rsation, but
without any interior correspondence on my part, and, evidently, without
any benefit to you. God would teach you, my dear child, there is a
silence of the soul through which he operates, filling it with the
unction of grace, to be diffused on other hearts who are in a state of
receptivity, often more efficacious than words to replenish the soul.

We find this still harmonious action in nature. The sun, the moon, and
stars, shine in silence. The voice of God is heard in the silence of
the soul. The operation of grace is in silence, as it comes from God,
and may it not reach and pass from soul to soul without the noise of
words? O, that all Christians knew what if means to _keep silence_
before the Lord!

LIMIT NOT YOUR SPHERE.

Let me urge you, my child, to enlarge your heart; or, rather, suffer it
to become enlarged by grace. This contraction shuts you up in
yourself, and hinders an agreeable openness which we should ever
maintain, even towards those who have no particular affinity with
ourselves. An open, frank exterior wins confidence. Let it not
appear, that you have so much relish for yourself, as not to think of
others. What seems to us a virtue is sometimes regarded by God as a
fault; and which we shall so perceive, when we have clearer light.

You seem to mark out for yourself a certain sphere, and if you go
beyond it, you think you do yourself an injury. Thus, while you have
an apparent movement, you are only describing a circle, whose centre
and circumference is self. I entreat you, pass beyond the narrow
bounds of self;--suffer yourself to be led out of self into the will
and way of God. Thus you will be much more happy and useful. If I
loved you less, I should be less severe.

Let God be the sovereign Master over our hearts, and instruct, and
reprove, and operate in us, by himself, or through others, as pleases
him.

Adieu. God bless you, my child.

SECRET OF DIVINE OPERATIONS UPON THE SOUL.

Do not suppose, Dear Sir, that you are to be purified by great trials
and extraordinary events. All is accomplished in you by the suppleness
of your will,--by the state of infancy. It must be so on account of
the pride of your natural reason. God conducts the soul in a way
opposed to human philosophy. Hence the necessity of being reduced to
the state of infancy, and to the subjection of the will. What we call
the _death_ of the _will_, is the passage of our will into t