he will of
God. This change implies not only a change in externals, but the
inward subjection of the desires and sentiments of the heart. Here
most persons, who commence the religious life, stop short. They cannot
submit to the interior crucifixion, which lays prostrate the whole of
the natural carnal life, and consequently there follows a mingling of
the spirit of the flesh with grace, and it is this which produces such
monsters in the religious world. Do we not read in Scripture, that in
consequence of the alliance of the sons of God with the daughters of
men, giants were born, who so filled the earth with wickedness, they
drew down a deluge of wrath upon the world? It is from this abominable
alliance of the flesh with the spirit, that all those who appear in the
world, as "mighty men, men of renown," are produced and sustained. One
may be full of the natural life, while apparently dead to the external
things of the world. Thus they are dead to inferior things, and alive
in the most essential points--dead in name, but not in reality.

By an authority as gentle as efficacious, God accomplishes his will in
us, when we have surrendered our souls to him. The consent we give to
his operations, and our relish of them, is sweet and sustaining, in
proportion to the perfection of our abandonment. God does not arrest
the soul with violence. He adjusts all things in such a manner, that
we follow him happily, even across dangerous precipices. So good is
this Divine Master, so well does he understand the methods of
conducting the soul, that it runs after him, and makes haste to walk in
the path he orders.

Suppleness of soul is, therefore, of vital consequence to its progress.
It is the work of God to effect this. Happy are the souls, who yield
to his discipline. God renders the soul, in the commencement, supple
to follow illuminated reason; afterwards to follow the way of faith.
He then conducts the soul by unknown steps, causing it to enter into
the wisdom of Jesus Christ which is so different from all its former
experience, that without the testimony of divine filiation, which
remains in the soul in a manner hidden, and the ease and liberty the
soul finds in this unknown way, it would consider itself as being
separated continually from God, being left, as it were, to act of
itself. Human wisdom being here lost, and the powers of the soul
controlled by the wisdom of Jesus Christ, born in the soul, it
increases in