The Life of God in the Soul of Man
My Dear Friend,
Calling you my friend gives you a claim on every effort I can make to serve your interests. Your godly inclinations agree so happily with my duty that I need not leave my own path to please you. I can fulfill an obligation of friendship and carry out the work of my calling at the same time, since advancing virtue and holiness, which I hope you make your greatest concern, is the particular business of my ministry. This, then, is the most fitting way to express my affection and gratitude toward you. I will no longer delay fulfilling the promise I made you for this purpose.
I know you have better helps of this kind than any I can offer, and you are unlikely to find anything here that you did not know before. Yet I hope you will kindly accept what comes from someone you are pleased to honor with your friendship, especially since it is written particularly for your use. Perhaps God’s providence will so direct my thoughts that something here will prove useful to you. I also trust you will forgive me if, to give my discussion a better shape, I lay its foundation at the most basic level, beginning with the nature and characteristics of religion. As I pursue the subject, I will allow my thoughts enough freedom to say many things that would be unnecessary if I considered only the person to whom I am writing.
Mistakes About Religion
I cannot speak of religion without lamenting that, among so many who claim it, so few understand what it means. Some locate it in the understanding, in orthodox ideas and opinions. All they can say about their religion is that they hold this or that belief and have joined one of the many sects into which Christendom is so unhappily divided.
Others locate it in outward behavior, in a regular course of external duties and a prescribed pattern of observances. If they live peacefully with their neighbors, eat and drink moderately, observe regular times of worship in church and in private, and sometimes offer relief to the poor, they think they have done enough.
Still others place all religion in the affections, in passionate raptures and ecstatic devotion. All they aim at is to pray with passion, think of heaven with pleasure, and be moved by the tender, melting expressions with which they court their Savior. Eventually they persuade themselves that they are deeply in love with him. From this they gain great confidence in their salvation, and they regard that confidence as the chief Christian grace.
Thus things that bear some resemblance to godliness, and at best are only means of obtaining it or particular expressions of it, are frequently mistaken for the whole of religion. Sometimes even wickedness and vice claim that name. I am not speaking now of the gross impieties with which pagans used to worship their gods. Too many Christians would consecrate their vices and sanctify their corrupt affections. Their harsh disposition and sullen pride must pass for Christian strictness. Their fierce anger and bitter rage against their enemies must be called holy zeal. Their insolence toward their superiors or rebellion against their rulers must bear the name of Christian courage and resolve.
What Religion Is
Certainly religion is something quite different. Those who know it will think very differently and reject all these shadows and counterfeits. They know by experience that true religion is a union of the soul with God, a real participation in the divine nature, the very image of God drawn upon the soul. Or, to use the apostle’s expression, it is Christ formed within us.
In brief, I do not know how to express the nature of religion more fully than by calling it a divine life. I will discuss it under these terms, showing first why it is called a life, and then why it is called divine.
Religion’s Permanence and Stability
I choose to call it life, first because of its permanence and stability. Religion is not a sudden impulse or passion of the mind, even if that passion rises to a rapture and seems to carry someone into extraordinary actions. Few people have never felt convinced that they must do something for the salvation of their souls. Such convictions may push them a few steps forward with a great appearance of urgency. But soon they weaken and give up. They were in a heated mood, but now they have cooled. They sprang up fresh and tall, but quickly withered because they had no root in themselves.
These sudden fits may be compared to the violent, convulsive movements of newly beheaded bodies, caused by the agitation of the animal spirits after the soul has departed. However violent and forceful, these movements cannot last long. The movements of holy souls, by contrast, are steady and regular, proceeding from an enduring, living principle.
It is true that this divine life does not always continue with the same strength and vigor. It often suffers grievous declines. Holy people find greater difficulty in resisting temptations and less eagerness in performing their duties. Yet it is not entirely extinguished, nor are they abandoned to the power of those corrupt affections that govern and overpower the rest of the world.
Religion’s Freedom From Compulsion
Again, religion may be called life because it is an inward, free principle that moves from within. Those who have made progress in it are not moved only by external motives, driven merely by threats, bribed by promises, or constrained by laws. They are powerfully inclined toward what is good and delight in doing it.
A godly person’s love for God and goodness comes less from a command requiring it than from a new nature that teaches and prompts it. Nor does such a person offer devotion as an unavoidable tribute, merely to appease divine justice or quiet a clamoring conscience. These religious practices are the proper expressions of divine life, the natural activities of the newborn soul.
Such a person prays, gives thanks, and repents not only because these things are commanded, but because of an awareness of personal needs, divine goodness, and the folly and misery of a sinful life. This person’s charity is not forced, nor are gifts to the poor extracted by pressure. Love makes this person willing to give. Even without an outward obligation, this person’s heart would plan generous deeds.
Injustice, intemperance, and every other vice are as contrary to this person’s disposition and character as the basest actions are to a generous spirit, or shamelessness and vulgar abuse to those who are naturally modest. So I may well say with John, “Whosoever is born of God, doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (1 John 3:9).
Although holy and religious people pay close attention to God’s law and hold it in great regard, its reasonableness, purity, and goodness influence them more than its authority to enforce obedience. They consider it excellent and desirable in itself, and believe that keeping it brings great reward. The divine love that moves them makes them a law to themselves.
> Who shall prescribe a law to those that love?
> Love’s a more powerful law which doth them move.
In a word, what our blessed Savior said of himself applies in some measure to his followers: doing their Father’s will is their food and drink. Just as our natural appetite turns toward food even when we do not reflect on its necessity for preserving our lives, so they turn with a natural, unforced inclination toward what is good and commendable.
It is true that external motives are often very useful in awakening and stirring up this inward principle, especially in its infancy and weakness. It is then often so feeble that the person can scarcely discern it, and can hardly move one step forward without being pushed by hopes or fears, the pressure of an affliction or the awareness of a mercy, the authority of the law or the persuasion of others.
Now, suppose such a person is conscientious and consistent in obedience, earnestly grieves over this spiritual sluggishness, and desires to perform these duties with more spirit and vigor. These are the first movements of divine life. Though faint and weak, it will surely be nurtured by the influences of heaven and grow toward greater maturity.
But someone entirely without this inward principle, who does not aspire to it and is content with observances prompted by education or custom, fear of hell or earthly notions of heaven, can no more be called religious than a puppet can be called a human being.
This forced and artificial religion is usually burdensome and sluggish, like the movement of a weight forced upward. It is cold and lifeless, like the uneasy compliance of a wife married against her will, who behaves dutifully toward a husband she does not love out of some sense of virtue or honor. This religion is also meager and stingy, especially in duties that most strongly oppose people’s fleshly inclinations. Such servile spirits are sure to do no more than is absolutely required. A law compels them, and they are reluctant to go beyond the limit it sets. Indeed, they continually place interpretations on it that leave themselves the greatest freedom.
The spirit of true religion, by contrast, is open and generous, far removed from such resentful, narrow calculations. Someone who has given himself entirely to God will never think he does too much for him.
Religion as a Divine Principle
By now I hope it is clear that religion can very reasonably be called a life, or a living principle. It is also clear how necessary it is to distinguish religion from obedience that is compelled and depends on external causes.
I turn next to explain why I called it divine life. It may be called divine not only because of its source and origin, since God is its author and his Holy Spirit works it in human souls, but also because of its nature. Religion resembles the divine perfections. It is the image of the Almighty shining in the human soul. Indeed, it is a real participation in his nature, a beam of eternal light, a drop from that infinite ocean of goodness. Those who possess it may be said to have God dwelling in their souls and Christ formed within them.
What Natural Life Is
Before considering more particularly the divine life in which true religion consists, it will be fitting to say a little about the natural or animal life that rules those who are strangers to divine life. By this I mean simply our inclination toward things that please and satisfy our nature, or self-love branching out into as many forms as people have appetites and inclinations.
I take the root and foundation of animal life to be sense, understood broadly in contrast to faith. It means our perception and experience of things that are either pleasant or troublesome to us. These natural affections, considered in themselves and as nature has implanted them in us, are not vicious or blameworthy. Rather, they show the Creator’s wisdom in furnishing his creatures with appetites that tend to preserve their lives and promote their welfare. For animals these appetites take the place of a law, directing them toward the purposes for which they were made.
But human beings were made for higher purposes and are to be guided by more excellent laws. A person becomes guilty and blameworthy when the inclinations of this lower life gain such control that they lead to the violation of duty or neglect of the higher, nobler purposes of human creation. Our natural affections are not to be entirely rooted out and destroyed. They are to be moderated and governed by a higher, more excellent principle. In a word, the difference between a religious person and a wicked person is that divine life rules in the one, while animal life prevails in the other.
Natural Life’s Different Tendencies
It is striking to observe the different paths along which this natural principle sometimes carries those wholly guided by it. Their paths depend on the various circumstances that combine with it to direct them. Failing to consider this often leads to very dangerous mistakes. People think well of themselves because of an apparent difference between themselves and others, although their actions may all the while flow from one and the same source.
If we consider the natural temperaments of human souls, we find some frivolous, playful, and flighty, which makes their behavior excessive and ridiculous. Others are naturally serious and stern. Their whole manner has a solemnity that wins them considerable respect and esteem. Some have a capricious, harsh, and gloomy disposition. They can neither be pleased themselves nor bear to see others pleased.
But not everyone is born with such sour and unhappy dispositions. Some people have a sweetness and kindness rooted in their nature. They find their greatest pleasure in the warmth of companionship and the mutual satisfaction of friends, and want nothing more than to put everyone under an obligation to them. It is good that nature has supplied this tenderness of temperament to make up for the lack of true charity in the world and incline people to do something for one another’s welfare.
Education also makes a difference. Some have never been taught to follow any rules other than pleasure or advantage. Others are so accustomed to observing the strictest rules of decency and honor, along with certain practices of virtue, that they can hardly do anything they have learned to regard as base and unworthy.
Finally, considerable differences in the conduct of people who live merely by natural life arise from the strength or weakness of their intelligence and judgment, and from their care or neglect in using them. Intemperance and lust, injustice and oppression, and all the other impieties that fill the world and make it so miserable flow from self-love. They are the effects of animal life when it is neither overcome by religion nor governed by natural reason.
But if this natural principle takes hold of reason and gains judgment and intelligence as allies, it will often disdain the grosser vices and rise to attractive imitations of virtue and goodness. If someone has enough reason to consider the harm that intemperance and uncontrolled lust bring to health, wealth, and reputation, self-love may be enough to restrain that person. Someone may also observe the rules of moral justice in dealing with others as the best way to secure personal interests and maintain a good reputation in the world.
But this is not all. With reason’s help, this natural principle may rise higher and come closer to the practices of godliness and religion. It may incline someone to study divine truths diligently. Why should these not be as pleasant and satisfying to curious, inquiring minds as other subjects of contemplation? It may make people zealous to maintain and spread the opinions they have adopted. They may be very eager for others to submit to their judgment and approve the religious choice they themselves have made. It may make them delight in hearing and composing excellent discourses about religion, since eloquence is pleasing whatever its subject.
Indeed, it may incline some to a considerable degree of emotionally felt devotion. The glorious things spoken of heaven may make even an earthly heart fall in love with it. Scripture’s metaphors and comparisons, crowns and scepters and rivers of pleasure, and so on, readily stir a person’s imagination and awaken a desire to be there. Yet that person may neither understand nor desire the spiritual pleasures these images describe and represent.
When such a person comes to believe that Christ has purchased these glorious things for him, he may feel a kind of tenderness and affection toward so great a benefactor. He may imagine himself deeply in love with Christ while remaining entirely a stranger to the holy disposition and spirit of the blessed Jesus. Several learned and discerning writers have recently shown very well how natural temperament can contribute to the ecstatic devotions of some melancholy people.
To conclude, there is nothing suited to making a person’s life pleasant, or making that person prominent and distinguished in the world, toward which this natural principle, assisted by intelligence and reason, may not prompt him. I do not condemn these things in themselves. Yet it deeply concerns us to understand and consider their nature, both to keep them within proper bounds and to learn never to esteem ourselves because of such attainments, or make our natural appetites or actions the foundation of religion.
What Divine Life Consists Of
It is now time to return to the divine life I discussed before, that “life which is hid with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). It therefore makes no splendid display or appearance in the world, and to a person governed by natural life it will seem an insignificant and unappealing idea.
Animal life consists in a narrow, confined love that ends with oneself, and in an inclination toward things that please our nature. Divine life, by contrast, consists in a universal, unlimited affection and in mastery over our natural inclinations, so that they can never betray us into things we know to be blameworthy.
The root of divine life is faith. Its chief branches are love for God, charity toward others, purity, and humility. As an excellent person has well observed, though these names are common and ordinary, and make no extraordinary sound, yet they carry such a mighty meaning that the tongue of man or angel can pronounce nothing more weighty or excellent.
Faith has the same place in divine life that sense has in natural life. Indeed, it is simply a kind of sense, a felt conviction of spiritual things. It extends to all divine truths. But in our fallen condition it has a particular relation to the declarations of God’s mercy and willingness to be reconciled to sinners through a Mediator. Taking its name from that principal object, it is therefore ordinarily called faith in Jesus Christ.
The love of God is a joyful, affectionate awareness of the divine perfections. It makes the soul surrender and sacrifice itself wholly to him, desiring above all things to please him. It delights in nothing so much as fellowship and communion with him, and is ready to do or suffer anything for his sake or at his pleasure.
Though this affection may first arise from God’s favors and mercies toward ourselves, as it grows and develops it goes beyond these particular considerations. It grounds itself in his infinite goodness, displayed in all the works of creation and providence.
A soul possessed by divine love must expand in sincere, unlimited affection toward all humanity because of people’s relation to God. They are his creatures and bear something of his image. This is the charity I named as religion’s second branch. It fully includes every part of justice and every duty we owe our neighbor. Someone who truly loves the whole world will be deeply concerned for every person’s interests. Far from wronging or injuring anyone, such a person will feel any evil that befalls others as though it had happened to himself.
By purity, I mean a proper detachment from the body and mastery over the lower appetites. It is a disposition of mind that makes someone disdain and abstain from every pleasure of the senses or imagination that is sinful in itself or tends to extinguish or diminish our enjoyment of more divine and intellectual pleasures. It also implies a resolve to endure whatever hardships may arise in the performance of duty. Thus this heading includes not only chastity and temperance, but also Christian courage and greatness of spirit.
Humility means a deep awareness of our own weakness, with a heartfelt, loving acknowledgment that we owe all we are to divine generosity. It is always accompanied by profound submission to God’s will and great indifference toward worldly glory and human applause.
These are the highest perfections of which either human beings or angels are capable, the very foundation of heaven laid in the soul. Someone who has attained them need not desire to peer into the hidden records of God’s decrees or search the volumes of heaven to learn what has been determined about his eternal condition. He may find a copy of God’s thoughts concerning him written in his own heart.
His love for God may assure him of God’s favor toward him. The beginnings of happiness he feels as the powers of his soul conform to God’s nature and comply with his will are a sure pledge that his happiness will be perfected and continue through all eternity. It is not without reason that someone said, “I would rather see the real impressions of a God-like nature upon my own soul, than have a vision from heaven, or an angel sent to tell me that my name was enrolled in the book of life.”
Religion Better Understood Through Actions Than Words
When we have said everything we can, the hidden mysteries of a new nature and divine life can never be adequately expressed. Language and words cannot reach them. Only souls kindled within and awakened to an awareness and enjoyment of spiritual things can truly understand them. “There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.”
The power and life of religion can be expressed better through actions than words. Actions are more vivid and better represent the inward principle from which they proceed. We can therefore best judge these gracious qualities by the conduct of those who possess them. Above all, we see them perfectly exemplified in the holy life of our blessed Savior. A major part of his work in this world was to teach through his practice what he required of others, and to make his own conduct an exact expression of the incomparable rules he prescribed. If true goodness was ever visible to mortal eyes, it was when his presence adorned and illuminated this earthly world.
Divine Love Exemplified in Our Savior
His Diligence in Doing God’s Will and Patience in Bearing It
The sincere and devout love that constantly burned in his blessed soul toward his heavenly Father expressed itself in complete surrender to his will. It was his “very meat, to do the will, and finish the work of him that sent him.” This occupied him in childhood and remained his constant work in adulthood.
He spared no effort or pain while attending to his Father’s business, but found boundless contentment and satisfaction in doing it. Once, faint and weary from his journey, he rested at Jacob’s well and asked the Samaritan woman for water. The success of his conversation with her, and the resulting growth of God’s kingdom, filled his mind with delight. That delight seemed to reach even his body, refreshing his spirits. It made him forget the thirst he had complained of and refuse the food he had sent his disciples to buy.
He was no less patient and submissive in suffering God’s will than diligent in doing it. He endured the sharpest afflictions and most extreme miseries ever inflicted on anyone, without a resentful thought or discontented word. This was far from numb insensibility, fanciful stubbornness, or Stoic obstinacy. He felt pain as keenly as other people and understood most deeply what he was to suffer in his soul. His bloody sweat, and the intense distress and sorrow he expressed, abundantly show this. Yet he submitted entirely to that severe ordering of Providence and willingly accepted it.
He prayed to God that, “if it were possible,” or, as one of the Evangelists puts it, “if he were willing,” the cup might be removed. Yet he gently added, “Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.” How extraordinarily significant are the expressions in John 12:27! First he acknowledges the anguish of his spirit: “Now is my soul troubled.” This seems to lead to a moment of hesitation: “And what shall I say?” Then he proceeds to ask that his sufferings be averted: “Father, save me from this hour.” No sooner has he said this than, as though on second thought, he recalls it with these words: “But for this cause came I into the world.” He concludes, “Father, glorify thy name.”
We must not regard this as fickleness or blameworthy weakness in the blessed Jesus. He knew throughout what he was to suffer and underwent it with the greatest resolve. But it shows us the inconceivable weight and pressure he was to bear. It was so distressing and so contrary to nature that he could not think of it without terror. Yet, considering God’s will and the glory that would come to God through it, he was not only willing but eager to suffer it.
Our Savior’s Constant Devotion
Another instance of his love for God was his delight in conversing with him through prayer. This often led him to withdraw from the world and spend whole nights in that heavenly exercise with the greatest devotion and pleasure. Yet he had no sins to confess and few earthly interests to pray for. Alas, these are almost the only things that usually drive us to our devotions.
Indeed, we may say that his whole life was a kind of prayer, a constant course of communion with God. If the sacrifice was not always being offered, the fire was still kept alive. The blessed Jesus was never overtaken by that dullness or lukewarmness of spirit that we so often have to struggle against before we are ready for devotion.
Our Savior’s Love for Others
In the second place, I should speak of his love and charity toward all people. But anyone who would express it must transcribe the Gospel history and comment on it. Almost nothing recorded as done or spoken by him was without the purpose of benefiting someone. All his miraculous works were instances of his goodness as well as his power. They benefited those for whom they were performed as well as astonishing those who witnessed them.
His charity was not confined to his family or relatives. Nor was all his kindness absorbed in the affection of his special friendship with the beloved disciple. Everyone who obeyed his holy commands was his friend (John 15:14). And whoever did his Father’s will was to him as his brother, sister, and mother.
No one who came with an honest intention was ever unwelcome to him. Nor did he deny any request that would benefit those who made it. What was said of that Roman emperor whom people called the darling of mankind for his goodness was actually fulfilled in him: no one ever left him with a sorrowful face. The exception was that rich young man (Mark 10), who was grieved to hear that the kingdom of heaven came at so high a price, and that he could not save both his soul and his money.
Certainly it troubled our Savior to see that, though this man had the means to obtain wisdom, he had no heart for it. The sincerity apparent in his first approach had already won some affection for him, for it is said, “and Jesus beholding him, loved him.” But must he, for this man’s sake, make a new way to heaven and alter the nature of things, which makes it impossible for a covetous person to be happy?
And what can I say of his meekness? He met the monstrous ingratitude and deceit of the wicked man who betrayed him with no harsher words than these: “Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?” What further evidence could we desire of his fervent and boundless charity than his willingness to lay down his life even for his bitterest enemies? Mingling his prayers with his blood, he begged the Father that his death might not be charged against them, but might become the means of eternal life for the very people who brought it about.
Our Savior’s Purity
The third branch of the divine life is purity. As I said, this consists in disregarding worldly pleasures and comforts, and resolutely enduring all the troubles we encounter in doing our duty. Surely, if anyone was wholly dead to all the pleasures of natural life, it was the blessed Jesus. He seldom tasted them when they came his way, and never stepped out of his path to seek them.
He allowed others the comforts of married life and honored marriage with his presence. He supplied a lack of wine through a miracle, yet would not perform one to relieve his own hunger in the wilderness. Such was the gracious and divine character of his soul. He allowed others lawful pleasures from which he himself chose to abstain. He supplied not only their most urgent and pressing needs, but also their smaller and less significant wants.
We often hear of our Savior’s sighs, groans, and tears, but never that he laughed, and only once that he rejoiced in spirit. Throughout his whole life, therefore, he corresponded exactly to the description given of him by the prophet long before: “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”
The troubles and hardships of his life were also matters of choice. No one ever appeared on the world’s stage with greater opportunities to raise himself to the highest earthly happiness. He could bring an enormous number of fish into his disciples’ net and, on another occasion, obtain from a fish the tribute he was to pay to the temple. He could easily have made himself the richest person in the world.
Indeed, without any money he could have maintained an army powerful enough to push Caesar from his throne, since more than once he fed several thousand people with a few loaves and small fish. But to show how little he valued all the world’s pleasures, he chose to live in such poverty and lowliness that, though the foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, he who was lord and heir of all things “had not whereon to lay his head.”
He did not frequent the courts of princes or seek the acquaintance and company of the great. Regarded as a carpenter’s son, he had fishermen and other poor people as his companions. He lived in a way suited to that lowly condition.
Our Savior’s Humility
And so, without intending it, I have come to speak of his humility, the last branch of the divine life. In this he was an outstanding example to us, so that we might learn from him to be meek and lowly in heart. I will not now speak of the infinite condescension of the eternal Son of God in taking our nature upon himself. I will consider only our Savior’s lowly and humble conduct while he was in the world.
He had none of the sins and imperfections that may rightly humble the best of people. But he was so wholly absorbed in a deep awareness of God’s infinite perfections that he appeared as nothing in his own eyes. I mean this only insofar as he shared our created human nature. He regarded the outstanding perfections that shone in his blessed soul as gifts from God rather than possessions of his own. He therefore took no credit for them, but with the deepest humility renounced every claim to them as his own.
For this reason, he declined the customary address of “good master” when it was applied to his human nature by someone who apparently did not know of his divinity: “Why callest thou me good? there is none good, but God only.” It was as if he had said, “The goodness of any creature, and that is all you take me to be, is not worthy to be named or noticed. God alone is good in himself and in his very essence.”
He never used his miraculous power for vanity or display. He would not satisfy the Jews’ curiosity with a sign from heaven, some extraordinary appearance in the sky. Nor would he follow the advice of his countrymen and relatives, who wanted all his great works performed before the world to bring him greater fame. When his charity moved him to relieve the suffering, his humility often led him to command that the miracle be kept secret. When God’s glory and the purpose for which he came into the world required the miracles to be made known, he ascribed all the honor to his Father, telling people that he could do nothing of himself.
I cannot dwell on every instance of humility in his conduct toward others: his withdrawal when they wanted to make him a king; his obedience, not only to his blessed mother but also to her husband, during his younger years; and his submission to all the indignities and insults inflicted by his rude and malicious enemies. The history of his holy life, recorded by those who associated with him, is full of such passages. Indeed, serious and attentive study of it is the best way to gain a right understanding of humility and all the other parts of religion I have been trying to describe.
But now, to ease the burden of reading a long letter by making some pauses in it, let me add a prayer here. It may be suitable for someone who once held false ideas of religion and is beginning to discover what it is.
A Prayer
Infinite and eternal Majesty, author and fountain of being and blessedness, how little we poor sinful creatures know of you, or of the way to serve and please you! We talk of religion and claim to possess it. But alas, how few know and consider what it means! How easily we mistake our natural affections and the effects of self-love for those divine graces that alone can make us acceptable in your sight!
It is right that I should grieve to think that I have wandered so long and so often contented myself with empty shadows and false images of piety and religion. Yet I cannot help acknowledging and adoring your goodness. You have been pleased, in some measure, to open my eyes and let me see what I ought to aim for. I rejoice to consider how greatly my nature can be improved, and what a divine character of spirit shines in those you are pleased to choose and bring near to yourself.
Blessed be your infinite mercy! You sent your own Son to dwell among people and instruct them through his example as well as his laws, giving them a perfect pattern of what they ought to be. Oh, may the holy life of the blessed Jesus always be in my thoughts and before my eyes, until those excellent graces that shone so eminently in him make a deep impression on me and I become deeply aware of them. Let me never cease my efforts until that new and divine nature prevails in my soul and Christ is formed within me.
The Excellence and Benefits of Religion
And now, my dear friend, having explained the nature of true religion, perhaps we should pause before going further. Let us reflect for a little while on its excellence and benefits, so that we may pursue more vigorously and diligently the means of attaining such great happiness. But alas! What words can express that inward satisfaction, those hidden pleasures that only the holy souls who experience them can rightly understand? “A stranger intermeddleth not with their joy.”
