Chapter 2: Of the Necessity of Knowing and Loving God

It is not astonishing that men do so little for God and that the little which they do costs them so much. They do not know Him; scarcely do they believe that He exists; and the impression they have is rather a blind deference for general opinion than a lively and distinct conviction of the Divinity. They suppose it is so, because they do not dare to examine, and because they are indifferent in the matter, their souls being distracted by the inclination of their affections and passions for other objects; but their only idea of Him is of something wonderful, far off and unconnected with us. They think of Him as a stern and powerful Being, ever making requisitions upon us, thwarting our inclinations, threatening us with great evils, and against whose terrible judgment it behooves every one to be on his guard. Such is the inward thought of those who think seriously about religion, and their number even is small enough. "He is one who fears God," say they; and in truth such an one fears only, but does not love; as the child is in awe of the master who punishes him, or as the servant is in dread of the blows of one whom he serves from fear, and of whose interests is he utterly regardless. Would he like to be treated by a son or a servant as he treats God? It is because God is not known; if He were known, He would be loved. God is love, says the apostle John (1 John iv.8; 16) ; he who loves Him not, does not know Him, for how could we know love without loving it? It is plain, then, that all those who have until now only feared God, have not known Him.

But who shall know You, O! my God? He who shall seek with his whole heart to know You, who shall know himself with approbation no longer, and to whom all that is not You shall be as though it were not! The world cannot receive this saying because it is full of self, and vanity, and lies, and is empty of God; but I trust that there will always be souls hungering for God, who will relish the truth which I am about to set forth.

O my God! before You madest the Heavens and the earth, there was none other but You. You wert, because of your years there was no beginning; but You wert alone. Out of You there was nothing, and You did'st rejoice in this blessed solitude; You are all sufficient in Yourself, and you hadst no need of anything out of Yourself, for none can give unto You, and it is You that givest to all by yours all-powerful word, that is, by your simple will. To it, nothing is difficult, and it does whatsoever it will from its own labor. You didst cause that this world, which was not as yet, should begin to be; not as the workmen of the earth, who find the materials for their work ready made to their hands, and whose art consists in bringing them together, and arranging them by slow degrees in the requisite order; You didst find nothing ready made, but didst create all the materials for your work. It was to nothing that You didst say, "Let the world be," and it was. You didst only speak and it was done.

But why didst You create all these things? They were all made for man and man was made for You. This is the order which is of yours appointment, and woe to him who inverts it, who would that all should be for him and shuts himself in self! He breaks the fundamental law of creation.

No! Lord, You can not yield the essential prerogatives of a creator; it would degrade You. You can pardon the guilty soul that has warred against You, because You can fill it with your pure love; but you can not cease to be at variance with the soul which refers all your gifts to itself, and refuses to embrace You as its Creator with a sincere and disinterested affection. To have no feeling but fear, is not to refer to itself to You, but on the contrary, to think of You solely with reference to self. To love You with a single eye to the good You can bestow, is not to lose one's self in You, but to lose You in self! What then must be done in order that we may be lost in You? We must renounce, forget and forever lose sight of self, take part with You and shine, O God, against ourselves and ours; have no longer any will, glory or peace, but yours only; in a word, we must love You without loving self except in and for You.

God who made us out of nothing, re-creates us, as it were, every moment. It does not follow that because we were yesterday, we shall of course be to-day; we should cease to exist and return into the nothingness out of which He formed us, did not the same all-powerful hand prevent. Of ourselves we are nothing; we are but what God has made us, and for so long time only as He pleases. He has but to withdraw the hand that sustains us and we plunge into the abyss of annihilation, as a stone held in the air falls by its own weight when its support is removed. Existence and life, then, are only ours because they are conferred by God.

There are blessings, however, of a purer and higher order than these; a well-ordered life is better than life; virtue is of higher price than health; uprightness of heart and the love of God are as far above temporal goods as the heavens are above the earth. If then these lower and baser gifts are held only through the mercy and at the pleasure of God, with how much more reason must it be true of the sublime gift of his love!

They know You not, then, O my God, who regard You as an all-powerful Being, separate from themselves, giving laws to all nature, and creator of everything which we behold; they know You but in part! they know not that which is most marvelous and which most nearly concerns your rational creatures! To know that You art the God of my heart, that You there do what pleaseth You, this it is that elevates and affects me! When I am good, it is because You renderest me so; not only do You turn my heart as pleaseth You, but You givest me one like yours own! It is Yourself that You lovest in me; You art the life of my soul as my soul is the life of my body; You art more intimately present to me than I am to myself; this I, to which I am so attached and which I have so ardently loved, ought to be strange to me in comparison with You; You art the bestower of it; without You it never would have been; therefore it is that You desirest that I should love You better than it.

O incomprehensible power of my Creator! O rights of the Creator over the creature which the creature will never sufficiently comprehend! O prodigy of love which God alone could perform! God interposes himself as it were, between me and myself; He separates me from myself; He desires to be nearer to me by his pure love than I am to myself. He would have me look upon this "me" as a stranger; He would have me escape from its walls, sacrifice it whole to Him, returning it absolutely and unconditionally to Him from whom I received it. What I am ought certainly to be less precious to me than He by whom I am. He made me for himself and not to be my own; that is, to love Him and to will what He wills, and not to seek my own will. Does any one feel his heart revolt at this total sacrifice of self to Him who has created us? I weep for his blindness; I compassionate his bondage to self, and pray God to deliver him from it, by teaching him to love Him above every other object.

O my God! in these souls, offended at your pure love, I behold the darkness and rebellion resulting from the fall! You didst not make man's heart will this monstrous passion of appropriation. The uprightness in which the scriptures teach us he was originally created consisted in this, that he had no claim upon himself but acknowledged that he belonged to his Creator. O Father! your children are sadly changed, and no longer bear yours image! They are enraged, they are discouraged when they are told they should belong to You as You belongest to Yourself! They desire to reverse this holy order, and would madly raise themselves into Gods; they desire to be their own, to do everything for self, or at least, to surrender themselves with certain reservations and conditions, and for their own advantage. O monstrous usurpation! O unknown rights of God! O the ingratitude and insolence of the creature! Miserable nothing! what have you to keep for yourself! What have you which belongs to you? What have you which did not come from on high, and ought not to return thither? Everything, yea, even this I which would divide with God his gifts, is a gift of God, and was only made for Him; everything within you cries out against you and for your Creator. Be still, then, you who, having been created, would deny your Creator, and surrender yourself wholly to Him.

But alas! O my God! what a consolation is it to know that everything within as well as without me, is the work of your hand! You art ever with me. When I do wrong, You are within me, reproaching me with the evil which I do, raising within me regrets for the good which I abandon, and opening to me yours arms of mercy. When I do good, You inspirest the desire, and do it in me and with me; it is You who lovest good and hatest evil in my heart, who sufferest and prayest, who do good to the neighbor and givest alms: I do all these things but by your means; You causest me to do them; it is You who puttest them in me. These good works, which are your gifts, become my works; but they do not cease to be your gifts; and they cease to be good works if I look at them for a moment as emanating from myself, or if I forget that they are good only because they come from You.

You, then, (it is my delight to believe it!) art incessantly working within me; there You laborest invisibly like a miner in the bowels of the earth. You do everything and yet the world beholds You not, attributes nothing to You; and even I myself wandered everywhere vainly searching for You outside of myself; I ran over all the wonders of nature that I might form some conception of your greatness; I asked your creatures of You and not once thought of finding You in the depths of my heart where You hadst never ceased to dwell. No, O my God! it is not necessary to descent into the depths nor to pass beyond the seas; it is not necessary to ascend into the heavens to find You; You art nearer to us than we are to ourselves.

O my God! who art at once so great and so condescending, so high above the heavens and so accommodating to the misery of the creature, so infinite and so intimately enclosed in the depths of my heart, so terrible and so lovely, so jealous and so easy to be entreated of those who converse with You with the familiarity of pure love, when will your children cease to be ignorant of You? Where shall I find a voice loud enough to reproach the whole world with its blindness, and to tell it with authority all that You art? When we bid men look for You in their own hearts, it is as though we bade them search for You in the remotest and most unknown lands! What territory is more distant or more unknown to the greater part of them, vain and dissipated as they are, than the ground of their own hearts? Do they ever know what it is to enter within themselves? Have they ever endeavored to find the way? Can they even form the most distant conception of the nature of that interior sanctuary, that impenetrable depth of the soul where You desirest to be worshipped in spirit and in truth? They are ever outside of themselves in the objects of their ambition or of their pleasure. Alas! how can they understand heavenly truths, since, as our Lord says, they cannot even comprehend those which are earthly? (John iii. 12.) They cannot conceive what it is to enter within themselves by serious reflexion; what would they say if they were told bid to come out of themselves that they might be lost in God?

As for me, my Creator, I shut my eyes to all exterior things, which are but vanity and vexation of spirit, (Eccles. i. 14,) that I may enjoy in the deepest recesses of my heart an intimate companionship with You through Jesus Christ your Son, who is your Wisdom and Eternal Understanding. He became a child that by his childhood and the folly of his cross, he might put to shame our vain and lying wisdom. Cost what it may, and in spite of my fears and speculations, I desire to become lowly and a fool, still more despicable in my own eyes than in those of the wise in their own conceit. Like the apostles, I would become drunk with the Holy Spirit, and be content with them to become the sport of the world.

I find You everywhere within. It is You that do every good thing which I seem to do. I have a thousand times experienced that I could not of myself govern my temper, overcome my habits, subdue my pride, follow my reason nor will again the good which I had once willed. It is You that must both bestow the will and preserve it pure; without You I am but a reed shaken by the wind. You art the author of all the courage, the uprightness and the truth which I possess; You has given me a new heart which longs after your righteousness, and which is athirst for yours eternal truth; You has taken away the old man full of filth and corruption, and which was jealous, vain, ambitious, restless, unrighteous and devoted to its own pleasure. In what a state of misery did I live. Ah! could I ever have believed that I should be enabled thus to turn to You, and shake off the yoke of my tyrannical passions?

But, behold a marvel that eclipses all the rest! Who but You could ever have snatched me from myself, and turned all my hatred and contempt against mine own bosom? I have not done this; for it is not by our own power that we depart from self; no! You, O Lord, didst shine with yours own light into the depth of my heart which could not be reached by any other, and didst there reveal the whole of my foulness. I know that, even after beholding, I have not changed it; that I am still filthy in your sight, that my eyes have not been able to discover the extent of my pollution; but I have, at least, seen a part, and I desire to behold the whole. I am despised in my own sight, but the hope that I have in You causes me to live in peace; for I will neither flatter my defects nor suffer them to discourage me. I take your side, O God, against myself; it is only by your strength that I am able to do this. Behold what has God wrought within me! and You continuest your work from day to day in cleansing me from the old Adam and in building up the new. This is the new creation which is gradually going on.

I leave myself, Father, in your hands; make and re-make this clay, shape it or grind it to atoms; it is yours own, it has nought to say; only let it always be subservient to yours ever-blessed designs, and let nothing in me oppose your good pleasure for which I was created. Require, command, forbid; what would You have me do? what not do? Exalted, or abased, rejoicing or suffering, doing your work or laid aside, I will always praise You alike, ever yielding up all my own will to Yours! Nothing remains for me but to adopt the language of Mary: "Be it unto me according to your words," (Luke i. 38.)

Let me, O my God, stifle forever in my heart, every thought that would tempt me to doubt your goodness. I know that You can not but be good. O merciful Father! let me no longer reason about grace, but silently abandon myself to its operation. Grace performs everything in us, but does it with and through us; it is by it, therefore, that I act, that I forbear, that I suffer, that I wait, that I resist, that I believe, that I hope, and that I love, all in co-operation with grace. Following its guidance, it will do all things in me, and I shall do all things through it; it moves the heart, but the heart must move; there is no salvation without man's action. I must work, then, without losing a moment, that I may put no hinderance in the way of that grace which is incessantly working within me. All the good is of grace, all the evil is of self; when I do right, it is grace that does it; when I do wrong, it is because I resist grace. I pray God that I may not seek to know more than this; all else will but serve to nourish a presumptuous curiosity. O my God! keep me ever in the number of those babes to whom You revealest your mysteries, while You concealest them from the wise and prudent!

You causest me clearly to understand that You makest use of the evils and imperfections of the creature to do the good which you have determined beforehand. You concealest yourself under the importunate visitor, who intrudes upon the occupation of your impatient child, that he may learn not to be impatient, and that he may die to the gratification of being free to study or work as he pleases. You availest yourself of slanderous tongues to destroy the reputation of yours innocent children, that, beside their innocence, they may offer You the sacrifice of their too highly-cherished reputation. By the cunning artifices of the envious, You layest low the fortunes of those whose were too much set upon their prosperity. It is your hand that sends death upon him to whom life is a constant source of danger, and the tomb a harbor of refuge. It is You that makest his death a remedy, bitter enough, it is true, but effectual, for those who were too fondly attached to him, and thus, while saving one, by removing him from life, You preparest the others, by that very act, for a happy death. Thus You mercifully strewest bitterness over everything that is not Yourself, to the end that our hearts, formed to love You and to exist upon your love, may be, as it were, constrained to return to You by a want of satisfaction in everything else.

And this is because You art all Love, and consequently all Jealousy. O jealous God! (for thus art you called!) a divided heart displeases You; a wandering one excites your pity. You art infinite in all things, in love as well as in wisdom and power. You lovest like an infinite God when you lovest; You movest heaven and earth to save your loved ones; You becomest man, a babe, the vilest of men, covered with reproaches, dying with infamy and under the pangs of the cross; all this is not too much for an infinite love. Our finite love and limited wisdom cannot understand it; how should the finite comprehend the Infinite? it has neither eyes to see it nor a heart to take it in; the debased and narrowed soul of man and his vain wisdom are offended, and can perceive no trace of God in this excess of love. But for myself, it is by this very character of infinity that I recognize it: this is the love that does all things; that brings to pass even the evils we suffer, so shaping them that they are but the instruments of preparing the good which, as yet, has not arrived.

But ah! when shall we return love for Love? When shall we seek Him who seeks us and constantly carries us in his arms? When He bears us along in his tender and paternal bosom, then it is that we forget Him; in the sweetness of his gifts, we forget the Giver; his ceaseless blessings, instead of melting us into love, distract our attention and turn it away from Him.