ion
of one so cold in the divine service as he was; but only one whose
breast is inflamed with divine love, and whose words are more
penetrating than fire, can speak of that virtue. He says that
compunction requires in the first place, solitude, not so much that of
the desert, as that which is interior, or of the mind. For seeing that a
multitude of objects disturbs the sight, the soul must restrain all the
senses, remain serene, and without tumult or noise within herself,
always intent on God, employed in his love, deaf to corporeal objects.
As men placed on a high mountain hear nothing of the noise of a city
situated below them, only a confused stir which they no way heed; so a
Christian soul, raised on the mountain of true wisdom, regards not the
hurry of the world; and though she is not destitute of senses, is not
molested by them, and applies herself and her whole attention to
heavenly things. Thus St. Paul was crucified and insensible to the
world, raised as far above its objects as living men differ from
carcasses. Not only St. Paul, amid a multiplicity of affairs, but also
David, living in the noise of a great city and court, enjoyed solitude
of mind, and the grace of perfect compunction, and poured forth tears
night and day, proceeding from an ardent love and desire of God and his
heavenly kingdom, the consideration of the divine judgments, and the
remembrance of his own sins. Persons that are lukewarm and slothful,
think of what they do or have done in penance to cancel their debts; but
David nourished perpetually in his breast a spirit of compunction, by
never thinking on the penance he had already done, but only on his debts
and miseries, and on what he had to do in order to blot out or deliver
himself from them. St. Chrysostom begs his friend's prayers that he
might be stirred up by the divine grace to weep perpetually under the
load of his spiritual evils, so as to escape everlasting torments.

The saint's three books, On Providence, are an exhortation to comfort,
patience, and resignation, addressed to Stagirius, a monk possessed by
an evil spirit. This Stagirius was a young nobleman, who had exasperated
his father by embracing a monastic state: but some time after fell into
lukewarmness, and was cruelly possessed by an evil spirit, and seized
with a dreadful melancholy, from which those who had received a power of
commanding evil spirits were not able to deliver him. St. Chrysostom
wrote these books soon