this idea torment me, and to so many doubts
does it give rise within me, that my admiration for the beauty of things
created--of the heavens so full of stars, in these serene nights of
spring, and in this favored region of Andalusia; of these smiling
fields, now covered with verdure, and of these cool and pleasant
gardens, abounding in shady and delightful walks, in gently flowing
streams and rivulets, in sequestered nooks, in birds that enliven them
with song, and in flowers and odorous herbs--this admiration and
enthusiasm, I repeat, which formerly seemed to me in perfect harmony
with the religious feeling that filled my soul, animating and exalting
it, instead of weakening it, seems to me now almost a sinful
distraction, and an unpardonable forgetfulness of the eternal for the
temporal, of the uncreated and the spiritual for the material and
created. Although I have made but little progress in virtue, although my
mind is never free from the phantasms of the imagination, although the
interior man is never exempt in me from the influence of external
impressions, and from the need of employing in meditation the fatiguing
argumentative method; although I can not, by an effort of love, withdraw
myself to the very center of pure intelligence, to the loftiest sphere
of thought, in order to behold there goodness and truth divested of
images and forms, yet I confess to you that the method of mental prayer,
unrestricted by set forms, makes me afraid. Even rational meditation
inspires me with distrust. I do not want to employ a process of
reasoning in order to know God, nor to adduce arguments for loving, in
order to love him. I desire, by a single effort of the will, to elevate
myself to and be absorbed in the divine contemplation. Oh, that I had
the wings of a dove, to fly to the bosom of him whom my soul loveth! But
what and where are my merits? Where the mortifications, the extended
prayers, and the fasting? What have I done, O my God, that thou shouldst
favor me?

I know that the ungodly of the present day accuse--though without any
foundation whatever--our holy religion of inciting souls to abhor the
things of this world, to despise or to contemn nature, perhaps to fear
it also, as if there were in it something diabolical, placing all their
affections on what these ungodly call the monstrous egotism of divine
love, for it is herself, they say, the soul loves in loving God; I know,
too, that this is not the case; that the