so. We must also remember that the tendency of sensitive­
ness is always toward selfishness. An unusually affectionate man
is generally a man of unusual self-love; and sensitiveness is a
department of the affections. It comes from what is good.
Indeed, it comes from what is too good for the present state of
things. Hence it often does a mischief here, while it is in itself a
prophecy, or rather an actual germ, of some undeveloped excel­
lence of our eternity.

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I have defended sensitiveness, and yet I have been saying
a great many strong things against it. So I must not conclude
without saying something about its privileges. Even in natural
things it is the source of our keenest and most refined enjoyment.
It is sensitiveness alone which finds out what lies under the
monotony of life, and so gives us spirits to bear it. It glorifies
all our joys, and makes sorrows more tolerable by its carrying
them deeper down into our hearts. While it widens the sphere
of our love, it also intensifies its action. It gives a zest to the
practice of virtue, which is in natural things what divine sweet­
ness is in spiritual things. But its grand privilege is, that it
makes us especially capable of the higher graces of sanctity. There
is a delicacy, or subtlety, in the more uncommon operations of
grace, which appears to require something congenial in the
natural character, on which it may graft itself. Thus sensitive­
ness is the best basis for a great grace of charity, because it is
an almost infinite power of sympathy. It reveals to us the finer
and more interior perfections of charity. It is also infallible
in its instincts for heavenly things and quickly apprehends God,
and is thus an excellent foundation for interior peace. It will
thus perhaps increase our joy in heaven if natural character
is allowed any action there, independent of the degree of super­
natural love.
Sensitiveness also peculiarly enables us to understand God.
to penetrate the meaning of his ways with us, to feel each touch
of his grace, to discover the faintest workings of a divine voca­
tion, and to be uneasy under any scarcely perceptible drifting
away from his will. We are enabled by it to correspond to the
jealousy of God,—that jealousy which is a characteristic of his
sanctity and enters so deeply into all his dealings with souls that
are aiming at perfection. Sensitiveness also makes us unworldly
by continually bringing home to us our unfitness for the world.
It is a gift whose dower is suffering, and which therefore makes
us pine in our exile, even while it is contributing joys which are
the best natural consolations of that exile. It is a source of
sanctification uniting in itself all the four excellences, according

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to which we judge of the importance and efficacy of means of
grace. It is constant; it is acute; it is unsuspected; it is fatal
to self-love. By unsuspected I mean two things: first, that it
goes on sanctifying us even while we are not adverting to the
fact; and secondly, that so little delusion adheres to its method
of operation that we may trust ourselves to it without suspicion.
Last of all, it is a peculiarly Christ-like fountain of suffering.
Think of the mystery of the Agony in the garden. It was
a great part of that mystery that therein our dearest Lord
put himself in the place of every one of us. He bore our sins;
he identified himself with our shames; he felt our shrinkings.
Our finest sensitiveness is coarse and blunt compared with his.
We rudely pressed every one of the quivering keys of his Sacred
Heart, and made it utter the low and plaintive notes of a sorrow
beyond our understanding. He shrank, like a sensitive plant,
from die shame with which we covered him. In the other mys­
teries of the Passion we have outward pains, external shame,
publicity, unkindness, and the desertion of friends; but the suf­
fering of the Agony was in no slight degree, and above the other
mysteries, the keenness of wounded feelings. To us, therefore,
the model and the consolation in our excess of wounded feeling
is that most dear and divine Heart whose inward wound finds
words in the Reproaches of Good Friday.

CONFIDENCE THE ONLY WORSHIP

What has God done, that his creatures do not trust him? We
cannot trust ourselves, neither can we do without trusting. We
cannot hang suspended in space, from nothing and over nothing.
It is plain we cannot trust each other. Confidence in God is
meant to be the creature’s life. Without it, we had better disbe­
lieve whatever we do not see, while we can do no better than
acknowledge that all we see is a burdensome enigma. But how
is life to be lived without confidence in God? We came out
of his Hand. It is true he has in some sense loosened his hold
upon us, but it is only for a while. He will take us up again.
We came from him. We are going back to him. There are
but two eternal homes. They are both the work of his justice.
One or other of them is inevitable. But one of them is rather
an endless end than a home. We cannot fly from him. We
cannot hide from him. What shall we do, if we cannot trust
him?
Yet confidence in God is far from common, and an adequate
confidence most rare. It would be a terrible thing to say that
the worship of God was rare among men; yet confidence is the
only real worship. Our confidence is our religion. It is the
sweetness of life. It is worth our while to have lived, if it were
only to have known the delight of trusting in God. But it is not
our joy only. It is our absolute necessity, and therefore belongs
to the lowest of us. It is our only true perfection, and therefore
belongs to the highest of us. Let us try to bring this home to
ourselves. It is one of those commonplace things which are of
the greatest importance and yet need continual repetition. When
we look even at good men, we see that what they want is con­
fidence in God. Bishops want it, priests want it, religious want it.
It is the want in the piety of almost every one. Our very con241

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fidence in God is wanting in confidence. Yet, if confidence is
the only true worship, things must be very far from being what
they ought to be, even with the servants of God.
Let us sec, then, first of all, whether this idea is any thing
more than a devout exaggeration. There is nothing in the world
of so much importance to us as God and God’s favor. Rather,
it would be more true to say that there is nothing in the world
of any importance at all except that. But in order to gain and
keep God's favor, and especially in order to be able to return
his love, we must learn and understand him. He is not simply
a collection of all possible perfections, a resplendent object of
worship. He is a living Being, who is not only in the most inti­
mate relations with us, but who has a peculiar character of his
own, upon which the whole of our love and worship of him is
moulded. Now, if we look at his character as it is implied in
any one of his Attributes, or again in the entire assemblage of
his Perfections, or as it is manifested to us in action in the
pages of Holy Scripture, or as we see it for ourselves in the
romantic providences of life, the result of our study is, that
confidence in him is the only true worship of him. But this
is not merely the doubtful result of our own investigation. He
has actually told us so by his prophets again and again. The
gospel is defined by St. Paul to be an “access with confidence''
to God. God himself vouchsafes to seem as if he made a boast of
his fidelity. He is perpetually calling the attention of his crea­
tures to it, lest they should not appreciate it rightly. It is out
of his extreme compassion for us that he lays this stress upon
that perfection which most invites our confidence.
If we consider the results of confidence, we shall see how
impossible it is to exaggerate its importance. Without it there
can be no living faith, because living faith, in the religious
sense of the word, must inevitably lead to trust. There can be
no hope unless we have confidence in the truth of him who
has promised. Charity is equally impossible unless there is also
confidence. Thus without it there can be no exercise of any
of the three theological virtues. It is worship in itself without

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2«

any further act, because it is an acknowledgment not only of
some perfections in him whom we trust, but of perfections ade­
quate to the amount of confidence we repose in him, and that
amount is only measured by fortunes and interests which are
eternal, and as nearly infinite as any thing belonging to the
creature can be. Moreover, confidence in another is the sur­
render of self. We sit down no longer under our own shadow,
but we go and rest beneath the sovereignty of God. Confidence
in him is the legitimate expression of our sense of responsibility
to him. It is the perpetual loyalty of conscience. The interior
dispositions which it produces in us are childlikeness, simplicity,
and calmness of spirit. Without these dispositions perfection is
impossible; and without confidence in God these dispositions
are impossible.
Now, it must be remembered that we are not treating at
present of the sweetness of this confidence, or of the beautiful
motives to it which multiply themselves daily on the path of
life. The subject is so attractive it is hard to keep from it. The
mysterious delight which the Creator is pleased to take in the
trust of his creature would fill a volume by itself, if we took it
up, and turned it round, and held it in different lights, and
touched with it all the affections of our hearts one after the
other. But at present we have a drier task before us. It is to
show the importance of this confidence in God.
Few persons are aware of the extent of their own deficiency
in this respect. Most persons take the matter so completely
for granted that they do not suspect themselves, and therefore
do not examine themselves on the subject. There is something
so monstrous in not trusting God, that we should have thought
it must be a rare thing among good people. But experience
teaches very differently. Many aim at perfection, and few
attain it. In almost every case the reason of the failure is the
want of confidence in God. Many persons live for years always
intending to begin to form habits of prayer, or habits of par­
ticular examination of conscience, and never really begin either
the one or the other. The real cause of this procrastination is

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want of confidence in God. Men try to give up habits of sin,
and either intermit their efforts, or abandon them entirely,
through want of confidence in God. When a man is scrupulous,
it is mostly from want of confidence in God. Our knowledge of
our own misery, which makes us brave when we have confidence
in God, makes us cowardly and mean-spirited when we are desti­
tute of that confidence. Many persons take up supernatural
views of things as intellectual convictions; and yet, when they
are thrown into circumstances which as it were compel the acting
on these principles, we behold not a vestige of them in their
conduct. This also is a result of want of confidence in God.
We really, far more than we believe, look at religion, at
prayer, and at grace as if the whole was a lottery, or something
like it. A real believing prayer is by no means common. This
is probably the reason why such an immensity of prayer seems
unanswered. Many men content themselves with a mere inde­
terminate hope, which can never carry heaven by storm as
confidence does. Let us look into ourselves and see if we really
have true and solid confidence in God. Many remain beginners
all their lives, because they have not confidence in God.
1 have said that in our position it is the only true worship.
First of all, we are ignorant,—not only ignorant of much which
we should like to know yet can do without knowing, but ig­
norant also of much which it deeply concerns us to know.
What can we do but trust our ignorance to the light of God’s
wisdom? He knows what he wants of us; he knows what he
intends to do with us; he knows the evil we might do, and the
evil we shall do. We know hardly any thing of these important
questions. We must trust him. Even if there were any risk
in trusting him, there is no help for it. We are also feeble. We
have to cope with three tremendous worlds, the huge material
planet, the crowded world of men, and the invisible world of
spirit. Besides this, we have the management of our own selves,—
at best a perilous and dubious affair. Our means are so limited
as to look absurd. Our strength is little more than infantine.
What can we do better than trust our weakness to his stupendous

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power? Then, again, our unworthiness is more in excess than
our weakness. It is hard to vilify our nature as it deserves, yet
dangerous to vilify it at all. Self is deserving of our uttermost
contempt, only that no contempt is safe. It merits our hearty,
honest hatred; but we must trust God first before we can hate
ourselves aright. It is only when we are sinking overhead in
his mercy that our unworthiness does not impair our confidence.
Yet what can we do with the comparative infinity of our un­
worthiness but trust it to the absolute infinity of God's compas­
sion? Our sins,—they are in one sense indelible. They are
objects of fear to us, even after they are forgiven. They are not
forgotten. We must hear of them again one day. We must be
confronted with them. The nearest approach to getting rid
of them is to trust them to God’s justice. It is a fearful venture;
but there is the Precious Blood. As to our eternity,—an interest
almost too big for creatures so little, an interest which we cannot
think of without trembling,—he knows already what it will be:
yet we must trust it to his silence. Thus it is that confidence
meets the necessities of our position, while it comes nearest of
all things to satisfying the requisitions of God’s magnificence.
But what is this confidence? What is its nature? How do we
define it? It is not a mere feeling: it is rather a faith. But it
has something more than faith in it: it is a kind of sight. It
adds to hope the character of assurance. It goes beyond a com­
mon habit of charity, and appears to have some distant affinity
with confirmation in grace; and, however distant, such an affinity
is incalculably precious. It is rather the result of our whole
religion than the offspring of any one virtue. It makes us familiar
with God; yet, rightly considered, it is rather a form of reverence
than a form of familiarity. It is what comes of the fear of God
when that fear is wholly a grace. It is the beauty of heavenly
fear. It is also no less a form of humility. It is humility in its
exact balance, not sinking into cowardice on the one hand, nor
mounting into presumption on the other. Confidence is (he
manliness of an humble soul. It is also the strength of lave,not its effort, or its impulse, but its abiding, constitutional

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strength. It is love chastised, and therefore equable and steadfast.
It is so eminently its nature to be practical that it can never
remain only a sentiment, or a pathos, or an inward smoothing
of the soul. It breaks out into action, as if it could not be
kept in; and, like the bodily vigor of youth, it is often scarcely
conscious of its own exertions. Moreover, it is the happiness
of religion, that sunshine in which perseverance is comparatively
easy, that light in which all the virtues combine properly and
have ample room and fair play, the atmosphere in which delu­
sion, discouragement, and indiscretion are to our relief least
at their ease. It has also the same irresistible tendency to prayer
which it has to action. It is almost prayer itself, that uninter­
mitting prayer of which the gospel speaks, and which of all
things commanded looks the most like an impossibility. But,
more than this, it seems to make direct prayer the necessary
centre of the soul. It is always gravitating to prayer. Λ soul
possessed with this confidence feels an uneasiness, and has a
sense of being held back, when it is not at prayer. No sooner
is the pressure of distracting occupations removed than it almost
insensibly glides into prayer. It has no vacant time, because its
spare lime is as it were naturally prayer. It does not so much
strive to pray as it lapses into prayer. Last of all, although it is
more congenial to some natural dispositions than to others, it
is peculiarly a gift of God; and not a natural disposition; yet,
more than most gifts, it has to be earned like wages. It is essen­
tially a grace; yet no grace has more of the nature of an acqui­
sition.
If this be so, how, then, is it to be acquired? We will see,—
remembering all the while that it is a grace, and not a pure
acquisition, of which we are speaking. We might almost say that
all the practices and experiences of the spiritual life concurred
to form this confidence in our souls. It is true. Nevertheless
there are certain things which have more to do with it than
others; and we shall now enumerate some of these.
The thought of God is very broad. It is not so much a thought
as a world of thought. It cannot be thought in one thought.

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Hence the importance of systematic and formal meditation on
the Divine Perfections. We have seen that our confidence in
God depends greatly on our knowledge of God. We must have
made his character familiar to us in prayer, in order to ground
and root our confidence. Meditation on the Attributes of God
is, therefore, one of the chief means of acquiring the grace of
confidence. To this we must join meditation on the mysteries
of Jesus. Neither thought nor reading nor theology will ever
adequately bring home to us the breadth of redeeming grace,
or the depth of the unsearchable riches of the Incarnation. Is it
not our own experience that the more we think, the harder salva­
tion seems, while the more we pray, the easier it seems? In order
to have confidence, we must know God. But this is not enough:
we must know him in Jesus Christ. It is only eternal life to
know him when we know also his Son whom he has sent.
All our spiritual exercises, of whatever nature they may be.
are so many means of acquiring confidence in God. They all let
us deeper down into him. They all unfold more and more of
the nature of grace and of the poverty of our own nature. They
all bring experiences of Jesus in the soul; and each of these ex­
periences is a new ground of confidence in him. Our simple
perseverance in any thing good is a process of augmentation of
our confidence. Outward temptations help us. They frighten
us away from self-trust. They make us better acquainted with
our possibilities of sin. They reveal to us in an alarming manner
the vigor and the unweariedness of the spiritual powers which
are arrayed against us. They lead us to try all methods of keeping
right, and we exhaust them, and find that only confidence in
God wears, endures, and succeeds. Inward trials lead to the
same result, only still more swiftly and more infallibly. God’s
arms arc more closely folded round us in interior trials than in
the sensible sweetnesses of his consoling visitations. A muchtried man is always a man of unbounded faith, and of a confidence
in God which looks, to us of lower faith, superstitious in little
things and presumptuous in great ones.
We also acquire confidence in God by exercising confidence.

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It produces itself, and multiplies itself while it strengthens itself
Direct prayer lor the grace is likewise an obvious means of its
increase. Examination of conscience, which burrows under self­
trust and takes the ground away from under it, increases our
confidence in God by the vivid manner in which it shows us the
necessity of it, through the vision of our own nothingness and
sin. Sacraments, especially carefully-prepared confessions, have
a peculiar power to increase and reinforce this gift. The same
may be said of spiritual sweetness, the tendency of which is to
produce a holy languor, wherein self-trust is distasteful and we
long to lie down and rest in God. “Stay me up with flowers;
compass me about with apples; because I languish with love. His
left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace
me.” Such is the language of the Spouse in the Canticle. A
special devotion to the Providence of God, which seems to
have possessed the souls of some of the modern saints as a
scarcely-conscious protest against a false philosophy, is another
means of acquiring confidence in God. Even temptations against
the faith, which trouble it so terribly, leave an increase of it
behind them when they go, like a legacy from an unkind relation.
But, above all, the habit of working for God only, of doing our
good for him and caring little about its success, and of doing it
secretly,—which we instinctively do when we do it only for him,—
is the royal road to confidence in him. Here, you see, are a variety
of means by which we can acquire great riches of this blessed
and indispensable confidence.
Let us think a little of the practice of it. The constant profes­
sion of it must be a great part of prayer. It is so completely a
part of the worship due to God, that we must profess it even
when we do not sensibly feel it. It must be in us, if we believe.
We must extend it to every thing which happens to us. All the
events of life, all the things of this outer world, must come under
its influence. In truth, there is good reason for it, because, after
all, human wisdom and worldly prudence are nearly as impotent
in the common affairs of life as they are in our spiritual warfare.
Is it not our experience that it is always God who does things

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for us, even those things which we seem to do most for ourselves?
Much more, then, must all our interior life, with its mysterious
phenomena and fluctuations, be brought under the sovereignty
of this tranquillizing yet animating confidence. It must overflow
in our hearts from God upon all his appointments, as our Blessed
Lady, the sacraments, the blessings of the Church, the office of
the priest, and the like. We must trust with a special trust all
that belongs to God or looks like him. Our trust must be inces­
sant, universal, prudent, and bold. In divine things there is no
prudence which is not bold. It must live and work in the dark
as briskly as in the light. It must distrust itself. It must be gay.
playing blithely with difficulties; for difficulties are the stones out
of which all God’s houses are built. Of a truth, our whole
generosity with God is nothing more than the measure of our
confidence in him. To sum it up in one word,—in the pursuit
of sanctity confidence is progress.
Now, how does the matter stand with ourselves? We have
been trying to get rid of some tiresome habit of venial sin. We
resolve against it; yet, while we make our resolutions, we do not
believe we shall ever be able to keep them. We accuse ourselves
of it at confession, and make not only a distinct act of sorrow
about it, but a distinct purpose against it, and yet we feel sure,
down in our minds, that we shall bring the same self-accusation
to confession again. So the habit clings. All this is because we
are lacking in confidence. If, from confidence in God and not
in self, we believed we should never commit the sin again, prob­
ably we should not commit it again. We have fallen for want
of faith in grace. Let us take another case. We desire to form
certain habits of devotion,—it may be, the habit of particular
examination of conscience. Now, no one can tell how burden­
some this is, until he has tried it. It is a great restraint, and a
continual one. Some considerable amount of mortification is
often necessary in order to persevere in it under adverse circum­
stances. We give it up. as if the original taking of it upon our­
selves had been an indiscretion. We give it up. and thereby
forfeit untold graces, simply because we have not confidence in

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God. So it is with bodily mortifications. We abandon those we
have begun, because we cannot believe we shall ever persevere
in them. Or we exercise an infelicitous discretion, and shrink
from committing ourselves to trifling austerities, whose grace
would have been any thing but trifling, simply because we are
deficient in confidence in God. We thus alter our standing
in heaven forever. Indeed, as I said before, all generosity with
God depends upon confidence in him. It is the same with our
outward works of mercy when they are environed with difficul­
ties. Saints made their way through impossibilities; we turn
aside rather than attempt to brush a cobweb away. We turn out
disappointingly under temptations, and in interior trials, for the
same reason. We do perhaps a tenth of the work for souls which
we might do. All this happens because of our insufficient con­
fidence in God.
Oh that we could inspire each other with more confidence
in grace as a certain aid and an unfailing fountain! Happy is
he who makes one other man trust God more than he did before!
He has done a great and influential work in creation. Happy we,
if we know how to trust God as he should be trusted! A child
with his mother is full of innocent, respectful liberties. He never
doubts of gaining his end. He never anticipates a refusal till it
actually comes, no matter how often it has come before. He
was refused yesterday; so he feels sure today. If refused, he
persists with the persuasions of a not disobedient love, and
argues with a playful smile. When he is definitely refused, he
goes up to her, and kisses her, and runs away as happy with
his mother’s affectionate will as if he had got what he wanted.
So must we venture to be with our eternal Father.

ON TAKING SCANDAL

To give scandal is a great fault, but to take scandal is a
greater fault. It implies a greater amount of wrongness in our
selves, and it does a greater amount of mischief to others.
Nothing gives scandal sooner than a quickness to take scandal.
This is worth our consideration. For I find great numbers of
moderately good people who think it fine to take scandal. They
regard it as a sort of evidence of their own goodness, and of their
delicacy of conscience; while in reality it is only a proof either
of their inordinate conceit or of their extreme stupidity. They
are unfortunate when this latter is the case; for then no one but
inculpable nature is to blame. If, as some have said, a stupid man
cannot be a saint, at least his stupidity can never make him into
a sinner. Moreover, the persons in question seem frequently to
feel and act as if their profession of piety involved some kind of
official appointment to take scandal. It is their business to take
scandal. It is their way of bearing testimony to God. It would
show a blamable inertness in the spiritual life if they did not take
scandal. They think they suffer very much while they are taking
scandal; whereas in truth they enjoy it amazingly. It is a pleasur­
able excitement, which delightfully varies the monotony of devo­
tion. They do not in reality fall over their neighbor's fault,
nor does it in itself hinder them in the way of holiness, nor do
they love God less because of it,—all which ought to be implied
in taking scandal. But they trip themselves up on purpose, and
take care that it shall be opposite some fault of their neigh­
bor’s, in order that they may call attention to the difference
between him and themselves.
There are certainly many legitimate causes for taking scandal,
but none more legitimate than the almost boastful facility of
taking scandal which characterizes many so-called religious people.
The fact is that an immense proportion of us are pharisees. For
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one pious man who makes piety attractive, there are nine who
make it repulsive. Or, in other words, only one out of ten
among reputed spiritual persons is really spiritual. He who
during a long life has taken the most scandal has done the most
injury to God’s glory, and has been himself a real and sub­
stantial stumbling-block in the way of many. He has been an
endless fountain of odious disedification to the little ones of
Christ. If such a one reads this, he will take scandal at me.
Every thing that he dislikes, every thing which deviates from
his own narrow view of things, is to him a scandal. It is the
pharisaic way of expressing a difference. Men marvellously like
to be popes; and the dullest of men, if only he has, as usual, an
obstinacy proportioned to his dulness, can in most neighbor­
hoods carve out a tiny papacy for himself; and if to his dulness
he can add pomposity, he may reign gloriously, a little local
ecumenical council in unintermitting session through all the
four seasons of the year. Who has time enough, or heart enough,
or hope enough, to try to persuade such men? They are not
sufficiently interesting to us to be worth our persuading. Let us
leave them alone with their glory and their happiness. Let us
try to persuade ourselves. Do not we ourselves take scandal too
often? Let us examine the matter and see.
Now, here is a thing which I have often thought upon.
Certainly no one can remember every thing in the voluminous
lives of the saints; for it would take a lifetime to read them all.
But I do not remember to have read of any saint who ever took
scandal. If this is even approximately true, the question is de­
cided at once. Big men, swollen with self-importance, who see
the faults of others with eyes of lynxes, and criticize them with
clever sarcasms, and delight in the pedantry of a judicial frame
of mind, can only humorously apply to themselves the name of
the little ones of Christ. Yet books tell us there are two kinds
of scandal,—the scandal of the little ones of Christ, and the
scandal of pharisees. It follows, then, that these men must be
pharisees. But I say that, if this remark about the saints is even
approximately true, it must give us a check, and make us very

ON TAKING SCANDAL

255

thoughtful, if we are earnest men, although we are not saints,
and what belongs to saints is by no means safely applicable to
us in all respects. Let us suppose it not to be strictly true.
Let us suppose it only a rare thing for saints to take scandal.
We can draw a sufficiently broad conclusion from this to be very
practical to ourselves. For we may infer that it is a matter about
which persons aiming at being spiritual are not sufficiently
careful. Every time we take scandal we run a great risk of
sinning, and a manifold risk as well as a great one. We run the
risk of impairing God’s glory, of dishonoring our Blessed Lord, of
giving substantial scandal to others, of breaking the precept of
charity ourselves, of highly-culpable indiscretion, and, at the very
least, of grieving the Holy Spirit in our own souls. Here is
enough to make it worth our while to inquire.
Let us see, first of all, how much evil the habit of taking
scandal implies. It implies a quiet pride, which is altogether
unconscious how proud it is. Pride is the denial of the spiritual
life. Spiritual pride means that we have no spiritual life, but
the possession of that evil spirit instead of it. Pride is hard
enough to manage even when we are conscious of it; but a pride
which has no self-consciousness is a very desperate thing. It
often seems as if grace could only get at it through a Fall into
serious sin, which will awake its consciousness and at the same
moment turn it into shame. Now, the habit of taking scandal
indicates that worst sort of pride, a pride which believes itself
to be humility. Any thing like a habit of taking scandal implies
also a fund of uncharitableness deep down in us, which grace
and interior mortification have either not reached, or failed to
influence. If we pay attention to ourselves, we shall find that,
contemporaneously with the scandal we have taken, there has
been some wounded feeling or other in an excited state within us.
When we are in good humor, we do not take scandal. It is an
act which is not for the most part accompanied by kindness. A
genuine gentle sorrow for the person offending is neither the
first thought nor the predominant thought in our minds when
we take the offence. It is the offspring generally of an unkindly

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mood. Sometimes, indeed, it springs from moroscncss, brought
on by assuming a seriousness which does not become us because
it is not simple. We precipitate ourselves into recollection, and
find that we have fallen over head and ears into sullenness.
Neither can taking scandal be very frequent with us without
its implying also a formed habit of judging others. With a
really humble or a naturally genial person the instinct of judging
others is overlaid and, as it were, weighted with other and better
qualities. It has to exert itself and make an effort before it can
get to the surface and assert itself; whereas it lies on the surface,
obvious, ready, prompt, and predominating, in a man who is
given to taking scandal. Is it often allowable to judge our neigh­
bor? Surely we know it to be the rarest thing possible. Yet we
cannot take scandal without, first, forming a judgment; secondly,
forming an unfavorable judgment; thirdly, deliberately enter­
taining it as a motive power inclining us to do or to omit some­
thing; and, fourthly, doing all this for the most part in the
subject-matter of piety, which in nine cases out of ten our obvious
ignorance withdraws from our jurisdiction.
It also indicates a general want of an interior spirit. The
supernatural grace of an interior spirit, among its other effects,
produces the same results as the natural gift of depth of char­
acter; and to this it joins the ingenious sweetness of charity. A
thoughtless or a shallow man is more likely to take scandal than
any other. He can conceive of nothing but what he sees upon the
surface. He has but little self-knowledge, and hardly suspects the
variety or complication of his own motives. Much less, then, is
he likely to divine in a discerning way the hidden causes, the
hidden excuses, the hidden temptations, which may lie, and
always do lie, behind the actions of others. So it is in spiritual
matters with a man who has not an interior spirit. There is not
only a rashness, but also a coarseness and vulgarity, about his
judgments of others. Sometimes he only sees superficially. This
is if he is a stupid man. If he is a clever man, he sees deeper than
the truth. His vulgarity is of the subtle kind. He puts things
together which had no real connection in the conduct of his

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255

neighbor. Base himself, he suspects baseness in others. If he
saw a saint, he would think him either ambitious, opinionated,
or hypocritical. He secs plots and conspiracies even in the most
impulsive of characters. He cannot judge of character at all. He
can only project his own possibilities of sin into others, and
imagine that to be their character which he feels, if grace were
withdrawn from him, would be his own. He judges as a man
judges whose reason is slightly unsettled. He is cunning rather
than discerning. To clever men charity is almost impossible if
they have not an interior spirit.
We shall also find that, when we fall into the way of taking
scandal, there is something wrong about our meditations. There
are times when our meditations are inefficacious. With some
men it is so nearly all through their lives. The fact is, that the
habit of meditation will not by itself make us interior. When a
man's spiritual life is reduced to the practice of daily meditation,
we see that he soon loses all control over his tongue, his temper,
and his wounded feelings. His morning’s meditation is inade­
quate to the sweetening of his whole day. It is too feeble to detain
the presence of God in his soul until evening. Like general inten­
tions, it has theological possibilities which are hardly ever practical
realities. It is like a shrub planted in the clay; if we do not dig
around it and let in the air and moisture, it will not grow. Its
growth is stunted and impeded. This is a perilous state of things,
when our meditation is but an island in a day which is otherwise
flooded with worldliness and comfort. For we must remember
that comfort is one of the worst kinds of worldliness, and is most
at home in our own rooms, at a distance from the gay, noisy, and
dissipated world. We are not far from some serious mishap when
mortification and examination of conscience have deserted our
meditation and left it to itself. A habit of taking scandal often
reveals to us that we are in this state, or are fast tending to it.
It also poisons much else that is good, and desecrates holy
things, almost making them positively unholy. It infuses some
what of censoriousness into our intercessory prayer. It turns our
spiritual reading into a silent preachment to others. It charms

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away the arrows of the preacher from ourselves, and aims them
With a pleased skill at others whom we have in our mind's eye. It
plays into the hands of whatever is unkindly and unlovely in
our natural dispositions; and it makes our very spirituality un­
spiritual by making it uncharitable. All this complicated evil it
implies as already existing in us; and it fosters and increases it
all for the future, while it is implying it in the present. It is
plain, therefore, that it would be well for us to take scandal at
our taking scandal, seeing what a degrading revelation it is to us
of our own misery and meanness. We are aiming at a devout
life. We have only just extricated ourselves from the swamps of
mortal sin. We know something of the ways of grace. We have
the models of the saints. We are more or less familiar with the
teaching of spiritual writers. We arc not obliged, either because
of our ignorance or because of our weakness, to look to the conduct
of others as the rule of our own. Hence, in our case, taking
scandal is neither more nor less than judging, and we must treat
die temptation to it as we would treat any other temptation
against charity,—namely, check it, punish it, detest it, resolve
against it, and accuse ourselves of it in confession. We must
beware also of its artifices. For it has many tricks, and they are
often successful. Masters, parents, and directors are quite familiar
with a device of those under their care and control, and who
criticize, suggestively at least, their government or direction: this
trick consists in their accusing themselves of having taken scandal
at the conduct of their superiors and directors. It is ingenious,
but soon wears out. Directors learn early to stifle their own curi­
osity, and not allow their self-deluded critics to tell them what
has scandalized them, as they cannot even listen to it without
compromising their dignity and forfeiting their influence. In a
word, we shall find it the truest and the safest conclusion to
come to, that we must regard the temptation to take scandal as
wholly and unmitigatedly evil, a temptation to which no quarter
should be allowed, and to whose eloquent pleadings of delicacy
of conscience no audience should be given but that of calm
contempt.

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257

Now that wc have considered the existing evil which a
readiness to take scandal implies in us, wc may consider the way
in which it hinders us in the attainment of perfection. It hinders
us in the acquisition of self-knowledge. Watchfulness over our­
selves is nothing short of an actual mortification. We eagerly lay
hold of the slightest excuse for turning our attention away from
ourselves, and the conduct of others is the readiest object to which
we turn. No one is so blind to his own faults as a man who has
the habit of detecting the faults of others. It also causes us to
stand in our own light. We ourselves actually intercept the sun­
shine which would fall on our own souls. A man who is apt to
take scandal is never a blithe or a genial man. He has never a
clear light round about him. He is not made for happiness; and
was ever a melancholy man made into a saint? A downcast man
is raw material which can only be manufactured into a very
ordinary Christian. Moreover, if we have any sort of earnestness
about us, our taking scandal must at last become a source of
scruples to us. If it is not quite the same thing as censoriousness,
who shall draw the line between them? We know very well that
it is not at our best times that we take scandal, and it must
dawn upon us by degrees that it is so often contemporary with
a state of spiritual malady that the coincidence can hardly be
accidental. At the same time, the act is so intrinsically ungen­
erous in itself that it tends to destroy all generous impulses in
ourselves. No one can be generous with God who has not a great,
broad love of his neighbor.
Furthermore, it destroys our influence with others. We irri­
tate where we ought to enliven. To be suspected of want of sym­
pathy is to be disabled as an apostle. He who is critical will
necessarily be unpersuasive. Even in literature, what department
of it is less persuasive, and thus less influential, than that of
criticism? Men are amused by it, but they do not form their
judgments on it. There are few things in the literary world more
striking than the little weight of criticism compared with the
amount and the ability of it. We like to find fault ourselves; but
we are never attracted to another man who finds fault. It is the

il

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last refuge of our good humor that we like to have a monopoly
of censure. Then, again, this habit entangles us in a hundred
self-raised difficulties about fraternal correction, that rock of nar­
row souls; for a man's presumption is mostly in proportion to
his narrowness. Men awake sometimes, and find that they have
almost unconsciously worked themselves into a false position.
This is a terrible affair in spirituality. It is harder to work
ourselves right than to recover our balance after a sin. Yet the
supposed obligation of fraternal correction is always enticing us
into false positions. It also calls our attention off from God, and
fixes them with a sort of diseased earnestness upon earthly mis­
eries and pusillanimities. It is bad enough to look off from
God by looking too much on ourselves; but to look off from
God in order to look upon our neighbors, is a greater evil still.
It deranges the whole interior world of thought, upon which
the exercise of charity so much depends. It hinders us in acquir­
ing the government of the tongue. It prevents our succeeding in
good works where zealous and free co-operation with others is
needed. It is the cloak which jealousy is forever assuming and
calling it by the name of caution. Finally, we think all these
things virtues, while they are in reality vices of the most unamiable
description.
I do not think I have exaggerated the evil of this quickness
to take scandal. I confess it is a fault which vexes me more than
many others, and for many reasons. Its victims are good men,
men full of promise, and whose souls have been the theatres of
no inconsiderable operations of grace. It seizes them for the most
part, just at the time when higher attainments seem opening to
them. Its peculiarity is, that it is incompatible with the higher
graces of the spiritual life, that it defiles that which was now
almost cleansed, and vulgarizes that which was on the point of
establishing its title to nobility. When we consider how many are
called to perfection, and how few arc perfect, may we not almost
say that we do well to be angry with that evil which so oppor­
tunely and so effectually mars the work of grace?
In what does perfection consist? In a childlike, short-sighted

ON TAKING SCANDAL

259

charity which believes all things; in a grand supernatural con­
viction that every one is better than ourselves; in estimating far
too low the amount of evil in the world; in looking far too
exclusively on what is good; in the ingenuity of kind construc­
tions; in an inattention, hardly intelligible, to the faults of others;
in a graceful perversity of incredulousness about scandals, which
sometimes in the saints runs close upon being a scandal of itself.
This is perfection; this is the temper and genius of saints and
saintlike men. It is a life of desire, oblivious of earthly things.
It is a radiant, energetic faith that man's slowness and coldness
will not interfere with the success of God's glory. Yet all the
while it is instinctively fighting, by prayer and reparation, against
evils, which it will not allow itself consciously to believe. No
shadow of moroseness ever falls over the bright mind of a saint.
It is not possible that it should do so. Finally, perfection has
the gift of entering into the universal Spirit of God, who is wor­
shipped in so many different ways, and is content. Now, is not
all this just the very opposite of the temper and spirit of a man
who is apt to take scandal? The difference is so plain that it is
needless to comment on it. He is happy who on his dying bed
can say, “No one has ever given me scandal in my lifel" He has
either not seen his neighbor's faults, or, when he saw them, the
sight had to reach him through so much sunshine of his own that
they did not strike him so much as faults to blame, but rather
as reasons for a deeper and a tenderer love.

ON Λ TASTE FOR READING

Considered as a Help

in the

Spiritual Life

A man has tried for some time to avoid sin and to keep close
to God. He has taken pleasure in prayer, in religious services,
and, above all, in the Blessed Sacrament. Peace is consciously
stealing over a life which was perhaps fretful and agitated before.
Now self-knowledge comes in upon him largely, yet not so as
to confuse or overwhelm him. He sees heights in the practice of
virtue which had been hidden in the clouds before, and he is
not discouraged. He hopes to climb them; nay, he has a modest
certainty that he shall one day stand upon those heights. He is
realizing every day more and more that God loves him, and with
the increase of that consciousness all other heavenly things in­
crease within him. But now another trouble is becoming visible
in his soul. It is no bigger than a point,—less than the hand
which the prophet saw from Carmel. It is stealing up, like morn­
ing over the sea, without a sound, with a level gray brightness
over the waters, shyly as if it was not sure of a welcome, yet
gradually as if it did not wish to take us by surprise. It has
come io the man to feel that there is another sort of closeness
to God from any he has thought of before. Another form of
goodness is taking shape before his eyes. A tranquil dissatisfac­
tion is mastering him. It will soon grow into a restlessness, but
a restlessness which lies on a deeply-hidden peace. He looks up
to heaven to God, but, lol a hand is put out from the depths of
his own soul and is fain to draw him gently down there. A voice
without words seems to say to him, Not up in the blue sky, or
beyond it, but down here! The Holy Ghost has given him the
craving for an inward life, a new vocation, a vocation to a closer
union with God, and a union of another sort, a finding of God
within. Happy the souls who are thus touchedl Now, if they
260

READING A HELP IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

261

will but correspond! If they can but light on one who shall
guide them well!
Under this divine pressure the man seeks his spiritual father.
He is athirst for God, and he goes to the shepherd to show him
the springs up among the hills. Woe to the shepherd if he cannot
show them, from not knowing himself where they are! The
inquirer naturally lays before his chosen guide all that has passed
within him, and is passing within him still. He tells him of the
faults of his past life, and, as far as he can judge of himself, the
faulty tendencies of his natural character. He and his guide,
however, are in very different states of mind. He is engrossed with
the delight of his present feelings. He is yet thrilling under the
divine touch. But his guide sees onward, far onward, beyond
that first range of beautiful mountains. He sees the portals of a
wilderness, and through them the wastes of pale glistening sand.
Dangers and delusions, faintings and uncertainties, strange trials
and unwonted temptations, these are the images of the future
which rise to the eye of the guide. Yet he is full of sympathy. He
looks with tender respect on the man whose soul God has touched.
The grandest of all the signs of predestination is shining majes­
tically round him, in this vocation to the mystical apostolate of
the inward life. He could almost kneel to one on whom God’s
finger has so lately pressed, nay, is perhaps pressing still; only
that these touches are very swift and transitory, even when their
consequences are permanent and lifelong. Nevertheless he is filled
also with an affectionate anxiety, because of the numerous require­
ments he must make upon his disciple. He must require gener­
osity: that is the first of indispensable things. He must exact
humility, though just now he cares less for deficiencies there
than in generosity. But, at all events, he must have such material
humility as amounts to docility. The growing knowledge of
God will bring the rest.
These are great requirements; yet they are only two out of
many. What can he dispense with, so as neither to frighten nor to
burden the beginner? He need not be much afraid of frighten­
ing; for men are unconsciously brave, in whom a recent touch

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of God is still throbbing. But he may easily burden him over­
much, and so may even suffocate grace in the soul. Generosity
and humility are very great things, but so great that at least he
must with them have one lesser thing, one little thing along
with them, an engine small enough to be practicable, an imple­
ment capable of working on small scales, a tool not too big to be
well grasped and held tight without distracting the whole man
by the mere effort of handling it. He chooses one which his
disciple hardly expected, nay, at present cannot bring himself
to believe in,—a taste for reading. With all the varied future as
well as imminent difficulties of his dear disciple before him, the
master seems exaggeratedly anxious that he should already have,
or forthwith acquire, a taste for reading. To all, he will say, it is
important, even inside the walls of a cloister; but to souls in the
world, who have neither rule, cloister, nor superior, he will
most dogmatically assert this taste for reading to be, as a general
rule, indispensable to perfection, and that without it he cannot
pretend to undertake the work now intrusted to him.
Beginners must take many things on faith. Long before they
are perfect, they will have learned that they must take all things
on faith; such depths will have opened upon them as to show
inscrutable difficulties everywhere. The habit of believing will
have become stronger then than the habit of knowing. Men
who have to learn—as all spiritual men have—that obscurity is
the clearest and purest kind of light, have also other strange things
to learn, and are too much engrossed to have time to be aston­
ished. Beginners, therefore, must take for granted that their
master knows what he is about when he lays such stress upon a
taste for reading. Perhaps the monks of St. Hugh of Lincoln had
to take it on faith when their saintly abbot made so much of it.
His biographer tells us that it was one of his chief cares that all
his religious should be provided with plenty of devout books;
and books were scarce in those days. St. Hugh was always im­
pressing upon them the duty of reading. He even went so far
as to tell them that their spiritual books were "their arms in
time of war, their occupation in time of peace, their support in

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263

time of trial, and their remedy in time of sickness.” St. Ignatius
went quite along with St. Hugh in this matter. However, it is
not my object at present to accumulate authorities to prove the
immense importance of reading in the spiritual life. I want rather
to explain the stress laid upon it by ascetical masters, and to
make it less strange to those who think it strange. Perhaps they
will thus allow themselves to be persuaded to a more generous
docility in the matter.
Other things being equal, a person beginning the spiritual
life with a taste for reading has a much greater chance both of
advancing and of persevering than one who is destitute of such
a taste. Experience shows that it is really almost equal to a grace.
The hardest thing in the world is to think, that is, to think real
thought. Goethe said that, if men wanted to think, they must
avoid “thinking about thinking.” This is a fatal process, a quag­
mire which has sucked up generations of unfortunate young men
and is capable of absorbing as many generations more. The
best test of a system of education is the power of thinking which
it engenders in its men. If we are at all observant, we must
have been struck with this feature in the conversation of selfeducated men, that, while it is very often clever, it is hardly ever
characterized by real thought. The power of thinking is an
immense help in the spiritual life. But it belongs to the few, and
is mostly the result of an excellent education, which is, in this
matter as in all others, the grand natural support of the life of
the Church. Next to the power of thinking we may reckon the
power of reading, or, to be less exacting, the taste for reading,
which in spiritual matters is practically the same thing with the
multitude of men, as the most important of all the personal nonsupernatural qualifications for an inward life. As the power of
thinking is the highest test of a system of education, so the second
test by which it should be tried is its successful creation of a taste
for reading. But by all persons a taste for reading is positively
attainable, while the power of thinking is not so. Men who have
been loosely and disjointedly educated, or educated without the
cultivation of their imaginations, will have all the more difficulty

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in acquiring this taste for reading. Still, the difficulties are not
very formidable. The process is little more than one of time.
There are harder things to be done along the road to perfection,
and success more than repays the effort. Anyhow, whether we
have the taste for reading already, or whether we have to acquire
it, we may be sure that he who begins a devout life without it
may consider the ordinary difficulties of such a life multiplied
in his case at least by ten. I will now make some observations
with a view of showing you that this is not an exaggeration.
In the first place, the mere knowledge gained by reading
spiritual books, even books which are very indirectly spiritual,
is of incalculable importance. I am not speaking of erudition.
I am aware that there is a consent among the great ascetics of the
seventeenth century that learned persons are nearly the most
difficult to lead to perfection, both because the absorption of
learning engrosses their interest and interferes with habits of
contemplation, and also because the process of study withers the
freshness of the mind for prayer, and dries the affections as if
an east wind had passed over them. But knowledge and learning
are two different ideas. It is not easy to think out for ourselves
even very obvious things. Reading suggests them to us. It in­
creases the light round about us, and also the light within us.
We gain time by appropriating through books the experience
of others. We learn methods which shorten roads. We multiply
our motives of action, and we infuse new vigor into old motives
by understanding them better. It is instructive to observe that,
when God is pleased to raise ignorant and illiterate persons to a
high state of perfection, he infuses into them supernatural science,
making them very frequently even accomplished theologians and
profound expositors of Scripture,—as if knowledge must lie in
the spiritual soul either as a cause or an effect of holiness, or,
more probably, as both. It is the common rule that an illinstructed person can never attain any considerable heights in
devotion. He must have, for the most part, a knowledge of spir­
itual things, and even some knowledge of theology.
In the next place, we must take into account the direct assist­

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ance in our combat which we derive from reading books about
God, and the soul, and the virtues or the lives of the saints.
They stir up our affections to God as we read. They elicit by a
gentle compulsion continued acts of love, or hope, or faith, or
desire, or contrition. They are like inspirations to us. Silent
divine voices leap into our souls from off the page. Spiritual
reading is itself an essential exercise. It is a special and peculiar
form of prayer, the management of which is one of the im­
portant features of our spiritual day. Historically speaking, the
reading of the lives of the saints alone has been a most energetic
power of holiness in the Church for long ages.· It will almost
surprise us if we make an effort to remember how much we
ourselves owe, in our little efforts after spirituality, to the study
of the lives of the saints.
So far we have considered spiritual reading as directly an
intrinsic portion of a devout life, one of its actual and almost
indispensable exercises; and we have considered this very briefly,
inasmuch as it deserves to be handled separately, both because
there is so much to be said upon it, and because what might be
said is of such great importance.! What we have now to bring
forward, although it primarily concerns spiritual reading, applies
also to reading which need be only indirectly spiritual. Every
one must have experienced the good effects of religious reading
as connected with prayer. Prayer is the grand difficulty of most
souls. Solve that difficulty, and other difficulties are solved with it.
Now, reading feeds and furnishes prayer. It supplies matter. It
• For illustrations of the effects of reading the lives of the saints, and also for
the right method of reading them, see the Author’s F«<ay on Canonization, pp. 9.
et seqq., and his Essay on the Characteristics of the Saints, pp. 17. el seqq.

f Although I am not treating here of the right method of managing our
spiritual reading, I cannot resist quoting for the reader's benefit a passage iront
Dacrianus. which deserves to be written in letters of gold:—"Noli eos imitari, qui
nullum legendi ordinem servant; sed quod forte occurrerit. quodque casti repercrint, legere gaudent: quibus nihil sapit, nisi quod novum est. et inauditum.
Consueta enim, et vetera omnia, quantumlibet utilia, fastidiunt. Tinia instabilitas
procul a te sit: ipsa enim non promovet, sed dispergit spiritum; et pencvlow
laborat, qui hoc morbo vitiatus est." Yet how many are there whose spiritual
reading is a luxury, rather than a spiritual «erase! Dacrianus ap Nigrvnium.
p. 199, in tractatu quinto. De lectione libr. spiritual.

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plants the wilderness. It irrigates what it has planted. The old
masters called it oil for the lamp of prayer. How often do men—
not beginners only, but men who are far from their beginnings
now—complain that they do not know what to think about at
meditation, or what to say to God I It is not too much to affirm
that regular and rightly-practiced spiritual reading obviates at
least half the difficulties of meditation. It is a sad thing to have
been twenty years serving God, and to be still fighting with our
morning meditation; although it is a comfort to think that St.
Teresa was engaged in those hostilities for seventeen years.
Reading is also of no inconsiderable service simply as an
occupation of time. The use of time is one of the chief difficul­
ties of the spiritual life. If we may distinguish the one from the
other, we should be less frightened of St. Teresa’s vow, Always
to do what was most perfect, than of St. Alphonso’s, Never to
waste a moment of time; and the most impressive thing in those
wonderful eighty-eight years of St. Andrew Avellino is his never
having let a moment glide by unperceived and unoccupied. It
tries our faith to think of it. Now, we cannot always keep our
minds fixed on God,—I mean, we who are not saints. We may
doubt it of the saints, gravely doubt it; but, having no experience
of sainthood, we cannot dogmatize about it. Yet, when the effort
to do so would be too much for us, there are in most of our days
gaps of time which would be filled up with inutilities. Inutilities
would be the most innocent filling up of them, yet how spirit­
wasting also! Then reading—not our regular spiritual reading,
which is a more serious and direct intercourse with God, but
conscientiously-chosen reading, even of a secular sort—comes in,
and not only saves us from evil by being harmless, but does us a
positive good in itself.
Moreover, it takes possession of the mind, of which the evil
one is always on the watch to take possession. It occupies it. It
garrisons it. It peoples it with thoughts which are, directly or in­
directly, of God. Now, in these days there are two contagious
influences in the atmosphere around us, which are most dele­
terious to the spiritual life. They arc the multiplicity of interests,

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and the rapidity of objects. It is sad to see the success with which
these two things thrust God out of our minds, perpetually edging
a little more forward, and a little more, and a little more. The
mere occupation of our minds, therefore, with religious objects,
has become of serious importance in devotion, especially to those
who are living in the world, and so are forced to hear its roar,
and to turn giddy at the sight of its portentously-swift whirling
and revolving, as if it were a machine of God got loose from his
control. I need not dwell on this; but it would not be easy to make
too much of it. For what has taken possession of the current of
our thoughts has taken possession of our whole selves. A taste
for reading is therefore especially necessary for these times,
because of their perils and their peculiarities.
It is by this occupation of our thoughts that reading hinders
castle-building, which is an inward disease wholly incompatible
with devotion. Perhaps it is speaking too broadly to say that
reading hinders it altogether; but at least it makes it much
less likely and confines it within much narrower bounds. In
temptations, also, it is a twofold help, both negative and posi­
tive. Negative, because all occupation involves the non-existence
of a great many temptations; and positive, because it furnishes
an actual distraction while we are under temptation, as well
as gives us light in our warfare with them, and a heating of
the heart which prevents our being chilled by their icy touch.
It also delivers us from listlessness, which is a dangerous enemy
of devotion, especially to those who live in the world and
have not the help of an always pressing rule and the soft un­
interrupted pulsations of community acts. Toward afternoon
a person who has nothing to do drifts rapidly away from God.
To sit down in a chair without an object is to jump into a
thicket of temptations. A vacant hour is always the devil's
hour. When time hangs heavy, the wings of the spirit flap
painfully and slow. Then it is that a book is a strong tower,
nay, a very church, with angels lurking among the leaves, as if
they were so many niches.
But from our privacy let us pass to society. Conversationi

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what a stormy sea is that for a spiritual man to navigate! Possi­
bilities of sin everywhere, rapid flow of indeliberate words, gal­
loping of images through the mind, indistinct in the dust they
raise, impossibility of adequate vigilance because of impossi­
bility of ubiquity, unsatisfactory helplessness in the effort to
preserve general purity of intention,—tongues whetting tongues,
brain heating brain, faces kindling faces, rapidity at last becoming
terrific, and with rapidity unguarded oblivion,—while truth, and
justice, and charity, and reverence, and modesty, and kindness
are standing round, mute listeners, shy, jealous, suspicious, fright­
ened, almost fanciful, wincing visibly now and then,—and the
great fact that we are talking in God, with his immensity for
our room, gradually growing less and less distinguishable! Were
it not so hard to be one of the silent saints, even commonly good
people would gradually steal into Carthusian deserts. But read­
ing helps to make conversation harmless, by making it less petty
and less censorious. Our books are our neighbor’s allies, by
making it less necessary for us to discuss him. It is very hard for
a person who does not like reading to talk without sinning. As
a help to the government of the tongue, therefore,—that govern­
ment without which, as St. James tells us, a man's whole religion
is vain,—a taste for reading is invaluable.
It also makes us and our piety more attractive to those around
us. It enables us to adorn our Christian profession much more
in the sight of others. Ignorance is repulsive, but I doubt if it
is so repulsive as that half-ignorant narrowness of mind which
characterizes persons who do not read. The world is full of
objections to devotion; and its want of geniality, of sympathy
with men and things, is one of the chief objections to it. We
may be quite sure that men have on the whole preached the
gospel in their conversation more when they spoke indirectly
on religion than when they spoke directly on it. Common in­
terests are a bond. We are better missionaries in daily society
if we have a taste for reading; and this of course does not mean
spiritual reading on the one hand, nor on the other that light
reading which dissipates our spirit, sullies our faith, and makes

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our conversation puerile or frothy. Above all, a taste for reading
is necessary for Christian parents. It is evil for those children
who arc more educated by tutors and governesses than by their
own parents. A mother who is little with her children is but
half a mother; and how dull, and foolish, and uninteresting, and
uninfluential must children grow up, if, as their minds expand,
they find the conversation of their parents (as the conversation
of unreading persons must be) empty, shallow, gossiping, vapid,
and more childish than the children's talk among themselvesl
It is this which explains what we so often observe,—that a taste
for reading, or the absence of it, is hereditary. Furthermore, still
speaking of society, a taste for reading often hinders our taking
the wrong side in practical questions, which are mooted in the
world but tell upon the Church. It does this either by the
information it has enabled us to obtain on the subject itself, or
by making our instincts accurate and sensitive through our famili­
arity with right principles and with the subjects kindred to the
one under discussion. Look how many little-minded, narrowsighted good people get on a wrong tack about the Church, and
the Pope, and public affairs, especially in a non-catholic country,
simply because, having no taste for reading, they are fractions of
men rather than men.
Now, to go back to ourselves again, and our own self-improve­
ment. Do we not all perceive in ourselves a tendency to become
vulgar, to be interested with petty interests, to be recreated by
foolish recreations, to be allured by ignoble pursuits? It seems
as if, when the gay liberty and sweet clever simplicity of child­
hood evaporated, they left some dregs of sheer unmitigated pueril­
ity behind them, which made a shallow in the soul upon which
we were ever and anon stranding. Very high spirituality sets us
far above all this. But which of us is dwelling in those regions?
Meanwhile, a taste for reading obviously does the same work
for us in another way, and naturally with inferior success, yet
with a success complete in its kind and degree. It raises us. It
calls out our manhood. It makes us grave. It infuses an element
of greatness into every thing about us. The same taste also helps

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us with our temper. It aids us in the supernatural work of
gaining inward peace. When we are fretted, and are too feeble
to lay hold of higher things, we have always a self-tranquillizing
process at hand in reading. But who is not fretted wellnigh daily,
and wellnigh daily forfeiting graces by his fretfulness? When I
said before that a taste for reading was especially necessary for
these times, I said also that it was especially necessary for those
leading devout lives in the world; for they are the souls who
most want peace and least find it.
I am afraid of making you suspect me by the multiplicity of
my reasons. Nevertheless you must bear patiently with some
more, which will not occupy us long. The spiritual life is always
more or less a work in the dark; but it is a darkness in which we
see. Nevertheless when we can see what we are doing, and
whither we arc going, what our work is, and how God would
have us to do it, we work more securely and advance more
rapidly. Even when we see our end before us, we have often
to arrest ourselves in life, and make a deliberate election of the
means best calculated to bring us to our end; and still more often
have we to decide upon the character of some apparent means,
which may in reality be a temptation or a distraction, either to
turn us aside from the right road, or at least to hinder us from
concentrating our efforts upon our single ascertained end. In
all these cases we derive the greatest assistance from reading.
Indeed, it is astonishing how pertinent all our reading seems to
become when we are in difficulties. It is as if the Holy Ghost,
rather than our selves, had chosen what we should read; and it is
he most assuredly who gives it now such a special unction and
special message to our souls in their present straits.
As a taste for reading assists us by illuminating our own work,
so does it enlarge our charity in judging of the work of others.
The more we know, the less narrow are our minds. Our sphere
of vision is increased. Our horizon is wider. We appreciate the
manifold varieties of grace and of vocations. We see how God’s
glory finds its account in almost infinite diversity, and how holi­
ness can be at home in opposites, nay, how what is wrong in this

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man is acceptable, perhaps heroic, in that other man. Hence we
free ourselves from little jealousies, from uncharitable doubts,
from unworthy suspicions, from unsympathetic cautions, from
ungenerous delays, from narrow criticisms, from conceited pedan­
tries, from shallow pomposities, about others and their good
works, things which are the especial diseases of little great
men and little good men, and which may be said to frustrate
one-third, if not more, of all the good works which are attempted
in the Church. Goodness which is not greatness also is a sad
misfortune. While it saves its own soul, it will not let others save
theirs. Especially does it contrive, in proportion to its influence,
to put a spoke in the wheel of all progress, and has almost a
talent for interfering with efforts for the salvation of souls. Now.
if reading did no more than abate the virulence of any one of
these eight diseases of narrow goodness mentioned above, would
it not be a huge work? For we are all of us little at times, even
when we are not habitually little. Self-love makes us jealous, and
jealousy makes us little. But how much more, as experience
teaches us, does a taste for reading do, than merely abate the
virulence of these things! How many a narrow mind has it not
made broad! How many close, stifling, unwindowed hearts has
it not filled with mountain air and sunshine, and widened them
to noble, spacious halls, so making room for God where he had
no room before!
It also heightens our whole spiritual standing, by making us
more free from human respect. When we have a taste for reading,
and reading approved religious books, we acquire the sense of
standing under the eye and at the judgment-seat of great and
holy minds. Their judgments give the law to ours. They intro­
duce us into another world, where right measures and true
standards prevail, and where injustice and falsehood are righted in
the mind as they will be righted in fact at the general doom.
Hence the judgments of that little inefficient circle immediately
round ourselves, which we surname the world, are less important,
less all-in-all in our eyes, than they used to be. We have got
accustomed to higher things, to wider prospects, to greater worlds.

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He who does not suffer from the tyranny of human respect will
hardly appreciate the force of this reason: but in what fortunate
clime, or even in what anchoret’s cell, is that blissful man to
be found?
Last of all, we must not forget St. Hugh’s reason for making
much of good books,—that they make illness and sorrow more
endurable. Doubtless what has surprised us in all our illnesses
is that they have sanctified us so little. Pain has done so much
less for us than by all accounts it should have done. Our ex­
perience of the matter has not been the same as the experience
of the saints. It is not so much that we have been less patient,
as that we have been more animal. We have been occupied
with the physical part of our sufferings. All our energies have
been absorbed in the effort of endurance. Even sorrow we make
too physical. Moreover, though others should not ask too much
of us, neither should we unwisely overtax ourselves, yet there is
no doubt we allow both sorrow and sickness to make us more
idle than they need do. We waste time in suffering, when moments,
always precious, are more precious than at any other lime of life.
Now, in die matter of patience, in the matter of inwardly sancti­
fying our sufferings, and in the matter of needless indolence, we
shall find a taste for reading of great service to us both in sickness
and sorrow.
“But all these are very low and merely natural reasons!”
True; but are we fit for higher things yet? Have we any dispensa­
tion from the earlier stages of this grand journey? Surely, if we
rightly estimate ourselves, we may feel that we are too low for
the lowest thing that is good; but we cannot feel that we are too
high for any thing. Here, then, are about twenty reasons why a
spiritual guide is so anxious to know whether one who is just
putting himself under direction has a taste for reading. He
knows by experience that this taste will practically do the work
of higher graces, before we have yet reached, in the common
course of things, the region where those higher graces dwell.

THE MONOTONY OF PIETY

To ourselves it is always good to make the best of a bad case;
but in persuading others it is good to admit the worst in that
which is the subject of their complaints. Now, most men in most
stages of the spiritual life complain that piety is monotonous.
An interior life is dull, tame, uninteresting, uniform, wearisome,
and sickly. It would be easy to answer, as many do answer, that
to meditate on the magnificences of God can hardly be dull; to
fight for our lives with the superior intellect and huge power
of a fallen seraph can hardly be tame, whatever else it may be:
to be all day receiving new actual graces, realizing new increments
of sanctifying grace, listening to numerous and wonderfullydiversified inspirations of the Holy Spirit, can hardly be unin­
teresting; to be changing in grace, and love, and knowledge,
nearly every hour, cannot strictly be called uniform; and to be
fighting God's battle even with the most importunate and dishon­
oring temptations cannot truly be a sickly thing, even though it
may be fatiguing. Indeed, from an intellectual point of view it
would not be easy to find any thing in the world so thoroughly
refreshing, so actively full of changeful vitality, or so briskly
interesting, as a spiritual life. It is the healthiest, manliest,
completes!, divinest thing on earth. Resolve it into its elements
of prayer, of light, of love, of heavenly communications, and of
the highest operations of a human will, and what more noble,
more free, more wide, more magnificent? Look at its darker side,
failures, temptations, fallings short, inward trials, diabolical intru­
sions, and what more interesting? At the least interesting, at the
least not monotonous, if it be nothing else. This is an answer
common enough, and true in its way, yet eminently unsatisfactory,
because it is not genuine. It wants the persuading charm of truth­
fulness, although it is true; and for this reason, that it is only true
273

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to us when we do not feel piety monotonous, while it is untrue
to us when the monotony is sensible. It remains speculatively true,
while it is practically false. In ascetics, as well as in theology, we
need something more than logic in order to discover truth,—
something, indeed, above logic. Unless we can embrace in our
minds, and feel not to be contradictions, opposite truths which
are not only seeming contradictions, but to us effectually irrecon­
cilable, we can never hold the truth. We must sacrifice it to the
rigor of an unfruitful consistency. Who ever read and compared
half a dozen theologians on Grace, and did not see this? Yet
when these theologians came to preach sermons or write spiritual
books for the people, they all taught alike; they were all at their
ease; they all turned their faces one way, to make people acknowl­
edge that salvation was wholly of grace; then they all calmly
turned their faces the other way, and reproached and insisted as if
free will could do it all; and they found the teaching of incom­
patibles as easy as it was comfortable, when it concerned divine
things. So it is in conflicting questions in the spiritual life. The
experience of kindly direction will do for our ascetical theories
what the patient and observant confessional does for our theology.
So, then, I give up this answer about the monotony of piety.
I am not going to administer to you a dignified reproof for
calling the service of God and the salvation of your souls a tame
and uninteresting work. I admit it. I admit it to be my own
experience. Indeed, I believe the admission will help us to the
better sight of some truths, which, although they will not make
piety less monotonous, will teach us what to do with our monotony,
and how to make the most of it. I will freely confess that I know
nothing in the world to which I can compare for monotony the
occasional drag of a pious life, except either the being detained
at a country inn during a hopelessly wet day, or driving a tired
horse in a gig for a long stage which is on the collar the whole
way. Not very dignified comparisons! No! but where shall we
find any dignity about the monotonous? We are out of the atmos­
phere of dignity when we are in the region of monotony.
Let us get a clear idea of monotony. It is something more

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275

than the being uninteresting, something more than the being
uniform, something more than honest, downright weariness.
We may get tired of looking at lightning. It is about the last
sight in the world to get tired of. Still, we may tire of it. Yet
not one could call lightning monotonous. Rahel Varnhagen used
to say, “Heavenly men love lightning.” An interesting thing may
become monotonous by our becoming callous to its excitement.
Yet it need not thereby cease to be interesting. Even a change
may become monotonous to us, from its following uniform laws
in a lifeless and pedantic way. Novelties may be monotonies even
while they are still novelties, from being forcedly new, or obvi­
ously new as treats to us and distractions to us, having the old
expressions of countenance under their masks and the old odor
about their flowers. This is especially true of novelties in devo­
tion. They are simply old friends come back on the stage with
their jackets turned inside out and their hats cocked on the other
side. Our spiritual nurses coax us to receive them as novelties,
and pretend to go into ecstasies with their newness. Alas! we
are too old for those dear deceits, yet not old enough to know
that life is too short to let it be worth our while to be indignant
with impostures.
In fact, monotony is a very unmonotonous thing. Yet this is
true of all the varieties of monotony, that they keep down among
the littlenesses of our nature and betray us into all manner of
protean unworthiness. There are monotonies which irritate,—like
the monotony of a man who is always joking and punning. All
forms of stupidity are irritating, but this perhaps most of all.
Some monotonies are placid, and minister to our indolence,—like
the splashing of a fountain. Most men have one monotony or
other which never tires them. To me the sound of the wind
blowing and wailing is always new music and almost articulate
speech. The fluent conversation of a light-hearted, grammatical
man is a delightful monotony, quite apart from the sense which
there may or may not be in his talk. Sense is not requisite, only
fluency and grammar. Some monotonies are almost universally
depressing,—as the monotony of a solemn manner, which to the

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male sex is almost without exception intolerable, yet is attractive
and influential with many women, perhaps as indicating some­
thing foreign to their nature; for a solemn woman is surely not
common, and, if anybody has seen one, he has most probably
found that she was not a favorite. Then there are monotonies
which rest us,—as, in certain moods at least, the sight of the wilder­
ness or the sea. But 1 have said enough about monotonies. I want
to force a picture of it into your mind, rather than to furnish
you with a definition, else I might have dismissed the whole
matter by giving you the old one, “Want of variety in cadence;"
for it is just this which annoys us in life, when our life is forever
repeating the same cadences, like a preacher who preaches as if
he were doing a lection in choir. Alas! And is not this true of
almost all lives in these smooth days, that they are all on one note?
We will start, then, with the admission that piety is almost
unpardonably monotonous, and that we may the more pardonably
complain of this, first of all, because at the outset it distinctly
promised to be otherwise, and secondly, because really, monotony
is not a quiet suffering, like a degree too much of heat on a
summer day, but it is a positive strain upon us. It is an active
annoyance, not a merely passive one. Now, then, without the
slightest hope of changing matters, indeed, without the least effort
to do so, and without any purpose, let alone expectation, of finding
a remedy, we plunge into the matter in order to investigate it,
believing that something practical will come of the investigation,
without exactly knowing or caring how much or what. We shall
at least pass through some country, and see something; and a man
is not worth much who is not a trifle the better, deeper, and truer
man for every thing he sees. I have a presentiment that, with a
little adroitness, we can make capital of our monotony.
Why is piety so monotonous? "Really,” some of you may
say, "now that you force me to think of it steadily, I do not
perceive that it is so monotonous." Fortunate soul! then read
no further. You will perhaps find suitable matter for you in other
Conferences, if rather you are not happily above the need of any
Conferences. The rest of us will work out this problem of our

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monotony, and try to forget it for a while by the very working
of it. Why is piety so monotonous? Because it lies in so smalt
a compass, because there are only Ten Commandments, because
it is all fear, because it is all love. These are reasons, brief
enough, and with nothing in them to be complained of. Never­
theless piety would not be less monotonous if we had more than
Ten Commandments to keep, or if the Counsels were innumer­
able. We have little need to complain of piety lying in such a
small compass; for that narrow compass is wider than we can con­
veniently stretch ourselves to fill. But the answers are too sum­
mary, altogether too narrow for the question. We must answer
more at length, more in detail.
The spiritual life is the progress of the finite creature toward
union with the Infinite. In all its stages the process of being
conformed to God is going on in the soul. Nothing is indifferent.
Every moment of time may be made to bear the burden of some­
thing which is eternal. Each separate action, no matter how
trivial, is capable of holding a supernatural immensity. The grace
which enables us to do supernatural things is coming to us con­
stantly in ways which are imperceptible except to the greatest
vigilance, and operating in us with such fineness and delicacy as
require a heavenly discernment in order that we may perceive
them and co-operate with them. On the other hand, the unworthi­
ness of our nature is almost unbounded, and its manifold unfitness
for such a divine union is disabling us at every turn. So that we
have to live down among our own motives, and consort with all
the creeping and crawling things of self-love, in order to be pro­
vided against a surprise. Moreover, nature to the last draws one
way, and grace from the first draws another. Thus the three lead­
ing characteristics of the spiritual life must always be effort,
detail, and slowness,—all three things monotonous, and the sus­
tained combination of the three almost an insufferable monotony.
When we advance in self-knowledge, and by grace have ob­
tained a tolerable command over those greater passions, whose
tyranny has in it something of a seeming dignity, and even the
shame of which is felt not to be degrading, we come to the mean-

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ncss of our nature and character. Here the work becomes slower
at the very moment that it has grown less endurable. The details
also multiply, and fresh vigor has to be infused into efforts which
have no sort of external stimulus to cheer them on, and very often
hardly a place on which to rest their lever. The drag of the spir­
itual life is not so much felt by a man when he is getting out of
his sins, and quelling the revolts of his greater passions, as it is
when he comes to his ungenerosities, his little untruthfulnesses,
his ingrained hypocrisies, his mean jealousies, his degrading spites,
his incredible conceits, his causeless dislikes, the undignified vag­
aries of his wounded feelings, his secret slavery of human respect,
and all the crookednesses of his self-love. It is here that the
monotony begins. All the phases of the work only deepen its
monotony.
Dirty work, such as digging and delving in a swamp, is well
known to be more wearisome than other work, even when it is
not more tiring in itself. It is wearisome because it is dirty; and
the discomfort of it is not an inapt representation of the work
of the spiritual life. It is a work also at which we must always
labor stooping, and the posture adds to the monotony. It is an
extremely solitary toil. We cannot work at our soul in gangs.
We must labor in secret. Even the intelligence and sympathy
of our directors cannot reach into the innermost secrets of our
secrecy. Thus there is nothing to beguile the time. It is sheer
work, unparticipated, uncommunicated, unrelieved. Further­
more, our efforts are attended with extremely little success, and
most even of that little is imperceptible to ourselves, or imper­
ceptible at the time. It is not a work which can be put in detail
under any external obedience. It can only be generally under
obedience. The minutest regulations of a director, which, because
of their ver)' minuteness, are as often a snare to souls as a help
to them, are only a general obedience, compared with the minute
intricacy of the ever-shifting operations within. Then, again, a
work soon becomes wearisome when it is not under obedience,—
wearisome with a weariness quite different from that produced by
the uniform pressure of obedience, and harder far to bear. More­

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over, the perpetual shifting of the operations of the interior life
is in itself a fountain of monotony; for there is no monotony so
flat as the monotony of endlessly fluctuating change.
To be always beginning is an irritating as well as an unin­
teresting thing. Yet this also is an invariable characteristic of
the spiritual life. It is a work which almost any change of out­
ward position—so morally feeble are we—actually interrupts.
Then there is a beginning again at the same place with the same
tools and under the old difficulties. It is like the perpetual falling
in of a tunnel in unmanageable loose soil. Moreover, it is a
work which we only very imperfectly understand; and under­
standing is light, and light is cheerfulness. To say Office without
knowing Latin must obviously be much more irksome than
saying it as a scholar says it. Neither recitation is irksome if we
have sensible sweetness; but who has that always? Still, in most
things, we are always working toward the light, always approach­
ing an understanding of what we are about. But the teasing
thing about the spiritual life is, that what we begin to under­
stand immediately changes into something else as soon as we
come to understand it. Grace is always drawing us over the border,
into a darkness beyond. Even while we ourselves are in the light,
our attractions are far outward in the dimness ahead of us. It is
also to be considered that any thing like a satisfactory spiritual
life implies a great deal of steady self-punishment. A certain
quiet unmercifulness toward self is the indispensable condition
of all inward peace. We have also to strengthen our hand to a
firmer and more vigorous chastisement of self, especially at those
times when we are most discouraged by recent and unexpected
defeats. Yet all the while so little are we rooted in our work
that any breath is enough to blow us away when we are engaged
in it.
There are many varieties of inward lives. But the features
enumerated above belong to all of them. They are in the nature
of the case. The one thing which is equally the result of all
those numerous cases is monotony. Of course there is a great
deal to be said on the other side. Upon what question is there

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not? It is true also that a man may be justly reproved for com­
plaining too much of this monotony of piety. A man of great
graces may perhaps be reproved for complaining at all. But we
must deal gently with the great multitude of those who arc
honestly trying to keep closer to God than a mere avoiding of
sin implies. There are some who treat with dignified contempt
not only the complaint, but the very feeling of this monotony.
They deny that there can be any solid virtue where such a feeling
exists, except as the merest transitory temptation. Rather may
we say that where contempt exists, no solid virtue can exist.
Indeed, it is shrewdly to be suspected that those who have not
felt this burden of monotony have only escaped the feeling because
the burden they have tried to carry was so exceedingly little, or
because they have carried it only a little way. A man who has
always found it plain sailing, and has never failed to have sun
and stars visible when he wanted them for observations, may be
sure he is sailing over a pacific ocean of his own, very different
from the wild, uncertain, clouded seas where saints and saint­
like men so often find themselves at the mercy of wind and
weather.
But let us look at the matter from an opposite point of view.
Most of most men’s success in life comes from the vigorous play
of their natural activity. The abbot Esaias says, that of the three
diings necessary to the pursuit of perfection natural activity is
*
one.
Even good works owe no little of their success to this.
It has been observed that men who go about the country giving
missions and retreats with all the excitement of fresh air, new
faces, new places, new work, and the energetic reactions after
physical weariness, find it difficult to cultivate a really, or at least
a profoundly, interior spirit. The chronicles of religious orders
are full of examples of this, and the arrangements of saintly
founders exhibit a presentiment of it. The admiration men have
for the exceptions is a conclusive demonstration of the rule.
•Impetus secundum naturam, as he calls it. Nigronius confirms this doctrine.
See de diligentia spirituali, cap. Hi. sec. 10.

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The truth is, natural activity is most eager to save grace the
trouble of working; and it may safely be confessed that this same
natural activity does no little of the outside work of the Church,
and does it well. It has not often happened, though there are
notable exceptions,
*
that successful mission-preachers or con­
verters have been eminent directors. They want the inward
peace, the leisurely concentration, and the habit of not looking
for results, which for the most part build up a safe and intelligent
director.
Now, what is it which gives our lives the swing, which men
see and admire, and by which we accomplish our successes?
It is the intrinsic joyousness of natural activity. We are in­
spirited by our own effervescence. Our life seems to accumulate
by mere speed. We mesmerize ourselves, and so double our
powers and multiply our senses. We are always throwing our
innermost selves outside of ourselves, and so producing the most
astonishing results. We widen ourselves by this sort of selfexternation, and so make ourselves capable of doing more than
one man’s work. Our self-love riots in the stimulus of enthusi­
asm, and becomes downright power in the excitement of success.
We live in the midst of inward shouts and cheers and huzzaing,
until we seem all fortitude and learn to disbelieve in the impos­
sible. We do various work, and variety always multiplies the
amount of work at least by ten. Our results are visible, and the
vision of them is a grand attraction. There is nothing dry about
results. They fatten self-love; and a well-fed self-love, what should
ever tire it, what may it not hope to do, what expectations can ever
be reasonably considered unreasonable to such a thing as it is?
Results also make a noise, and noise is an endless battle cry to an
active spirit. Silence is the wearing thing, thin and unsatisfactory
and void where the soul is not full of God. Among many results,
some must be great ones, and their greatness is an intoxication.
Then an external life, when it is at full swing, is replete with
• For instances of some of these exceptions, see the Author’s Essay on Catholic
Home Missions, pp. 70, 71.

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changes and contrasts, which make it as interesting to us as a
romance. We have no time to get tired of any thing. The scenes in
the drama are too short rather than too long. All this increases our
speed, and with our speed our momentum, and with our momen­
tum our facility. Our arms lengthen, and we embrace the world.
Then comes the delighted complaint of the multiplicity and the
manifoldness of what we have to do, and our speed never lets us
see how unsatisfactorily we are doing it all. Quantity is what the
world admires, and so we are hounded on by praise. Nobody
finds fault. They are too busy staring. You cannot both stare
and speak at once. Staring requires the whole face. We throw
details overboard, and look only at generals. Now, we can be
busy without being fatigued. Those details,—they were the drag,
the vexation, secret nests of responsibility every one of them,
and greediest devourers of time. We are positively out of breath
ourselves with the speed of our lives and the downright awfulness
of our success. Yet there is a seeming dignity about having too
many things to do which to the eye of the world envelops us in
an appearance of repose. We seem to be marching through life,
marching to music, while we are in reality tearing through it,
like a planet got loose in space.
This is the kind of life for swing, for natural activity, for visi­
bility of results. This is the kind of life in which a little grace
grows furthest, or seems to do so. What is the opposite of all this?
The spiritual life! What a change! Burrowing in the dark,
hidden from all men,—for all comfortable purposes hidden even
from ourselves. Silence and deep night, solitude and a strange
place, an element in which we move sluggishly like tortoises, a
land overshadowed by dread presences, haunted by phantoms of
evil, terrified by possibilities, which are more often likelihoods,
of sin, a sort of peevish concentration of distraction about details,
an altogether microscopic life! What a change! It is as if we
had become deaf all at once, and blind a few minutes afterward.
This is the picture of the self-hindered man praying his way into
the neighborhood of the supernatural; for that is not a place into
which he can either think his way, or speak his way, or push

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his way. The prospect is one of boundless monotony when the
horrified eye of natural activity gazes over it; and, alas! there are
few of us that are worth more than the worth which our natural
activity confers upon us.
But is it, then, really and definitely decided that a thing on
which so much depends, and which is made up of such com­
ponent parts, as the spiritual life, is uninteresting? It is hard
not to suspect some fallacy in such a conclusion. In reply to this,
we may say that the feeling of monotony docs not arise so much
from the nature of the spiritual life itself as from the imperfect
and wounded state of our own nature. It is one of the phases
of our fallen state and its consequent unworthiness. Eternal in­
terests do not excite our sluggishness. It is not they that are
uninteresting, but we that are uninterested. Neither, again, is it
a feeling always felt, but only at times, and least at those times
when the spiritual life has most its own way. But there is some­
thing more than this to be said. We must distinguish somewhat
between monotonous and uninteresting. A thing may be inter­
esting and yet monotonous; nay, it is possible that die very in­
terest of a thing may increase its monotony. Now, it happens
that this is actually the case with the spiritual life. It is made
more monotonous by the very things which make it most in­
teresting.
When an intense seriousness accompanies every step in a
long line of actions, and those actions remain the same in the
same place, to be accomplished in the same way, through a repeti­
tion of the same obstacles, and with only the same results, die
seriousness will increase the burden of the monotony. Sunny
natures are so light, and gloomy natures so peevish, that they
can neither of them bear the yoke of seriousness long; for serious­
ness is as little congenial to gloom as it is to lightness. Yet this
same seriousness must run alongside the spiritual life in its longest
length. We never part company with it except through a fall.
We cease to be spiritual when we cease to be serious. Moreover,
we have to do with God always, and to do with him in the most
intimate way; and in divine things that which is most intimate

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is also most frightening. Reverence is a constraint, yet to lose
reverence is to lose every thing. But constraint is enough of itself
to create monotony; or rather, when long continued, and with
a pressure which does not vary much, it of itself becomes monot­
ony. Sin, either in its past, present, or future tense, runs right
through the composition of the spiritual life, and above all things
keeps us on the alert. Yet the perpetually-fretting shadow, and
the perpetual starting at shadows, makes the journey extremely
monotonous, while these shadows are also themselves its most
painful interests. Neither does our poor nature like to be kept
always in the same posture. It wishes to yawn; it would fain fold
its arms; at least it must be allowed to stretch its legs. Always
to sit, always to stand, always to lie down, all are equally insup­
portable; but to be always kneeling,—the thought of it is terrible.
Yet the spiritual life is not a work at which we can take liberties.
The very gravity of its interests forbids that. But a change of
posture is a liberty; frequent change of posture an unsafe lib­
erty,—indeed, incompatible with true spirituality. The interest
of piety also disallows its indulging in any recreation. We can­
not give our consciences a holiday, or give over prayer for a
while, as we give over lessons. The tension must be always on
us,—not an unvarying tension, certainly, yet a tension. The
bow is always bent, and will take a year to recover its having
been an hour unstrung. The height of the prize at which we
aim augments our strain. The attitude fittest for star-gazing
does not comport itself comfortably with our anatomy. The risk
is tremendous; and a tremendous jeopardy, while it is terribly
interesting, is insufferably monotonous. Then, after all, we
have come to think so little trustfully or gallantly of our poor
degenerate nature, that final perseverance, as a grace God keeps
in his own hands to the last, looks only like a chance in a super­
natural lottery. Indeed, it is not so; for it is a grace which an
earnest life can secure, though the holiest life cannot merit it.
Yet it looks like a lottery, and this adds to the interest by in­
creasing the nervousness. Yet what monotony is worse than a
continuity of fear? Thus it is that the interests of the spiritual

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life are, from their peculiar character, the feeders of its monotony.
We have, then, made out a case against piety, namely, that
it is monotonous. Now, what is the good of all this inquiry?
What profit is there in the charge, and in the laborious substan­
tiation of it? We shall succeed in discouraging people more
than they are discouraged already. Is that what we wish? Surely
the very opposite. Illogical as it may seem, there are few things
more consoling to men than the mere finding that other men
have felt as they feel. Neither is it in reality illogical. Special
evils are the most frightening; and that evil cannot be special
which is confessed to be part of the experience of others. We
feel piety to be monotonous. As was said at first, the service of
God is often a sensible drag upon us. It becomes flat and dull,
failing to excite us, and degenerating into a wearisome con­
straint. There is always something more than this in it, but
that something lies deep down. What is on the surface is
monotony, and dulness, and a struggle just on the point, forever
on the point, of ceasing to be a struggle at all. There are times
when the sense of all this wellnigh overweights us. They are
moods certainly, but moods so long, so seldom interrupted, and
interrupted for so short a time at once, that in some stages of
the spiritual life they seem almost to amount to a normal state.
It is miserable to find the service of God so wearisome. The
more earnestly we love him, the more profoundly we fear him.
then so much the greater is the misery. When we compare
the briskness and agility, the unsleeping interest, and the be­
guiling attractions, of our worldly occupations, with the dead,
flat, sluggish feeling which comes over us in regard to our
prayers and mortifications, there is something extremely de­
pressing in this feeling of monotony. Surely, then, it is no little
consolation to find that it is not merely an evil symptom of our
own spiritual condition, a sign against our own individual pre­
destination, but that it is part of our great human disease,
belonging to our common misfortune, and all-but universal
among those who are honestly striving to serve God in the inti­
macies of an interior life.

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In our strife to be supernatural, it is natural, then, that we
should be haunted by this heavy shadow of monotony. It is no
cause for discouragement, because everybody else suffers from
it more or less at times, unless when it begins to gall them they
give up struggling; and to give up struggling is to give up God.
Nowhere docs it furnish us with any legitimate reason for being
disheartened. For it does not imply any actual sin, or any past
incompleteness in our confessions, or any secret corroding fault.
As I have hinted, even its long continuance is often a cheering
sign, because it is also a sign that we have continued to struggle.
Surely there is manifold comfort here.
Comfort! Yes; but what we want are cures. This is what you
would say. True: but let me take this opportunity of saying
something to you which I regard of the utmost importance. In­
deed, I know few things more important. What I am always
complaining of in you spiritual people is your unreality. I suffer,
like poor Cassandra, from always making distasteful prophecies
to you about this. Now, I will go further, and find the same
fault of unreality with a very great number of spiritual books.
It is taken for granted that every spiritual disease has a cure,—
not a partial alleviation, not a counterbalancing comfort, not
a check which shall hinder its becoming fatal, but an abso­
lute cure, a specific which shall end in a complete restoration
to health. I get quite angry with books and sermons for the
thoughtless things they say about this. Surely it is a simple
untruth. In the matter of bodily health, there are diseases which
cannot be cured, wounds which will leave us maimed or lamed
to the end of life, constitutional maladies which can be controlled
and limited, yet never cured. With such evils, we have to content
ourselves with medical superintendence, ceaseless physic, a dietary
yoke, and the like. Why should we be surprised at finding sim­
ilar maladies in the spiritual life? Look at the absurdity of the
opposite supposition. You do not surely believe in the perfecti­
bility of human nature on this side the grave. You do not expect
that you can reach a state of sinlessness before you die, or that
your corrupt nature shall become incorruptible while it is still

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mortal. Yet your vexation when you can not have a regular cure,
cut and dried, for every spiritual disease, implies that you indulge
in these monstrous expectations. Some spiritual maladies are
incurable in themselves, because of our nature. This is true of
self-deceit and of several other forms of. self-love. Others are in­
curable in the individual case; and this may arise from past sin.
or from natural character, or from unchangeable outward cir­
cumstances. In some cases the knowledge of the evil is all we
can attain to. In many cases the management of the mischief is
our highest attainment. In others the diminution of it is the
utmost we can hope. Surely this is common sense. The other
doctrine, besides being nonsense, is a grand source of discourage­
ment, while it also foments unreality and fosters delusions. Spir­
itual books are, in great measure, to blame for it. It is so tempt­
ing to be systematic, to set off salves against wounds, antidotes
against poisons, to look complete, to encourage, to be popular,
to exaggerate our inventions, to puff our nostrums. We call this
quackery when it is applied to the body. Why does it deserve a
kindlier name when it is applied to the soul? The saints tell us
we are to be patient with ourselves to the last. Now, to be patient
means to endure; it means that some things, if not many things,
will remain in self, with which self will have to be patient to
the end—that is, some things which cannot be cured. We are
not told by the saints to be patient with our sins, but with our
sicknesses, those sicknesses of the soul under which sanctification
consists not in the cure, but in the combat. The practical man is
the man who does the best he can under the circumstances.
You must distinguish between incurable and irreparable. I have
often told you that no mischief in the spiritual life is irrepar­
able; but I never meant you to understand by that that there
are no evils in the spiritual life which are incurable. I hope
you will not forget this distinction. If you do, you will mis­
understand many things which it may greatly concern you to
understand. A spiritual director is a physician. Do you ever
expect to do without a director? If not, then you contemplate
the necessity of being in an ailing state to the end. This is all

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I want you to admit:—in the spiritual life nothing is irremedi­
able, but several things are most certainly incurable. The normal
state of spirituality is at best that of a vigorous, cheerful, hearty
invalid, who is obliged, in order to keep up to his work, not
only to take great care of himself, but to be upon his guard
against a great many things, and, in spite of his vigilance, to
have a good deal to endure.
But, to return from this digression, what are we to do with
our monotony? Are we to be simply passive under it? Certainly
not. But what will help us out of it? Making haste will not; and
this is the first thing to take note of. This negative piece of
advice is worth more than any thing positive which I can say:
at least I judge so, from the entanglement and low spirits into
which I see people fret themselves by trying to get out of it
through making haste. Properly speaking, all difficulties in the
spiritual life partake of the nature of entanglements; and this
also is a thing very much to be observed; for it is another argu­
ment, and they never can be needlessly multiplied, for slowness
in the way of holiness, that prompt holiness, of which I have
spoken so repeatedly that I see you smile when I reiterate it,
as if it were the burden of all my songs. Haste, then, is not the
road out of this entanglement of monotony. Mortification, espe­
cially bodily mortification, is the shortest way out of it, as indeed
it is always the shortest way to cheerfulness and supernatural
joy. Every thing that tends to fervor tends also to make this
burden of monotony less sensible, like wine and food which cure
weariness as well as satisfy hunger, curing the weariness by cur­
ing the weakness. This need not be dwelt upon; but there is
one thing more which should be said. To look at that dull,
odious, repulsive, gray monotony, who could suspect it was the
raw material of the very highest of all high graces? Yet so it is.
That haunting monotony is, in a brave, striving, quiet soul,
always tending to become simplicity, the peculiar simplicity of
the spiritual life, which is a glorious shadow of the Unity of
God, and wherein God becomes all in all. This is what the
monotony merges in, and then the trial becomes a grace, the

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pusillanimity a heroism. Strangest of transformations! Yet
there are strange things in an inward life, and most of them
have the character of transformations. Its phenomena arc given
to be transfigurations. It is true that the degree of simplicity
in which the pusillanimity becomes a heroism belongs to a
high and advanced state of things. But the trial becomes a
grace in much lower states. But why should you think of any
thing less than the highest? This feeling of monotony makes me
think you should aim high; for it is the proof of something genu­
ine and real in your present attainments. You have but one
thing to do:—Sink deeper down in prayer.

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I wonder what the saints in heaven think of modern spir­
ituality. Certainly to all appearance the nineteenth century is
a very exceptional time. But then I have misgivings that all
times seem so, as they are passing. Each generation magnifies
the good and exaggerates the evil of its own day, while in history
one century falls back into the lap of another in a very quiet,
unexciting, and commonplace manner. However, it is plain
that the nineteenth century is not a congenial season for oldfashioned things; and, as in other things, so in the matter of
spirituality, there are changes. The great books of the seven­
teenth century certainly innovated upon the elder writers in many
not insignificant respects. Even in one religious order, the Jesuits,
we find the school of Ligronius and Lancicius very different
from that which prevailed less than a century later. Certainly,
just now, the Church is singularly mixed up with the world.
The public action of catholic charity is materially changed.
Increased luxury, combined perhaps with other causes, has
superinduced a valetudinarian state over a large portion of
society. Fewer men can fast. People take cold more easily. We
cannot think of a hermit in the fens of Lincolnshire, or in the
wet woods of Picardy, without marvelling how his life contrived
to be any thing but a chronic rheumatism. There is less sim­
plicity; and hence the exercises of some virtues become more
difficult, especially ostensible practices of humility. More civil­
ization gives us less individuality; and hence the danger of singu­
larity cuts off many opportunities of sanctification. Mental habits
are different, more rapid, more introverted, more self-conscious;
and this must necessarily tell hugely upon the whole subject
of prayer. All these things seem to indicate that we must have
spiritual systems for our own day, just as our fathers had them
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for their day. Nevertheless I often sit and think, in a forlorn
kind of way, what a disconsolate thing it is to part company
with any old traditions, however insignificant; and the more so
in a subject-matter of the most urgent concern to all of us, and
in a time which seems to labor under a special unfitness for
readapting to its use the older spirituality of the saints. You
see, while times change very much, souls change very little, and
God not at all. So I cannot help thinking that the antique
spirit has to return again, in matters which regard both the
ecclesiastical and the ascetic temper. Some day or other we
shall have to go back to the Fathers of the Desert, or to Richard
of St. Victor, or to the earliest school of Jesuit ascetics. The
day has not come yet, and will not in our time. So we must
take what heart we can, and face the sickly, unsupematural
spirituality we see around us, and do what good we can by
condescensions and adaptations, which may save a soul or two
here and there, taking care all the while, for the sake of our
own sanctification, to keep grumbling about that antique spirit
and that old-fashioned wisdom, which we believe to be the only
real thing.
Now, I want to speak about a little matter in the conduct
of modern pious people, which I am so sure is wrong that I
cannot be content to let it alone; and I will try to be goodnatured while I am discontented, and as little sarcastic as I can
help being, remembering that there is no piece of modem piety
of which I know so little good as I do of my own. I only wish
I knew whether the saints in heaven really thought that our
pleasant, unoffending, moderate, contented, polished, civilized
spirituality was so much as safe. People rebel if you try to put
more upon them; and do we, as a matter of fact, get much more
out of ourselves? One question we are sure we never can solve,—
the way to serve both God and mammon; but how near may
we come? Yes! look at upper-class piety in London and Paris,
and then ask, How near may we come? We dare not be sure we
are right in being contented, because it looks so unlike the
right of old times. We dare not be sure we are wrong; for.

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then, what consequences follow, what wholesale delusions, what
multitudes in the armies of perfection and devotion, what rough
work with vocations, absolutions, and the like! Sometimes it is
so weary a problem that we are fain to think men would be
holier with a sounder and more robust holiness if they would
leave the Counsels and take to the Commandments.
Now to my subject, without further elegy. The great want
of modem piety is a real, deep, vigorous, inward repentance.
If you dance till four in the morning and go to communion at
ten, I do not believe in your abiding sorrow for sin. If you
are in the theatre till midnight, I do not credit the compunction
of your morning’s meditation. If you are just like any other
fashionable person, I can set no value upon your profession of
devotion. Piety and gayety do not mix; and in this matter, to
speak shortly, and once for all, I do not believe in mixtures.
But I say modern piety is defective in the matter of inward
repentance: I do not say it is destitute of it, but seriously
defective; and I prove it as follows.
We see persons on all sides of us who are certainly good
persons. They are endeavoring to avoid sin, and on the whole
successfully. They would fain avoid worldliness; but in that
effort they are hardly so successful. Truly, it is a more diffi­
cult affair. They are making some profession of strictness and
devotion. They rank with pious people. Yet penance is plainly
not a feature of the lives they are leading. Their love of pleasure,
their appearance at places of worldly resort, their unstinted
enjoyment of the prevailing fashions and amusements, nay, the
very ease, elegance, propriety, equability, and smoothness of
their spirituality, all betoken a very imperfect idea of abiding
sorrow for sin, or of that inward self-revenge which should in­
crease in us daily the older we grow. The way in which worldli­
ness and religion are pounded up together is quite decisive as
to their inadequate notion of inward repentance. It is for­
tunate for such persons if their piety does not degenerate into
a mere familiarity with sacred names and things, which will

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be a great impediment to their future conversion.
The systems of spirituality which are most in vogue are
marked by the same characteristics. It seems as if they were
arranged for a lower standard of holiness than that of God­
as if the souls for which they were meant were the rule and
measure of sanctity, and not the evangelical counsels or the
exceedingly holy law of God. To do as those around us do, so
long as it is not plain sin, is part of their wisdom. To avoid
singularity does not mean, in the language of these systems, what
it means in old spiritual writers. Here it signifies that we are
to go with the stream, and to put our piety out of the way when
it is likely to be distasteful to those who make no profession of
piety at all. To be at peace is the highest attainment of this
philosophy; and whatever disquiets a soul is, on that account
alone, a positive evil, and to be avoided. Thus, if a soul is
deluded, it must remain deluded; if it is lukewarm, it must
remain lukewarm; if it is sluggish, its slumbers must be respected.
Now, think of the proportion of good people, as they are called,
who are neither deluded, or lukewarm, or sluggish; and then
reflect on the inevitable consequences of this undiscerning and
promiscuous avoidance of what is disturbing and discomforting
Of a truth, it would be a safer rule to lay down that we can
none of us be too much or too often discomforted, provided
only we can bear being discomforted without being discouraged
also. Penance can be no child of such lax and slatternly systems
as these. Yet how many souls in these days dread what they
call exciting direction a thousand times more than they abhor
a mortal sin! Indeed, they do not know what they mean bv
exciting direction, and could not define it, if you called upon
them to do so. What they intend to express is only an instinct
against reality and earnestness.
Here is another feature of modern piety which meets us
at almost every turn:—the continual mistaking of common graces
for uncommon ones. The lower and the higher graces are coun­
terparts of each other. A very high grace may wonderfully

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resemble a very low grace; and, unless we have tasted it, that is,
had experimental knowledge of it, we may easily confound it with
its analogue among much lower things. We think we feel what
the saints have recorded that they felt, because the description
of it in language is too coarse to convey a right notion of an
operation so delicate. Then, if we satisfy ourselves on any one
point, it brings a change over our whole spiritual life; because
a spiritual life is a very inveterate unity. It changes our method
of prayer, and interprets our position toward God quite in a
new way, and, as it happens, in an erroneous way. Now, this
mistake comes of everybody in these times being in such a
hurry to get out of the purgative way; and this impatience of
commencements partly bears witness to a want of inward repent­
ance, and partly increases the want, as rendering us unable to
appreciate it. This is a long subject, and we must not say more
of it now.
There is, moreover, a deeply-imbedded naturalism, which
betrays itself everywhere in the modern views of the spiritual
life. There is an evident desire to sacrifice the supernatural to
the prejudices of those who dislike it. Men are eager to fix the
charge of extravagance upon those who stand up boldly for the
rights of God and speak uncompromisingly about worldliness.
The vague notions people have of vocations, and their jealousy
of the whole subject, are additional evidences of this naturalism.
Low practical views of the sovereignty of God arise from the
same source. The lives of the saints, indulgences, and devotions
connected with purgatory, are the touchstones of this naturalism.
Real searching inward repentance changes a man’s whole notions
about all these subjects. It unlocks the hidden wisdom of the
church-system to him, and transforms his sympathies and in­
stincts into those of the saints. Naturalism is impatient of godli­
ness, because it has no taste for God; and how much depends
precisely upon having this taste for God! Under the auspices of
naturalism, spirituality tends to become a mere literature to
intellectual curiosity, or a mere pleasurable excitement to un-

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earnest and halt-hearted devotion, or a relish to worldliness by
way of contrast.·
The amount of alms giving, and the manner in which it is
given, also inspire me with a distrust of modern piety, especially
in regard to the reality of its inward repentance. A very inward
thing always, or almost always, has very outward results, and
these outward results are congenial to itself. Penance is the best
guarantee for the inwardness of our repentance, and almsgiving
is notably a chief part of penance. Inward repentance is not a
feeling within us, but a change within us; and it is not easy
for us to be changed inwardly without manifesting it outwardly.
Thus I cannot bring myself to believe that a professedly pious
person, who is very guarded in giving alms, has the genuine
spirit of inward repentance. Now, in the present day it is not
uncommon to see pious people acting as if they really thought
their piety in other respects was almost a dispensation from
alms-giving. Others, again, when they give, give in ways which
minister to their own humors; so that even in alms giving selflove shall find its account. Moreover, generosity is not alms­
giving. The quantity given must have reference to the means
of the giver, but still more to the amount of sacrifice and self­
denial which his alms entail upon him. Expensiveness is perhaps
not a distinct sin in itself, though even that may be questioned:
but it is the mother of many sins, and it is remarkably uncon­
genial to the spiritual life. Yet pious people are particularly
given to be expensive, when they have the means. An alms which
does not put the giver to inconvenience is rather a kindness
than an alms; and certainly the alms which is to be a satisfactory
evidence of inward repentance ought to reach the point of caus• This question of naturalism is one of the most important in these days of
catholic revival, ft were greatly to be wished th.it Dorn Guenngrri aoredingly
interesting volume could be compressed, ami reduced to form, to .» to prêtent to
impatient readers the principles of naturalism, its dangers and its remedies. in a
compact and lucid way. The successive criticisms of M. de Broglie’s ImmA diurict
the reader ami disconnect the subject. .Nevertheless it is a most valuable contribu­
tion to catholic literature, even in its present unattractive form,
tur It
Naturalisme Contemporain, par R. P. D. Guerangcr. Julien, Lanier, el Cie, Paris.

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ing some palpable inconvenience, of involving some solid selfdenial. Now, if a professedly pious person has to retrench, and
begins his retrenchments with his charities, does not this suggest
grave suspicions as to the inward self-revenge of his repentance?
Does it look as if his sins were always before him, or as if he
had the scriptural fear of forgiven sin, or as if he worshipped
the exactions of divine justice with any thing like a hearty and
vigorous worship? Depend upon it, a man’s parting with his
money is one of the proofs of his having right views about God
and sin, which is least liable to delusion or self-deceit. If we
look to the dress, and the equipage, and the furniture, and the
children, first, and then to God afterward, it is pretty plain that
God's real place in the heart, no matter what the feelings may
say, is after the dress, and the equipage, and the furniture, and
the children. For feelings are easily fancied, and are also often
themselves very fanciful even when they are genuine.
In nothing is the genuine worth of real spirituality more tried
than in the performance of works of mercy. An interior spirit
proves itself in these external operations. To work for the poor
in a spiritual way requires many graces, and often graces of a
high order. Natural activity, which helps the beginnings of
works, comes at last to generate weariness, and so to fight against
their perseverance. A slight admixture of natural feeling, or
the indulgence of natural affection, is often sufficient to forfeit
God's blessing on a difficult undertaking. No one carries out
charitable plans, or conducts benevolent institutions, success­
fully, unless he is at once detached from his work and attached
to it. But the harmony of these apparently opposite qualities
implies a well-grounded spirituality. Patience, love, vigilance,
inventiveness, wide judgments, a large heart, and an obstinate
cheerfulness are all necessary to the persevering success of real
works of mercy, together with that humble, bashful earnest­
ness which is such a peculiar feature of Christian compassion.
To beg for a work of charity is an exercise of holy poverty,
which few have the grace to go through without a multitude
of venial sins, perhaps in God’s sight the most venial of venial

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sins that can be. The criticisms of idle men, the doubts of icy
men, the narrowness of good men, and the censoriousness of
all men, are also hard to bear·, and yet a work is worth little,
and does not make the devil uneasy, if it has not had to endure
these irritating molestations. From some points of view, an active
saint is a more complicated work of grace than a contemplative
one.
But let us look at the popular modern spirituality in con­
nection with this test of external works of mercy. The London
season does not more surely bring with it new modes of dress,
than it brings also with it new plans of doing good and bene­
fiting the poor. When we have not had much experience, we
respect all this. Any thing seems good which is for the poor.
What a gain that the rich of this world should take a fancy to
any works of mercy, no matter what! But this satisfaction soon
passes away, when the vexatious sight of money squandered, of
time wasted, of beginnings discontinued, of inert committees
organized, of the obvious pursuit of excitement and self-love
in the whole matter, has tried our patience year after year. It
is also the more difficult to keep our temper with inefficient
charity, because it is so seldom innocuous as well as inefficient.
Now we get a glimpse of what this spirituality is worth. A
Mohammedan with his five posture-penances a day is a happy
man; for he feels he must do something to make his conscience
easy, something for God, something in the way of religion: and
he has done it, done enough to make him feel he has done
something. So it is with these annual fashions of charity. Chris­
tians must feel as if they were doing something for God. or else
they will not be easy. So they get up a good work. It takes
some time to call on others and talk it over. Some further time
to take the advice of half a dozen popular preachers or directors.
A little more time to decide on following the advice of none
of them. Then some clerical head has to be chosen for the
work; and that takes time. After that, the Lent services render
any other excitement unnecessary just then. Now Easter has
come, and there is an interruption because of people going

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down into the country. Then the Month ol Mary has excite­
ments of its own; and it is well advanced before the committee
is formed. When it is formed, it has to meet. When it meets, it
naturally talks. What should happen if it began to do any thing,
it is impossible to say. We cannot think of that without some
degree of consternation. However, there is the excitement of
having to work with strange people, the important excitement
in some cases of having to try to get Government aid or to call
on philanthropic magistrates, and the peculiar excitement per­
haps of having to work with our inferiors in rank and station,
and so to practice the condescensions of a sort of Christian free­
masonry, which somehow or other satisfies some nameless crav­
ing in our conscience. Meanwhile the season thickens, and at
last closes. All that was wanted has been done; for all that was
wanted was the self-righteous feeling that we were very busy
tor God, and also the manifold satisfaction of half a dozen kinds
of self-love. The excitement has been pleasant, the feeling of
being good more pleasant still; and the fact that it has all come
to an end without our having had to pay any thing for it has
been without doubt the pleasantest feature of the transaction.
It has got us through the season. We could enjoy our expensive­
ness more comfortably while we believed ourselves on the road
to some considerable imaginary alms. An hour of committee,
besides being chatty and agreeable, will sanctify long, long hours
of shopping. What a wonderful exercise of humility was that
conventual bazaarl Our intense delight in the salient worldli­
ness of the year, whatever it was, has been well counteracted
by the dim vision of romantic garrets, or of interesting orphans,
or of palsied pensioners, or of picturesque young thieves, or of
reclaimed children in tasteful uniforms, or of distant idolaters,
or of domestic hunger-bitten heathen. It has all been the ounce
of God to the hundredweight of the world, the adequate cor­
rective, the proper proportion of alkali to our acid.
Yet alms giving was not exactly meant as a corrective of
worldliness. Might not light be let into many minds if they
would distinctly put before themselves the final cause of riches?

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Why are there any rich people at all, and what does God mean
by them? For there is only one real truth about any of the
facts of the world, and that truth is God’s meaning of the fact,
God’s intention in the ordering or permitting of it. Now, what
are rich people meant for? They are not made rich for their
own good. That is quite plain. A man's good consists in the
saving of his soul; but it is plain riches do not help him to save
his soul,—rather the contrary. Jesus would not have riches, when
he came. Nay, he pronounced woe to those who have them.
When the saints have had them, they have made away with
them as fast as they could. Riches, if the Gospel be true, are
the unheavenliest of all earthly things. Why, then, are some
men put into a less advantageous position than others, as far
as regards the salvation of their souls, by having riches allotted
to them? What are rich people meant for? To be the prey of
of the poor. Prey! there is no other word for it. The rich arc
meant for the poor. The poor are the cause and the significancy, as they will be also the salvation, of the rich. The poor
are God’s eagles to beset, infest, and strip the rich. He alone
is happy in his riches who lets these eagles of God tear him
with least resistance. That process, rich man. is what thou art
meant for. God had no other intention in thee. If there be a
heaven and a hell, there is nothing which it more behooves thee
to know than this peculiarity of thy position. Are the poor
wearisome, grasping, unseasonable, insatiable, unreasonable, in­
numerable, unbearable? It is more unreasonable in thee to
complain. They were meant to prey upon thee: thou wert meant
to be their prey. That is the whole account of thee. Give, then,
and be silent.
To sum it all up:—Look at the eccentricities in almsgiving,
at the appetite for novelties, at the neglect of old charities, at
the infinite subdivision of efforts which are thus completely
neutralized, at the prominence of self, at the self-opinionated­
ness, at the folio volumes of talk or the duodecimo volumes of
note-paper, at the subordinate position of God in the matter.
at the little amount of keen sympathy for the misery to be dealt

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with, at the less amount of self-denial in the dealing with it
and, last of all, at the astounding moderation of the subscrip­
tions. Surely all this testifies to a huge amount of delusion and
fond inward flattering of self in the spirituality around us. It
sometimes almost makes one think that works of mercy are
simply an imposture. But, all the while, the imposture lies in
a spirituality without solid mortification. Tried in the balance
of outward charity, how much fair-looking interior piety is griev­
ously found wanting! If all this is ill natured, is it not also true?
Depend upon it, genuine mercy is very rare. Real alms-givers
must have either an unusual nobility of natural character, or a
very solid virtue. Devotion to the poor is, in its disinterested
purity, the rarest grace in sanctity. In its debased state, it is
one of the commonest features of a piety the unsoundness of
which is testified by nothing so much as the unreality of its
mercy.
Many feel this, and so take no pains about works of mercy.
Indeed, we might not unreasonably find fault with modern
piety altogether, for its want of balance between inward and
outward things, between spiritual exercises and works of mercy
for the poor. We do not become interior by trying not to be
exterior. If we try to be interior only, we soon cease to be in­
terior at all, if ever we were so before. For the most part a
spiritual exercise costs nothing; it is done in secret; and it
may be done in a hundred ways, from the highest strain of rever­
ential attention down to the slovenliness of lolling postures and
voluntary distractions. It costs no money. It involves no per­
sonal trouble. Hence it is no evidence of sincerity. Least of all
is it any token of the spirit of penance. The eagerness with
which we are told that external mortifications are almost worth­
less compared with interior mortifications, breeds distrust. The
proposition itself is most true; and there are times and places
in which it needs preaching forcibly. It is not the proposition,
then, which makes us distrustful. It is the eagerness with which
it is urged which is the suspicious symptom. I fear that a great
deal of this private soul-saving, which is so much the fashion

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just now, indicates little more than an unwillingness to part
with money, or a reluctance to be teased, fretted, and hard worked
by plans for the poor. Anyhow, we may be sure of this, that
there is always a holy restlessness, an insatiable activity, about
the spirit of inward repentance, whose deportment is very dif­
ferent from this easy-going, money-saving, stay-at-home devotion.
Modern piety has also a guilty instinct for a false discre­
tion, which is very unlike the swift straightforwardness or the
headlong generosity of inward repentance. If you listen to the
conversation, for example, of devout ladies, who habitually form
themselves into a kind of self-nominated Congregation of the
Index about sermons, direction, vocations, religious orders, spir­
itual books, and the like, you would imagine that half catholic
London is disciplining itself to blood, that there are two or
three hundred hair shirts at the Opera every night, that the
floor of the palace is strewn with horrid, nondescript instru­
ments of penance after every drawing-room or royal ball, that
the health of the West End, which so successfully resisted late
hours and turning night into day, is now succumbing under
lentils and long prayers and bodily macerations, and that parents
and husbands, who were once thrown into a fever by the dangers
of an early communion and a few mouthfuls of fresh air taken
fasting between home and church, are now obliged to act the
spy on those they love, because of the murderous excesses of
fanatical penance. This is what you would suppose from the
conversation of these good ladies. You may not think their
conversation very wise: still, you would infer from it that nobody
is lukewarm, that nobody wants stirring up, that everybody
wants holding back. Whereas, when you come to know a little
of the facts, you will agree with them so far as this.—that the
want of discretion is the prevailing stupidity of the day only
you will apply it differently. You will see that people are in­
discreetly tepid, indiscreetly self-indulgent, neglecting prayer
and weekday mass indiscreetly, indiscreetly niggard in alms­
giving, indiscreet in doing so little for God, indiscreet in making
so much of the little they do. All this is hideous indiscretion;

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and. if our lady-congregation of the Index can get rid of any
of this for us, we should be forward to bless their labors. Un­
happily, their discretion lies quite on the other side. Their
notion of discretion is to come so close to hell that even angels
tremble to see them, and then just to swerve clear of it. The
worst of this is, that, while it is a risk often run, we may fear
that its issue is seldom felicitous. We may fear that many of
them just swerve into hell: another moment, and they will be
clear, like a wheel that is only for an instant over the ledge;
but, unluckily, that moment never comes, and the momentary
swerve turns out to be eternal. A moderation which consists in
taking immoderate liberties with God is hardly what the Fathers
of the Desert meant when they preached their crusade in favor
of discretion. When we meet with these apostles of the new
discretion, we feel that the matter is so serious that we ought
to be serious with them; 1 regret that I am not habitually so:
only one has such a tendency to see the ludicrous side of things;
and then also we may plead, as a further excuse, that unreal
persons are always so amusingly, because they are so uncon­
sciously humorous. However, our consciences need not prick
us; for experience shows that no good is done to these people
by being serious with them. They are not serious themselves.
They have no notion of seriousness except being angry; and the
best way to cure anger is to punish it by being amused at it.
For our present purpose it is plain that a discretion whose
prominent trait is its aptitude to take umbrage at penance can
hardly be a manifestation of the spirit of penance.
The next fault to find with modern piety is its shallowness.
Perhaps people were always as silly as they are now; yet I can
hardly imagine that people always thought as little as they do
now. The rapidity with which modern people live hinders their
seeing the depths of any thing, just as the enormous super­
ficies over which their education strains to extend itself hinders
their being well educated. Even in reading, men nowadays
will not stop to think; and they have too much to read to
enable them to read twice. Thought is manifestly at a discount

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just now; although there will be a change soon, as shallowness
is tiresome, and men always abandon what bores them, when
the bore reaches to a given point. However, this rapidity, which
hinders people from seeing the depths of any thing, affects
nothing so much as their religion and their relations to God.
because religion is all depth, and we might almost say of our
relations to God that they lie too deep to have any surface visible
at all. It sometimes looks as if piety had an intrinsic tendency
to be silly. It is to be hoped it is not so. Nevertheless, piety
is often disfigured by silliness, except when it coexists either
with great grace, or with considerable intellect, or with a keen
sense of humor. It would not be fair to say that piety is always
silly when it is not earnest, because unearnest piety is not piety
at all. It is only an ill-done caricature. Now, the deepest of
all spiritual things is inward repentance. It is based on a supernaturally-illuminated self-knowledge. It implies a profound
view of the sinfulness of sin. It lives in a clear vision of the
perfections of God, which almost anticipates the brightness of
the Vision hereafter. It is entangled with all manner of super­
natural things, with secrets of prayer, with saintlike instincts,
with curious operations of grace, and with the nameless fruits
of patient meditations. Rapid livers and rapid thinkers make
rapid worshippers; and rapid worshippers are rapid penitents;
and the spirit of inward repentance fares ill with all this. Deep
work is too slow for our modern pace. A railway-embankment
is another thing from a Roman road.
Another feature of modern piety is its fastidiousness. This
is a very stronghold of Satan. It hides God. It refuses to study
his mysteries. It saps the foundations of holy fear. It derogates
from devotion to the Passion. It forms a screen, behind which
unchaste spirits work at leisure. Every one is familiar with this
fastidiousness. I need not speak of it at length here, as I have
dwelt upon it in my book upon the Passion, and shall have to
refer to it later on in this Conference. It is sufficient to sav
that the fastidiousness here complained of is neither an ele
gance nor a delicacy, but a plain demand on the part of the

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world that we should practically give up a part of the gospel.
It manifests itself by an impatience with any thing like devotion
to the Passion in detail, as involving horrors which harrow up
the soul, and dislodge that precious peace which modern spiritu­
ality watches over as if it were the palladium of holiness, and
which is in reality nothing but the sleep of death. Alas! how
much better should we be if we could be harrowed up a little
now and then! We should shrink more from sin if we shrank
less from the physical atrocities of the Passion. The same fastidi­
ousness is angry and disgusted with sermons on hell. But of
this hereafter. No more need be said here than that, ordinarily
speaking, a reluctance to look hell in the face is a bad sign in
devotion, and affords no insignificant probability that we shall
really go there at last. Now, observe: the Passion and Hell are
the two great fountains out of which men learn a profound
hatred of sin: they are the two well-heads of sacred fear; they
are two revelations of God most necessary to complete a true
idea of him. But inward repentance turns upon the hatred of
sin, upon fear, and upon the completeness of our idea of God.
Thus our modern fastidiousness does what it can to render
inward repentance inadequate, by holding a veil before the two
revealed objects out of which that inward repentance is to draw
its life. If this fastidiousness were the unassisted mawkishness
of natural effeminacy, it might be despised as such. But it is
in reality a very intelligent contrivance of the arch-deceiver, and
very fatal to the interests of God, because it is a trap into which
good people fall.
I have another unpopular complaint to make. The oldfashioned hatred of heresy is becoming scarce. God is not
habitually looked at as the sole truth; and so the existence
of heresies no longer appalls the mind. It is assumed that God
must do nothing painful, and his dominion must not allow
itself to take the shape of an inconvenience or a trammel to
the liberty of his creatures. If the world has outgrown the idea
of exclusiveness, God must follow our lead, and lay it aside
as a principle in his dealings with us. What the many want

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they must have at last. This is the rule and the experience of
a constitutional country. Thus discord in religion, and untruth
in religion, have come to be less odious and less alarming to
men, simply because they are accustomed to them. It requires
courage, both moral and mental, to believe the whole of a grand
nation in the wrong, or to think that an entire century can go
astray. But theology, with a brave simplicity, concludes a whole
world under sin, and sees no difficulty in the true Church being
able to claim only a moderate share of the population of the
earth. The belief in the facility of salvation outside the Church
is very agreeable to our domestic loves and to our private friend­
ships. Moreover, if we will hold this, the world will pardon a
whole host of other superstitions in us, and will do us the honor
of complimenting the religion God gave, as if it were some
literary or philosophical production of our own. Is this such
a huge gain? Many seem amazingly pleased with it, and pay
dear for it quite contentedly. Now, it is plain that this belief
must lower the value of the Church in our eyes. It must relax
our efforts to convert others. It must relax our efforts to convert
ourselves. Those who use the system of the Church least will
of course esteem it least and see least in it, and are therefore
least fitted to be judges of it. Yet it is just these men who are
the most forward and the most generous in surrendering tire
prerogatives of the Church to tire exigencies of modern smooth­
ness and universalism. It would be strange if divine truths were
not sometimes harsh to a world lost in corruption and sin. Vet
we have not the bravery to hold fast to our principles. We
should think priest, and sacrament, and church-membership,
of the last consequence to ourselves, if we were dying. But we
regard them of too little consequence to our neighbor to justify
a candor which might savor of unpoliteness, or a sincerity which
may be unpopular. Or is it that we really do not care whether
he be saved or not? However, our want of hatred of heresy
first lowers our doctrines, and then our standard of practice.
Hence it is that, with the spirit of inward repentance. .1 love
of the Church grows also; and that, where there is cordial hatred

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of sin, cordial hatred of heresy is not far off. All these are anti­
quated notions; yet I keep running into them unconsciously.
I believe we should be more really and validly repentant if we
had a trifle more of the spirit of the old Inquisitors about us.
I know I ought to be ashamed of this in the meridian splendor
of die Nineteenth Century; but it is a weakness which I cannot
overcome, perhaps because I have not made sufficiently earnest
efforts to overcome it. Up to this time I continue to hold that
hatred of heresy will go along with genuine inward repentance.
I beg of God, in his infinite compassion, to keep alive in me
to the last hour of my life the intense hatred of heresy with
which he has inspired me, and which I recognize as his gift.
I beg of him to make it grow in me to an abhorrence far greater
than it is yet. Heaven is the land of love; but the hatred of
heresy will not diminish there; for the hatred of heresy is the
adoring love of God's ever-blessed truth.
Once more: I have spoken of a low standard of doctrine
bringing with it a low standard of practice. It is in this matter
of a standard that the whole faultiness of modern spirituality
consists. But it is difficult to make it clear. Let us try. If we
put an absurdly high ideal before us, it ceases to be an ideal
at all, because we have no idea of acting up to it. We never
reach it. But this does not shame us, because we never expected
to reach it. The whole thing was a sham from the first. On the
other hand, if we take a very low ideal, we shall never learn
humility, because we shall be always succeeding; only our success
will have no progress about it. A success in which it is not worth
our while to succeed is but a success in name. Considering the
shortness of life, such a success is almost a failure, because of
the waste of time which it implies. Perhaps what I want to find
fault with in modern piety may be expressed thus:—that it lives
on too low things by pretending to live on too high things. Does
this sound enigmatical? Then I must try to make it plainer still.
We intend to be moderate and discreet; that is, we do not intend
to be like the canonized saints. We intend to avoid mortal sin,
and not to be singular by any uncommon out-of-the-way pieties.

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But, notwithstanding this sage and very intelligible decision, we
intend at once to breathe the atmosphere oi the saints and to
imitate their liberty of spirit. We will at once soar above the
fatigues of meditation, and pray a more free and unshackled
prayer. We will dismiss the terrors of our recent conversion,
and at once participate in the calm of advanced holiness. We
will put aside hell as a motive, and serve God out of a disin­
terested love. We will throw off the degrading trammels of
custody of the senses, and be at once as Gertrude and Teresa
were, when they had spent years in that painful custody. There
is something vulgar and plebeian in ascetical books: we must
have the larger, more airy, less regimental system of the mystics.
Thus we make our piety a jumble. In truth, we are still in bed
with the fever of a raw and half-complete conversion; but we
will drink wine, and now are light-headed, and fancy we are
wheeling round mountain-pinnacles with the strong-winged
eagles of God. We are doing a tinker’s work with a watch­
maker’s tools. We might just as reasonably, in our natural lives,
dwell in this city of raw fogs and obstructed sunshine, perse­
cuted by our great English appetites, and yet resolve to go with­
out victuals and drink, as the angels do above.
But see what practically comes of all this. In order to be true
penitents, we must be continually dissatisfied with ourselves;
whereas in this state of things we are never dissatisfied with our­
selves, because we are living among unrealities. We certainly
have not succeeded in making such seraphic acts of love as St.
Teresa; but then we never expected to do so. Neither have
we failed in snubbing some low bad passion, such as envy and
gluttony, as a converted ticket-of-leave man does, because, to
say the truth, we never tried to do so. Thus it is that even
so-called pious people do not think themselves sinners, except
in a conventional sense. The theological generality is highly in­
offensive, and they do not object to be included under that. But,
as to any thing more individual, and so more humbling, it is
a mere matter of words with them, not a spiritual reality which
they have tasted inwardly. Yet they are quite unconscious of

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all this delusion, because they have confused the whole matter
by giving high names to low things. The real practical wisdom
is this:—to take a high standard, but to take low things as our
present working-tools, because they are best for doing the low
work, the far-off work, the initial work, which belongs to us
just now.
Of such importance does this matter seem to me, that the
whole of the rest of this Conference will be devoted to one
illustration of it. It is this:—we strain at motives which are so
far above us that they have no reality to us. We aim at disin­
terested love before we have half learned interested fear. We
leave the notions of rewards and punishments almost out of the
spiritual life. Heaven and hell are not cogent daily motives
with us. Nothing but experience would make us believe to
what an extent this amazing folly—for it is rather a folly than
a conceit—is perpetrated. In a word, one crying want of modern
spirituality is more of heaven and hell, as the natural and secure
means of getting more inward repentance.
But I am met on the threshold with all manner of objections
to the consideration of heaven and hell as habitual, homely,
familiar motive powers. As to heaven, we are told that all de­
tailed accounts of it must be so entirely fanciful. They who
think so have little idea how much ascertained theology there
is upon this subject, how much Scripture tells us, how much
the fathers have warrantably inferred, how much has been re­
vealed to the saints, or how much becomes plain to us in humble,
persistent prayer. Then, again, we are told heaven is too un­
worldly, that is, it is too unlike the life we are now leading,
or the earth we are now living on. It is so unlike as to be
practically powerless as a motive. This needs no refutation.
Again, it is said of heaven that it requires meditation before it
can be known, and that when a man has already acquired a habit
of meditation he will not need to be spurred on by the mer­
cenary consideration of heaven. We may answer, shortly, that
what was practical to David and St. Paul can hardly be too low
for us. But, it is rejoined, Isaias and St. Paul both say that eye

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has not seen, nor car heard, nor man's heart conceived, the joys
which make up the life of heaven; and therefore that we shall
only be losing ourselves in resplendent mysteries if we strive to
familiarize ourselves with details of heaven. I reply, Is the incom­
prehensibility of God admitted as a valid reason for not medi­
tating upon his perfections? It is added that a consideration of
such a purely-interested character is opposed to the modern spirit
which talks so grandly against low motives. Granted: the mod­
ern spirit does talk grandly; but does it act grandly? Is it not
the spirit of material prosperity, of railway-speculations, of com­
mercial frauds, of Stock-Exchange diplomacy? But, in truth, no
man ever began with making heaven a consideration of interest,
who did not soon come to find it a consideration of love; and
the thought of hell, which began with fear for ourselves, ends
in devotion to the sanctity of God. Finally, we are told that
such meditation is likely to lead to dreaminess. I reply that,
in the first place, I should like to meet with a few of these dreamy
people, first to be sure of the fact (which I venture to doubt), and
secondly to be sure I should condemn their dreaminess (which
I doubt also.) I can quite conceive a dreaminess which would
be better than that misty vagueness of religious convictions
which half-earnest men are so fond of just now.
But, if meditation on heaven is objectionable, any thing
like a studious scrutiny of hell is still more so. First of all, it is
exciting. Now, let me ask you,—and be honest with me,—Did
you ever try it and find it so yourself? You are only theorizing.
Exciting! I should say no;—rather that it was saddening, sober­
ing, subduing, snubbing; though, after all, if it was exciting,
it might perhaps be the very tiling for you. You probably need
exciting. Most people do, in the matter of religion. Secondly.
fastidiousness puts in its objection. As noises must be kept from
invalids, so all the coarse horrors of hell must be relegated to
the background, and not be allowed to intrude upon our calm­
ness or our gentility. They do no good. They only startle and
scare. Here, again, I ask. in return, Is it so certain that you
do not require startling? Is it quite beyond a doubt that a scaring

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would be a great help to your salvation? Kindness is cruel, as
I told you when we were speaking of weariness in well-doing,
to those who have taken opium, in order that it may be the
more really kind. It walks them about, when they piteously
entreat to lie down and sleep. It beats them on the soles of
their feet and on the palms of their hands. It chafes them until
they are scarified. What if modern spirituality has something
analogous to opium in it? In that case, a similar treatment of
the patient might be recommended.
But I am not contented with this answer. I would ask some
further questions; for this is an important matter. Who made
these "coarse horrors”? God. Then they must be worthy of
him, and in some way manifest his perfections? Assuredly.
Now, did he make them with the intention that they should be
concealed and unknown? Did he wish sinners to remain in
ignorance of them, that so the intensity of their punishment
should take them by surprise when they died? If so, why did
he reveal them? If so, why did our meek, gentle, loving Lord
talk of the undying worm, and the unqucnched fire, and the
outer darkness, and the weeping, and the wailing, and the gnash­
ing of teeth? Why did he repeat his words about the worm and
the fire, like the burden of a song, as if he wished to impress
them upon us? Why did he bid his sweet-tongued disciple St.
John to speak twice of the lake that burns with fire and brim­
stone? Surely he meant hell to be made much of, and diligently
pondered. The old spirituality, which put the Four Last Things
so prominently forward in its system, was more evangelical than
the fastidious system which proclaims the new principle of
keeping out of sight those frightening objects, of which the
Old Testament says * that he who remembers them shall never
sin, and the apostles, that knowing the terror of the Lord they
persuade men.f Is it really meant to assert that, in these polished
days, religion is to be allowed no office except to soothe? Who
can help being reminded of those Scriptures wherein, twice
• Ecc. vii. 40.
f 2 Cor. v. 11.

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over,· jeremias makes God to say, They healed the breach of
the daughter of my people disgracefully, saying, Peace, Peace,
and there was no peace; or, again, where Ezekiel speaks of the
spiritual directors of his day,f Woe to them that sew cushions
under every elbow, and make pillows for the heads of persons
of every age?
I grant that there is one thing in modern spirituality which
does tend to make a definite and detailed consideration of hell
unpractical. It is that its largeness, its laxity, and its opiates
make every one take for granted that he at least shall never go
there. It insures salvation to any one. It bids us cast out fear,
as if we already had perfect love. The question which God
leaves to hang in doubt it solves and settles, in order to annihi­
late the doubt because it is a painful and disturbing one. In a
prison, a hulk, a convict-settlement, or among the exceedingly
poor, we are at liberty to use hell. It is a vulgar subject, for
vulgar minds. Alas! if our languishing upper-class piety did but
so much as dream of the realities of grace which there are among
the exceedingly poor, it might blush for the child's play of devo­
tion with which it strives to gild its worldliness without sub­
duing self!
Once more: we are told to be chary in bringing hell for­
ward, inasmuch as in these days it angers men rather than cows
them, and is suggestive of temptations against the faith, and
of irritabilities against God’s dominion and sovereignty. But
at this rate we may go on keeping back first one part of God’s
revelation, and then another. Each age has some portion of
divine truth of which it is specially impatient. God knew all
this when he gave revelation to men. He does not bring forward
a dispensation every century. He does not give each generation
a Bible of its own. He does not condescend so far to the noisy
trivialities which strut across history and call themselves the
spirit of the age. Each century makes too much of itself, and
is mistaken both in thinking itself so very peculiar and in con•Jcr. vi. 14. viii. II.
fEzek. xiii. 18.

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sidering its peculiarities to be of much consequence. If men arc
rather irritated than frightened by the preaching of hell, it is
certainly an index that the gift of faith is less abundant or less
vigorous; but it is no argument against bringing forward a
part of divine truth which will find souls to save, even though
others may rebel. Our Lord foresaw that his Gospel would be a
stumbling-block, and St. Paul found that it looked like foolish­
ness to many. As I said before, God knew all this, and yet re­
vealed it; and in all the nineteen centuries of the Gospel there
has never been one heretofore whose spirituality was not fed
from the contemplation of the Four Last Things. As to these
temptations against the faith, which, like exacting invalids, claim
such a specialty of delicate forbearance, I get to respect them
less the older I grow. They abound in unreality. They are the
most unearnest of temptations. They are not unfrequently a
form of conceit in the young, and a mode of self-importance
in the middle-aged. I have so often been taken in by them
that I find it difficult to treat them as gravely as I wish to do,
or to give a very careful attention to them: they mean so much
less than they sound, and so much less than those who utter
them imagine. I see a real, good, solid, wholesome work to be
done in real, good, solid, Avholesome souls, by frequent medita­
tion on hell; and I cannot bring myself to sacrifice it to the
sickly insincerities and dishonest ignorances out of which so
large a proportion of temptations against the faith arise.
1 cannot, therefore, concede all that these various objections
imply. But 1 know that no private opinions are so obstinate
as those which concern practical religion; and therefore I am
willing to concede part for the present, in the hope of gaining
the whole from you hereafter. I should like to take the oldfashioned heaven and the old-fashioned hell, and put them in
their old places. But you would not go along with me. Let us,
therefore, make a compromise. You shall at least admit the
principle of finding a motive in rewards and punishments. You
shall stoop to be more mercenary and self-interested about your
own salvation. Meanwhile I will be content to bring heaven

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before you with the heaven left out,—that is, without the Beatific
Vision; as it seems that it is the theology of the Vision which is
considered so fanciful, and too unlike our present joys to excr
cise much of a practical influence over us. Most men, espo tally
if their family ties and domestic affections are very strong, at­
tempted to wish for an eternity of virtuous earth,—not a mere
everlasting Bagdad of the Arabian Nights, not a mere unending
“golden prime of the good Haroun Alraschid," but really an
eternity of virtuous earth, a soul of developed faculties, a finer
field of action, the negation of all kinds of unhappiness, and,
above all (the old penates), the well-known household gods,
gathering round him without danger of parting or growing
old. This I must heighten, modify, and scripturalize a little;
but still there shall be no inexplicable Vision, with its worldless
beauties and its unimaginable splendors. In like manner, in
the hell I put before you, there shall be no stress laid upon the
indescribable pain of losing God; and I will also leave out the
fire, the worm, the brimstone, the weeping, the wailing, and
the gnashing of teeth. This is the only heaven many so-called
good people care to reach; this is the only hell many so-called
good people think they are called upon to avoid. Moreover, it is
the only hell they will consent to look at, as in keeping with
the decencies and proprieties of polite life. I believe the cause
of inward repentance will gain even by the consideration of such
modified rewards and punishments as these,—a truly sober heaven
for unimaginative men, a truly inoffensive hell for the squearnishness of modern discretion!
Now let us come down from the crazy heights of detachment,
pure love, and other attainments of the saints, among which we
have been wandering to no purpose in our dreams, while in our
waking hours we have just eaten, and drunk, and spoken, and
slept, and enjoyed ourselves as we pleased, in the midst of modern
comforts. Let us look at our promised reward, at what David
calls God's retribution: and let us see if looking at it will not
hinder our fainting so often, and falling so far short in the
observance of the Ten Commandments and in the conscientious

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discharge of our relative duties. Leaving all mysteries aside,
what kind of a life shall we lead in heaven?
First of all, it is a life of inability to sin. Who is not bur­
dened by his proneness to evil? Who is not vexed with the
facilities of sin? It is true we love God poorly. Yet we love
him well enough to make it a positive pain to us to offend him.
Even in our present state of low attainments there is something
wonderfully attractive in a life of inability to sin. But it would
be much more so if we loved as the saints loved. It will be
much more so, by God's grace, before we have done. Then
think also of the painful ascetic vigilance which we are now
obliged to keep up. That will all be gone. There will be no
more possible discomforts of conscience. It will be the joy of
our life to be secure that all we do will be sweet music and
beautiful worship in the sight of God. But this is not all. Our
life will be one of facility in worship, of an endless uninter­
mitting inundation of spiritual sweetness. We read wonderful
things of this sweetness, in the lives of the saints. We have had
no such experience as theirs. But we have had, from time to
time, little tastes of sweetness; and what have they been like?
Now, let us be deliberate. I think that, without any exaggera­
tion, life has never given us any thing like them. They have
been few, and transient, and doubtless of the lowest kind. Yet
the joy of them was not a thing to put into words, it was so very,
ver)’ sweet. But heaven will be always that. Nol not so. Heaven,
the lowest heaven for the lowest of us, will be a life of spir­
itual sweetness far beyond what the highest saints have ever
experienced on earth. Now we have to strive, in order to pray.
It is hard to keep our thoughts up to God. But in heaven no
sort of effort will be required, but we shall enjoy a most de­
lightful facility in the most sublime and ecstatic contemplations,
with the keenest sensations of delight, of which the raptures of
the world’s most glorious artists, in the heat of their grand
creations, is but an unworthy figure. All this will be continuous
and unwearied, and yet ever gushing, as it were, afresh and anew
from the glad soul, accompanied with such magnificent expan­

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sions both of intellect and heart as are beyond our present
dreams, even when they are boldest and wildest.
Then think of the life of peace in heaven. Peace! let us
stay to suck the word as if it were a honeycomb. Peace! Peace'
how unlike life, how unlike earth, how unlike even the fatiguing
activities of grace! How we have longed for it all life through,
and long for it now, alas! more than we long for God! Imagina
tion can hardly picture to itself a life without trouble or dis­
trust, a life without a past to excite regrets, or a present to gall
with a yoke, or a future all dim and misty in its uncertainty
The sleep of happy honest labor is an image of this delicious
calm. The way in which land and sea, lakes and woodlands, as
if their display of morning beauty had tired them, seem to lie
down afresh and sleep in the noonday sun, is an emblem of
our heavenly rest. The starry skies at soundless midnight give
us a feeling which we cannot express, but which helps us to a
notion of the utter peace of that blissful Hereafter. Yet. after
all, it is like no other peace; for it is a participation in that
peace of God which overpasses human understanding. Can all
this be for us? Is it actually one of our possibilities? Nay. more
than that, nearer than that, likelier than that. An ocean of
heavenliest peace, bound in mysterious and glad tranquillity,
inviting us to sail upon its bosom, onward into brightness for­
ever and forever,—Oh, if this were all, if there were nothing
but this peace, is it not a more than sufficient reward for a
long life of austerest holiness?
Then, after the resurrection, there are the pleasures of sense.
Who can tell the powers of enjoyment which there will be in
the glorified bodies of the just, raised up in the likeness of
Jesus? In this world of Faith, the senses seem stronger than God.
because we do not yet see him. They lead all men captive with
a passionate captivity. Other pleasures, marvellous as they are.
exercise no such thraldom over our souls. The world goes wild
with the intoxicating enchantments of sensual pleasures. How
exquisite they are! Think of the delight of the eye in contem­
plating the beauties of nature, and expatiating over magnifiant

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scenery, or feeding itself on some fascinating work of art. Or,
again, reflect how the ear revels in sweet sounds and is entranced
with the spells of music. Hours pass, and the lapse of time is
all unheeded. The rest of the outer world has faded away, and
the soul hangs over the abysses of harmony, as if it would break
away from the body and drown itself in those deeps of wavy
sound forever. Or, again, think with what exquisite tranquil
encroachment the odors of sweet flowers and aromatic gums
steal over us, and dislodge cares and weariness, and revive the
drooping soul, and put a new life into us, and a life of such
peculiar spell-bound gentleness and love. All these things will
be in heaven. They will be there unintermittingly. Only they
will exist in infinitely higher degrees than are possible on earth.
Yet all this is but a little thing to say of the senses of the glorified
body. Countless kinds of new and unimaginable pleasures will
be opened out to us there, each one far surpassing those of
earth, pleasures worthy of the ecstasies of heaven, worthy of the
magnificence of God.
*
Moreover, we may not only give our­
selves up to them with unreserved abandonment as utterly sin­
less: we may do more. They are not only faultless, but they are
all of them fresh exercises of the grandest holiness. Was there
ever a fairy-tale like this?
But the sweetest of all earthly joys is love; and the life in
heaven is a life of love. Love, more than any human passion, has
controlled the destinies of the world. It has been historically the
greatest natural motive power on earth. Nay, what of natural
brightness each life of man on earth possesses,—whence comes it,
if not from love? What should we be at this moment, if we had
none to love? How all our light would become darkness for a
while, until our eyes could bear the light of God! Not to have
God to love—is hell. Yet the love of all passionate lovers upon
earth, thrown together, could not equal the love of the lowest
and the calmest soul in heaven. Eternity will give us new powers
of loving. We shall love with some great nameless love, of which
• Il cm des émotions tellement délicates et des objets si ravissants, qu’on ne
saurait les exprimer qu’avec des couleurs ou des sons.—Joubert, Pensées, ii. 2.

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parental, filial, conjugal, fraternal loves only represent some pertions or some elements. The jubilee of this immense power of
loving is inconceivable. The objects of our love will be multi
plied ten thousandfold; and yet the very multiplication of its
objects will only quicken the intensity of the love. Then consider
that the whole of this ocean of affection will always be poured
out gloriously in the immortal vehemence of a spotless love, unut­
terably blissful because unutterably holy.
If we were bidden to say which were the greater joy, to love,
or to be loved, it would be hard to give a judgment. We all
crave for love. Our whole nature expands under its influence.
It gives us new characters. It converts the deepest misery into
happiness, and it makes heroes out of cowards. So far as our
pleasure is concerned, there seem to be no limits to our capabili­
ties of receiving love. What an amount of it we can drink in
even now and here, while our souls are undeveloped, and our
lives narrow, and our hearts shallow, compared with what they
will be! Surely, then, in heaven we shall be able to absorb oceans
of love; and as surely there will be oceans to absorb. Each one
of the Blessed will love us with a might of love far beyond all
earthly love; and the Blessed are innumerable. The wide, strong,
fiery natures of the angels will be poured out upon us in love,—a
love which we cannot now define, but a love more deep, more
beautiful, and more possessing than human love; and of these
angels there are legions upon legions. Who can think of the
bliss of that love with which the sinless Mother of God will
endow us? No fond earthly mother, rapt in the exclusiveness of
an excessive love, ever hung over her first-born and her onlyborn with a fondness like to that which the Mother of Jesus
will testify to each of the Redeemed. Shall I dare to speak of
the Sacred Humanity, or of how we shall share in the love which
Peter once enjoyed upon the shores of Gennesareth, or John
when he leaned upon the Bosom in which the Sacred Heart was
beating? We have no measures for a bliss like that. Yet all this
put together, saints, angels, Mary, Human Heart of Jesus,—it is
not such a love as the one which still awaits us. Glorified though

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we shall be, we shall still be little, finite, weak; and yet out of
every Perfection of the immense, omnipotent, all knowing, allhols, incomprehensible, jubilant God there will flow into us
torrents of bewildering love in perpetual inundations, overpow­
ering us with thrills of a vast new life, taking away our breath,
and suspending all the faculties of our souls far, far up amid
unthought-of regions of light, in ecstasies of an incomparable
beatitude, like to the Beatitude of God Himself. We shall be
eternally swallowed up in eternal love.
The exceeding imperturbable contentment of heaven is an­
other feature of its life. All the joys, whether singly or col­
lectively, are more satisfying than we believed they could be.
Widened, deepened, strengthened as our natures are, each joy
fills our whole nature to the brim. Yet there is no satiety, even
while there is no craving. A delightful hunger for more, and
more, and always more, has possession of us; but it is only the
joyous, fresh, vital feeling of hunger, and in no wise a sense of
want. Each joy seems every moment as if it could not be surpassed,
and yet every moment it is surpassing itself, and every moment
being surpassed by some other joy. That immortality should be
able to endure such vehement pulsations of gladness will be an
eternal miracle. Eternal! this is the last feature of this blissful
life. But the word is rather music than meaning. Eternal! dis­
tracting thought, even when we meditate upon it the most undistractedly! It is a bliss which shall have no end, because it is
out of his bliss who had no beginning. It is a glory always in
excess yet always equable, immutable yet not monotonous, exhil­
arating yet immortally calm, multitudinous yet simple and un­
distracting, an incredible ecstasy incredibly new for an incredible
eternity.
What a life to lead! But is this heaven? I answer both Yes
and No. It is the poor part of heaven. It is the minor joys of
heaven. It is the secondary accompaniments of the real grand
joy. It is heaven with the heaven left out, heaven without the
Beatific Vision of our dear God. I have not even dwelt upon the
spiritual blessedness of heaven, because I should have had to

HEAVEN AND HELL

S19

imply the Vision. Yet what a life does even this faint, thin, weak,
overclouded, lower heaven present to our minds! If we wen- < on
tinually meditating upon it until we familiarized ourselves with
it, would it not marvellously draw us onward toward GodWould it not exorcise many a spirit of worldliness which now
dwells contentedly amidst the unrealities of our spiritual life?
Above all, would it not breed in us a far deeper abhorrence of
sin, a far more genuine spirit of inward repentance, a far more
abiding sorrow for our miserable, ungenerous past? Yet who are
they who have reached that fair haven of their peace? Those, and
those alone, who on earth took up the Cross, and took it up daily,
and so, and only so, and always so, have followed Christ.
Let us then turn to hell. It is fearful to think upon the union
of God’s power, wisdom, and justice in producing this world of
punishment, this wonderful, mysterious, and terrific part of crea­
tion, which is in its desolate mysteries as much beyond our con­
ception as the joys of heaven are in their resplendency. Neverthe­
less we will leave the Great Evil, the loss of God, out of view, and
all the horrible details of the cruelties of physical torture. Bating
all these things, what sort of a life will the life in hell be, after
the resurrection?
It will be a life where every act is the most hateful and abom­
inable wickedness. We shall understand sin better then, and be
able more truly to fathom the abysses of its malice. Yet every
thought we think, every word we speak, every action we per
form, we shall be committing sin, and committing it with a
guilty shame and terror which will be insupportable. Even the
sins of others will be excruciating tortures to us. If we were
awakened at midnight in our houses, and held by strong men
in the lone darkness, while their accomplices were murdering
before our eyes some one whom we loved most tenderly, how
terrible, how desperate, would the torture bel Our reason would
be not unlikely to give way. The agonizing moan, the wild in­
quiring eye so glazily fixed upon us, the pale contracted face of
the sufferer, the fiendlike gestures of the murderers, and the
staring red stain everywhere,—these would haunt us all through

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life. Yet I suppose the sight of the hideous wickedness of hell
must be incomparably more horrible than this. Nevertheless amid
it all we have to live, as best we may, eternally, drowned in
shame and misery and hopelessness.
It is a life—for I will speak of it in the present tense—in which
all possible kinds of bodily agony are united in the highest
degree. Think of the countless diseases to which men may be
subjected. Some of them kill with sheer pain in a few moments.
Every limb, every deeply-hidden nerve, every cell which life in­
forms, has a cluster of torments belonging to itself. Think only
of what the head, the teeth, the ears, the eyes, can suffer! Then
consider all the variety of wounds which may be inflicted upon
our wincing flesh and our tingling bone, whether upon a field of
battle or in surgical operations. Consider also the exquisite
ingenuity of the tortures of medieval prisons, or of the inhuman
contrivances from which the criminal law of England and Scot­
land has not been free till quite late in modern history. All
these, always at the highest stretch, always up to the point of
the intolerable and beyond it,—such is the life of hell. Nay, it
is not such; for, besides these, there will be an excess of new,
undreamed-of tortures of our flesh, which has lost even the poor
mercy of being able to lie down and die.
This is terrible; but to this you must add the mental agonies
of hell. Envy, despair, spite, rage, gloom, sadness, vexation,
wounded sensitiveness, weariness, loathing, oppression, grief, de­
jection, wildness, bitterness,—all these are there, in all their kinds,
and in unspeakable intensity. Think of a violent access of sor­
row now; think of the rawness of lacerated feeling; think of a
day’s leaden load of dark oppression. Now, without pause, with­
out alleviation, without even vicissitude of suffering, here is a
blank, huge, superincumbent eternity of all these things, with
an undistracting multiplicity of wretchedness far beyond the
worst degrees they could ever reach on earth. But earth does
not half exhaust the mind’s power to suffer, either in degree or
kind. The life in hell will disclose to us indescribable novelties
of unhappiness. Our vast immortal spirits will become alive with

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misery and woe. New faculties of wretchedness will spring to
life. We shall be forever discovering new worlds of intensest sor­
row, of most intolerable anguish. But is this to be endured? It
must be endured. We must lie there in disconsolate helplessness
forever. Our minds have lost also their last poor mercy of being
able to go mad.
The life in hell is a life, also, from which there is a total
absence of sympathy and love. This is an easy thing to say;
but it is not easy to penetrate into its significance. The mind
loses itself when it attempts to traverse an interminable desert
eternity, where no florvers of love, nor even their similitude, can
grow. Shall a kind voice never speak to us more? Shall a kind
eye never look at us again? Shall even the hearts of the Blessed
in heaven, who loved us once with such surpassing tenderness,
only beat the more happily because the justice of God is done
upon us forlorn impenitent offenders? Who can live without
love? I know not: I cannot think how it can be: but I know
that we must live without it there. Nay, more than this: hatred
will be all around us. Every lost soul, every lost demon, will
hate us, hate us individually with a concentration of rage and
hatred which it is terrible to think of. There is something in­
supportable in being hated, something maddening. Even when
we are hated—though few men are really hated with a genuine
hatred—by only one man, and unjustly, and with love all round
us, coming in from every other point of the compass, see how
we run to God, and cling to him, that he may make up to us
what we are suffering, and take our part, as a just Father, against
our unjust brother! But in hell we shall be inundated with
scorn and rage and hatred, and we shall one while cower in our
shame as knowing how richly a confirmed enemy of God merits
even more than this, and then another while we shall rave with
equal scorn and rage and hatred against every one else, even while
we are being crushed by the hollow, vacant impotence of our
unutterable fury. A life of universal hatred, sinking ever lower
and lower in the depths of torturing shame, with screams of rage
which are not madness, but a concentrated intelligent misery,—

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this is the life of hell, the life that follows upon an over-estimate
of earthly love.
The life in hell is also a life of terror. Fear may be reckoned
as one of the greatest tortures to which human nature can be
submitted. It "betrays the succors of reason” without bringing
also the unconsciousness of insanity. It is hard to say whether
the visible approach of some great evil, or the agony of an un­
certain evil, or the distracted fright of a present evil, may be
considered as the worst to bear. Ordinarily speaking, life is not
greatly tortured by fear. It is for the most part but an occa­
sional visitant, and an extremely transient one. In truth, life
would be hardly liveable if it were not so. Yet how its visits
burn themselves in upon the memory as unforgotten dates! But
the whole life in hell is a life of fear, and of such exceeding
fear as is not known on earth. It is a commingling of all unholy
fears, and a commingling of them in the highest possible degree,
and an addition to them of new fears of such terrific aspect and
gigantic features as shall be in proportion with the fearfulness
of hell. Our whole nature, keen, sensitive, immortal as it has
become, will be saturated with fear. Its very pulses will be start­
ings and quakings of horror, horror never removed but ever new,
to which we never grow accustomed, but which will strangely
magnify itself to all eternity. We can only picture our feelings
by comparing them to the torture of a suffocated scream when
we fear to betray ourselves, or to a terrified death-bed without
death coming. One feature of hell will enable us to bring this
home to ourselves. We shall be in the hands of devils, quailing
under the cruel manipulation of those hideous, incorporeal, shape­
less, formless, gigantic spirits. They will do what they will with
us. It is their office to distress, to rack, to torture us, with a vin­
dictive cruelty and a demoniacal skill of which we can form no
conception. Mighty creatures! and yet their magnitude, their fury,
their oppressive fiery natures, cannot crush the wretched life out
of us, their trembling, awe-struck victims. To be thrown down
amidst a herd of wild horses, to be confined for a night with an
unchained frenzied murderer in his condemned cell, to be locked

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in bound hand and foot, amidst a crowded ward of howling
maniacs, all loose and free,—what light and easy endurances
these would be, compared with those wild panics of tenor in
hell, a terror which can neither escape, nor hide itself, nor die!
It is a life also without pauses, diminutions, or vicissitudes. No
angel ever wings his way thither on an errand of consolation.
All the united eloquence of hell could not bring one drop of
water from earth's thousand fountains, to cool the torture for
one lightning’s flash of time. All is unintermitting. Our nature
has become many-sided to bear its million agonies which are
separately gnawing at it. It has become stronger than adamant,
that it may not be shivered in pieces by the colossal tortures of
those appalling monstrous executioners. To this unintennittingness should be added a threefold anguish, which may be consid­
ered as the permanent disposition of the sufferers in hell. There
is the anguish of impotence. We can do nothing. We are tied
down. We cannot stir. We cannot even roam and wander over
the lurid regions round about us. We cannot use any activities
which might distract us, or put forth any energies which might
give us occupation. We are helpless in a desperate intelligent
paralysis. We cannot even toss to and fro, or turn from side
to side. We are fastened to our place. Look at it. We shall never
move from it any more,—never, never, never. It is the anguish
of immobility, under which we are helpless without being passive.
It seems a cruelty, enough to drive us wild to think of. Yet to
this impotence we must add also an intolerable restlessness, but
an unshifting restlessness. Every limb will throb with uneasiness,
every nerve vibrate with restlessness. It will peck at the heart as a
vulture pecks at its prey. The soul will thrill with unrest, until it
makes every sense tingle, as with burning needles, because of the
unbearable torture of this restlessness. Every moment, even an
immortal soul, even a deathless body, will feel as if this nervous
and mental agony of restlessness could be borne no longer; and
yet it must be borne still, and it must be borne forever, and it
must be borne without its ever becoming easier to bear. Oh,
that scared tumult of eternal sleeplessness! who shall endure it?

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Yet a third agony adds itself to the other two, growing out of
them, out of the impotence and the restlessness. It is the misery
of an impatience which has no hope, an impatience which can
only be a spirit of blasphemy, a loathsome burning abhorrence
of God, which the lost creature is obliged himself to abhor, even
while he inwardly raves with the fever of it. We cannot fancy
what it is not to hope. We cannot put into form and figure
in our own minds the unimaginable blackness of a soul from
which all expectation, all prospect, all future, has been removed.
Its only future is the everlastingness of its intolerable present.
We have sometimes a flash of pain, which just darts over the limit
of what is bearable, and we utter a peculiar shriek. It is heard
on the battle-field when the diaphragm is stabbed through. It
occasionally accompanies the crash of apoplexy. It is the body’s
uttermost cry. Conceive an inward life of a deep broad soul, which
shall be forever in itself the spiritual reality of which that cor­
poral cry is the most inadequate expression.
Yet this is the bright side of belli How bitter the words
sound! yet it is not bitterness which prompts them, but the in­
tense fear which pierces through me like splinters of ice at this
moment. This is hell with the hell left out, the crowning woe,
the loss of God. This is hell without the fire, and the brimstone,
and the darkness, and the discordant noises, and the weeping,
and the wailing, and the gnashing of teeth. It is the minor ad­
juncts of hell, the torments to be thought least of, the miseries
which come nearest to being bearable. Could we persistently
meditate on all this, and still be what we are? Are we quite clear
that this will not be our eternal destiny? Is there any thing in
life to be compared for importance with the barest possibility
of this? Are our lives at all a sensible effort to avoid this? What
is our inward repentance like? What are our mortifications, our
tears, our cries, our alms, our unworldlinesses? How do we stand
toward our past sins in the way of penance and contrition? How
are we dealing with our present temptations and occasions? What
pains are we taking about our resolutions for the future? Even

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at the best, it is not clear of any one of us that we shall escape hell.
To all of us hell is an imminent possibility. The saints tell us
that they who feel surest of not going there are the likeliest to
be mistaken. Have we an attachment to any sin, however venial?
Are we bargaining with God, and trying to evade strictness? These
are the beginnings of hell already in our souls. But which of
the dead have avoided hell? Those, and those only, who on
earth took up their Cross, and took it up daily, and so, and
only so, and always so, have followed Christ.
Now, dear blood-ransomed souls of men! how does modem
spirituality look in the soft light of heaven and in the grim
light of hell? I have put before you but thin shadows of their
lesser realities. I did not think you would bear more. But I
hope these thin shadows will lead you on, until the old-fashioned
heaven and the old-fashioned hell come into you and take their
right place in your spiritual life. By the light of these things,
then, what judgment shall we pass on much of the popular spir­
ituality of the day? On that jumble of theatres, operas, balls,
shows, pageants, and expensivenesses, with churches, hospitals, con­
fessionals, altar-steps, penances, and charitable committees,—on
that neglect of the relative duties of our stations to parents, to
servants, to children, for church-functions and fancy devotions,—
on that favorite confusion of the purgative, illuminative, and
unitive ways of holiness,—on the lax doctrine of vocations,—on
that oblivion of the old-fashioned capital sins, such as envy and
idleness,—on that fastidiousness which is the secret fuel of im­
purity,—on that eternal gossip of direction and criticism of
sermons,—on that impatience of dry pains-taking meditation,—
on that appetite for liberty of spirit, and a vain imitation of the
saints,—on that hankering after Counsels without heeding the
interior and spiritual observance of the Commandments,—on
that inordinate craving for inward peace at any cost,—on all this
what judgment shall we pass? Meditate on heaven and hell, and
then you will be fitting judges. I do not ask you to do so because
it will make you happier. It will make you happier, because it

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will make you holier. But I want you to do so because, gently
and in time, solidly yet without violence, it will lead you to do
braver penance for your sins, and to repent of them with a more
inward repentance; and this inward repentance is the grand
necessity of the day. I shall be more content with your spir­
ituality when you can say to God, with David,
*
in unabashed sim­
plicity, I have inclined my heart to do thy justifications forever,—
because of the reward.
Pi. cxviii. 112.

ALL MEN HAVE A SPECIAL VOCATION

There are some thoughts which, however old, are always new,
either because they are so broad that we never learn them thor­
oughly, or because they are so intensely practical that their
interest is always fresh. Such thoughts are, for the most part,
very common thoughts. They are so large and so tall that they
are obvious to all capacities, like the huge mountains which are
visible from the plain. They require no peculiar keenness of
vision; for no one can fail to perceive them. Now, among such
thoughts we may reckon that thought which all children know,—
that God loves every one of us with a special love. It is one of
the commonest thoughts in religion, and yet so amazing that
when we come to look steadily at it we come nigh to not believing
it. God does not look at us merely in the mass and multitude. As
we shall stand single and alone before his judgment-seat, so do
we stand, so have we always stood, single and alone before the
eye of his boundless love. This is what each man has to believe
of himself. From all eternity God determined to create me, not
simply a fresh man, not simply the son of my parents, a new
inhabitant of my native country, an additional soul to do the
work of the nineteenth century. But he resolved to create me
such as I am, die me by which I am myself, the me by which other
people know me, a different me from any that have ever been
created hitherto and from any that will be created hereafter. Un­
numbered possible creatures, which God saw when he chose me,
he left to remain in their nothingness. They might have wor­
shipped him a thousand times better than I shall ever worship him.
They might have been higher, holier, and more interesting. But
there was some nameless thing about me which he preferred.
His love fastened on something special in me. It was just me,
with my individual peculiarities, die size, shape, fashion. and
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way of my particular, single, unmated soul, which in the calm­
ness of his eternal predilection drew him to create me. I should
not believe that God was God, if I did not believe this. This is
the profession of faith which each of us should make in our
hearts. I cannot tell how men endure life, who do not profess
this faith in the Creator’s special love.
Moreover, we may go on to say, this specialty never leaves me.
God’s preservation of me is in truth a continual new creation. In
some respects it is almost more wonderful, and more special, than
my original creation. Other men are constantly dying. I am
singled out to be kept alive. Half mankind die before they come
to die end of boyhood: I am selected for the maturity of age.
Must I not infer then, also, that in the sight of God I stand in
some peculiar relation to the whole of his great world? I clearly
belong to a plan, and have a place to fill, and a work to do, all
which are special; and only my specialty, my particular me, can
fill this place or do this work. This is obvious, and yet it is
overwhelming also. I almost sink under the weight of the thought.
It seems to bring God so very near. Yet on looking back over
my past life, and considering it especially in reference to my
present position, I see that, while I have had the most perfect
liberty, I have really had very little to do with bringing things
about, or settling myself in my present position. It has been done
over my head, and outside of me, with exceeding suavity, and yet
at the same time with exceeding force. I have had very little
practical influence over my own destiny. This is one side of the
question. But then there is another side to it. If I am to be
in a special place in God’s plan, and do a special work for him,
and no other place is my place, and no other work is my work,
then I have a tremendous power over myself, a power the consé­
quences of which may not only easily be everlasting, but as a
matter of fact must positively be everlasting. I come in sight of
the most overshadowing responsibilities. Responsibility is the
definition of life. It is the inseparable characteristic of my posi­
tion as a creature. I am constantly moving, constantly acting. I
move impulsively, and I work negligently. What then becomes

all men have a special vocation

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of my special place and of my special work? From this point of
view life looks very serious. Surely we must trust God with a
huge confidence, or we shall be frightened into going and burying
our talent in the earth!
Now, what is it about us which was the prime object of God s
love when he chose us for creation? It cannot be put into words.
It is just all that which makes us ourselves, and distinguishes us
from all other selves whether created or possible. It was pre­
cisely our particularity which God so tenderly and so intensely
loved. The sweetness of this thought is almost unbearable. I draw
in my breath as if to convince myself that I am alive. I lay my
hand on my heart to feel its beating. First I smile, and then I
weep. I hardly know what to do with myself, I am so delight­
fully entangled in the meshes of divine love. This specialty of
God’s love startles me more and more, the longer I familiarize
myself with it. I am obliged to make acts of faith in God, acts
of faith in all his different perfections, but the greatest act of
faith in this specialty of his love of me, of me such as I am,
such as I know myself to be, even such as he knows me to be.
Deeper and perpetually deeper, taller and perpetually taller, the
shadow of my responsibilities is cast upon me. But it is not a
dark shadow, not depressing, but inspiring, sobering, but not
paralyzing. I see plainly that my love of God must be as special
as God’s love of me. I must love him out of my special place,
love him through my special work; and what is that place, what
is that work? Is not this precisely the question of questions?
Whatever God does, teaches us lessons. Each one of his
works has many significancies. All possible interpretations are
true, so long as they be worthy of his majesty. At the very outset
the specialty of God's love of us teaches us some lessons, which
we must at least enumerate before we go further. The first is
that there is no service of God except that of love. We must
love him with a hopeless love, despairing of our ever being able
to love him as we ought. We must love him with a brave love,
which indeed calculates grace, but does not calculate difficulties.
We must love him with a swift, pushing love, which, like a tree,

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is fastening itself deeper in the ground with its roots, while it
is also climbing higher into the blue sky. God's love of us is
so bewilderingly great, and so bewilderingly special, that we
must love him with a glorious love, to be worthy of the name
of love at all. But this specialty of his love also teaches us to be
afraid. Our love will be no worse for this, but all the better.
It is indeed a fearful thing to have to do with God. It is fearful
to think how much he expects of us, and yet with what justice
he expects so much. It is fearful to think of the sea of grace
around us, which so much love, and so special a love, implies. It is
fearful to think how easily we may slide out of our place, how
easily we may miss of our work; and then whither shall we fall?
Truly, to wander away from God eternally seems a cheeringly
hard thing to do when we think of his much love of us, and
yet almost inevitably easy when we think of his special love of us.
That specialty which makes his love so sweet is just the thing
which makes our responsibilities so terrible. Even human love
is half fear, and more than half fear when it is more than com­
monly sweet. What, then, shall we say of divine love? At least
this, that he who loves most fears most.
Furthermore, the specialty of God’s love impresses upon us
the necessity of slowness in our dealings with him. It must not
be the slowness of unwilling service or of frightened service.
It must be a prompt and generous slowness; only it must be
slow. There is no hurry in eternal things. We must indeed run
to do the Commandments of God; but we must run cautiously,
and look about us while we run. A man must move very cau­
tiously among complicated machinery, especially machinery which
is as swift and powerful as it is complicated. If we are not slow
we shall miss things. We shall miss seeing God, and miss hearing
him also. We shall not do our work well, and we shall leave the
places, where we have worked, littered and untidy. We can
hardly be reverent unless we are slow. We cannot speak, even
to utter acts of love, when we have run ourselves out of breath
by our precipitation. We have to do with a God who paused
tranquilly for four thousand years, when the world was falling

all men have a special vocation

531

into the dismal abyss for want of Jesus. What is special needs
to be exact; and all accuracy takes time. So, in this sense, we
must in the spiritual life let God do the swiftness, and we will
do the slowness. Then, once more, the specialty of God's love
teaches us that we must confine and concentrate ourselves very
determinately on our own place and work, which that love has
assigned to us. In the matter of God's service, generals are good
for nothing. They are universally inefficacious. We must come
to particulars, and we must fasten ourselves on particulars and
rest in them. Then of course it is of the utmost consequence to
us that we should fasten on the right particulars. In other words,
it is almost of as much importance in the spiritual life to know
what to leave undone as to know what to do. Indetermination has
ruined as many good beginnings as either resistance or negli­
gence. It is well to pause, and think of that.
What is our next step? We have seen the specialty of God s
love for us, and the lessons which it teaches us. Now let us look
at the spiritual life in the light of this single but all-embracing
truth. The view we generally take of it is this. There are multi­
tudes of people, who by the help of the sacraments keep their
heads above water, clear themselves of mortal sin, and save their
souls, through the amazing compassion of God. In reality the
fréquentation of the sacraments, along with what that fréquenta­
tion implies, is a spiritual life. For it is a life of grace, not of
nature. It could not end in salvation were it otherwise. But we
generally use the term “spiritual life" in a more restricted sense.
We mean by it an aiming at devotion, at the evangelical counsels,
or at the perfect interior keeping of the Commandments. Of per­
sons so aiming we think that a small number of them have what
we call vocations. These vocations are of three sorts. They are
either to the ecclesiastical state, or to the religious life, or to
some very special life of inward contemplation or of outward
philanthropy in the world; and these last we account to be very
rare. The remaining vast multitude of spiritual persons have no
vocations. They simply remain in die world, sanctifying them­
selves in their proper place and by their proper work. Certainly

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this division expresses a truth, but it expresses it very badly,—so
badly as to lead us to a false view. The truth is,—and it follows
from the specialty of God's love of us,—every man has a distinct
vocation, a vocation of his own, a vocation which may be like
other men's vocations, but is never precisely the same. For con­
venience’ sake, we may class people in the spiritual life according
to their devotions, or outward position, or peculiar work. But
these divisions do not include every thing. No two of us are alike.
God saw a specialty in us eternally. It was this specialty which
he loved. It is this specialty which decides our place and our
work in his creation.
Thus, then, we have each of us a vocation of our own. No man
or woman on earth has the same. There has never been precisely
the same vocation since the world began. It will never be pre­
cisely repeated up to the day of doom. No matter what our posi­
tion in life may be, no matter how ordinary our duties may seem,
no matter how commonplace the aspect of our circumstances,
we each of us have this grand secret vocation. We are, in a
certain inaccurate and loving sense, necessary to God. He wants
us in order to carry out his plans, and nobody else will quite do
instead of us. Here is our dignity; here also is our duty. This is
the deep fountain of our love; this also is the deep fountain of
our fear. Our vocation is as real a vocation, as distinctive a voca­
tion, as the vocation to be a Carmelite or an Ursuline, a Fran­
ciscan or an Oratorian. It is less visible, less easy to describe. We
may be less certain about it, and it is far harder to know. But
there it is, a regular and complete vocation. If this be true,
all spiritual life is simply working at random, if it is not based
either upon the knowledge of this vocation or upon the endeavor
to find it out. That vocation, whatever it is, is God's will about
us. He may never intend us to know it fully. But he intends
that we should try to find it out. Holiness consists simply of two
things, two endeavors,—the endeavor to know God's will, and
the endeavor to do it when we know it.
Now, have we considered this truth practically and seriously?
Is it always before us? I do not say, Do we, each of us, know

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our own vocation? for that I hold to be a matter of quite tec·
ondary importance, though doubtless of importance. The tense
of our vocation, the feeling that we have a vocation, peculiar,
special, individual, unmated in the whole world, the faith that
this vocation is one of pure love, that it Rows straight out of our
eternal predestination, that it is at the mercy of our own free
wills, that all the endless grace which comes to us comes because
of that vocation, and that it lies around us either as a revealed or
unrevealed revelation, an interpreted or an uninterpreted vision,—
this is truly the important matter. We know neither God, nor
ourselves, nor others, until we have this knowledge. It puts
others into their true positions toward God, and ourselves into
our true positions toward them. It makes us first to feel that
we are God's property, and then to act as his property and not
our own. It also makes God our property. He is not only our
God, but our own God. He is really ours in a way in which he is
no one else's, through his special love of us separately. He is not
distant. He is not common property between all his creatures,
though he is most truly so. His arms are not round all men, and
round us among them, though verily his arms are so round us.
But his arms are round our own selves. We have him all to
ourselves, in secret caresses, in private embraces, in a privileged
exclusiveness. He is the God of our own souls,—simply, sweetly,
truly, our own private God. I am always pleased with St. Jane
Frances de Chantal for being so sharp with the pedantic lady
who said that, for fear of selfishness, and attachment, and a want
of holy property, she would only call God God, not her God,
her own God.
*
The Blessed mother would not hear of it. She
had been brought up in a different school. We must be of her
school. We know of no such wiredrawn distinctions. We are
greedy of God, and will have him all to ourselves, leaving his
• In like manner we read of the Jesuit F. Giulio Faiio. the author of the famous
treatise on Mortification, that when he WU dung. and. taking the Crucifix in hu
hand had said the words, "I wish to live. I long to die. in the arms of tmr Lord,
he keot repeating over and over again the word mv. ..nd seemed, savs the writer in
the Menologio. as if he were nuking in ««■ tHicfa· liquid-SfenologK G»

najo, 5.

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infinite wisdom and power to manage how to be exclusively every
body else’s God, while we have the exclusive enjoyment of him
for ourselves.
Nowhere do we find God so infallibly as in the special voca­
tion which he gives us. But this outward providence docs not
altogether settle what this vocation is. It settles much, but it does
not settle all. We have an inward life to live as well as an out­
ward one, and the inward completes the outward, fulfils the out­
ward. The inward life more often interprets the outward than
the outward the inward. It certainly is an overwhelming truth,
and yet a cheering one, that we have all got a special vocation
from God. Indeed, I should say much more about it, and show
how astonishing it is from every point of view, if it were not
just now my business rather to explain matters than either to
excite your feelings or to give way to my own. But there is an­
other truth lying close to it, which is almost as astonishing.
It is this. We are continually receiving special revelations from
God. We live in the midst of revelations. We are almost always
inspired,—not merely now and then, but almost always, and in
a very true and peculiar sense. In other words, we are continually
receiving what we ordinarily call inspirations. There is hardly
ever a complete silence in our souls. God is whispering to us
wellnigh incessantly. Whenever the sounds of the world die out
in the soul or sink low, then we hear these whisperings of God.
This is so invariable that we come to believe he is always whis­
pering to us, only that we do not always hear, because of the
hurry, noise, and distraction which life causes as it rushes on.
Thus he is forever telling us his Will, not only by his Church and
in his Word, but privately. These inspirations are like private
revelations to us. There are, as you may suppose, many intricate
and difficult questions connected with these inspirations. This is
not the time to enter upon these. 1 only want to put them before
you at present as part of the specialty of God’s love toward each
of us separately. Moreover, these inspirations are immediately
connected with our special vocation, whatever it may be. They
are given either to show us what our special vocation is, or to

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335

enable us to do our special work, even if we are not to know
that it is our special work. They are to our vocation what the
sun and rain are to the seed or the growing plant. They furtha
God's special design upon us, and enable it to develop itself.
Holiness of the highest kind is distinguished by the quickness
and fineness of its ear in detecting these inspirations, and by its
promptitude and docility in following them.
If we have rightly estimated the importance of our special
vocation, we shall set a due value on these inspirations. But as
the vocation is itself a source of holy and salutary fear, so likewise
are the inspirations. God ever speaking, the world ever making
us deaf,—this is something like a description of our state. The
very delicacy of the operations of grace makes us fear, because
it makes our correspondence to them a matter of such nicety.
God and the soul form a world by themselves; and unless we
live an inward life in this secret world, these operations of grace
will escape unperceived. We cannot doubt but that, even with
our utmost diligence, we are continually missing divine oppor­
tunities in our souls. We must strain our ears to catch our inspira­
tions, or they will sound only like an inarticulate murmur, even
when they are not inaudible altogether. Without an inward life
we have no chance of discerning them. Not unfrequently they
require other ears than our own to hear them; very frequently
other minds than our own to understand them. This is part of the
necessity of spiritual direction. We have to take some one else
into the councils of our inward life to protect God against our­
selves, to guarantee him, as far as may be, against the wrong
which self-love is always ready to do him.
Many of these private inspirations solicit us, plead with us,
hang about us, repeat their invitations, for weeks, months, or
even years. Others come and ask, wait a while, and go away
again, and return after a long interval. Others come and ask,
and hardly wait for an answer, but pass on like a flash of light­
ning. Some of those which go come back, some do not; of those
which come back, some return soon, some late, some once more,
some repeatedly. Some explain themselves, some simply present

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themselves to be welcomed, and, if not admitted, depart to return
no more. You see they are numberless and very various. Yet each
of them is a glorious gift, each a divine operation, each an incom­
prehensible compassion, each a private revelation, each a distinct
reinforcement of that special design for which God in his creative
love fashioned us in his own mind from all eternity, when he
might have made what seems even to our self-love a better choice.
It makes us nervous to think of the multitude of these inspira­
tions, their apparent waywardness, their divine susceptibility, and
their extreme rapidity. We are almost tempted to despair in the
midst of our own inward world of divine things, amidst all this
bewildering apparel of sanctifying love. Yet, even in the case of
the most momentary of our inspirations, our sanctity, possibly in
some indirect way our very salvation, may be mixed up with our
docility to them. It is to them at any rate that we are to look
both for a disclosure of our special vocation, and for light and
fortitude to work it out successfully and in the way of God's Will.
It will be part of our amazement, when we are judged, to see
what a life of inspirations we have had, and what immense holiness
we might have gained with comparative facility.
We must never, then, disjoin our inspirations from our voca­
tion. It is the two together which contain the specialty of God’s
love of us. But I must speak now of our knowledge of our own
secret vocation. I most fully admit that it is a very great advan­
tage to us that we should know it. In fact, the knowledge of it
is one of our most influential graces. Nevertheless comparatively
few men do know it. Of the multitudes who do not know it,
some half know it, some suspect it, some are half right and half
wrong in their idea of it, and some have not the remotest notion
of it; and there are most excellent persons in every one of these
classes. Then, again, of those who do not know it, some remain
unknowing through their own fault, and some because God keeps
them in ignorance. In the case of these last we must suppose that
they are kept in ignorance for their own good, and that their
ignorance is itself an operation of grace and an act of divine
love. There may be reasons peculiar to themselves for ignorance

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being better for them than knowledge. Their vocation may be
of such a nature that there might be certain spiritual dangers in
their knowing it, or their knowledge of it might go far toward
frustrating its fulfilment, or it may involve so much suffering that
nature would shrink from it if it foresaw it. It must be enough
for them to be sure that their being kept in ignorance is a work
of divine love. At any rate, we must all guard against two tempta­
tions in the matter. The first is a temptation to discouragement
because we cannot find out what our special vocation is, or what
special attraction of the Holy Ghost is implied in our inspirations.
We must remember that our very ignorance may be part of our
vocation, and that our inspirations may purposely avoid illuminat­
ing that portion of God’s will about us. Many men of eminent
sanctity have to live in their own souls as in the profound magnifi­
cence of a cavern, in which they see partly by the strange reflec
tions of those stalactites which get light we know not whence and
almost seem to create it, and partly by their eyes becoming habitu­
ated to the gloom and learning supernaturally to see in darkness.
All discouragement is based on the thought that God loves us less
than we thought he did. We may be confident that this ignorance,
if it is from him, is no proof of the littleness of his love, but
rather of its grandeur, and certainly of its specialty, which, after
all, is the sweetest thing in love.
The second temptation is to think that God is laying snares
for us. There is often a great appearance of this in the spiritual
life. An impatient and distrustful heart fancies it detects God
circumventing the free will which he does not allow himself abso­
lutely to overrule. The very vastness of our grace makes it present
the appearance of an entanglement. Not unfrequently also we
separate ourselves insensibly from God, and glide into a current
of self-will, which silently and swiftly bears us far away. Then
God mercifully disposes outward events with fitting inward graces,
and with gentle mastery brings our lives back to the point at
which we left him. This is in reality a most beautiful ingenuity
of compassion, and often an answer to our frightened prayers.
But it has a look of interfering with our free will; and in those

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unloving moods when we take every thing in a wrong way we
may come to suspect the goodness of God. His love suffers in
its credit, because it has been affectionate enough to resort to
artifice, not for its own sake, but for ours. Moreover, God always
remains essentially unknown. He who commits himself to God
does not know to how much he commits himself, nor to what.
When we follow our inspirations we always come to give him
more than we promised. Still, our promise was a promise, and
not a bargain. The grace of generosity consists in its ignorance
of the entire sacrifices it has made inevitable to itself by its loving
trust in God. When our heart is hot with love, the sight of these
deceivings of divine love fills us with rapture. But in cold times
die same sight makes us suspect God and resolve to be cautious
with him. Yet we should be greatly surprised if he was to put
before us the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of protestations we
have made to him in years past, that he was to do what he liked
with us, that we freely gave him all we were, all we had, and
all we were capable of suffering, that we desired to have no will
but his, and that we only wanted one thing,—which was to love
him more, and we did not care what it cost us. You see he has
done no more than take us at our word; and we must not care
too much about the petulance of our cold seasons. They were
certainly great prayers to make, but we were sincere when we
made them, and, if it had to come over again, we should commit
ourselves once more just in the same way. Nay, sometimes it
seems as if we were unfairly entrapped by an equivocation in spir­
itual matters. We have promised in one sense, and God has
chosen to understand it in another. Oh, these are grand timesl
They ought to put us into great spirits; for they are divine famili­
arities, and unusual graces are latent all around. Presently, if only
we do not stand on our rights, we shall be raised we know not
whither, but somewhere far nearer him than we are now. Further­
more, we may be sure that a time of divine ignorance has fewer
snares than a time of divine light. Where God is concerned, we
may walk with more unhesitating confidence in the dark than in
the light. There is no snare in God.

all men have a special vocation

539

Hence it is that I have so often repeated myself to you about
the necessity of having a filial feeling toward God. I often see
that you know what is coming when I begin on that subject. You
smile, because it is already so familiar to you; for a sermon, like
a song, may have a burden and refrain, and half a dozen burdens
may do duty for a hundred songs. But really any thing like an
interior life is out of the question without this filial feeling
toward God. You must believe, you must trust. You must walk
rather by your own faith about him than by his manifestations
of himself. We creatures are in no condition to judge of him
by appearance. But our faith comprehends him. He is our Father.
That is his grand relation to us. Any acts of his which seem to
contradict that can only be transcendental proofc of it The
problem of the world bums in some men's hearts like an uneasy
fire. But if their whole hearts were on fire with the love of God,
where would the problem burn them? There would be no room
for it inside. God is my Father, and he could not persuade me
to tire contrary himself. This is the position which faith takes up.
It is the only position on which a spiritual life can be built. All
our graces have to do with our special vocation. Our ignorance
of our vocation, if it be from God, is one of the appropriate graces
of our vocation. A really interior spirit will see cause for special
thankfulness to God for the graces it has not received, as much
as for those it has received. Indiscriminate grace would have
been its ruin. The soul would have been impeded by it in ac­
complishing its special end. It would have been either a sickli­
ness, like a forced growth, or a deformity, like a hindered growth.
It is a great grace that our one special grace should not be inter­
fered with. Spiritual mixtures are confusions. Who are the blind
men in the spiritual life, but the overladen with good works, the
oppressed with pious practices, the overworked with devotions,
the overdriven by activities? Still, I am willing to grant that the
knowledge of their special vocation, which some men have, is an
enviable grace. But—and please to observe this—no man will
ever be an interior man until he has reconciled himself to the idea
of inequalities in grace.

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Besides which, this divine ignorance is never total. There is
always a glimmering, which the soul acknowledges as its leader.
How little there was to lead the Kings of the Epiphany! and yet
what would they have lost if they had decided not to follow the
star! We may take this star as an illustration to us of the doctrine
of vocations and inspirations. Many a star has risen to us in the
clear blue night of faith, and we have not followed it. Many a
leading light has stood over where the Young Child was, as it
were beckoning to us with a brightness in which, modest as it
was, we felt there was something heavenly, and yet we have
turned away, and have now clean forgotten it. If we could but
have hearts to feel, and eyes in our souls to see, where we really
are! There are good angels around us, and graces are raining
down upon us, great and small, all our lives long, and inspira­
tions are falling upon us, thick as snow-flakes, and almost as
softly and as silently, and we are fastened with a thousand fasten­
ings to great unknown eternal purposes, and we feel them no
more than a strong man feels the cobwebs and the gossamer on
the autumnal grass; and all the while we are closed all round,
and walled in, not so much with the sun and moon and stars,
with the air and the floor of our own planet, as with the living
and inevitable presence of the All-Holy, who will not spare us
one moment from his sight, and who even while we sleep expects
us to do our work of glorifying him, and whose love of us, and
therefore his jealousy of us, is as everlasting as himself.
But there may be some whose ignorance of their vocation
is their own fault, or, if not in any fault at all as yet, who
may come to the knowledge of it by using the proper means.
A man who does not lead a life of prayer of course does not
lead a life of light; and he who does not dwell in inward light
can neither see God nor understand his ways with us. If, then,
we would learn what our special vocation is, or at least make
that endeavor to learn it which God expects of us, we must
begin by being interior, by attaining that habit of seeing in the
dark, to which I have already alluded. God must be watched,

ALL MEN HAVE A SPECIAL VOCATION

Ml

in order to be known; and we must watch him on our knees,
and in the lowest place within ourselves to which we can sink.
Thus we shall learn much, if we do not leam all. We shall
learn enough to give us the opportunity of being much holier,
even if we do not learn the precise thing of which we are in
quest,—namely, our special vocation. Then, again, as spiritual
direction is almost a necessary condition of self-knowledge, so
is it in ordinary cases almost an inevitable condition of the
knowledge of God's dealings with our souls. As heavenly appari­
tions are visible to some of the bystanders, and not to others,
so God’s movements in the soul are often manifest to the eyes
of others, and hidden from our own. Sometimes there are
natural reasons for our not understanding the operations of
grace within ourselves, and sometimes there are supernatural
reasons for their being invisible to us, or inexplicable. While
we must be accurate and punctual in the examination of our
conscience, we must also lean on some one else, and be content
sometimes, and within certain limits, to see with his eyes and
to hear with his ears. If we do not lead interior lives, our
whole course may be changed without our knowing it. Some­
times this happens through some little inobservance of our
own, which hardly amounts to a fault, and yet is pregnant
with consequences. Sometimes new circumstances gather round
us, and an invisible hand presses the helm, and our life steers
upon a track almost indistinguishably like its old one, yet lead­
ing to a very different quarter. Hence to our own inward
vigilance and to our docility to intelligent and disinterested
direction we must add a quiet observation of what happens to
us from without, and which is God's external providence over us.
A pondering—a grateful, pensive, admiring pondering—of past
mercies is a very different thing from that sickly self-inspection
which unnerves so many pious persons and is unwholesome to all.
Our past years are a scroll of prophecy, full of rules and intima­
tions for the future. Like the prophet, we must eat the scroll,
and eat it often. A spiritual life arranged independently of

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our outward circumstances, and alongside of our external duties
instead of upon them, is simply a stronghold of delusions.
But the surest method of arriving at a knowledge of God’s
eternal purposes about us is to be found in the right use of the
present moment. We must esteem our present grace, and rest
in it, and with tranquil assiduity correspond to it. Our present
grace is the most infallible will of God. It is a revelation from
God, which almost always brings its own authoritative inter­
pretation along with it. What we want for our sanctification
is not merely grace, but the right grace, the right grace at the
right time and in the right place. God’s will does not come
to us in the whole, but in fragments, and generally in small
fragments. It is our business to piece it together, and to live it
into one orderly vocation. Like a lantern in the night, grace
gives light around our feet, a circle of light just wide enough to
prevent our stumbling. But then we must look at our feet.
If we strain our eyes into the gloom ahead of us, we shall
stumble in spite of the lantern: nay, sometimes we shall even
stumble because of it, its shadows move so suddenly and with
such unwieldy strides. Our present grace is also the one least
beset with delusions, and we can act safely upon it, although per­
haps not comfortably, even when we do not see how it matches
with what has just gone before, or how it can fit into any con­
ceivable future which our circumstances will allow. The hours
are like slaves which follow each other, bringing fuel to the
furnace. Each hour comes with some little fagot of God’s will
fastened upon its back. If we thus esteem our present grace,
we shall begin to understand God’s purposes. It seems an easy
thing to do; and yet it cannot really be easy, because so few do it.
One man is always pulling the past to pieces, while another
man is marching with his head erect into the uncertain future,
disdainful of the present. Strange to say, intentions are more
exciting than actions, and therefore more attractive. For safety
and for swiftness, for clear light and successful labor, there is
nothing like the present. Practically speaking, the moment that

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is flying holds more eternity than all our past, and the future
holds none at all, and only becomes capable of holding any as
it is manufactured piecemeal into the present. The spiritual
direction of multitudes of men consists of nothing but keeping
them to this; and it is one of those unlikely works which has
the misfortune of being seldom successful, even though it is
indispensable, and on the whole least successful where most
indispensable.
But we may follow all these rules with adequate fidelity,
and yet not find out our special vocation. True, but we have
found out that it is God’s will we are not to find it out; and
surely there is no repose like that of a certain will of God.
When we have ascertained that, we are contented. The endeavor
to learn our vocation is the way to learn it, though it does
not secure the knowledge of it. But it secures our sanctification,
and therefore its results are practically the same as if we did
know our vocation. The endeavor sanctifies us more than the
attainment of our end, and it does so because it deals only with
present grace, and so with ascertained wills of God. So long as
our ignorance is not our own fault, love is all round us, and we
are on the right road. To some, as I said, God gives a clear view
of their special vocation. He gives it them as a grace apparently
independent of their endeavors, and before they have made any.
On some it dawns gradually, like a slow sunrise, and makes
many a beautiful revelation of God in the changeful splendors
of its rising. On some it flashes all at once without any reason
that we can see, and without our having expected it. Some­
times, on the other hand, it comes like one of those expected
things which have the charm of always coming unexpectedly.
To some the vision of it is granted when they are yet far off
from the fulfilment of it. To others it unveils itself only when
they are upon it, so that they almost fall over it; and some do
fall over it. Now, it is plain that the knowledge of our vocation
will affect our whole spiritual life. Men who enjoy the vision
of it lead special lives based upon that knowledge. It is a great

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grace, but only to those who have it. It would not be a great
grace to those to whom God does not give it.
But the majority never know what their vocation is, because
God does not intend them to know it. It is part of their voca­
tion that they should not know it. They even fulfil their voca­
tion and do not know that they have done so. They have no
feeling of it at the very moment they arc fulfilling it. This
ignorance is as great a grace as the knowledge would have
been, though it is a less consoling one. If it be less in itself,
it is better for us, because it is fitter for us. The size of our
graces is not of as much consequence as their suitableness. They
must fit us, and they must fit each other, and they must fit the
end which God has in view for us. Thus we may be tranquil
and courageous in our ignorance. But even if we belong to the
third class of men, those who through their own fault do not
know their special vocation, there is nothing to hinder our cour­
age or our tranquillity, if only we are earnestly endeavoring to
learn God’s will about us. We must not fret. Fretting neutralizes
grace. It looks a little evil, but it is in truth a great one.
If there be retrospect in eternity, and the Vision in front of
us does not absorb us wholly, I conjecture that our life will
present this picture to us. In the far back of an unbeginning
eternity we shall see a clear and special purpose for which God
created us, an individual specialty, which he has never quite
repeated in any other of his creatures, a special attraction which
called out his love to us, or, rather, which his love invented,
and which made us more dear in his sight than possible better
men would have been. This specialty decided our vocation upon
earth. It fixed our place. It determined our time. It fashioned
our work. All the mercies of our lives had their faces set toward
it. Outward circumstances made a current which drew us that
way. All our graces were in order to it. All our inspirations,
like according notes in music, were a unity, and each sounded
out of that eternal purpose and seemed to call us on to its
fulfilment. Each present moment was a partial development

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MS

of the one grand special end; and now our glory in heaven
answers to the old eternal specialty of God's love about us. The
one eternity looks the other eternity in the face. Thus we have
all along had the arms of God's special, and indeed singular and
unshared, love, round about us, and in the light of our Blessed
Home we see with rapture that all has been predestination, and
that all has been free will.