fortitude, roused me to a more immediate resolution than any
other form of solace. There are times when a splendour of exaggeration
is the best foil to truth. The Roman's pride is the best corrective to
the earthward bias of the diffident; by its excess of an opposite defect
it drives us soonest into the mean of a simple and manly confidence. It
is better for us first to repeat, "Dare to look up to God and say: Make
use of me for the future as Thou wilt, I am of the same mind, I am equal
with Thee.... Lead me whither Thou wilt," than to dwell upon such words
as these: "It is altogether necessary that thou have a true contempt for
thyself if thou desire to prevail against flesh and blood"--or these:
"If I abase myself ... and grind myself to the dust which I am, Thy
grace will be favourable to me, and Thy light near unto my head.... By
seeking Thee alone and purely loving Thee I have found both myself and
Thee, and by that love have more deeply reduced myself to nothing."

This supreme abnegation may leave the saint unharmed, but it is ill
fitted for those who droop already with the malady of dejection. The
divine wisdom which knows the secrets of all hearts and their
necessities infinitely various, shall exact obedience according to no
adamantine law: it loves not the jots and tittles of formalism, nor the
pretensions of those who would cast all things in one mould. From those
made perfect, from the saints whose links with earth are almost severed,
whose sight begins to pierce gross matter through, it may accept
prostration and endless contrite tears, knowing that to these, upon the
very verge of illumination, the forms of slavery have lost their
vileness. But to those who are still of earth and can but conceive God's
fatherhood according to earthly similitudes, it will not ordain a prone
obeisance. Such it will require to stand erect even in contrition, in
that posture which is the privilege of sons. We who are unperfected
affront God supposing him pleased with the prostration of his children.
It is the ignorance of a feudal age that ascribes to him a Byzantine
love of adulation; but that age is no more, and he disserves the divine
majesty who imputes to it a liking for the _esprit d'antichambre_.

I did not need to dwell upon my weakness and misery but rather upon the
grandeur of humanity, whose kinship and collaboration God himself does
not reject. The Stoic phase was a useful stage on the road of
convalescence, and