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 PREFACE 
 
 THIS little book aims at quickening personal 
 religion by recalling the lessons in the 
 spiritual life which some of the great Masters of 
 Devotion have left to us in their lives and in their 
 writings. Next to the Bible itself, the lives of the 
 Saints and their written counsel are the surest guides 
 to holiness. Their experience is always an inspira- 
 tion. Their counsel never grows old. But they are 
 often too little known. 
 
 This book is meant to be a simple introduction 
 to the study of some of their writings which are 
 most accessible. In each chapter the same plan has 
 been followed. After a short account of the spirit 
 of the age in which they lived, comes a short bio- 
 graphy, and then an outline of the chief character- 
 istics of their teaching, with brief quotations from 
 their books. It is hoped that in this way these 
 treasures of devotion, which have nourished the 
 spiritual life of the faithful in other ages, may be 
 made to contribute more fully to the quickening 
 and enrichment of our own religious life to-day. 
 
 No one who reads a book of devotion can afford 
 to forget the wise caution of Scupoli : " This 
 
 .iJl.
 
 vi MASTERS OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 
 
 crucified Lord is the Book that I give you to read, 
 from which you wiU be able to draw the true portrait 
 of every virtue. For being the Book of Life, not 
 only does it teach the intellect by word, but it 
 inflames the will by a living example. The whole 
 world is full of books, and yet aU of them together 
 are not able to teach you the way of acquiring all 
 the virtues so perfectly as we can acquire them by 
 gazing on the Crucified God." 
 
 F. W. D.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. S. AUGUSTINE AND " THE CONFESSIONS " . I 
 
 II. JULIAN OF NORWICH AND " REVELATIONS 
 
 OF DIVINE LOVE " . . . -31 
 
 III. THOMAS A KEMPIS AND " THE IMITATION OF 
 
 CHRIST " . . . . . -55 
 
 IV. LORENZO SCUPOLI AND " THE SPIRITUAL 
 
 COMBAT " . . . . . .81 
 
 V. FRANCIS DE SALES AND " THE DEVOUT 
 
 LIFE " 104 
 
 VI. WILLIAM LAW AND " A SERIOUS CALL " . 134
 
 NOTE 
 
 In the chapters on S. Augustine, Thomas a 
 Kempis, ScupoH, Francis de Sales, and William 
 Law, the quotations from their works are made 
 from the excellent and uniform editions of The 
 Confessions, The Imitation oj Christ, The 
 Spiritual Combat, The Devout Life, and A 
 Serious Call, which are published in Methuen'S 
 Library of Devotion. The quotations from 
 Julian in Chapter ii. are made from Miss 
 Warrack's edition of Revelations of Divine 
 Love, published also by Methuen & Co., Ltd.
 
 MASTERS OF 
 THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 
 
 I 
 
 S.AUGUSTINE AND "THE CONFESSIONS" 
 
 IN The Confessions of S. Augustine we have a 
 work which finds no real parallel in all the 
 literature of the world. It is not a theological 
 treatise, though it illustrates freely the great re- 
 ligious truths which governed the mind of him 
 who became the chief creator of the theology of 
 Western Christendom. It is not a book of devotion, 
 but it enumerates clearly the principles of penitence, 
 faith, and love, which are the permanent elements 
 of all Christian devotion. It is not a biography, 
 though it deals intimately with the inner history of 
 the supreme crises of a great man's life. It is the 
 solemn address of a soul to God, recounting into the 
 ears of Divine Love the penitent and grateful story 
 of a life of many failures and repeated mercies. 
 It is a book that speaks with equal vividness and 
 power of intimate appeal to every age. It tells of a 
 life spent in the crowded scenes of the busy cities 
 of Italy and Africa more than fifteen hundred years 
 
 A
 
 2 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 ago. Yet in it we overhear the story of our own 
 experience to-day, we see the picture of our own 
 struggles and catch the promise of our own victory. 
 Told with all the witchery of a sublime master of 
 words, the story never palls. It rings with the un- 
 dying interest of spiritual reality. It has the 
 eternal charm of true romance — Love calling for love, 
 Love faithful through sin and triumphant over aU. 
 
 When Augustine was born at Thagaste in North 
 Africa in the year 354, the Church of Christ had 
 already enjoyed nearly fifty years of peace and 
 imperial favour. The first days of Christianity had 
 been days of great danger and severe discipline. 
 As long as the new religion could hide itself under 
 the shadow of Judaism, which was a tolerated and 
 favoured faith in Roman eyes, there was no danger 
 of public persecution. But when Jerusalem fell, 
 Christianity was brought into the open, and a period 
 of grave peril followed. In wonderful ways the 
 Church grew and prospered in the days of adversity. 
 The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church. 
 Common danger strengthened the bonds of Christian 
 fellowship and kindled a spirit of glowing zeal and 
 steadfastness. The dangerous days came when 
 the last persecution was over and Constantine took 
 the Church under his protection. Profession of
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 3 
 
 Christianity became the way of promotion and of 
 imperial favour. Men flocked into the Church from 
 unworthy motives, uninstructed and unconvinced. 
 In the heresies that arose the emperors took sides, 
 and political obedience carried with it allegiance to 
 the religious creed, whether orthodox or heretical, 
 which the Emperor professed. 
 
 Augustine was bom into the midst of the greatest 
 struggle for the Faith which the Church has ever seen. 
 The Deity of Christ, the very keystone of the Christian 
 faith, had been challenged by Arius. Put under 
 the ban of the Church by the decree of the Council 
 of Nicsea, Arius had found a staunch supporter in 
 the eastern emperor Constantius, who threw into 
 the cause of heresy all the weight of his imperial 
 influence and patronage. Augustine was three years 
 old when all the great leaders of orthodoxy had 
 been overborne, except Athanasius, and the whole 
 world groaned to find itself Arian. Augustine in 
 his teens must have watched the long stmggle with 
 interest, as he saw the Faith of the Church victoriously 
 reasserted and vindicated by the vigorous champion- 
 ship of Athanasius and Basil. He was twenty- 
 seven years old when the Council of Constantinople 
 set its seal to the victory of the Nicene faith. 
 
 But already a danger, no less grave than heresy, 
 was rending the unity of the Church in Africa. A 
 schism had arisen which destroyed the peace and 
 paralysed the progress of the Church. In a spirit of
 
 4 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 mistaken reaction against the moral laxity which 
 years of peace had engendered and the persecution 
 of Diocletian had revealed, a party of enthusiasts 
 sought to purge the Church by excluding from its 
 fellowship all who had proved unfaithful in time 
 of danger, or who were deemed unworthy in life 
 and conversation. The ministry, they urged, could 
 only be exercised by those who were holy. The 
 worthiness of the minister was in their eyes the in- 
 dispensable condition of valid sacramental grace. 
 The election of a bishop in vindication of these views 
 in 311, in opposition toCaecilian, the duly consecrated 
 Bishop of Carthage, was the beginning of this 
 Donatist schism, which in Augustine's day num- 
 bered more than two hundred and fifty bishops, 
 and challenged both in numbers and importance 
 the Catholic Church of Africa itself. The out- 
 rageous violence of the Donatists, and their self- 
 sought, and often self-inflicted, martyrdom produced 
 perilous confusion in the Church life of North Africa. 
 The position was all the more difficult, because on 
 the great questions of belief which had convulsed 
 Christendom they were at one with the champions 
 of the Catholic faith. To a lover of Catholic unity 
 like S. Augustine, nothing could be more desolating 
 than the spectacle of a divided Church, no longer 
 able to realise the treasures of its own inheritance, 
 nor to evangelise the vast heathendom of Africa, 
 because its brilliant endowinents of learning and
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 5 
 
 its passionate energies of zeal were being squandered 
 on the wilful perpetuation of this pitiable schism. 
 
 But there was not only schism, there was heresy 
 also which disturbed the unity of the Church in 
 North Africa at the end of the fourth century. 
 The great cardinal truths about God — the Unity of 
 God and the Deity of Christ — had been securely 
 vindicated as the result of the Sabellian and Arian 
 controversies. It remained for a British monk, 
 Pelagius, in a spirit of genuine moral earnestness, 
 to question the very need of that grace which the 
 Incarnation of the Son of God had brought for the 
 uplifting of human life. There was no inborn weak- 
 ness of sin, he said, in human nature which needed 
 the help of Divine grace. Man's will, unaided and 
 alone, was sufficient for all the tasks that God had 
 laid upon human nature. Men had failed because 
 they had not fully estimated their own natural 
 powers. They only needed to be assured of their 
 self-sufficiency to put forth an energ}^ of will which 
 had been withheld through ignorance and fear. 
 Augustine at once saw the perils of such a doctrine. 
 Rejection of Divine grace meant the denial of sin 
 and the voiding of the whole purpose of the Incar- 
 nation. Augustine brought to bear upon this 
 controversy a knowledge which was not only pro- 
 found in its theology, but was the fruit of his own 
 life's experience. He knew what were the limitations 
 of human independence, he knew the need of Divine
 
 6 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 grace and the fulness of its power, he knew the 
 weakness of human will and its need of renewal 
 through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The 
 Pelagian heresy was significant of the spiritual 
 needs of the last days of the fourth century. Men 
 needed rousing to action. There was a growing 
 lack of zeal, a waning sense of sin, a lowering of the 
 moral ideal, and a rising spirit of intellectual pride, 
 bom of material prosperity and a rationalising 
 temper which saw no beauty in holiness. Pelagian- 
 ism is a peril which is always present in ages of great 
 intellectual and scientific advance. It is well for 
 us that in these days of its recrudescence we have 
 the Catholic doctrine of Grace so clearly and so 
 accurately vindicated in the terse and vigorous 
 language of S. Augustine. 
 
 It was indeed an age of restless activity in which 
 Augustine lived. The death of Theodosius the 
 Great in 395, when Augustine in the prime of life 
 was on the eve of his great episcopate, marked a 
 crisis in the life of the Roman Empire. He had 
 proved a sturdy, though intolerant, champion of 
 the Church and a stout defender of the Empire. 
 Theodosius had struggled with paganism, and amid 
 the growing troubles of the Empire had preserved 
 Italy from invasion. But in the incapable hands 
 of his two successors the defence of the Empire was 
 no longer safe. The ruthless advance of the bar- 
 barians could be no longer held in check. In 410
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 7 
 
 Rome, the inviolable, was captured, sacked, and 
 burned by the savage troops of Alaric the Goth. 
 The fall of Rome stupefied the world and brought 
 renewal to the life of paganism. Christianity, the 
 pagans said, had wrought the downfall of Rome and 
 the ruin of the Empire. As long as the old pagan 
 sacrifices continued, Rome had been secure. But 
 now, with the proscription of pagan rites and the 
 growth of Christianity, the ine\'itable end had 
 come. 
 
 Augustine at once took up the challenge, and in 
 The City of God, which occupied his later years, he 
 denounced the powerlessness of polytheism and 
 laid bare the essential immorality of paganism, 
 which was the true source of imperial decay, while 
 he lifted men's minds beyond the glory of this world 
 to see the true City of God in the sure and stable 
 fellowship of the Church with its life of peace and 
 purity on earth, based on the immutable laws of 
 Christ and bright with the hope of immortality. 
 It needed the genius of an Augustine to bring 
 comfort and hope to a generation so sorely tried 
 and so profoundly perplexed by the oncoming tide 
 of the barbarian invasion. From Spain the Vandals 
 crossed to Africa, and Numidia was ravaged by the 
 pitiless hordes of Genseric. As the aged Augustine 
 lay dying in Hippo, the city was already blockaded 
 by land and by sea. The warning which he had 
 uttered was coming home to his own people. The
 
 8 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 judgments of God were in all the land. The chastise- 
 ments of the Lord were calling men to repentance, 
 vindicating His holiness and creating a people for 
 Himself out of the midst of desolation, famine, and 
 the sword. What would Augustine have said could 
 he have foreseen the future of that African Church, 
 for which he so patiently, so lovingly, and so untir- 
 ingly had laboured through the thirty-five years of 
 his devoted episcopate ? The barbarian desolation 
 which he had seen when the Vandals besieged his 
 dying bed at Hippo was renewed three centuries 
 later in far more terrible guise, when the Moorish 
 hosts swept over North Africa and put the Christians 
 ruthlessly to the sword. Was it the judgment of God 
 upon a Church that had not realised the Faith for 
 which Augustine pleaded, that had not sought the 
 unity for which he had so bravely striven, nor roused 
 the energies of its will in loving missionary effort 
 to build the City of God in those strongholds of 
 paganism, in which he had already seen the hope of 
 coming \dctory ? 
 
 B. 
 
 The peculiar value of The Confessions in studying 
 the story of S. Augustine is that it enables us to 
 choose out of the countless activities of a crowded 
 life just those events which were critical for the 
 formation of his character and the development of 
 his career. Our own judgment is aided by the inter-
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 9 
 
 pretation which he himself gives to the continual 
 leading of God by which his life was guided. It 
 was at the request of his friends that Augustine 
 wrote The Confessions. They had asked for the 
 story of his life. He had now been Bishop of Hippo 
 for some three or four years. He wanted to write 
 in such a way that he neither veiled the weaknesses 
 of his earlier life nor made himself the object of 
 admiration and of praise. He wished men to realise 
 that the precious secret of his life was the continual 
 goodness of God, Whose guidance and love he recog- 
 nised at every stage of his career. He mshed the 
 story of his life to be a song of praise to God. So 
 might he make reparation for the long years of 
 silence and forgetfulness. Therefore he chose to 
 review his life in the form of a solemn confession to 
 God. It should be the outpouring of a penitent and 
 loving heart, with each fresh memory of the past 
 renewing its thanksgiving and praise for the unfail- 
 ing mercies of the Divine Love in Whom at length 
 it had found rest. 
 
 Such a method of biography has its own dangers, 
 especially for a man of Augustine's literary skill 
 and dramatic temperament. But we can trust that 
 his continual reliance on the Holy Spirit, his acute 
 power of moral analysis, and his ardent humility 
 have combined to guide him to a faithful remem- 
 brance of the way in which the hand of God had 
 silently led him out of darkness into light, and had
 
 10 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 preserved him through so many dangers and temp- 
 tations that he might bear witness to all ages of 
 the Truth as it is in Christ Jesus and of the Hope 
 which God inspires. 
 
 Augustine was bom in the year 354 at Thagaste, 
 a Numidian market-town in the north of Africa, 
 where his father Patricius was a burgess of some 
 local importance. Patricius was a pagan, but his 
 wife Monnica was a Christian, who was allowed to 
 pursue her habits of catholic devotion, not without 
 remonstrance, but without active hindrance from 
 her husband. Augustine was therefore in infancy 
 made a catechumen, " signed with the sign of His 
 Cross and seasoned with His salt." He was not yet 
 baptized. In accordance with the frequent Christian 
 habit of those days, the " cleansing " of baptism was 
 deferred till later life, to avoid the graver peril of 
 sin after baptism, " because after that bath the 
 guilt and vileness of sin would be greater and more 
 dangerous." 
 
 As a boy Augustine recalls his dislike of school 
 and his great love of games. He remembers his 
 first prayers to God that he might escape flogging. 
 But as he gave no better heed to his lessons, his 
 prayers were unanswered, and he gained his first 
 experience of that law of prayer which S. James 
 enunciates, " Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask 
 amiss." Soon the primary school of Thagaste 
 gave way to the grammar school of the neighbouring
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " ii 
 
 town of Madaura, where he found his first sentiments 
 of emotion stirred by the love-story of Dido, and 
 gained his first triumphs in dramatic recitation 
 before his classmates. Afterwards he could find no 
 words of praise for an education which abjured all 
 moral and spiritual training in favour of the nice 
 delicacies of classical refinement. 
 
 The talent of Augustine could not be denied. 
 His father, " who was but a poor burgess, with a 
 spirit beyond his purse," ambitious that no edu- 
 cational advantage should be lost to his son, deter- 
 mined to send him to Carthage. But the expense 
 was more than Patricius could immediately aft'ord, 
 and while he was raising money for the course at 
 Carthage, Augustine was forced to spend an idle 
 year at home. It was a dangerous interlude for 
 such a lad. " While during that sixteenth year I 
 kept complete holiday in idleness, enforced by 
 straitened means, and lived in the society of my 
 parents, the thorns of lust grew higher than my 
 head, and there was no hand to root them up." 
 " Behold with what comrades I roamed the streets 
 of Babylon, and wallowed in the gutters as in spices 
 and precious ointments. In the very centre of that 
 city of sin the ghostly enemy trod me down and 
 held me fast." The voice of God spoke to him 
 through the warning words of his mother, yet it 
 seemed to him that God was silent, and he strayed 
 wantonly into sins of lust and theft, " merely for the
 
 12 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 pleasure of doing wrong." Augustine was always 
 peculiarly sensitive to the influences of friendship. 
 In Thagaste his comrades were a shameless fellow- 
 ship, whose ways he was not strong enough to 
 control nor brave enough to denounce. 
 
 At Carthage he found himself adrift in a larger 
 world, for which he was ill equipped. He was still 
 swayed by the unbalanced emotions of affection. 
 " I was not yet in love, but I loved the idea of love. 
 To love and to be loved was sweet to me." But 
 such passion brought its own suffering, and in the 
 pains which he endured he recognised the scourge 
 and judgment of God. In the midst of such dis- 
 tractions Augustine did not forget his work. He 
 attained the highest distinctions in the school of 
 rhetoric, and was pursuing his studies ardently, 
 when the whole course of his desires was changed 
 by the reading of a treatise of Cicero, Hortensius, 
 which kindled in him a love of wisdom. " That 
 book changed my mind, changed my very prayers 
 to Thee, O Lord, and altered my wishes and aspira- 
 tions. From that moment vain hopes ceased to 
 charm, and with a strange and heartfelt passion I 
 began to live for the immortality of wisdom. Thence- 
 forth began my upward way and my return towards 
 Thee." His new quest after wisdom led him to turn 
 to the Bible, in which he hoped to find the highest 
 wisdom. But he was rebuffed by its want of literary 
 beauty. Intellectual pride would not suffer him
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 13 
 
 to read a book whose sentences were so uncouth, 
 whose style was so simple and so unpolished. 
 
 But his desire for higher truth must find satis- 
 faction somewhere, and in his new intellectualism 
 he was caught by the specious wisdom of the 
 Manichees. Their egregious philosophy, with its 
 assumption of superior wisdom, with its defective 
 sense of sin and ready tolerance of moral obliquity, 
 seemed to suit Augustine's needs, and for nine years 
 he was kept by the spell of Manichaeism from any 
 desire to learn more of the Christian faith, to which 
 the prayers of his widowed mother were already 
 beginning to draw him. " During this space of nine 
 years, from the nineteenth to the twenty-eighth 
 year of my age, I was misled and misleader, deceived 
 and deceiver in various fond desires, openly by means 
 of those arts and accomplishments which men call 
 liberal, secretly in the cause of a false religion — now 
 proud, now superstitious, always naught." 
 
 After a short term as schoolmaster at Thagaste, 
 Augustine became a teacher of rhetoric at Carthage 
 in 376. But the disorderliness of his pupils taxed 
 both his patience and his skill, and after six years he 
 left Africa for Rome, where he had heard that the 
 scholars were better disciplined. But Rome had 
 its difficulties as well as Carthage. It was a habit 
 of the Roman pupils not to pay their fees. Augus- 
 tine therefore seized the opportunity of a vacancy 
 in the public professorship of Rhetoric at Milan to
 
 14 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 leave inhospitable Rome, and to journey north to 
 the city of Ambrose, where Monnica was delighted 
 to join him. 
 
 Manichseism had ceased now to exercise any hold 
 over Augustine. He had found it wrong in its 
 astronomical science, and Faustus, its most able 
 champion, could no longer hide his ignorance about 
 much which he had professed to know. Augustine 
 had then turned to the Platonic teaching of the 
 New Academy, to which he owed his first spiritual 
 conception of the Being of God. He had always 
 thought of God hitherto as " nothing but corporeal 
 substance." Now in Ambrose he found a teacher 
 who appealed both to his sense of beauty, his affec- 
 tions, and his powers of thought. Scripture unveiled 
 to him its inner meaning and was justified in his 
 eyes, as Ambrose unfolded the beauties of its spiritual 
 teaching. 
 
 The preaching of Ambrose stirred in Augustine 
 fresh thoughts about the human will, which was the 
 cause of so much sin. Silenth^ there sounded in 
 his heart the murmur of Christian truth, which 
 seemed to him, ever since he was made a catechumen, 
 to have been his hidden possession. " For this 
 Name, according to Thy loving-kindness, O Lord, 
 this Name of my Saviour, Thy Son, my infant heart 
 had sucked in with my mother's milk, and there 
 it still was, hidden safe away." "And yet the faith 
 of Thy Christ, our Lord and Saviour, taught me by
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 15 
 
 the Catholic Church, stuck fast in my heart. As 
 yet it was shapeless and wandered from the straight 
 line of doctrine, nevertheless my mind never lost 
 hold upon it, but drank it in daily more and more." 
 
 At this moment in his spiritual struggle Augustine 
 turned for help to Simphcianus, " the spiritual father 
 of Bishop Ambrose." Simplicianus told him of the 
 conversion of the philosopher Victorinus, who in 
 his old age, putting aside at last his fear of offending 
 friends and yielding himself to the call of God, was 
 baptized " to the great wonder of Rome and the 
 great joy of the Church," and had proved his courage 
 by deliberately choosing to make public profession 
 of his salvation before all the people. Augustine 
 was just in the same case as Victorinus — a public 
 man, a brilliant teacher, practically convinced of the 
 truths of Christianity, but afraid of his friends, 
 hesitating to move, lacking the courage to give up 
 the vanities and pleasures which held him down, 
 unable to break with evil habit. 
 
 The story of another friend determined Augustine 
 at last to break free from the chain of sensual sin. 
 Pontitianus told him how two friends, inspired by 
 reading the Life of Antony, had left the loves of this 
 world and given themselves to God in the religious 
 life. In an agony of conflict Augustine struggled 
 with the new impulses to righteousness and obedience 
 to the Will of God which urged him to immediate 
 surrender. " I flung myself down under a fig-tree
 
 i6 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 and gave my tears free course. I felt that I was held 
 fast by my iniquities, and I went on waiHng ' How 
 long, how long ? To-morrow and to-morrow ? 
 Why not now ? Why not this hour make an end 
 of my vileness ? ' Thus I spoke, weeping in bitter 
 contrition of heart, when, lo, I heard a voice from 
 the neighbouring house. It seemed as if some 
 boy or girl, I knew not which, was repeating in a 
 kind of chant the words, ' Take and read, take 
 and read.' " Augustine could only interpret the 
 voice as a Divine command to open the Bible and 
 read the first passage he lighted on, as Antony had 
 taken to himself the first words of the Gospel which 
 he had heard on entering church. Picking up the 
 book of his friend Alypius, he opened it and read 
 in silence the passage on which his eyes first fell — 
 " Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering 
 and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put 
 ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision 
 for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof." " As I 
 reached the end of the sentence, the light of peace 
 seemed to be shed upon my heart and every shadow 
 of doubt melted away." Calmly Augustine told 
 his friend Alypius what had befallen him, and to 
 his surprise Alypius was ready to join him in his 
 Christian profession. So the Divine Love had at 
 length triumphed over the vain loves of earthly 
 passion, and to the restless soul made for Himself 
 God had brought peace.
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 17 
 
 Augustine at once retired to a country house near 
 Milan at Cassicium, where in the fellowship of that 
 quiet retreat his friends Verecundus and Nebridius 
 were won over to the Christian faith. Soon after, 
 in the year 387, Augustine was baptized by Ambrose 
 in Milan. " We were baptized, and all anxiety for 
 the past fled away." So were the faithful prayers 
 of Monnica at length rewarded, and with the hope 
 of her life fulfilled she started back with Augustine 
 for Africa. But at Ostia Monnica died, rendering 
 to God a soul filled with thanksgiving for the Divine 
 mercy of her son's conversion, and praying that at the 
 Altar of God she might find continual remembrance. 
 
 Augustine never swerved from the path on which 
 God had now set his feet. Returned to Thagaste, 
 he sold his little property and lived a simple com- 
 munity-life with a few friends, until in 381 he was 
 ordained to the priesthood to help the aged Bishop 
 Valerius at Hippo. For fourteen years he laboured 
 faithfully in the priestly life, attaining eminence 
 both by his brilliant championship of the Catholic 
 Faith and by his devoted labours on behalf of Church 
 unity. It was inevitable that he should be called 
 to the episcopate, as Valerius grew too old for the 
 burden. Consecrated Bishop in 395, one year 
 before the death of Valerius, Augustine remained 
 sole Bishop of Hippo for thirty-five years. The 
 history of his labours is the history of the African 
 Church. In every Council his was the guiding voice. 
 
 B
 
 i8 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 In every controversy it was he who was the cham- 
 pion of the Church against its foes, be they Arians, 
 Pelagians, Donatists, or Manichees. His hterary 
 industry remains a marvel. Correspondence with 
 friends, Commentaries on Scripture, profound 
 Treatises on the Faith, Refutations of Heresy — 
 Augustine amid all the innumerable burdens of the 
 episcopate found time for them all. And through all 
 his work and life there runs the continuous sense 
 of the Divine Presence and the call of Divine Love, 
 of which The Confessions are the \vitness. Dedi- 
 cation, humility, obedience, self-sacrificing diligence, 
 utter love of the Truth, adoring reverence and fear 
 of God — these are the marks of discipleship which 
 the life of Augustine bears. In him God has shown 
 the magnificent power of His converting grace. 
 In him we see what glorious enrichment of all the 
 faculties of life awaits the soul that yields itself to 
 the enabling call of God. No Christian teacher 
 has ever left such an enduring mark upon the re- 
 ligious thought of all ages as S. Augustine. At 
 every crisis in the life of the Western Church it has 
 been to the writings of Augustine that men have 
 turned. Schoolman and Mystic, Schismatic and 
 Catholic, Jansenist and Jesuit — all alike have drawn 
 new inspiration from the profound theology, the 
 religious insight, and the intense personal devotion 
 of Augustine, the Pilgrim and the Apostle of Divine 
 Love.
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 19 
 
 C. 
 
 The Confessions of Augustine reveal effectively 
 to the thoughtful reader the religious inspiration of 
 a life that is truly hid in Christ. For while it is the 
 record of years of wasted opportunities and selfish 
 pleasure and forgetfulness of God, the story is told 
 with such a deep spirit of humble penitence, such 
 a trustful dependence upon the power of God's 
 protection, and such a faithful acceptance of the 
 fulness of the Di\'ine pardon, that the reader moves 
 in the felt Presence of God, and is conscious rather 
 of the eternal constancy of the Divine Love than 
 of the merely human interest of Augustine's 
 narrative. 
 
 Augustine has a very reverend conception of the 
 Majesty of God. That spirit of adoring approach 
 to God, which is so lacking in our own life of prayer, 
 finds repeated expression in his devotion. God is 
 to him the God of awe, the terrible Judge, the 
 Omnipotent Creator, the Ruler of the world. It 
 is as impossible for man to comprehend the 
 infimite God as it is for a child to pour the sea into 
 the httle hole which he has dug upon the shore. 
 Yet at the same time he reahses that close and 
 intimate personal fellowship with God which enables 
 him to use terms of the dearest human affection and 
 to appeal to Him in every circumstance of life as his
 
 20 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 own Friend, his cherished Hope and Light and Joy. 
 The very first words of the book are an ascription 
 of praise to God, as the natural offering of man to 
 his Creator. 
 
 Great art Thou, O Lord, and highly to be praised. 
 Great is Thy power, yea, and Thy wisdom is infinite. 
 And man would praise Thee, because he is one of 
 Thy creatures. Yea man, though he bears about 
 with him his mortality, the proof of his sin, the proof 
 that Thou, O God, dost resist the proud, yet would 
 man praise Thee, because he is one of Thy creatures. 
 Thou dost prompt us thereto, making it a joy to 
 praise Thee. For Thou hast created us unto Thyself, 
 and our heart finds no rest until it rests in Thee. [i. i .] 
 
 And as the prelude to the story of his life, Augustine 
 sets this noble confession of the Majesty and in- 
 effable Perfection of God : 
 
 What art Thou, then, my God, save the Lord God ? 
 For what God is there but the Lord, or what God 
 but our God ? Highest, best, most mighty, most 
 almighty — most merciful, most just — most far and 
 yet most near — fairest yet strongest — fixed yet 
 incomprehensible — unchangeable, yet changing all 
 things — never new, yet never aged — renewing all, 
 yet bringing the haughty into decrepitude and they 
 know it not. Ever busy, yet ever at rest — gathering, 
 yet never needing — bearing, filhng, guarding — 
 creating, nourishing, perfecting— seeldng, though 
 Thou hast no lack. Love is Thine without passion, 
 jealousy without alarms, repentance without sorrow, 
 anger without disorder. Thou changest Thy works,
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 21 
 
 but not Thy purpose. Thou takest what Thou 
 findest and dost never lose. Never poor art Thou, 
 yet delighting in gain, never covetous, yet exacting 
 usury. Men give Thee more than Thou dost claim, 
 that Thou shouldest be their debtor, yet who 
 possesses aught that is not Thine ? Thou payest 
 debts which Thou dost not owe. Thou forgivest 
 debts and losest nothing. What can I say, my God, 
 my Life, my holy Joy ? [i. 4.] 
 
 This passage illustrates the natural way in which 
 Augustine passes from the contemplation of God's 
 majesty to the simplest terms of personal devotion. 
 This intimate apprehension of the nearness of God 
 is shown by the wide variety of titles by which he 
 addresses God. God is his own very personal 
 possession. It would suggest a happy enrichment 
 of our own prayers to collect together some of these 
 terms of invocation, which rise so spontaneously 
 to the lips of Augustine as he speaks to God. It is 
 not only that, as he writes, ejaculatory prayers rise 
 from his heart, called forth by the memory of the 
 Divine mercies, but his conception of the intimacy 
 of God with the soul of His redeemed is so rich, 
 so constant, and so stimulating. 
 
 O Lord God, Thou Ruler and Creator of all nature 
 — my God and Lord — O God, the Light of my heart, 
 Thou hidden bread of my soul. Thou mighty Hus- 
 band of my mind and of the bosom of my thought 
 — Lord my God, Thou best and most excellent
 
 22 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 Creator and Ruler of the world — O my God, my 
 Joy, my Glory, and my Confidence — O Justice and 
 Innocence, fair and lovely with heavenly light — 
 O my God, my Merciful One — O Light of my heart — 
 my Love for whom I faint, that I may be made 
 strong — O Life of my soul — O Thou almighty 
 Goodness who carest for each one of us, as if Thou 
 caredst for him alone — O Fount of Pity — O Fount 
 of Mercies — O Most High, who never forsakest our 
 clay — Eternal Truth, and true Love and lovely 
 Eternity. 
 
 Such are some of the titles which reveal the reality 
 of Augustine's fellowship with God and are suggestive 
 for our own devotion. 
 
 It is this God so near, so intimate, so infinite 
 in mercy and in love who had been ever calling 
 Augustine to find rest in Him. The Confessions 
 make very real to us this quiet, persistent call of 
 Di\dne Love, which waits for the response and 
 obedience of every soul, whose patience is never 
 wearied, whose resources are never exhausted, 
 whose appeal is never hushed. Augustine had a 
 dim feeling through all his life that the Catechu- 
 menate which he had entered upon as a child, com- 
 bined with the unconscious influences of his mother's 
 faith and prayers, had always made him subtly 
 responsive to the power of the Sacred Name. " This 
 Name of my Saviour, my infant heart had sucked 
 in with my mother's milk, and there it still was.
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 23 
 
 hidden safe away." The teaching of the Catholic 
 Church, which he had listlessly heard, stuck fast in 
 his heart, and his mind never lost hold upon it. He 
 was always conscious of this drawing towards the 
 truth. He could never rest apart from it. And the 
 cause of his restlessness was always the same. He 
 would not submit his will to the guidance of his 
 heart and the direction of his better reason. He 
 was always self-indulgent. He had a nature singu- 
 larly lovable. Life was made easy for him by the 
 affection of all those by whom he was surrounded. 
 His will remained undisciplined. As a professor, in 
 class he was a poor disciplinarian. He knew that 
 he was always hesitating and deferring moral de- 
 cisions that ought to be made at once. He regards 
 the story of his life as one great lesson in the power 
 of the human will and the need of its education and 
 discipline for the happiness of Ufe. He knew the 
 vanity of prayers that were mere words, mere wishes, 
 not deteiTninations of the will to accept the Will of 
 God. The supreme moment of his conversion was 
 the moment when he resolved to delay no longer, 
 but to obey at once. It was the recovery of his 
 will that meant for him the discovery of Christ. 
 
 One thing lifted me up towards Thy hght. It was 
 that I had come to know that I had a will, as certainly 
 as I knew that I was ahve. And so, when I willed 
 to do or not to do anything, I was absolutely sure 
 that I, and not somebody else, willed it, and I was
 
 24 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 beginning to perceive that there lay the cause of 
 my sin [vii. 3]. — As yet I was bound by the iron 
 chain of my own will. The enemy held fast my will 
 and had made of it a chain, and bound me tight 
 therewith. For from a perverse will came lust, and 
 the service of lust ended in habit, and acquiescence 
 in habit produced necessity. These were the links 
 of what I call my chain, and they held me bound in 
 hard slavery. But the new will which had sprung 
 up in me, the will to serve Thee for nought and to 
 enjoy Thee, O God, the one certain joy, was not yet 
 strong enough to master the old time-hardened will. 
 So my two wills, the old and the new, the carnal 
 and the spiritual, were in conflict, and their discord 
 paralysed my soul [viii. 5]. — I was weak and chose 
 the easier place, and for this single reason my whole 
 life was one of listless indecision. I had already 
 found the goodly pearl. I ought to have sold all 
 that I had and bought it, and yet I could not make 
 up my mind [viii. i]. — On the very threshold of my 
 youth I had even begged of Thee the gift of chastity, 
 but I had said, " Give me chastity and self-control, 
 but not just yet " [viii. 7]. — I kept saying within 
 myself, O let it be now, let it be now. And as I 
 spoke the word I was on the verge of resolution. I 
 was on the point of action, yet I acted not [viii. 11]. 
 
 And what the power of the redeemed will can be in 
 human life is shown by the industry, the devotion, 
 the steadfast holiness, the firm discipline, and the 
 profound spiritual peace which ruled the life of 
 Augustine after the day of his conversion. 
 
 The Confessions reveal a profound knowledge of 
 Scripture. Augustine had been repelled at first by
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 25 
 
 the uncouth diction of the sacred text. The versions 
 which he read failed to do justice to the beauty 
 and simphcity of the original text. He acknow- 
 ledged that it was pride which made him refuse to 
 study wisdom revealed in such humble guise. But 
 it was not only in the literary style of the Bible that 
 he found difficulties. Its stories seemed foolish and 
 some of its facts impossible. And it was not till 
 the flowing eloquence and persuasive teaching of 
 Ambrose commended the allegorical interpretation 
 of Scripture to him, that the Bible yielded up to him 
 its hidden treasures of Divine truth. He felt that 
 Scripture came to him with the express authority 
 of the Divine sanction to disclose and explain that 
 which by the mere light of reason he could never 
 discover. 
 
 Since we are too weak to discover the truth by 
 the mere hght of reason, and for this cause need the 
 authority of Holy Writ, I began to believe that 
 Thou never wouldest have assigned such eminent 
 and world-wide authority to Scripture, unless it 
 had been Thy will that through it Thou shouldest 
 be believed and through it sought. For by this 
 time I could find an explanation for the contradictions 
 that used to repel me in the depth of its mysteries, 
 having heard many of them reasonably explained, 
 and its authority appeared to me all the more august, 
 imd all the more worthy of reverential faith, because, 
 while all might read it, it shrouded the grandeur 
 of its inmost thought within the deeper meaning, 
 appealing to all by its plain and homely speech,
 
 26 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 and tasking the attention of those who are not 
 hght of heart, welcoming all in its hospitable arms, 
 and guiding to Thee through narrow crannies a few, 
 yet far more than it could have done, if its authority 
 were not so highly exalted that it drew the multitude 
 within the bosom of its holy humility [vi. 5]. 
 
 Of all " the august writings of Thy Spirit," it was 
 the writings of S. Paul that especially appealed to 
 Augustine and taught him the meaning of Grace. 
 By actual quotation and by facile allusion in many 
 a simple phrase Augustine shows his intimate know- 
 ledge of the Bible. Had we not known it from 
 his sermons and his commentaries, we could tell 
 from The Confessions alone how dear the Scriptures 
 had become to Augustine, and how the Bible lan- 
 guage came readily to his use. This is one way in 
 which Augustine exemplifies the true foundations 
 of the devotional life. There can be no safe know- 
 ledge of God without the love of His Word and 
 frequent meditation upon its sacred text. 
 
 Augustine's life shows at once the beauty and the 
 danger of human friendship. With his lovable 
 nature he gathered friends about him wherever he 
 was. He was never alone. Gradually he learned 
 by bitter experience where the secret of ti"ue friend- 
 ship really lay. Only God can give and consecrate 
 true friendship. God, Who is Love eternal and 
 holy, can alone create and bless all relationships of 
 earthly love.
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 27 
 
 Friendship is not true, unless Thou dost form the 
 bond between them, who cleave to Thee with that 
 love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy 
 Ghost which is given to us [iv. 4]. — Blessed is he who 
 loves Thee and his friend in Thee and his enemy for 
 Thy sake. He alone loses no dear one, to whom all 
 are dear in Him, Who is never lost [iv. 9]. — The Word 
 Himself calleth thee to return, and in Him is the 
 untroubled place of rest, where love, that forsakes 
 not, is never forsaken [iv. 11]. — If souls dehght thee, 
 let them be loved in God. For they too are change- 
 ful and go their way and perish, unless fixed and 
 estabUshed in Him. Let them be loved then in 
 Him [iv. 12]. 
 
 It was a soul thus capable of love which the Divine 
 Love drew to Himself, that love might be perfected 
 in Christ. There was a stage when fear and not 
 love was the great motive to a better life. " Nor 
 did anything call me back from a deeper pit of carnal 
 pleasures but the fear of death and of Thy judgment 
 to come, which throughout all the changes of my 
 opinions, never faded from my breast." But love, 
 as it grew perfect, cast out fear, and Augustine 
 attained to a fellowship of Divine Love which trans- 
 figured all his life with the conscious nearness of 
 God, and gave him flashes of insight into mysteries 
 of the Divine Life which words could not express. 
 It was so that at Ostia, in loving converse with 
 Monnica " on that eternal life of the saints, which 
 eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it 
 entered into the heart of man," passing from earthly
 
 28 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 love to love divine, he touched the sunlit heights of 
 Vision, and reached out to the Eternal Wisdom that 
 abides above all. 
 
 As our converse drew to this conclusion, that the 
 sweetest conceivable dehght of sense in the brightest 
 conceivable earthly sunshine was not to be com- 
 pared, no, nor even named, with the happiness of 
 that life, we soared with glowing hearts towards the 
 same, mounting step by step the ladder of the 
 material order, through heaven itself, whence sun 
 and moon and stars shed their radiance upon earth. 
 And still higher did we climb by the staircase of the 
 spirit, thinking and speaking of Thee and marvelling 
 at Thy works. And so we came to our own minds, 
 and passed beyond them into the region of unfailing 
 plenty, where Thou feedest Israel for ever with the 
 food of truth, where Life is Wisdom by which all 
 these things come to be, both the things that have 
 been and the things that shall be. And the Life 
 itself never comes to be, but is, as it was and shall 
 be evermore, because in it is neither past nor future 
 but present only, for it is eternal. And as we 
 talked and yearned after it, we touched it for an 
 instant with the whole force of our hearts. 
 
 We said then, " If the tumult of the flesh were 
 hushed, hushed these shadows of earth, sea, sky, 
 hushed the heavens and the soul itself, so that it 
 should pass beyond itself and not think of itself, if 
 all dreams were hushed and all sensuous revelations 
 and every tongue and every symbol, if all that comes 
 and goes were hushed. (They all proclaim to him 
 that hath an ear, we made not ourselves, He made 
 us, Who abideth forever.) But suppose that having 
 delivered their message, they held their peace,
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS " 29 
 
 turning their ear to Him Who made them and that 
 He alone spoke, not by them, but for Himself, and 
 that we heard His word, not by any fleshly tongue, 
 nor by an angel's voice, nor in the thunder, nor in 
 any similitude, but His voice Whom we love in His 
 creatures. Suppose we heard Him without any 
 intermediary at all. Just now we reached out, and 
 with one flash of thought touched the Eternal 
 wisdom that abides above all. Suppose this endured 
 and all other far inferior modes of vision were taken 
 away, and this alone were to ravish the beholder, 
 and absorb him, and plunge him in mystic joy, 
 might not eternal life be like this moment of com.- 
 prehension for which we sighed ? [ix. 10.] 
 
 In such words we have a glimpse of that mystic 
 Vision which comes of the Love of God. They 
 speak of that true fellowship of which all our de- 
 votion is a real experience. For us too, as for 
 Augustine, the Divine Love waits. " There is none 
 who can hide himself from Thy sunshine." We 
 too can trust ourselves to the Divine protection, 
 " for Thy omnipotence is not far from us, even 
 when we are far from Thee." W^e who, like Augus- 
 tine, " love the blessed life " must " will wholly " to 
 seek it now, and " humbly hold the humble Lord 
 Jesus " in the ways of daily obedience and sacra- 
 mental fellowship. Taught by this pilgrim of Love, 
 we shall find in God the glory and the joy of life. 
 Thanksgiving and the praise of God shall make our 
 life perfect. " Thanks be unto Thee, O my God,
 
 30 S. AUGUSTINE 
 
 my Joy, my Glory, and my Confidence. Thanks 
 be unto Thee for all Thy gifts. But do Thou keep 
 them safe for me. For then Thou wilt keep me safe, 
 and Thy gifts will increase and be made perfect. 
 And I shall be with Thee, for even my being is Thy 
 gift." Prayer and penitence shall keep us close to 
 God. " Come, Lord, and work. Arouse us and 
 incite. Kindle us, sweep us onwards. Be fragrant 
 as flowers, sweet as honey. Teach us to love and 
 to run."
 
 II 
 
 JULIAN OF NORWICH AND "REVELATIONS 
 OF DIVINE LOVE" 
 
 IN the Revelations of Divine Love we have a record 
 of EngHsh mediaeval devotion which reveals 
 the spiritual history of a life of rare simplicity and 
 insight. The language is the quaint idiom of the 
 fourteenth century. The style is very simple and 
 clear, touched with that naive charm of originality 
 which sincerity and genius give. Truths which, 
 in the language of to-day, have ceased to appeal 
 either to heart or mind, reveal in themselves new 
 beauties and new depths of meaning as they come 
 to us clothed in the picturesque garb of Lady 
 Julian's exquisite diction. 
 
 The life of Julian of Norwich was a long one, 
 extending over almost a century, from 1342 to 1441 
 — a stirring century in English history. The 
 battles of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, which 
 marked the long contest of England and France,
 
 32 JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 were all fought in her lifetime. The end of the 
 fourteenth century saw the decay of feudalism and 
 the uprising of new social conditions. Both the Black 
 Death of 1349 ^^^ Wat Tyler's rebellion of 1381 
 marked in different ways the arrival of great econo- 
 mic changes in the life of England. A new spirit of 
 nationality was struggling to the birth, and with it 
 there came a new consciousness of individual inde- 
 pendence, and a growing effort to assert the rights 
 of personal freedom both in the sphere of politics 
 and of religion. The effects of the rising spirit of 
 national self-assertion already showed themselves 
 in the life of the Church. 
 
 The prestige of the Papacy suffered a sad eclipse 
 in the fourteenth century. The Pope, imprisoned 
 at Avignon, became the tool of the French kings, 
 and the Papal power was degraded in the general 
 esteem of Christendom. Corruption and immorality 
 disgraced the Papal court and spread widely through 
 all the higher ranks of the clergy. The schism 
 which followed the captivity helped to loosen the 
 hold of the Papal government upon the obedience 
 of a united Christendom. The degradation of the 
 Papacy meant the loss of the greatest unifying and 
 spiritual power which had yet been brought to 
 bear upon the nations of Europe. In England the 
 spirit of the people was shown in the Statutes of 
 Provisors and of Praemunire, which restrained the 
 exercise of the Papal influence and power in these
 
 "DIVINE LOVE" 33 
 
 islands. The English Church was far enough re- 
 moved from the Papal court not to be much in- 
 fluenced by its evil moral example. It was the 
 financial exactions and the political usurpations of 
 the Papacy that were the great scandal in England. 
 It was these which gave special colour to the move- 
 ment of religious reform inaugurated by John 
 WycHffe. 
 
 New social theories and political ideals came first. 
 Doctrinal reformation followed in their train. 
 England was in the throes of the Lollard movement 
 during the greater part of Julian's life. Julian 
 herself reflects none of these unbalanced innovations. 
 She is content with the primitive faith and govern- 
 ment of the Catholic Church. Her book represents 
 Catholic truth at its purest and best. It suggests 
 how, amidst the many unprimitive accretions and 
 doctrinal extravagances that marked the practical 
 teaching of the mediaeval Church, there were those 
 who moulded their lives steadfastly and happily 
 upon the great fundamental and unquestioned 
 truths of the primitive Faith. Already signs were 
 not wanting in England, both in the movements of 
 Church and of State, of that great upheaval, which 
 in the course of a century was to reassert Catholic 
 purity and primitive tradition through the desolating 
 violence of the Reformation. But in Julian there 
 are no marks whatever that she wrote upon the eve 
 of so momentous an epoch. 
 
 c
 
 34 JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 But if there are no signs of these coming changes 
 in her writings, it was not from want of hving sym- 
 pathy with the events of her own time. The echoes 
 of all- the eager and stirring movements of the day 
 came to the ears of the Lady Juhan as she dwelt 
 in her " cell " in Norwich, uplifting her " meek, 
 continuant prayer " for all the needs of her fellow- 
 countrymen. Norwich, with its great woollen manu- 
 factures, was then one of the first commercial cities 
 of the kingdom, and reflected in its life all those 
 turbulent industrial and social movements which 
 were beginning to change the face of the nation. 
 Although she could not mix with the busy life of the 
 great city, yet its news came daily to her ears. 
 
 Julian had consecrated her life to the work of an 
 Anchoress or Recluse. Brought up in the Benedictine 
 nunnery of Carrow, she gave herself as a solitary to 
 the work of continual contemplation and prayer, 
 and lived in the "Anchorage," which adjoined the 
 east end of the little church of Conisford, near 
 Norwich. Here with her two maids she continued 
 " to serve our Lord with inward beholding of His 
 blessed goodness." The life of an anchoress in such 
 conditions was not one of utter loneliness. The 
 room which she occupied in her little house had 
 three windows. One looked into the Church and 
 gave her a view of the altar, enabling her to share 
 in the public worship of the village. Another 
 opened into her maids' room, and afforded oppor-
 
 "DIVINE LOVE" 35 
 
 timity for their regular ser\Tice. The third looked 
 out upon the churchyard, and to this inquirers and 
 seekers after spiritual counsel had access. Over this 
 was hung a black curtain marked with a white cross, 
 which the anchoress drew aside whenever she held 
 converse with those who sought her prayers or 
 craved her counsel. In this way Julian took her 
 part in the life that pulsed so vigorously about her. 
 
 The vocation which Julian had chosen was one 
 which had attractions for many devout souls in the 
 Middle Ages. The life of the anchoret or anchoress 
 in England was a revival of the contemplative life 
 which had flourished so wonderfully in the early 
 centuries in the Thebaid and among the recluses of 
 Syria, While these anchorets gave themselves 
 chiefly to prayer and meditation, using a simple 
 rule which was most fitted to their individual con- 
 ditions, they were also able to help their fello\\Tnen 
 both by material bounty and by spiritual counsel. 
 Thus, though they were confined to the narrow limits 
 of their cells, they were never out of reach of the 
 influences of their day, nor deprived of that converse 
 with the world which gave new reality and fresh 
 direction to their life of prayer. 
 
 Of the life of Julian we know nothing beyond the 
 details which she tells us in her book. It is no 
 set autobiography, but the record of Revelations 
 and Visions granted to her by God, which she felt 
 v/ere not meant for herself alone. " In all this I
 
 36 JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 was greatly stirred in charity to mine even-Christians, 
 that they might see and know the same that I saw, 
 for I would it were comfort to them. For in all this 
 time I weened to have died ; and that was marvel 
 to me and troublous partly, for methought this 
 Vision was showed for them that should live. And 
 that which I say of me, I say in the person of all 
 mine even-Christians, for I am taught in the spiritual 
 showing of our Lord God that He meaneth so. And 
 therefore I pray you all for God's sake, and counsel 
 for your own profit, that ye leave the beholding of 
 a poor creature that it was showed to, and mightily, 
 wisely, and meekly behold God that of His courteous 
 love and endless goodness would show it generally, 
 in comfort of us all. For it is God's will that ye 
 take it with great joy and pleasance, as if Jesus had 
 showed it to you all." 
 
 She has no wish to draw attention to herself. 
 She is only the medium of the Divine revelation to 
 others. But in giving us the Revelations of Divine 
 Love, which sustained her own faith and gave her 
 such spiritual joy, Julian unveils the secret of one 
 of the most happy and lovable souls that the history 
 of the saints has ever known. Constantly she had 
 prayed for three gifts from God. To deepen her 
 love for God and to quicken her sense of sin, she 
 desired a bodily sight of Christ's Passion. The 
 second desire was for a serious illness which should 
 come to her in youth. And the third prayer was
 
 "DIVINE LOVE" 37 
 
 that she might " receive three wounds — the wound 
 of very contrition, the wound of kind compassion, 
 and the wound of steadfast longing towards God." 
 In the year 1373, when she was just thirty years old, 
 the first two petitions were suddenly granted. 
 Without any warning she fell ill, sick, as it seemed, 
 unto death. On the fourth night she " took all the 
 rites of Holy Church, and weened not to have lived 
 till day." For three days more she lingered, and 
 then, when death seemed almost to have come, the 
 priest set the Cross before her face and said, " I 
 have brought thee the image of thy Maker and 
 Saviour, look thereupon and comfort thee therewith." 
 Then as with failing eyes she looked, all grew dark 
 about her save the Cross, which glowed with a new 
 light. All the pain left her, life revived, and the 
 graphic Visions of the Passion followed, which in 
 the year 1393 she faithfully recorded, having care- 
 fully waited till the revelation of those hours of 
 sickness had been renewed and interpreted by 
 twenty years' experience of the Grace and Comfort 
 of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 B. 
 
 Julian is a Mystic. That spirit of Mysticism 
 which abroad showed itself so conspicuously in the 
 works of Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroeck, found expres- 
 sion in England in the thought of Richard Rolle of
 
 38 JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 Hampole, Walter Hylton of Thurgarton, and Lady 
 Julian. Of all these Julian is the most simple and 
 the most original. The essence of Mysticism is 
 union with God. This mystic union is based upon 
 the soul's love of God, and is realised in a conscious 
 spiritual fellowship. Mysticism may or may not 
 express itself in ecstasy, rapture, and states of un- 
 usual psychic experience, but wherever it is, it is 
 the creation and expression of love which links 
 together in one bond of inseparable union the soul 
 of the creature and the heart of the Creator. The 
 mystic has an intense and living sense of union with 
 God. For him all other relations tend to become 
 unreal except that fellowship \vhich exists between 
 the soul and God. To the mystic all things reflect 
 God. Among the manifold objects of created life 
 the mystic pursues his search after unity, and that 
 unity has its beginning and its end in God. 
 
 To the mystic God is the explanation of all things, 
 and he can never rest till he has related everything to 
 God and found in Him the ultimate reality and unity 
 of all created things. Tennyson writes in the mood 
 of the mystic when he says that if he could under- 
 stand the little flower which he holds, root and all, 
 in his hand, if he could understand what it is, " root 
 and all, and all in all," then he would know what 
 God and man is. In the same spirit Julian holds 
 a little hazel-nut in the palm of her hand, and looking 
 upon it, links it at once with the Author of all and
 
 "DIVINE LOVE" 39 
 
 says, " It lasteth and ever shall last, for that God 
 loveth it. And so all things have their Being by 
 the love of God. In this little thing I saw three 
 properties. The first is that God made it, the second 
 is that God loveth it, the third that God keepeth it. 
 But what is to me verily the Maker, the Keeper, and 
 the Lover, I cannot tell. For till I am in essence 
 united to Him, I may never have full rest nor very 
 bliss ; that is to say, till I be so fastened to Him, 
 that there is right nought that is made betwixt my 
 God and me." That is the true spirit and manner 
 of the profound mystic, who cannot rest till that 
 which is seen yields its message of the unseen, and 
 who must find for himself direct intercourse and 
 fellowship with God without any intermediary. 
 
 The way of the mystic is beset with two great 
 temptations, from both of which Julian keeps herself 
 free. She neither mistakes the place of Vision in 
 the spiritual life, nor depreciates the Sacraments of 
 the Church. They are dignified by her as the normal 
 means of the bestowal of Divine Grace and of the 
 attainment of fellowship with God. The special 
 visions which came to her as the extraordinary gift 
 of the Holy Spirit receive their due and rich inter- 
 pretation through the customary grace of the Spirit. 
 Twenty years of the " soft comfort and bhssful 
 touching of the Holy Ghost " are allowed to throw 
 their light on the Divine revelations vouchsafed to 
 this " simple, unlettered creature," before she records
 
 40 JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 them for the general comfort of all her fellow- 
 Christians. 
 
 Nor is Julian led away by the sense of special 
 Divine guidance and the experience of unwonted 
 nearness to God into any neglect of either the 
 common faith or the common sacraments of the 
 Church. " In all things I believe as Holy Church 
 believeth, preacheth, and teacheth. For the faith 
 of Holy Church, the which I had aforehand under- 
 stood, and, as I hope, by the grace of God earnestly 
 kept in use and custom, stood continually in my 
 sight, I willing and meaning never to receive any- 
 thing that might be contrary thereunto." 
 
 And the Catholic doctrine of the Divine use of 
 media for fellowship with God could not be more 
 truly nor more beautifully expressed than in these 
 words of Julian. " God of His goodness hath or- 
 dained means to help us, full, fair, and man}^ of which 
 the chief and principal means is the blessed nature 
 that He took of the Maid, with all the means that 
 go afore and come after, which belong to our redemp- 
 tion and to endless salvation. Wherefore it pleaseth 
 Him that we seek Him and worship through means, 
 understanding that He is the Goodness of all." 
 
 As becomes a true mj^stic, Julian makes the Love 
 of God the centre of her hope and happiness. She
 
 "DIVINE LOVE" 41 
 
 seizes upon the lowliness and individual nearness 
 of the Divine Love, God's " homely loving." 
 
 Our soul shall never rest till it cometh to Him, 
 knowing that He is fulness of joy, homely and 
 courteous, blissful and very life. — For truly our 
 Lover desireth that our soul cleave to Him with 
 aU its might, and that we be evermore cleaving to 
 His goodness. For of all things that heart may 
 think, this pleaseth most God and soonest speedeth 
 the soul [vi.]. 
 
 It is the very majesty and splendour of God which 
 enhance the tenderness and beauty of His love for 
 us. It is a love which passes the understanding of 
 every creature which He has made, a love which is 
 even one with the Love bestowed by the Father 
 upon His own dear and glorious Son. The behold- 
 ing of such a Love fills the human soul with reverence 
 and humility. Love is the very root and ground of 
 our life. It is a holy delight in God, born of truth 
 and wisdom. 
 
 Our God and Lord that is so reverent and so 
 dreadful is so homely and courteous [vii.]. — Our 
 soul is so specially loved of Him that is highest, 
 that it overpasseth the knowing of all creatures. That 
 is to say, there is no creature that is made that may 
 fully know how much and how sweetly and how 
 tenderly our ]\Iaker loveth us. And therefore we 
 may with grace and His help stand in spiritual 
 beholding, with everlasting marvel of this high, 
 overpassing, unmeasurable Love that Almighty God
 
 42 JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 hath to us of His goodness. And therefore we may- 
 ask of our Lover with reverence all that we will [vi.]. 
 — Because of this great, endless love that God hath 
 to all mankind, He maketh no disparting in love 
 between the blessed Soul of Christ and the least 
 soul that shall be saved [liv.]. — The beholding and 
 the loving of the Maker maketh the soul to seem less 
 in his own sight, and most filleth him with reverent 
 dread and true meekness, with plenty of charity 
 to his even-Christians [vi.]. — Truth seeth God and 
 wisdom beholdeth God, and of these two cometh the 
 third, that is, a holy, marvellous delight in God, 
 which is Love [xliv.]. — Our life is all grounded and 
 rooted in love, and without love we may not live 
 [xlix.]. 
 
 And so fifteen years after the Revelation had been 
 made to her, Julian learned that the whole purpose 
 and meaning of it were summed up in the word Love. 
 
 From that time that it was showed I desired 
 oftentimes to learn what was our Lord's meaning. 
 And fifteen years after, and more, I was answered in 
 ghostly understanding, saying thus : Wouldst thou 
 leaiTi thy Lord's meaning in this ? Leam it well. 
 Love was His meaning. Who showed it thee ? 
 Love. What showed He thee ? Love. Where- 
 fore showed it He ? For Love. Hold thee therein 
 and thou shalt leam and know more in the same. 
 But thou shalt never know nor leam therein other 
 thing without end. — Thus was I learned that Love 
 was our Lord's meaning [Ixxxvi.]. 
 
 The stooping and condescension of God in His love 
 never cease to move Julian to wonder and gratitude.
 
 "DIVINE LOVE" 43 
 
 God is near to her beyond all expression, and reveals 
 Himself in marvellous " homeliness and courtesy " 
 to those that love Him. No one has ever expressed, 
 in terms of such simple beauty, the close fellowship 
 with God which the Incarnation has bestowed upon 
 human life. It is God's homely appeal for man's 
 response of homehness. 
 
 He that is highest and mightiest, noblest and 
 worthiest, is lowest and meekest, homehest and 
 most courteous. The most fulness of joy that we 
 shall have is the marvellous courtesy and homehness 
 of our Father, that is our Maker, in our Lord Jesus 
 Christ that is our Brother and our Saviour [vii.]. — 
 Our courteous Lord wiUeth that we should be as 
 homely ^^'ith Him as heart may think or soul may 
 desire. But beware that we take not so recklessly 
 this homehness as to leave courtesy. For our Lord 
 Himself is sovereign homehness, and as homely as 
 He is, so courteous He is, for He is very courteous. 
 And the blessed creatures that shall be in heaven 
 with Him without end, He will have them like to 
 Himself in all things [Ixxvii.]. 
 
 Julian has wonderful words of comfort for those 
 who in love seek God and yet can come to no clear 
 vision. God asks us only to seek, to suffer, and to 
 trust. " Seeking is as good as beholding " in His 
 sight, if only we seek diligently, with unmurmuring 
 steadfastness and with the assurance of deep faith. 
 And every fresh vision that is granted only increases 
 our desire for further seeking still. That is the way
 
 44 JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 of all true spiritual desire. " I saw Him and I 
 sought Him. I had Him and I wanted Him." 
 And vision in itself is no profit unless it means 
 growth in love. " Because of the showing I am 
 not good, but if I love God the better." 
 
 The lonely anchoress knew what it was in her 
 search after God to experience dryness, weariness, 
 and heaviness of spirit, as well as to enjoy moments 
 of great sweetness. 
 
 After this He showed a sovereign ghostly pleasance 
 in my soul. This lasted but a while, and I was 
 turned and left to myself in heaviness and weariness 
 of life and irksomeness of myself that scarcely I 
 could have patience to live. There was no comfort 
 nor none ease to me, but faith, hope, and charity. 
 And these I had in truth, but little in feeling. This 
 vision was showed me that it is speedful to some 
 souls to feel on this wise, sometime to be in comfort, 
 and sometime to fail and to be left to themselves. 
 God willeth that we know that He keepeth us even 
 alike secure in woe and in weal. And for profit 
 of man's soul, a man is sometime left to himself, 
 although sin is not always the cause. But freely 
 our Lord giveth when He will and suffereth us to 
 be in woe sometime. And both in one love [xv.]. 
 
 But wonderfully through all her suffering Julian 
 was upheld by a certain assurance of delight and 
 bliss, which wells up again and again like some 
 joyous fount of happiness on almost every page of 
 her writing. It is the very spirit of blitheness and
 
 " DIVINE LOVE " 45 
 
 deep-souled gaiety which marked the devotion of 
 Francis of Assisi. No moments of dryness must 
 be allowed to mar the glad contentment of our 
 spiritual life. Even the vision of sin only fixes the 
 eyes of the penitent more surely on the glad bliss 
 of the eternal victory, which the Passion of Christ 
 has won. Pain passes. Bliss alone is eternal. 
 God is always a delight and joy. He takes His 
 bliss in us and we in Him. Even in the saddest 
 experiences of the prison-house of this life, there is 
 the joy of Christ's Presence, which drives away all 
 sorrow. The soul is daily renewed in that bliss of 
 God which is a foretaste of the happiness of heaven. 
 
 It is God's will that will hold us in comfort with all 
 our might, for bliss is lasting without end and pain 
 is passing and shall be brought to nought for them 
 that shall be saved. And therefore it is not God's 
 will that we follow the feelings of pain in sorrow and 
 mourning for them, but that we suddenly pass over 
 and hold us in endless enjoyment [xv.]. — He willeth 
 that we be as assured in hope of the bliss of heaven 
 while we are here, as we shall be in sureness while 
 we are there. And ever the more pleasance and 
 joy that we take in this sureness, with reverence and 
 meekness, the better pleaseth Him [Ixv.]. — This 
 place is prison and this life is penance, and in the 
 remedy He willeth that we rejoice. The remedy 
 is that our Lord is with us, keeping and leading into 
 the fulness of joy. For this is an endless joy to us 
 in our Lord's signifying, that He that shall be our 
 bliss when we are there. He is our keeper while we 
 are here [Ixxvii.]. — He loveth and enjoyeth us, and
 
 46 JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 so willeth He that we love and enjoy Him and 
 mightily trust in Him [Ixviii.]. 
 
 For all her assurance of joy, Julian was not blind 
 to the sorrow and the pain which mingled with the 
 happiness of life. But the certainty of Christ's 
 Presence, with its transfiguring power, continuall3'- 
 dispersed the clouds of suffering and left the world 
 bathed in sunshine. 
 
 We have in us, for the time of this life, a marvellous 
 mingling both of weal and woe. We have in us our 
 Lord Jesus uprisen, we have in us the wretchedness 
 and the mischief of Adam's falling, dying. By 
 Christ we are steadfastly kept, and by His grace 
 touching us we are raised into sure trust of salvation. 
 And by Adam's falling we are so broken, in our 
 feeling, in diverse manners by sins and by sundry 
 pains, in which we are made dark, that scarcely we 
 can take any comfort. And thus we stand in this 
 medley all the days of our life. But He willeth that 
 we trust that He is lastingly with us. And that in 
 three manner. He is with us in Heaven, very Man, 
 in His own Person, us updrawing. He is with us 
 in Earth, us leading. He is with us in our Soul, 
 endlessly dwelling, us ruling and keeping [lii.]. 
 
 The Passion of Christ was stamped upon her soul 
 in a very memorable vision, which brought before 
 her gaze the inexpressible agonies of human pain, 
 which the Man of Sorrows endured upon the Cross. 
 But above all the horror of that \ ision of suffering 
 there shone the glory of the ineffable love of God.
 
 "DIVINE LOVE" 47 
 
 In a wonderful passage Julian speaks of the infinite 
 merits and universal efficacy of the Precious Blood 
 of Jesus. 
 
 The dearvvorthy Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ as 
 verily as it is most precious, so verily it is most 
 plenteous. The precious plenty of His dearworthy 
 Blood descended down into Hell and burst her 
 bands and delivered all that were there which 
 belonged to the court of Heaven. The precious 
 plenty of His dearworthy Blood overfloweth all 
 earth and is ready to wash aU creatures of sin which 
 be of good will, have been and shall be. The 
 precious plenty of His dearworthy Blood ascended up 
 into Heaven to the blessed Body of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and there is in Him, bleeding and praying 
 for us to the Father, and is, and shall be as long as 
 it needeth, and ever shall be as long as it needeth. 
 And evermore it floweth in all Heavens enjoying the 
 salvation of all mankind, that are there and shall 
 be [xii.]. 
 
 The Passion of Christ is " the overcoming of the 
 fiend." The meaning of Sin rises before the Saint's 
 mind, and causes her no disquiet as she gazes upon 
 the sublime victory of the Cross. " It behoved 
 that there should be sin. But all shall be well, 
 and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall 
 be well." For in the Cross Julian saw the inspira- 
 tion of true Penitence, which she describes in these 
 sympathetic words : — 
 
 Sin is the sharpest scourge that any chosen soul 
 may be smitten with, which scourge thoroughly
 
 48 JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 beateth man and woman and maketh him hateful 
 in his own sight, so far forth that afterwhile he 
 thinketh himself is not worthy but to sink in hell — 
 till contrition taketh him by touching of the Holy 
 Ghost and tumeth the bitterness into hopes of God's 
 mercy. And then he beginneth his wounds to heal 
 and the soul to quicken as it is turned unto the life 
 of Holy Church. The Holy Ghost leadeth him to 
 confession, with all his will to show his sins nakedly 
 and truly, with great sorrow and great shame that 
 he hath defouled the fair image of God. Then 
 receiveth he penance for every sin, as enjoined by 
 his doomsman, that is grounded in Holy Church by 
 the teaching of the Holy Ghost. And this is one 
 meekness that greatly pleaseth God [xxxix.]. 
 
 The penances that are most valuable are those 
 which God Himself ordains, and sweet is the care 
 which the gentleness of the Saviour bestows upon 
 the soul that sins, lest it be swallowed up in despair 
 or lost in darkness. 
 
 FuU preciously our Lord keepeth us, when it 
 seemeth to us that we are near forsaken and castaway 
 for our sin, and because we have deserved it. And 
 because of meekness that we get hereby, we are 
 raised well-high in God's sight by His grace, with 
 so great contrition and also compassion and true 
 longing to God. — But our courteous God willeth not 
 that His servants despair, for often nor for grievous 
 falling. For our falling hindereth not Him to 
 love us [xxxix.]. — This is a sovereign friendship of 
 our courteous Lord that He keepeth us so tenderly 
 while we be in sin, and furtheiTnore He toucheth us
 
 "DIVINE LOVE" 49 
 
 full privily and showeth us our sin by the sweet light 
 of mercy and grace [xl.]. — Specially and highly and 
 with full lovel}' manner of look was it showed me 
 that we shall meekly bear and suffer the penance 
 that God Himself giveth us, v/ith mind in His blessed 
 Passion. 
 
 Even our falls may be turned to happy use, if they 
 are allowed to reveal the enduring and inexhaustible 
 love of God. Apart from our falls we should never 
 know how feeble and how wretched we are of our- 
 selves, nor should we ever appreciate the tenacity 
 and faithfulness of the Redeemer's love, nor turn 
 with such readiness to the unfailing intercession of 
 the Church for strength and safety. 
 
 For we shall see verily in heaven without end that 
 we have grievously sinned in this hfe, and not- 
 withstanding this we shall see that we were never 
 hurt in His love, we were nevertheless of price in 
 His sight. And by the assay of this falling we shall 
 have an high, marvellous knowing of love in God 
 without end. For strong and marvellous is that 
 love which may not, nor will not, be broken for 
 trespass [Ixi.]. — He willeth that we take us mightily 
 to the Faith of Holy Church and find there our 
 dearworthy Mother, in solace of true Understanding, 
 with aU the blessed Common. For one single person 
 may oftentimes be broken, but the whole Body of 
 Holy Church was never broken, nor never shall be, 
 without end. 
 
 In many passages of tender beauty Julian speaks 
 of the gentle care which Jesus bestows upon each 
 
 D
 
 50 JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 soul, whether in sorrow or in joy, in holy service or 
 in sin. All the natural duties of a mother are as- 
 cribed to the Saviour in tending the souls for whom 
 He died. 
 
 All the fair working and all the sweet natural office 
 of dearworthy Motherhood is impropriated to the 
 second Person [lix.]. — Our kind Mother, our gracious 
 Mother, for that He would all wholly become our 
 Mother in all things, He took the ground of His 
 works full low and full mildly in the Maiden's womb. 
 Our high God is sovereign Wisdom of all. In this 
 low place He arrayed and dight Him full ready in 
 our poor flesh. Himself to do the service and the 
 office of Motherhood in all things. The Mother's 
 service is nearest, readiest, surest — nearest, for it is 
 most of nature ; readiest, for it is most of love ; and 
 surest, for it is most of truth. This office none 
 might, nor could, nor ever should do to the full, 
 but He alone. — The mother may give her child suck 
 of her milk, but our precious Mother, Jesus, He 
 may feed us with Himself, and doeth it, full court- 
 eously and full tenderly, with the Blessed Sacrament 
 that is precious food of my life. And with all the 
 sweet Sacraments He sustaineth us full mercifully 
 and graciously [Ix.]. 
 
 In Christ, too, lies the secret of all human prayer. 
 The secret of delight in prayer lies in the recognition 
 of Christ Himself as the Source and Fulfiller of all 
 prayer. He is the ground of our beseeching. It 
 is not the emotion of delight, but " the goodwill and 
 the travail of His servant, howsoever we feel," that
 
 "DIVINE LOVE" 51 
 
 God accepts. It is our large trust that God looks 
 for. He does not ask for the impossible. He takes 
 delight in our prayer, for it is the means of union 
 to which the soul turns when it seeks to be obedient 
 to God. Prayer is a vision of God, anticipating that 
 day when we shall " see God face to face homely 
 and fully." 
 
 I am ground of thy beseeching. First it is My 
 will that thou have it. And after I make thee to 
 \vill it, and after I make thee to beseech it and thou 
 beseechest it [xli]. — Beseeching is a true, gracious, 
 lasting will of the soul, oned and fastened into the 
 will of our Lord by the sweet inward work of the 
 Holy Ghost. Our Lord Himself, He is the first 
 receiver of our pra3'er, as to my sight, and taketh 
 it full thankfully and highly enjoying. And He 
 sendeth it up above and setteth it in the Treasure, 
 where it shall never perish [xli.] — Full glad and 
 merry is our Lord of our prayer [xli.]. — This is our 
 Lord's will, that our prayer and our trust be both 
 alike large [xlii.]. — Prayer is a right understanding of 
 that fulness of joy that is to come, with well-longing 
 and sure trust [xlii.]. — Prayer oneth the soul to God. 
 When our courteous Lord of His grace showeth 
 Himself to our soul, we have that which we desire 
 [xhii.]. — When the soul is tempested, troubled, and 
 left to itself by unrest, then it is time to pray, for 
 to make itself pUable and obedient to God. But the 
 soul by no manner of prayer maketh God pliant to 
 it, for He is ever ahke in love [xliii.]. — Then shall 
 we, with His sweet grace, in our meek continuant 
 prayers come unto Him now in this life by man}' 
 privy touchings of sweet spiritual sight and feeling.
 
 52 JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 measured to us as our simpleness may bear it 
 
 [xliii.]. 
 
 Thus by the guidance of the Holy Spirit we 
 are made through our Hfe of prayer perpetual co- 
 operators with God. And this co-operation, which 
 the power of the indwelling God Himself creates in 
 us, is described with exquisite insight in these 
 words : " It is His good pleasure to reign in our 
 understanding bhssfuUy and sit in our soul restfully, 
 and to dwell in our soul endlessly, we all working 
 into Him. In which working He willeth that we be 
 His helpers, giving to Him all our attending, learn- 
 ing His lores, keeping His laws, desiring that all be 
 done that He doeth, truly trusting in Him." Such 
 a life of happy and continuous co-operation is 
 possible because the indwelling of God in man is of 
 such a nature that " worshipfully He sitteth in the 
 soul, in peace and rest. The Godhead nileth and 
 sustaineth heaven and earth and aU that is — 
 Sovereign Might, Sovereign Wisdom, and Sovereign 
 Goodness — but the place that Jesus taketh in our 
 soul He shall never remove it without end, for in 
 us is His homeliest home and His endless dwelling." 
 
 There is no doubt in Julian's mind as to the 
 manner of the Divine Approach. It is not in ecstasy, 
 nor trance, nor contemplation, but in sacrament 
 that the Divine Love gives Himself to the faithful 
 soul. And the soul that humbly and eagerly accepts
 
 "DIVINE LOVE" 53 
 
 the sacramental way of Divine fellowship enters 
 into the joy of God. " God showed full great 
 pleasance that He hath in all men and women that 
 mightily and meekly and with all their will take the 
 preaching and teaching of Holy Church. For it is 
 His Holy Church. He is the Ground. He is the 
 Substance, He is the Teaching, He is the Teacher. 
 He is the End. He is the Meed for which every 
 kind soul travaileth." 
 
 It is to such heights of true and lasting joy in God 
 that the vision of the Passion of Christ can lead us. 
 The Cross is indeed the supreme revelation of Love. 
 Man is often tempted, like Julian, to look else- 
 where for the vision of heaven, when he is himself 
 suffering on earth. " Look up to Heaven to His 
 Father " is the specious appeal of Satan when our 
 troubled eyes are turned towards the Cross. It is 
 then that we who have learned the ways of Divine 
 Love must make the brave choice of Julian : "I 
 learned to choose Jesus to my Heaven, whom I 
 saw only in pain at that time. Meliked no other 
 heaven than Jesus, which shall be my bliss when I 
 come there." Even as we gaze upon the suffering 
 Son of God and renew our penitence before the 
 Cross, we are to remember that " He loveth and 
 enjoyeth us, and so willeth He that we love and 
 enjoy Him and mightily trust in Him and all shall 
 be well." It is this sublime confidence in the 
 victory of the Love of God revealed in such lowly
 
 54 JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 and such " homely " guise through the Incarnation, 
 which is the master-lesson of Lady Julian's life. 
 The Cross is the mighty appeal of Love. Fellowship 
 with the Passion of Christ, however won, whether 
 by meditation, sacrament, suffering, or prayer, will 
 reveal to us too the secret of that mighty and 
 victorious joy which Juhan so lovingly possessed. 
 The redemption, the sanctification, the perfection of 
 each separate soul must be part of that "joy which 
 was set before Him," which inspired the Blessed 
 Saviour to endure the Cross and despise the shame. 
 It must be ours, as we tread in the footsteps of the 
 Crucified and enter more fully into the revelation of 
 God's Love, to offer to our Lord and Saviour the joy 
 of a soul happily reunited to Him in perfect holiness 
 through the merits of His atoning Death and the 
 power of His glorious Resurrection. Love is indeed 
 the beginning and the end of life, the clue to aU its 
 mysteries, the secret of all its suffering. The ex- 
 perience of Lady Julian will at length be ours also : 
 " I saw full surely that ere God made us, He loved 
 us. Which love was never slacked, nor ever shall be. 
 And in this love He hath done all His works. And 
 in this love He hath made all things profitable to 
 us. And in this love our life is everlasting. In 
 our making we had beginning. But the love 
 wherein He made us was in Him from without 
 beginning, in which love we have our beginning. 
 And all this shall we see in God, without end."
 
 in 
 
 THOMAS A KEMPIS AND " THE IMITATION 
 OF CHRIST " 
 
 THERE is probably no devotional writer who 
 has appealed to such a wide and such a varied 
 circle of readers as Thomas a Kempis. By men and 
 women of every age and every creed and system 
 of thought The Imitation of Christ has been en- 
 thusiastically received as a book which touches the 
 deepest springs of spiritual thought and personal 
 devotion. It is the beautiful record of an actual 
 experience. " It remains to all time," wrote George 
 Eliot, " a lasting record of human needs and human 
 consolation, the voice of a brother, who ages ago 
 felt and suffered and renounced — in the cloister 
 perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with 
 much chanting and long fasts and a manner of 
 speech different from ours, but under the same 
 silent, far-off heavens, and with the same passionate 
 desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the 
 same weariness." That is the secret of the book's 
 great charm. It is the faithful transcript of a soul, 
 gifted with no special endowments of intellect.
 
 56 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 favoured by no special opportunities of birth, 
 visited by no special fervours of spiritual ecstasy, 
 but through all the weary trials and perplexities of 
 the religious life held steadfast to its high vision 
 and gladdened by fellowship with God. 
 
 Thomas a Kempis was bom in 1380, and he died 
 in 1471. His long life was passed in those eventful 
 years which saw the close of the Middle Ages and 
 preluded the great movement of the Renaissance. 
 Just before his birth the terrible scourge of the 
 Black Death had swept across Europe, working 
 greater havoc and bringing more violent social 
 changes than the fiercest wars. And Thomas was 
 in his seventy-third year when the Fall of Constan- 
 tinople placed Eastern Europe at the mercy of the 
 Turk and flooded the West with the ancient learn- 
 ing of the Greel<3. Both these events, so different in 
 their several effects, helped to emphasise the passing 
 away of Mediaeval Europe. It was an age of tur- 
 bulent change and seething unrest. Empire and 
 Papacy alike, round which the ideals of Mediaeval 
 Europe were gathered, had now been tested and had 
 been found wanting. The thirteenth century had 
 seen the fall of the Empire under Frederick 11. 
 After his failure the Holy Roman Empire could no 
 longer hope to gather under its universal sway the
 
 ^■' THE IMITATION OF CHRIST " 57 
 
 forces of a united Christendom. Not only was 
 Italy now lost to the Empire, but in all the other 
 states of Europe the rising spirit of nationality had 
 begun to assert its disintegrating power. With the 
 decay of the great feudal oHgarchies in the fourteenth 
 century, France, Spain, and Germany alike felt the 
 pressure of this new national spirit, and great military 
 monarchies arose which broke up for ever the unity 
 of the Empire. The age of Thomas a Kempis was 
 thus marked in the political world by seething 
 turbulence, confusion, and unrest. 
 
 In the history of the Church it was a critical 
 period too. Boniface viii. had revealed the failure 
 of the Papacy to control the respect and the 
 obedience of Christendom. The work of Gregory, 
 Hildebrand, and Innocent, who had successively 
 aggrandised the power of the Papacy as the supreme 
 and ruling force in Europe, had been undone by the 
 submission of Boniface to the French captivity at 
 Avignon. Two years before Thomas was bom the 
 Papacy had received a further blow in the Great 
 Schism, which began in 1378 and for years divided 
 the allegiance of Europe. The Papal court became 
 a very sink of moral degradation, the centre of every 
 vile and venal intrigue. The Councils of Pisa and 
 Constance, of Basle and of Florence, tried in vain 
 to restore unity and to institute reform in Papal 
 government and conduct. The unbridled licence of 
 the Popes was reflected in the cruel insolence of the
 
 58 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 great prelates and in the scandalous vices which 
 too often marked the lives of the clergy. The 
 ideal of holiness seemed lost to the Church. No 
 one could say that the imitation of Christ was the 
 great characteristic of the hfe of the Church in the 
 beginning of the fifteenth century. 
 
 Monastic life had failed to preserve the ideal of 
 Christian holiness. The great revival of the tenth 
 century had run its course. The decay of discipline 
 and the decay of learning had gone hand in hand. 
 The monasteries had ceased to be the pioneers of 
 culture and the patterns of holy life. While the 
 religious houses were generall}' free from the grosser 
 vices, they were no longer the homes of devotion 
 and of zeal. Indifference, doubt, selfishness, and 
 comfort had eaten out the heart of their spiritual 
 power and usefulness. Often they had become mere 
 boarding-houses for the retainers of the wealthy. 
 All the best spiritual activities of the time had been 
 drawn into the Franciscan and Dominican move- 
 ments. It was for an age that was beginning to 
 despise the monastic life that Thomas drew his 
 inimitable picture of the true Religious. 
 
 In France and Italy and Germany universities 
 were rising which took the place of the mon- 
 asteries as seats of learning. The> had sprung 
 suddenly into unexpected power from their claim 
 to arbitrate between the Popes and the Councils. 
 Dominicans and Franciscans had thrown themselves
 
 " THE IMITATION OF CHRIST " 59 
 
 with ardour into the spirit of the new learning, that 
 they might find new support for the teaching of the 
 Church, and the universities became the strongholds 
 of Scholasticism. The teaching which the School- 
 men offered was very formal and pedantic, based 
 upon logic and philosophy, purely intellectual in its 
 nature, making no spiritual appeal, and as strikingly 
 wanting in intellectual originality as it was in 
 spiritual fervour and power. Thomas a Kempis, 
 who had himself escaped the formal training of the 
 Schools, speaks frequently of the barren intel- 
 lectuality, the futility, and the subtle pedantry of 
 Scholastic learning. " Better a humble peasant 
 who serves God, than a proud philosopher who 
 studies the course of heaven and neglects himself. 
 What doth it profit thee to lecture profoundly on 
 the Trinity, if thou be void of humility and thereby 
 displeasing to the Trinity ? " The new learning, as 
 Thomas had seen it, had not contributed to greater 
 holiness of life. The moral confusion of the age 
 and its spiritual darkness remained unrelieved by 
 all the efforts of Scholasticism. 
 
 It was difficult to see from what source help could 
 come to repair the moral ruin of the age. There 
 were not wanting voices that called loudly for reform. 
 Gerson in his theological treatises appealed for a 
 reform of the Church from within. Dante in 
 majestic verse, Petrarch in letters, Boccaccio, Lang- 
 land, and Chaucer in popular poems, the universities
 
 6o THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 in their outspoken criticism, Wycliffe with his new 
 social aspirations, visionaries like Bridget of Sweden 
 and Catherine of Siena with their prophetic zeal — 
 all these were voices crying passionately for reform. 
 
 The reaction against the intellectualism of schol- 
 astic thought and the corruption of moral life had 
 already taken the form of Mysticism, in which 
 Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroeck were the great 
 leaders. And inspired very largely by the teaching 
 of these mystics, a definite movement of spiritual 
 reform began to show itself among all classes in the 
 country of the Upper Rhine. It was a practical 
 attempt to reassert the realities of holiness and 
 the claims of personal religion, in which monks, 
 clergy, nobles, merchants, and agricultural labourers 
 all ahke took part. There was no breach whatever 
 of Church order, no desire whatever to question its 
 Faith or Authority, no attempt to separate from 
 the unity of the Church, but it was an endeavour to 
 supplement the ministrations of the clergy with 
 the organised help of the faithful amongst the laity. 
 Communities were formed under the name of " the 
 Friends of God," who with simple and eloquent 
 preaching and every form of Christian social activity 
 set forward the cause of personal holiness. The 
 movement was a very practical witness to the 
 profound desire for spiritual reformation which 
 was stirring in the hearts of the people. 
 
 One of the societies started under the impulse of
 
 " THE IMITATION OF CHRIST " 6i 
 
 this mystic revival of personal religion was " The 
 Brotherhood of the Common Life," founded at 
 Utrecht by Gerard Groot in the very year in which 
 Thomas a Kempis was bom. Groot was a brilliant 
 graduate of the University of Paris, who had studied 
 canon law, and, layman as he was, had been made 
 Canon of Utrecht and Aix-la-Chapelle. Suddenly 
 aroused from a life of purely intellectual interest to 
 a deep sense of personal religion, he spent three years 
 in retreat in a Carthusian monastery, was ordained 
 deacon, and began a ministry of earnest and effective 
 preaching of repentance in De venter, Zwolle, and 
 Utrecht. But he realised that the most hopeful 
 opportunity for establishing true and lasting prin- 
 ciples of spiritual reform lay in the schools. He 
 therefore set himself to organise a system by which 
 trained men of true, religious earnestness might be 
 sent to control the religious education of the schools 
 in the chief towns. To this end he instituted two 
 separate foundations. First, he gathered together 
 in " Brother-houses " those who were ready to 
 devote themselves to this work of teaching. Living 
 together in a fellowship of work and worship, they 
 were caUed " The Brothers of the Common Life." 
 A passage out of the statutes of one of their Houses 
 will best explain the nature of their life and the 
 simplicity of their aim. " We have proposed to 
 ourselves for the salvation of our own souls and for 
 the edification of our neighbours in the purity of
 
 62 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 the Christian faith and the unity of our Mother, the 
 Holy Christian Church, to hve together in common 
 by the labour of our hands in the ser\'ice of God, 
 and in chastity and in agreement with each other. 
 We desire to lead a simple life without begging, to 
 yield respectful obedience to our superiors, to wear 
 a plain and humble habit, to observe the canons 
 of the Holy Fathers, as far as they bear upon our 
 affairs, and to follow sacred services and studies 
 with diligence. We desire not only to lead a blame- 
 less life ourselves, but also to offer a good pattern 
 and example, and to assist in the conversion of 
 others, and we trust that God may deign to move 
 and convert the hearts of others by our means." 
 
 Thus the Brothers worked for their living, chiefly 
 by copying manuscripts, and taught without charge 
 in the grammar schools, where their aid was gladly 
 welcomed by the municipal authorities. But it 
 was soon discovered that the teachers needed a 
 central house where they themselves might be 
 s^'stematically trained under a stricter discipline 
 both of study and of worship. Thus Groot was led 
 to inaugurate monasteries, with the ^closer obligations 
 of conventual Hfe, into which the Brothers might 
 pass, if they wished, from the Brother-houses either 
 to take monastic vows themselves or to be trained 
 in the work of education. For this purpose he 
 chose the Augustinian rule as the basis of his new 
 foundation, because it was the most easily adapted
 
 " THE IMITATION OF CHRIST " 63 
 
 to that combination of manual work and spiritual 
 discipline which he felt to be the ideal of the 
 Religious Life. Of both these institutions Thomas 
 a Kempis had experience. In the Brother-house at 
 Deventer Thomas learnt his first lessons both in 
 devotion and in letters, and at the Monastery of 
 Mount S. Agnes he passed seventy-two years of his 
 life. Such was the sound and effective scheme by 
 which Gerard Groot brought new and holy influences 
 to bear upon the youth of his generation. In all 
 his undertakings Groot found an able supporter in 
 Florentius Radwyn, whose profound reverence, gentle 
 discipline, and gracious spirit of devotion left an 
 indelible mark upon the soul of his ardent disciple 
 Thomas a Kempis. 
 
 The work of the Brothers continued to exercise 
 a marked influence upon the cities of the Rhine- 
 land for more than a century. The Brothers of 
 the Common Life were in every way loyal to 
 the principles and organisation of the Catholic 
 Church. But their ardent advocacy of the study 
 of the Scriptures presently laid them open to 
 suspicions of heresy and schism, which were none 
 the less harmful because they were quite groundless. 
 In the first violent moments of religious disiTiption 
 which attended the innovations of Luther, it was 
 very easy to read into the Brothers' earnest devotion 
 to the Bible in the Church, the errors of those 
 rising Protestant sects who presumed to find in their
 
 64 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 new studies of the Bible justification for repudiating 
 the established order of Church government and 
 worship. At the same time the introduction of 
 printing very largely curtailed the work of copying 
 and writing, upon which the Brothers had chiefly 
 depended for their maintenance. When the Refor- 
 mation on the Continent had run its course, the 
 Brothers of the Common Life had disappeared, and 
 the work of religious education had passed into the 
 hands of the Jesuits, the most \'igorous represen- 
 tatives of that new spiritual movement which within 
 the Church itself was seeking to restore purity, zeal, 
 and devotion. But though the organisation of the 
 Brothers passed away, their influence continued, 
 and had they left no other record of their work 
 than The Imitation of Christ, they would have 
 made an imperishable mark upon the devotion of 
 the Church for all ages. 
 
 B. 
 
 Like Gregory Nazianzen and Francis de Sales, 
 Thomas was the child of many prayers. His father 
 was an artisan of Kempen, a village forty miles 
 north of Cologne, in the bishopric of Utrecht. Both 
 his parents were devout and God-fearing, and it 
 must have been due largely to the earnest devotion 
 of his mother, that from his earliest years Thomas 
 was brought up in the atmosphere of simple piety
 
 " THE IMITATION OF CHRIST " 65 
 
 and religion. Her eldest son Jolin, who was six- 
 teen years older than Thomas, had already sho^^^l 
 the fruit of his religious upbringing and had joined 
 the Brothers of the Common Life, and had become 
 prior of their monastery at Mount S. Agnes. When 
 Thomas was thirteen years old he was sent to the 
 town of Deventer, following the steps of his brother, 
 and became a pupil at the Song-school of the 
 Cathedral, where the religious education was in 
 the hands of the Brethren, and under the immediate 
 direction of Florentius Radwyn. At first Thomas 
 was put out to live with a matron in Deventer, 
 while he attended the school. He soon became a 
 favourite pupil of Florentius, whose saintly devotion 
 and reverence made a profound and lasting im- 
 pression upon the eager lad. The other great 
 influence which helped to quicken in Thomas a 
 high ideal of Christian devotion was the earnestness 
 of a feUow-pupil named Arnold. " I was set on 
 fire," said Thomas, " by the fervour of his prayer, 
 and I desired to feel sometimes a devotion Hke that 
 which he felt every day." After six years at the 
 school at Deventer, during the latter part of which 
 he was taken to live in the Brother-house with 
 Florentius, Thomas passed on to the ^lonastery of 
 the Brethren at Mount S. Agnes, where his brother 
 John was prior. There for ten years he took part 
 in the life of the Brethren, serving them, worshipping 
 with them, and receiving instmction in the finer 
 
 E
 
 66 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 arts of writing and copying, until in 1409 he was 
 ready to take the monastic vows. The next five 
 years were spent in special preparation for the 
 priesthood, which he received in 1414, at the age 
 of thirty-four. What that preparation meant for 
 Thomas, we can gather from the words in which 
 he afterwards reveals his ideal of the priesthood : — 
 
 Behold, thou art made a Priest, and consecrated 
 to celebrate. See now that thou offer sacrifice to 
 God faithfully and devoutly and at fit opportunities. 
 And bear thyself without reproach. Thou hast 
 not hghtened thy burden, but art now bound Avith 
 a straiter band of discipline, and art obhged to a 
 greater perfection of holiness. A Priest ought to be 
 adorned with all virtues and to set example of good 
 life to others. His conversation should not be in 
 the popular and common ways of manldnd, but 
 with the angels in heaven or with perfect men on 
 earth. A Priest clad in sacred garments is Christ's 
 deputy, that with supplication and huirdUty he may 
 beseech God for himself and for the whole people. 
 He has before him and behind the sign of the Lord's 
 Cross, that he may continually be reminded of the 
 Passion of Christ. He wears the Cross before him 
 on the chasuble, that he may diligently look on 
 Christ's footsteps and earnestly study to follow them. 
 Behind he is signed with the Cross, that he may 
 cheerfully endure for God's sake any evils inflicted 
 on him by others. Before him he bears the Cross, 
 that he may mourn for his own sins, behind him, 
 that he may with sympathy weep over the faults 
 of others also, and know that he has been placed 
 in the midst between God and the sinner, and that
 
 " THE IMITATION OF CHRIST " 67 
 
 he should not flag in prayer and holy oblation, till 
 he prevail to obtain grace and mercy. When a 
 Priest celebrates he honours God, rejoices angels, 
 edifies the Church, helps the living, gives rest to the 
 dead, and makes himself partaker of all good things 
 [iii. 5]- 
 
 These words suggest the very spirit of the life to 
 which Thomas was now fully dedicated. In accord- 
 ance with the rule of the Brothers, he took due part 
 in the domestic duties of the house and fulfilled in 
 turn the different offices of the Monastery. His 
 life was one of quiet meditation and study, combined 
 with assiduous activity in writing and copying 
 manuscripts. Except for three years when the 
 whole brotherhood left the diocese of Utrecht during 
 an interdict, and when he was called to the death- 
 bed of his brother John, Thomas a Kempis spent 
 the whole of his long life in the House of Mount 
 S. Agnes. He loved the quiet life of contemplation, 
 prayer, and devotional study. The frequent con- 
 ferences, which were a feature of the regular life 
 of the House, with their free interchange of spiritual 
 confidences between the Brethren, must have helped 
 both to deepen his own spiritual insight and to 
 confirm his influence as a guide and adviser of others 
 in the life of devotion. Thomas himself had personal 
 knowledge of the difficulties of the higher spiritual 
 life, which gave him his power of deep sympathy 
 with the needs of others. The chronicler of the
 
 68 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 Monastery, who gives a brief record of his life among 
 the Brethren, says, " In the early days of his monastic 
 life he went through many necessities, temptations, 
 and labours." And the spell which his writings lay 
 upon souls so diverse and so different is derived from 
 the reality of the deep spiritual experience out of 
 which he speaks with such intense humility and 
 candour. 
 
 Out of this hfe of simple labour and earnest 
 devotion in the cloister, hidden from the hideous 
 turmoil of the age, came the books which we know 
 as The Imitation of Christ. The first three books 
 were finished by 1425, and the whole four are found 
 in a completed form written out with other devo- 
 tional treatises in his own hand sixteen years 
 later. 
 
 In the interval Thomas had been largely occupied 
 with the task of writing out a copy of the whole 
 Bible for the use of the Monastery, a work which 
 must have been for him a peculiar labour of love 
 and happiness. The treatises were catalogued by 
 Thomas himself under the name of their opening 
 words, without any special title, except the third 
 book, in the case of which he prefaces the opening 
 words with the title " On the Sacrament." It is 
 important to notice that Thomas places the book 
 on the Sacrament third and not fourth in his list, 
 the longest book of all " Of internal consolation " 
 coming last. The title " Of the Imitation of Christ,"
 
 " THE IMITATION OF CHRIST " 69 
 
 which is the original title of the first book only, seems 
 not to have been used as the comprehensive title of 
 the whole four books till thirteen years after the 
 death of Thomas, but from that time the title has 
 gained universal currency. 
 
 The book is a revelation of the heart and life of 
 its author. Its perfect beauty of style and diction 
 is the mirror of a soul stayed firmly upon God, 
 who with clear vision and unclouded faith can 
 speak with absolute sincerity of the joyful mysteries 
 of a life lived in humble dependence upon the 
 Divine Love. The simple sentences, crisp and terse 
 in phrase, with their delicate rhythm and pregnant 
 brevity, defy translation. It has all the dignity of 
 language in which the Bible excels, the vigour and 
 beauty of diction which are associated with the best 
 writing of Augustine and Bernard, and all the 
 smooth and facile rh3^thm of the familiar phrases of 
 the Church liturgy. It is the echo of all the gathered 
 voices which he had heard in choir, the refrain of 
 the sequences, antiphons, and hymns which sounded 
 perpetually in his heart, the memory of the inspired 
 words of Scripture and the treasured wisdom of the 
 saintly Fathers, the fruit of years of quiet meditation 
 which he almost unconsciously recalled. 
 
 It is no wonder that such beauty and wealth of 
 sacred thought, linked to such perfection of Hterary 
 style, should make an irresistible appeal to the best 
 men and women of every age. The wonderful
 
 70 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 sympathy of The Imitation of Christ, its simple 
 sincerity and sweet humility, its tender charity and 
 ardent love of truth, its spirit of eager zeal, its clear 
 depth of spiritual insight, its frank conviction and its 
 happy faith, combine to make it attractive to every 
 earnest seeker after spiritual peace. It is a legacy 
 of peace left to us from an age of unceasing strife 
 and confusion. The long years of quiet meditation 
 and spiritual discipline which Thomas spent in the 
 tranquillity of the cloister have brought comfort to 
 many a soul besides his own. The brief words in 
 which the monastic chronicler speaks of his last 
 years, and of the sufferings of his old age, suggest 
 the Source of the patience, sympathy, and endur- 
 ing faith which so consistently marked the Ufe of 
 Thomas a Kempis : " He had a very loving devotion 
 to the suffering Saviour, and he possessed the gift 
 of consoling the tempted and the sad. At last, 
 when he became very old, he was troubled with 
 dropsy in the legs, and fell asleep happily in the 
 Lord." 
 
 So in the year 1471 was this faithful servitor of 
 the Lord laid to his rest in the eastern vault of the 
 Monastery of Mount S. Agnes, where for seventy- 
 two years he had sought to show men how the humble 
 and loving imitation of Christ is the earthly way of 
 happiness and peace.
 
 " THE IMITATION OF CHRIST " 71 
 
 C. 
 
 The hnitation of Christ makes such a universal 
 appeal, because it is the simple and true record of 
 a soul to whom spiritual experiences were very real. 
 It deals with the foundation facts of practical re- 
 ligion. It treats of the deep principles, which under- 
 lie that fellowship with God, which is the ideal of 
 every good and earnest soul. It is free from all 
 vagueness, indefiniteness, and abstraction, because 
 it is based upon the revelation of God in Christ. 
 Thomas a Kempis found in the religion of the In- 
 carnate the immediate and full satisfaction of all 
 the practical needs of his own soul. It was the 
 truthfulness of the Christian faith to the actual 
 facts of life, as he knew them, that wrought in his 
 tried and tempted soul such strong conviction. The 
 certainty of his simple and lucid faith, the absolute 
 sincerity of the spiritual experiences of his life in 
 Christ, the naive tone of certitude in which he 
 speaks of the deepest mysteries of a soul struggling 
 towards perfection and upheld through all temp- 
 tation and difficulty by the power of the Cross, the 
 resolute confidence with which he proclaims sacrifice 
 and renunciation as the condition of spiritual 
 progress — these constitute the charm and mark the 
 irresistible appeal of the work of Thomas. It is a 
 normal experience, a sane and patient discipline, a 
 wise and gentle sympathy which his life reveals.
 
 72 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 There are no eccentricities of ascetic rigour, no 
 transcendent states of spiritual ecstasy, no psychical 
 surprises. All is regular and intelligible, compelling 
 our admiration, comrnanding our sympathy, and 
 inviting imitation. So we turn hopefully to this 
 book to find the principles of the spiritual life, 
 which are true to our own experience to-day. 
 
 No one who reads The Imitation as a whole can 
 fail to recognise how Thomas makes the Sacraments 
 the true foundation of the devotional life. The 
 very order in which the author himself arranged the 
 books is significant. First comes the appeal to the 
 imitation of Christ, with its call for rigorous re- 
 nunciation and self-discipline. Then follows the 
 revelation of the conditions necessary for the attain- 
 ment of the inner life — peace, purity of intention, a 
 good conscience and, above all, the love of Jesus 
 and the readiness to take up our cross and follow 
 Him. Then comes the actual fellowship with Jesus, 
 effected by the sacramental union of the Eucharist, 
 to which the third book is wholly devoted. And 
 after that comes the book of internal consolation, 
 in which the soul is taught to hold colloquy with 
 Jesus the Divine Guest, upon Whose sure and 
 certain Presence the joy of all spiritual life depends. 
 Thomas a Kempis was a Mystic who found his 
 union with God not in any vague or indefinable 
 communion of spirit, but in the definite and divinely 
 promised certainties of Sacramental fellowship at
 
 " THE IMITATION OF CHRIST " 73 
 
 the Altar. It was a fellowship the joy of which 
 might not immediately be recognised, but the cer- 
 tainty of which might always be confessed in simple 
 faith and realised in humble service. It was a 
 fellowship which was not a rare experience, but the 
 frequent and regular habit of the devout soul. 
 
 Here in the Sacrament of the Altar Thou art 
 wholly present, my God, the Man Christ Jesus [iii. i]. 
 — Keep my heart and body undefiled, that A\dth a 
 cheerful and pure conscience I may be able fre- 
 quently to receive to my everlasting health Thy 
 Mysteries, which Thou didst specially ordain and 
 institute for Thine own honour and for a never- 
 ceasing memorial [iii. 2.] — For this is the one chief 
 consolation of the faithful soul, so long as it is on 
 pilgrimage away from Thee in this mortal body, 
 that remembering its God, it should often receive 
 its Beloved with devout mind [iii. 3]. — Whosoever 
 with a single heart lifts up his intention to God and 
 empties himself of all inordinate liking or disliking 
 of any created thing, shall be the most fit to receive 
 grace and meet for the gift of devotion. This man 
 when he receives the Holy Eucharist obtains the 
 great grace of divine union, because he regards not 
 his own devotion and comfort, but the honour and 
 glory of God above all devotion and comfort [iii. 15I. 
 — Blessed is the simphcity, which leaves the difficult 
 ways of dispute and goes forward in the plain and 
 sohd path of God's commandments. Many have 
 lost devotion whilst they sought to search into things 
 too high. Faith is required of thee and a sincere 
 life, not height of understanding nor depth of 
 mysteries of God. Go forward therefore with simple
 
 74 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 and undoubting faith, and draw near to the Holy 
 Sacrament with supphant reverence, and whatsoever 
 thou art not able to understand, commit securely 
 to Almighty God. For faith and love do here 
 specially take the lead, and work in hidden ways in 
 this most holy, most supremely excellent Sacrament 
 [iii. i8]. 
 
 These words suggest the paramount place of im- 
 portance which Thomas a Kempis assigns to the 
 Sacrament of the Altar in the devout life, and those 
 who use the devotions of preparation and thanks- 
 giving for Communion, which the third book con- 
 tains, will enter more and more into that spirit of 
 wonder, thankful adoration, humility, and love 
 with which Thomas felt the Blessed Sacrament 
 ought always to be approached. 
 
 Familiar to him as it is to every earnest and devout 
 man of prayer was the experience of drymess and 
 deadness at times of devotion. From the frequent 
 reference which he makes to it, it would seem that 
 it had been one of his own special difficulties. His 
 counsel is always clear and definite. The conscious- 
 ness of special joy in devotion and sensible recog- 
 nition of the Divine nearness are the special gift of 
 God, and not the indispensable token of reality 
 and earnestness. For one who, like Thomas, lived 
 a life of meditation and prayer, this must have been 
 one of his greatest trials, and he had learned how 
 to bear it and how to make use of the discipline of
 
 " THE IMITATION OF CHRIST " 75 
 
 this experience for the deepening of his faith and 
 love. 
 
 The grace of devotion should be waited for, with 
 good hope and patience [iii. 15]. — When spiritual 
 comfort is given thee from God, receive it with 
 thankfulness, but understand that it is the gift of 
 God, not any desert of thine. Be not uplifted, be 
 not too joyful nor vainly presumptuous, but rather 
 be the more humble for that gift, more wary too, and 
 fearful in all thine actions, for that hour will pass 
 away and temptation will follow. When consolation 
 is taken from thee, do not immediately despair, 
 but \\ith humihty and patience wait for the heavenly 
 visitation, for God is able to give thee back again 
 more ample consolation [ii. 9]. — Comfort shall at 
 times be given thee, but the abundant fulness 
 thereof shall not be granted [iv, 49]. — All is not lost 
 because at times thy heart is not stirred towards 
 Me or My saints as thou wouldst. That good and 
 sweet affection which thou sometimes feelest, is the 
 effect of grace present and a foretaste of thy heavenly 
 home. But thou must not lean thereon too much, 
 for it comes and goes [iv. 6]. — When the spirit of 
 fervour is kindled, thou shouldst consider how it 
 will be when that light departs. And when this 
 happens, remember that the light may return again, 
 which as a warning to thyself and for Mine own 
 glory I have ^vithdra\^^l for a time [iv. 7]. — Leave 
 comforts to God, let Him do therein as seemeth Him 
 good. Do thou set thyself to endure tribulations 
 and count them the greatest comforts [ii. 12]. 
 
 The secret of the life of devotion is Humility. It 
 was a lesson which the age of Thomas a Kempis had
 
 76 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 never learned. No one has taught it by precept and 
 by example so sweetly and so convincingly as he. 
 " Love to be unknown " might well be called the 
 motto of his life. Humility is presented not as 
 cowardice nor as a diffident refusal of duties, but as 
 the safeguard of the effective power of grace, the 
 condition of true fruitfulness and abundant service, 
 the source of tranquillity and inward peace. 
 
 To be always doing well and to think little of 
 one's self, is the mark of a humble soul [ii. 6]. — If 
 thou hast any good, believe better things of others, 
 that thou may est preserve humility [i. 7]. — If thou 
 wilt know or learn anything to profit, love to be 
 unknown and to be little esteemed. This is the 
 deepest and most profitable reading, the true 
 loiowiedge and contempt of ourselves. To make 
 no account of ourselves and to think always well 
 and highly of others, is great wisdom and perfection 
 [i. 2]. — A humble knowledge of thyself is a surer 
 way to God than a deep search after learning [i. 3]. — 
 Now will I teach thee the way of peace and true 
 freedom. Study to do the will of another rather 
 than thine own. Choose always to have less rather 
 than more. Seek always the lowest place and to 
 be inferior to all. Wish always and pray that the 
 Will of God may be wholly fulfilled in thee [iv. 23]. 
 
 Renunciation is part of the Way of Humility. 
 Man must be ready to strip himself of all that is not 
 God and to submit himself thus chastened and dis- 
 ciplined to the moulding influences of Divine Love. 
 Man's sin demands it and his deepest instincts of
 
 " THE IMITATION OF CHRIST " ^y 
 
 imparted holiness approve it. Above all the Cross 
 of Jesus sanctions, consecrates, and blesses it. 
 There is no more beautiful chapter in all the literature 
 of devotion than the last chapter of the second 
 book, " Of the Royal Way of the Holy Cross," 
 which exalts the Cross of Christ as the way of Divine 
 salvation and the only hope of man. 
 
 In the Cross is salvation, in the Cross is life. In 
 the Cross is protection from enemies, in the Cross 
 is infusion of heavenly sweetness. In the Cross is 
 strength of mind, in the Cross joy of spirit. In the 
 Cross the sum of virtue, in the Cross perfection of 
 sanctity. There is no salvation for the soul, nor 
 hope of eternal life, but in the Cross. Take up 
 therefore thy Cross and follow Jesus, and thou 
 shalt go into hfe eternal. Lo, in the Cross is all, 
 and there is no other way to life and true inward 
 peace, but the way of the holy Cross and of dail}^ 
 mortification. Walk where thou wilt, seek what 
 thou wilt, thou wilt find no higher way above, nor 
 safer way below, than the way of the holy Cross 
 [ii. 12]. 
 
 Renunciation is a strong assertion of the power 
 of the wiU. But that is not the only way in which 
 the \vill controls the life of devotion. Thomas a 
 Kempis recognised in the spiritual life of the age in 
 which he lived a fatal want of zeal and fervour. 
 He had marked also in the life of the novices under 
 his instruction, as well as in his o^\^l life, how neces- 
 sary it was to keep alive the true spirit of devotion
 
 78 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 by frequent daily renewal of fresh acts of will and 
 obedience. There could be no endurance of suffer- 
 ing, no acceptance of discipline, no understanding 
 of the difficulties of spiritual progress, unless there 
 were zeal and glowing enthusiasm for Christ. Pro- 
 gress must be slow, but it may be made daily, if the 
 will be stirred to renewed activity as each day offers 
 fresh opportunity of service, discipline, and obedience. 
 Violence must be done to self, if evil habits are to be 
 overcome and growth in holiness assured. This is 
 one of the truths of the spiritual life to which 
 Thomas most frequently recurs. 
 
 No place is safe, if the spirit of fervour be want- 
 ing [iv. 27]. — Who hath a harder battle than he 
 that strives to overcome himself ? And this should 
 be our business, to conquer ourselves and daily wax 
 stronger than ourselves and make some growth in 
 holiness [i. 3]. — We seldom overcome any one vice 
 perfectly, and do not bum for daily progress, 
 therefore we remain cold and lukewarm [i. 11]. — 
 Two things in particular help to great amendment, 
 to wit, to pull ourselves violently away from that 
 to which nature is viciously inclined, and to labour 
 zealously for that good which we most want [i. 25]. — 
 If thou give thyself to zeal, thou shalt find peace 
 and feel toil lighter. The more violence thou usest 
 to thyself, the greater shall be thy growth [i. 25]. 
 
 For all his rigour Thomas was very tender and 
 gentle in his counsel to the weak. He knew that 
 we must be very patient with ourselves, if we are
 
 " THE IMITATION OF CHRIST " 79 
 
 to make progress, and the progress must be often 
 very slow. He must have been an ideal novice- 
 master. He is so considerate and so wise in his 
 hopefulness. 
 
 If thou canst not continually recollect thyself, 
 yet do it sometimes and at the least once a day [i. 19]. 
 — If thou canst not contemplate high and heavenly 
 things, rest in the Passion of Christ and dwell gladly 
 in His sacred wounds [ii. i]. — Deal not roughly with 
 him that is tempted, but give him comfort, as thou 
 wouldst wish to be done to thyself [i. 13]. — Do what 
 lies in thee and do it diligently [iii. 12]. 
 
 Behind all the simplicity of his words there lies a 
 majestic conception of God as the Creator of all 
 human happiness, the ever-present Source of all 
 human activity, the theme of man's adoring medi- 
 tation, the goal and glory of his life. It is this 
 penetrating sense of God's Presence which gives to 
 The Imitation of Christ its vitalising and converting 
 power. It is touched with the dignity of God's 
 nearness. It breathes the atmosphere of the tender 
 love of God, It suggests the still whisper of the 
 Voice of God calling us to Himself, that in Him we 
 may have peace. 
 
 If thy heart were right, then every creature would 
 be a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine. 
 There is no creature so small and abject, but it 
 reflects the goodness of God [ii. 4]. — Let nothing be 
 great unto thee, nothing high, nothing pleasing.
 
 8o THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 nothing acceptable, but simply God or that which 
 is of God [ii. 5]. — If thou seekest Jesus in all things, 
 thou shalt surely find Jesus [ii. 7]. — WTien the grace 
 of God comes to a man, then he is made able for 
 all things [ii. 8]. — Thou art the end of all good, the 
 height of life, the depth of all that can be spoken, 
 and to hope in Thee above all things is the strongest 
 comfort of Thy servants [iv. 59]. 
 
 Again and again as we take up the book, its words 
 come to us with a message of renewal, kindling us 
 to new hopes, stirring higher ideals, touching new 
 depths of spiritual sense, and revealing new capacities 
 of love and service in the imitation of Christ. It is 
 this spirit of hope and renewal, this frank and con- 
 fident return to God, this glory in the Cross of 
 Christ, which we need to-day. Well may we make 
 our own such words as these, which come to us laden 
 with the ripe experience of a saint who through 
 many tribulations has entered into the kingdom of 
 God : " Daily ought we to renew our purpose and 
 stir up ourselves to fervour, as though this were the 
 first day of our conversion, and say. Help me Lord 
 God in a good purpose and in Thy holy service, and 
 grant that I may now this day begin perfectly, for 
 that which I have done hitherto is nothing."
 
 IV 
 
 LORENZO SCUPOLI AND " THE 
 SPIRITUAL COMBAT" 
 
 BETWEEN the days of Thomas a Kempis and 
 Lorenzo ScupoH had come the great up- 
 heaval of the Reformation, which had left its mark 
 on every country in Europe. The years that had 
 passed since the death of Thomas a Kempis had 
 changed the direction of religious thought in ways 
 which few had foreseen. The Middle Ages had 
 passed away. A new world was emerging, with 
 new problems and new aims. The Imitation of 
 Christ breathed a spirit of tranquillity and peace in 
 all its pages. The Spiritual Combat presents, as its 
 name implies, a picture of struggle and conflict. The 
 Mystics had done their quiet work of preparation 
 and had opened a door of vision into heaven. Now 
 the power of that vision is tested by the practical 
 demands of a Ufe lived in the strenuous activities 
 of a world not yet won to holiness nor swayed by 
 ideals of goodness and of truth. New careers have 
 opened for the educated classes besides those of the 
 knight and the monk, which were all that the 
 
 F
 
 82 LORENZO SCUPOLI 
 
 Middle Ages offered. This active and busy life in 
 the world needed guidance and direction in the ways 
 of spiritual growth. Deliberate and definite in- 
 struction in the details of a disciplined and ordered 
 life of the spirit takes the place of the old scholastic 
 epitome of doctrine and the ecstatic outpourings of 
 the mystic and the seer, Julian and Thomas a 
 Kempis reveal the great principles of faith and 
 vision which guide the soul upon the upward path 
 of union with God. Scupoli deals with the actual 
 difficulties of a soul beset with temptations and 
 struggling with the deceitfulness of sin. Not only 
 has the demand for holiness of life among Christians 
 become more general and more insistent, but the 
 individual conscience, which the spirit of the age 
 has freed from many of its accustomed obediences 
 and sanctions, needs special guidance. Scupoli 
 and the writers of the Spanish school of the six- 
 teenth century apply the deepest experience of the 
 spiritual life, which has been gained through years 
 of monastic discipline, to the new needs of those 
 who living in the world are yet anxious to prove that 
 their citizenship is in heaven. It is this which 
 makes The Spiritual Combat so real and so useful 
 to us to-day. The conditions of those for whom 
 it was first written are reproduced in our own lives. 
 We find that our own needs are exactly disclosed 
 and our own difficulties graphically portrayed by 
 this wise counsellor of the sixteenth century.
 
 " THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT " 83 
 
 Scupoli was bom in 1529 and he died in 1610. 
 His life was therefore passed in that most confused 
 and turbulent period of European histoiy, when 
 the first fury of the Reformation movement was 
 spending itself in violent and impetuous reaction. 
 Twelve years before Scupoli was bom Martin Luther 
 had nailed his theses to the door of Wittenberg 
 Church, and had begun that movement of indivi- 
 duahsm, heralded already by Wychffe and Huss, 
 which was soon to question all the estabUshed prin- 
 ciples of Church authority and organisation. The 
 Church was reaping what it had sown. It was the 
 scandalous immorahty, the rapacious greed, the 
 unspiritual temper of the Church of the fifteenth 
 century, which eventually gave permanence to a 
 movement of revolt, in itself not more dangerous 
 nor difficult than many other perils of dissent which 
 had only proved temporary and ineffectual. Had 
 it been possible for Luther to meet with sympa- 
 thetic counsel and guidance at the hands of spiritual 
 men, whose hves could have been an epiphany of 
 Christian holiness and grace, the whole movement 
 which he inaugurated might have ended gloriously 
 in strengthening and purifying the Church, and in 
 reasserting those primitive ideals of early Christian 
 life and teaching, from which it had partly strayed. 
 But from the first, politics had intervened to confuse
 
 84 LORENZO SCUPOLI 
 
 the issue, and Luther was led to break away in 
 violent schism from the estabhshed order of the 
 Church, and to create that breach of Catholic unity 
 which up to this very day has wrought untold harm 
 in the life of Christendom. 
 
 It was in the very year in which Scupoli was bom, 
 1529, that the Diet of Speier was held, at which the 
 minority of the reforming princes of Germany made 
 formal protest against the decision of the Diet, 
 which had declared against any innovation in the 
 discipline, sacraments, and government of the 
 Catholic Church. It was this protest at the Diet 
 of Speier which won for the German reformers the 
 name " protestant " — a title destined by its frequent 
 misuse in relation to the Church of England to do 
 grave injury to the cause of Catholic reunion and 
 progress, by obscuring the essential catholicity of a 
 Church, which through all its movements of reform 
 had never suffered any breach in the historic con- 
 tinuity of its apostolic ministry, as all the reforming 
 bodies on the Continent had invariably done. 
 
 The vital elements of success and spiritual power 
 in the movement of Reform were the insistence upon 
 holiness of life, and the assertion of the responsibility 
 of the individual to develop to the full all his personal 
 gifts in the furtherance of the glory of God. But 
 these were powers which could be developed and 
 exercised most effectively in the sacramental fellow- 
 ship of the Catholic Church. It might well be that
 
 " THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT " 85 
 
 abuses and scandals of long standing in the govern- 
 ment and ecclesiastical policy of the Papal Court 
 could not readily be remedied or removed. But 
 personal holiness need not wait upon papal method. 
 Of the three great and imperative needs of the 
 moment — spiritual renewal, instruction in the great 
 verities of the Christian Faith, and reform of the 
 Papal Court — the first two could well be considered 
 by themselves. 
 
 It was the recognition of this which led some of 
 the most spiritually minded of the Itahan clergy 
 in 1523 to form the Oratory of Di\'ine Love. Caraffa 
 was the leader of this movement of spiritual reform 
 within the Church. It was an informal society of 
 about fifty priests of high social position, who wished 
 to turn to rehgious use, in furtherance of the highest 
 life of the Church, the best inspiration and thought 
 of the New Learning. In the succeeding year, as the 
 first outcome of this new effort, Carafta founded a 
 definite religious Order, called the Theatines — after 
 the name of the see Theate, which he had given up 
 in order to pursue without hindrance this work of 
 spiritual reform. The work of the Theatine Order 
 was to inaugurate a spiritual revival in the lives of 
 the parish clergy. They were undisciplined, they 
 were unspiritual, they were ignorant. The Theatines, 
 by their own lives of disciphne, by their own ideals 
 of devotion, and their definite teaching of the Faith, 
 were to bring new life and light and love into the
 
 86 LORENZO SCUPOLI 
 
 sacramental ministries of the Church, which had 
 been robbed of all attractiveness and power through 
 the moral laxity and ignorance of the clergy. The 
 new movements of heresy found their strength in 
 popular ignorance of the Faith and in the abuses 
 of clerical life. It was the parish priest who was 
 most in touch with the daily life of the people. It 
 was there that true reform must begin. The 
 Theatines were therefore themselves an association 
 of secular priests, bound by the three vows of 
 poverty, chastity, and obedience, and trained to 
 bring the light of spiritual counsel and the inspiration 
 of holiness and of instructed faith to the help of their 
 brethren in the midst of their parochial work. It 
 was to the Theatine Order that Lorenzo Scupoli 
 attached himself in 1569. 
 
 This movement of Catholic reform showed itself 
 in the sixteenth century in the establishment of 
 many new religious Orders, such as the Oratorians, 
 the Capuchins, and the Bamabites, and in the 
 activities of many saintly lives. Ignatius Loyola, 
 Francis Xavier, Francis de Sales, Carlo Borromeo, 
 Teresa, Vincent de Paul, are names which recall 
 ministries of abundant fruitfulness in many varied 
 fields of practical service which signalise the revival 
 of holiness within the Church. A new spirit of zeal 
 was aroused by the very \agour of the Protestant 
 assault upon its Sacraments and its Faith. That 
 spirit of ardent championship of the cause of the
 
 " THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT " 87 
 
 Church found its most striking illustration in the 
 foundation of the Jesuit Order, which in its fearless 
 zeal, its devotion to the Faith, its deep knowledge 
 of human character, and its missionary enthusiasm, 
 possessed striking resemblances to the Order of the 
 Theatines, in which Scupoli exercised his spiritual 
 ministry. 
 
 Scupoli lived to see much of the fruit of all 
 these efforts after spiritual reform. He saw indeed 
 purity and hoHness once more the normal expression 
 of the priestly life ; he saw many that had been led 
 into error brought back to the faith of the Church 
 through the careful and zealous preaching of the 
 truth ; but he saw no approach to reunion between 
 the great bodies of dissent and the CathoUc Church, 
 The breach had been allowed to grow wider and 
 wider. The Council of Trent made no attempt to 
 reconcile the revolted children of the Church, It 
 made reunion more difficult stiU, by formulating 
 with much more careful definition the very doctrines 
 of the mediaeval Church which had inspired the 
 movement of dissent, and by inaugurating a new 
 attitude in the Papacy itself of intolerant and un- 
 yielding opposition. Strong in its sense of recovered 
 holiness, the Church of Rome started forth upon a 
 new campaign of conquest, having learned nothing 
 of penitence, nothing of tolerance, nothing of sym- 
 pathy from its falls, having gained no wider outlook 
 nor truer conception of primitive Catholicity from
 
 88 LORENZO SCUPOLI 
 
 all the rich treasures of the past which the New 
 Learning had unlocked. 
 
 The lesson of Scupoli had not been fully learned. 
 It must indeed be to a generation deeply imbued 
 with that stern spirit of self-conquest, that con- 
 fident trust in God and unselfish passion for His 
 glory, which Scupoli reveals, that we must look for 
 such a growth of penitence and holiness, for such an 
 awed devotion to the majestic Will of God, as shall 
 create a spiritual atmosphere in which the un- 
 quenchable hopes of Catholic reunion may be at 
 length fulfilled. 
 
 B. 
 
 Were it not for his book the story of Scupoli's 
 life would be entirely unknown to us. The few 
 details that we know are due to those who were 
 drawn to inquire about the author of The Spiritual 
 Combat, because it revealed to them the wise insight 
 and ardent zeal of a true man of God. Francesco 
 Scupoli was bom at Otranto in 1529. He was of 
 noble family, and from his earliest days showed a 
 great devotion to study. At the age of forty he 
 entered the house of the Theatine Order at Naples, 
 and took the name of Lorenzo. After two years he 
 was professed, and six years later, at the age of forty- 
 eight, he was ordained to the Priesthood at Piacenza. 
 He had chosen an Order which was peculiarly suited
 
 " THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT " 89 
 
 to his genius. His intuitive insight into character, 
 his love of devotion, his deep humihty, his per- 
 suasive eloquence and attractive skill in teaching, 
 his practical knowledge of affairs, and his undaunted 
 courage, gave him unusual opportunities of useful- 
 ness in the exercise of his priestly ministry. The 
 spiritual poverty of the great Italian cities provided 
 ample scope for energies such as his. In the very 
 midst of his devoted and unselfish work, at Genoa 
 in 1585, Scupoli foimd himself the victim of a foul 
 and baseless slander, which accused him of conduct 
 unworthy of the priesthood. The actual terms of 
 the accusation are unknown, as the Theatine Order 
 was accustomed to destroy the records of all such 
 trials. Some speak of it as a grave lapse from the 
 Faith, others regard it as a charge of sensual sin. 
 Both seem equally improbable, but as he was unable 
 to find a witness to refute the calumny, the rigid rule 
 of the Order prevailed, and Scupoli was sentenced 
 to degradation from the priesthood. Accepting 
 the severe decree of punishment with humility, 
 Scupoli remained stiU in the ranks of the Order, 
 continuing his religious life as a lay-brother both 
 at Venice and at Padua. 
 
 Despite the ignominy of his punishment, Scupoli 
 retained the trust and affection of those who still 
 came to him for counsel and spiritual conference. 
 It was in this hour of his humiliation that he gave 
 himself to the writing of The Spiritual Combat, in
 
 90 LORENZO SCUPOLI 
 
 which he made the ripe experience of his o\ati 
 spiritual hfe available for the help and guidance of 
 others in their conflict with evil. The first edition 
 of Scupoli's book was published at Venice four years 
 after his retirement from the priestly life. It ap- 
 peared anonymously. Francis de Sales received a 
 copy of the book in the same year at Padua from 
 the hands of a Theatine, who was very probably 
 Scupoli himself. Francis found the little book of 
 the deepest value as a guide to holiness. He 
 carried it about with him always in his pocket, 
 reading in it daily and recommending it to his 
 penitents. It became the inspiration of his own 
 Introduction to the Devout Life. 
 
 For twenty-five years Lorenzo Scupoli lived on in 
 solitude and humiliation, maldng fuU proof of his 
 lay-ministry by his spiritual counsel, his brilliant 
 advocacy of the Faith, his continued instruction of 
 those who sought his teaching, and his devotional 
 writings, in which he laid bare the secrets of his 
 own spiritual experience for the help and guidance 
 of others. In the year 1610, at the advanced age 
 of eighty, Scupoli died at Naples in the Theatine 
 house of S. Paolo, in which he had first taken his 
 vows. 
 
 The Spiritual Combat is the revelation of the 
 deepest secrets of his own struggle towards per- 
 fection. It is the work of one who realised most 
 vividly the strength of the powers of evil and the
 
 " THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT " 91 
 
 necessity of a stern and continuous conflict to secure 
 victory. It is marked by a spirit of thoroughness 
 and glowing zeal, which recalls the fervent ardour 
 of the heroes of the Spanish Church. The same 
 insistence on the power of the human will in the 
 life of devotion, which marked the works of Rod- 
 riguez and The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius, 
 characterises also The Spiritual Combat. Written 
 not in Latin, but in the vernacular Italian, the book 
 is significant of that new appeal to the awakened 
 sense of individual responsibility, which the spirit 
 of the age had so sedulously fostered. It deals with 
 the practical difficulties of the busy man of affairs. 
 Francis de Sales praised it because it was practical, 
 clear, and methodical. He read it himself again 
 and again, and always with fresh profit. It showed 
 a remarkable insight into spiritual difficulties, and 
 offered definite instructions — a deliberate plan of 
 campaign — for the struggle against the most in- 
 sidious and most habitual temptations. Based 
 upon the simple acceptance of the teaching and 
 sacramental life of the Church, Scupoli shows how 
 the resources of Divine succour may be applied 
 by the human will to the daily conquest over evil 
 and the gradual attainment of Christian Perfection. 
 Its counsels are as true and as helpful to-day as 
 they were for the difficult age in which they were 
 written, and many who perhaps m.ay be denied the 
 opportunity of wise spiritual counsel to-day from
 
 92 LORENZO SCUPOLI 
 
 the lips of some faithful and loving priest of God, 
 may find abundant help, clear and skilful direction, 
 and hopeful encouragement from the prayerful study 
 of The Spiritual Combat, in which the priestly heart 
 of Lorenzo Scupoli reveals the deep secrets of his 
 own self-conquest and of his self-devoted sub- 
 mission to the victorious Will of God. 
 
 There is a method in The Spiritual Combat which 
 makes it very easy to understand. Scupoli had 
 arrived at a certainty and conviction about the 
 essential conditions of success in the Christian war- 
 fare, which made it possible for him to speak in 
 terms of unequivocal assurance about the detailed 
 order and the progress of the campaign against sin. 
 He dedicated his work to " the Supreme Captain 
 and most glorious Conqueror Jesus Christ the Son 
 of Mary," scorning any less glorious dedication. 
 " How can I, without shame and without loss, 
 dedicate it to any other than to Thy Majesty, the 
 King of heaven and earth ? As to what this 
 treatise teaches, it is all Thy teaching, since Thou 
 hast taught us that, distrustful of ourselves, we should 
 trust in Thee, fight and pray. Thine, O Lord, is 
 this Combat in all its parts, because Thine is the 
 teaching, and Thine are all the spiritual soldiers,
 
 " THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT " 93 
 
 among whom are we the regular clergy of the 
 Theatines." 
 
 The natural aim of the Christian life must be 
 Perfection, True wisdom lies in knowing wherein 
 perfection consists. It is not found in ascetic 
 rigour, nor in many prayers, nor in solitude, nor in 
 discipline, nor in ecstasy, nor in any outward 
 activity, but in lixing for the glory of God. 
 
 It does not consist in anj'thing else than in the 
 knowledge of the goodness and greatness of God 
 and of our o\\'n nothingness and inclination to every 
 evil, in His love and in the hatred of ourselves, in 
 subjection not only to Him, but for love of Him 
 to every creature, in the renunciation of all wall 
 of our o\\Ti and a complete resignation of ourselves 
 to His good pleasure. And further than this, that 
 all this should be willed and done by us simply for 
 the glory of God and for His pleasure alone, and 
 because He thus wills and merits to be loved and 
 served [i.]. 
 
 If this is the height of perfection to which we aspire, 
 then we must be ready " to do continual violence " 
 to ourselves and to " undertake a continual and very 
 sharp conflict," providing ourselves " with four 
 things, as the surest and most necessary arms, 
 distrust of ourselves, trust in God, practice, and 
 prayer." 
 
 Distrust of self is very deliberately chosen as 
 the first step in the spiritual combat. It is to be
 
 94 LORENZO SCUPOLI 
 
 sought as the special gift of God, and is the lesson 
 of all our falls. 
 
 Distrust of yourself is so necessary to you in this 
 combat, that without it you will not be able to 
 overcome even the very smallest of your little 
 passions [ii.]. — Ask it of the Lord Himself with 
 fervent and humble prayers, since it is His gift [ii.]. — 
 When you fall, hasten at once in thought to a 
 humble recognition of yourself, and with earnest 
 prayer ask the Lord that He will give you the true 
 light of self-knowledge and a complete distrust of 
 yourself, unless you wish to fall again and sometimes, 
 it may be, into more serious ruin [ii.]. — This is the 
 foundation of all other virtues. God, before we 
 existed, created us out of nothing, and now that 
 we exist through Him wishes to base all the spiritual 
 structure on this knowledge of ourselves, that we 
 of ourselves are nothing. And the deeper we sink 
 ourselves in that foundation, the higher will this 
 structure rise. And in proportion as we dig out the 
 earth of our wretchedness, so much more firmly will 
 the divine architect lay the stones that He may 
 advance the building [xxxii.]. 
 
 Upon distrust in self there follows a real trust in 
 God. It is this which assures success and realises the 
 effective power of the Divine help in human diffi- 
 culties. The sense of the omnipotence of God gives 
 courage and stability to all our own endeavours, 
 and the remembrance of God's readiness to help 
 prevents despair in the midst of the gravest dis- 
 quietude. He who fights valiantly, trusting in God,
 
 " THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT " 95 
 
 will not " lose the help which never fails those who 
 fight for Him, though He sometimes permits them 
 to be wounded." This complete and absolute trust 
 in God is tested by the attitude of the soul after 
 repeated falls. Nowhere are the insight and faith of 
 Scupoli so wonderfully revealed as in his counsel 
 to those who seek peace after successive defeats in 
 the spiritual combat. 
 
 When you find yourself wounded, from having 
 fallen into some sin through your weakness, or even 
 at times through \\dlfulness or evil intention, do not 
 be a coward, and do not be disquieted by it, but 
 turning yourself at once to God, say — " Behold, my 
 Lord, what I have done of my own self, nor canst 
 Thou expect from me anything but such falls into 
 sin." And here after a little delay debase yourself 
 in your own eyes, grieve at the offence you have 
 given to the Lord, and without confusion to yourself, 
 be angry with your vicious passions, and chiefly 
 with that which has caused your fall. Then go on 
 to say, " Not here, O Lord, should I have stopped, 
 if Thou by Thy goodness had not held me." Then 
 give Him thanks and love Him more than ever, 
 wondering at His great mercy in that He, though 
 offended by you, yet stretches forth His right hand 
 that you may not fall again. Lastly, you will sa}', 
 with great confidence in His infinite mercy, " Do 
 Thou, O Lord, according to Thy will, forgive me, 
 grant that I may never live apart from Thee or afar 
 off, and that I may not offend Thee any more." 
 And, this done, do not spend your time in thinking 
 whether God has forgiven you or not, because this 
 is nothing else but pride, disquietude of mind,
 
 96 LORENZO SCUPOLl 
 
 loss of time, and a snare of the devil, under colour of 
 various pretexts, which are good. Therefore leaving 
 yourself freely in the tender hands of God, follow 
 up your own practice as if you had not fallen. The 
 method of recovering this peace is that you should 
 for the time wholly forget your fall and give yourself 
 to the consideration of the ineffable goodness of God. 
 Then in the time of sacramental confession, which I 
 exhort you to use frequently, go over all your faults, 
 and with renewed sorrow and displeasure at the 
 offence you have given God, and with a resolution not 
 to offend Him any more, you will unfold them 
 sincerely to your spiritual father [xxvi.]. 
 
 Trust in God leads to the due exercise of both the 
 understanding and the will, which are the two chief 
 weapons with which we wage our conflict. The 
 understanding must be prayerfully placed under the 
 illumination of the Holy Ghost, and success depends 
 on eliminating the two distracting and distorting 
 influences of inordinate affection and of curiosity. 
 Intellectual pride is the great snare of the under- 
 standing, and " pride of the understanding is more 
 dangerous than the pride of the will." 
 
 The first and most important way of obtaining 
 light for the understanding is prayer, praying the 
 Holy Spirit that He will deign to shed this hght 
 upon our hearts. The other way is the continual 
 practice of a deep and loyal consideration of things, 
 to see whether they be good or bad, according as 
 the Holy Spirit teaches, and not as they appear 
 outwardly. — A humble knowledge of ourselves ought
 
 " THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT " 97 
 
 to be prized more highly than the highest attained 
 of all the sciences [vii.]. — Take care as much as 
 possible always to keep your will purified and free 
 from inordinate affection of any kind [viii.]. — In the 
 desire of knowing the things of heaven, you must 
 be sober and humble, not wishing to Imow anything 
 but Christ crucified. His life and death, and as much 
 as He asks of you [ix.]. 
 
 It is in his rousing caU to a generous exercise of 
 the wiU that Scupoli reveals the intensity of the 
 continuous effort which the spiritual combat makes 
 upon the highest energies of our personal life. Here 
 he is at one with Augustine and Thomas a Kempis 
 and Ignatius, and all the great moral teachers, who 
 have sought to regenerate human life. The will 
 must be directed to one sole end — the glory of God. 
 We must will and do all as if we were moved by 
 God, and with the simple intention of honouring 
 and satisfying Him alone. And because this 
 necessitates continual effort, we must be careful to 
 renew the wiU again and again. Motives so soon 
 change. That which has been begun for God's 
 glory is often continued solely for our own pleasure 
 and self-gratification. The proof of the readiness 
 of the will to persevere is found in the conquest of 
 the smaller sins, and in the re nunciation of the little 
 faults as well as of the great ones. It is the work 
 of the alert and eager will to choose definitely against 
 which foe the battle shall be immediately waged. 
 
 G
 
 98 LORENZO SCUPOLI 
 
 The fight can never be relaxed. It is a daily struggle, 
 under the leadership of our victorious Captain, 
 Christ Jesus. And that foe must be chosen for 
 battle, which actually at the time and at close 
 quarters is making war against us. Against that 
 one enemy we must fling the whole force of our 
 attack, in full confidence that by the help of God 
 we are stronger than our foe. Such confidence in 
 the superior power of God arms the will with courage 
 and is the promise of victory. Only in the case of 
 temptations of the flesh is flight the way of safety. 
 " You must not fight in face of the vice, but flee with 
 all your might any occasion and person whatsoever 
 whereby you may fall into the least danger." 
 Meditation on the Life and Passion of the Crucified 
 Lord is the real remedy against such sins. 
 
 Let your will, being moved and drawn by His Will, 
 lay itself out to will it as being willed by God and 
 willed for His good pleasure and honour alone [x.]. — 
 To determine your will with greater ease to will in 
 all things the good pleasure of God and His honour, 
 remember again and again that He has first of all 
 in many ways honoured you and loved you. Every 
 hour, even every moment. He keeps you safe from 
 your enemies, fights for you with His grace, continu- 
 ally holds His beloved Son ready to be your defence 
 and sustenance in the Sacrament of the Altar, is not 
 this a sign of the inestimable consideration and love 
 which the Infinite God bears towards you ? Above 
 everything, keep always in your memory that the 
 Majesty of God of itself is infinitely worthy of being
 
 " THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT " 99 
 
 honoured and served, simply lor His own good 
 pleasure [xi.]. — Let no one presume to think that he 
 is able to follow the true Christian virtues, and to 
 serve God as is fitting, unless he wish really to do 
 violence to Himself and to bear the pain which is 
 felt in renouncing not only the greater but also 
 the httle faults to which he has been attached b}^ 
 eartlily affection [xii.]. — The habits of evangelical 
 virtue are acquired by doing over and over again 
 acts agreeable to the Divine Will [xiii.]. — God has 
 endowed our will with such freedom and strength, 
 that if all the senses, with all the devils and the world 
 together were to arm themselves and unite against 
 it, fighting against it and pressing it with all their 
 effort, yet in spite of these it can with the greatest 
 freedom mil and not will all that it wishes or does 
 not wish, and as often, and as long, and in the way 
 and to the end it most desires [xiv.]. — Let the order 
 of battle and your practice be to make war against 
 those passions which have always done you harm, 
 and are most frequently assaulting you and harming 
 you, and to adorn yourself as perfectly as you can 
 with the virtues which are contrary to them [xxxiii.]. 
 
 Scupoli is very wise in his knowledge of the diffi- 
 culties which beset our rules and resolutions, and 
 the eagerness of the soul to see the marks of its 
 own progress. Rules are not made for themselves, 
 nor ought they to press heavily upon our attention. 
 They are meant to make the vision of God more 
 perpetual. Where a long task is set before us, it is 
 well not to think of the whole at once, but to con- 
 centrate attention and effort on the beginning, and
 
 100 LORENZO SCUPOLI 
 
 to fight as if that were all. Thus we are insensibly 
 led on to the fulfilment of the whole. In the time 
 of spiritual delight, special humility is needed in 
 making resolutions and promises, that we do not 
 overstrain our powers. 
 
 I have not given you these methods of ruhng the 
 senses that you may occupy yourself with these, 
 for you ought, as it were, to be always united in 
 your mind to the Lord. There is little fruit when 
 many practices are undertaken, however good they 
 may be in themselves. Indeed, they are very often 
 merely a perplexity of mind, self-love, inconstancy, 
 and the snares of the devil [xxiii.]. — The practice 
 you have in hand may perchance require many and 
 many an act to gain one virtue and incessant weari- 
 ness for many days, and the enemies to be taken by 
 force may appear to you to be many and great. 
 Begin these acts as if there were only a few, and you 
 had need of toiling for only a few days, and fight 
 against one enemy as if there were no others to 
 fight, with full confidence that by the help of God 
 you are stronger than they are. For if you act in this 
 way, sloth will begin to lose its force and will then 
 make way for the gradual entrance of the opposite 
 virtue. — When it happens that you have need of 
 doing things, about which, since they appear to you 
 in your sloth to be many and difficult, you begin to 
 be weary, begin, nevertheless, bravely and quietly 
 with one, as if there were not another to do. For 
 by doing this diligently, you will come to do all 
 with far less fatigue than that which in your sloth 
 seemed to be before you [xx.]. — In the time of 
 spiritual delight be very cautious and humble in
 
 " THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT " loi 
 
 your resolutions, particularly in promises and 
 vows [xxix.]. 
 
 The fourth weapon in the spiritual combat is 
 Prayer. Prayer places a sword in the hand of God, 
 so that He will fight and conquer for us. And with 
 our petitions there are needed both self-discipline 
 and thanksgiving. Scupoli insists very earnestly 
 on the important part which thanksgiving plays in 
 the Christian conflict. By calling to mind the 
 mercies of God, the will is strengthened, and new 
 faith is aroused by a remembrance of the Divine 
 power and loving-kindness. Mental prayer is a 
 lifting up of the mind to God with an actual or 
 virtual request for that which is desired. Meditation 
 is an integral part of the life of prayer, and of all 
 subjects of meditation the Passion of Christ is the 
 most fruitful and the most inexhaustible. 
 
 Beyond these four weapons — Distrust in self, 
 Trust in God, Exercise of both understanding and 
 will, and Prayer — far surpassing them all in power 
 and dignity, is the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. 
 In speaking of the Holy Eucharist as a means of 
 victory in the spiritual combat, Scupoli emphasises 
 the need of humble preparation, the recognition of 
 God's joy in dwelling with us, the infinite love of 
 God which the sacrament displays, and the con- 
 fidence with which we must give Him a large place 
 in our heart, that He may make Himself wholly
 
 102 LORENZO SCUPOLI 
 
 master of it. The Holy Eucharist is not an occa- 
 sional weapon only, but one that may be frequently 
 used. " Because this most Holy Sacrament and 
 this weapon can be practised and taken in two ways, 
 sacramentally once a day, and spiritually every 
 hour and every moment, you ought not to neglect 
 to take it very frequently in the second way, and 
 always in the first way when it is allowed you." 
 
 So we are amply equipped for the spiritual com- 
 bat, from which there is no discharge in this life, 
 and in which we must never lose couraLge. If we 
 fight on bravely and are faithful unto death, it will 
 be by the gracious mercy and help of God our 
 Captain and most glorious Conqueror. In His power 
 we conquer, and His will be the victory. This is the 
 supreme confidence, bom of a long experience of 
 painful conflict and humiliation, which Scupoli 
 hands on to each soldier of Christ, as he takes his 
 place in the army of God and sets himself boldly 
 to the fight. The aged warrior writes, as God has 
 revealed to him the secret of the battlefield. He can 
 but speak as God has dealt with him. His words can- 
 not take the place of God's own revelation to each 
 individual soul, but they can point each warrior to 
 the Source of Victory and lead him to the Cross of 
 the supreme Captain and most glorious Conqueror, 
 Jesus Christ. For, as he beautifully says, unveiling 
 the secret of his own steadfastness and faith, " This 
 crucified Lord is the book that I give you 'to read,
 
 " THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT " 103 
 
 from which you will be able to draw the true por- 
 trait of every virtue. For being the book of life, 
 not only does it teach the intellect by word, but it 
 inflames the will by a living example. The whole 
 world is full of books, and yet all of them together 
 are not able to teach you the way of acquiring all 
 the virtues so perfectly as we can acquire them by 
 gazing on the crucified God."
 
 FRANCIS DE SALES AND " AN INTRO- 
 DUCTION TO THE DEVOUT LIFE " 
 
 FRANCIS DE SALES is perhaps the best kno^\^l 
 amongst the teachers and writers on devotion, 
 whose Hves of hohness and religious activity marked 
 the renewal of Church-life after the Council of Trent. 
 His work as a Missioner in the district of Chablais 
 shows the way in which a faithful and courageous 
 preaching of the Catholic Faith was able to triumph 
 even in the face of the grave political opposition 
 which the adherents of the Protestant reforming 
 bodies were able to offer. His treatises on Devotion 
 reveal an intimate knowledge of the social life of the 
 cultured classes of his day, and disclose the way in 
 which he sought to arouse new spiritual ideals in 
 the hearts of those whose duties called them to take 
 an active share in public life. The experience of the 
 cloister, which had stood the test of many genera- 
 tions, was made available for the consecration of the 
 lives of those who were engrossed in the manifold 
 responsibilities of active life in the world. Of all 
 the books that had hitherto been written, none had
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 105 
 
 shown such a dehcate appreciation and such a 
 practical knowledge of the possibilities of devotion 
 in the lives of those, " who live in town, at home, 
 in court, who by their position are obliged to live 
 to all outward appearance an ordinary life, and who 
 often, under the pretext of pretended impossibility, 
 do not even wish to think of undertaking the 
 devout life." 
 
 That is what makes An Introduction to the Devout 
 Life so valuable to us to-day. The conditions of 
 those whom Francis de Sales specially designed to 
 instruct, are in all essentials exactly the same as 
 our own, and his advice is peculiarly adapted to 
 meet the needs of our own experience. His Metro- 
 politan, the Archbishop of Vienne, was voicing the 
 gratitude of a long posterity when he thanked 
 Francis de Sales for " the inestimable advantage 
 which will accrue to those who shall be happy 
 enough to read this book as it ought to be read." 
 
 Francis de Sales was bom in 1567, and he died in 
 1622. The period of his activity therefore covers 
 the years when Europe was still convulsed by the 
 Wars of Religion, which were the first heritage of the 
 Reformation. In every European state the chief 
 political issues were determined by the conflict 
 between the aggressive leaders of Protestantism and
 
 io6 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 the defenders of the Cathohc Faith. The Papacy, 
 emerging more powerful from the vindication of its 
 hoHness at the Council of Trent, sought to regain 
 what it had lost, partly by a systematic propagation 
 of the Faith, partly by a policy of stem repression, 
 in both of which endeavours it received the pov/erful 
 aid of the newly established Order of the Jesuits. 
 It was the age of the Armada, of the unification of 
 France under the astute rule of Henri Quatre. 
 Spain was using its growing power to champion the 
 cause of the Papacy, while Germany, torn and rent 
 by rival religious factions, was fast losing its prestige 
 as a European power under the unstable rule of 
 Rudolf II. 
 
 But the country with which Francis de Sales was 
 most closely associated was the district round 
 Geneva, which had been in the possession of the 
 House of Savoy. The story of the Reformation in 
 Switzerland illustrates very vividly the way in 
 which political issues had become inseparably 
 bound up with ecclesiastical reform. The course 
 of the Reforming movement in Switzerland had 
 been determined by the influence of Zwingli, who, 
 in contrast to Luther with his religious passion and 
 aristocratic sympathies, was a cold thinker and a 
 genuine repubhcan. The triumph of Zwingli at 
 Zurich in 1523 meant the withdrawal of the city 
 from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Constance 
 and the proscription of all Catholic worship. Simi-
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 107 
 
 larly the institution of republican government at 
 Berne and at Basle, under the influence of the re- 
 formers, had driven the Bishops into exile. With 
 the assistance of Berne, Geneva in 1536 successfully 
 revolted from the Dukedom of Savoy, and five years 
 later the republic accepted the t3Tannical disciphne 
 of Calvin, From that time until Calvin's death in 
 1564, Geneva became the centre of Calvinist in- 
 fluence and was lost to the Catholic cause. But 
 bitter dissensions which arose between the supporters 
 of Zwingh, Luther, and Calvin, combined with the 
 energetic movement of the Counter-reformation, to 
 pave the way for a reaction, and the work of con- 
 version which was begun by Carlo Borromeo, the 
 saintly Archbishop of Milan, was carried on by 
 Francis de Sales in his mission to the Chablais from 
 1593 to 1598, in which he persevered through all 
 dangers till he had overcome the most violent Pro- 
 testant opposition and reconciled even the reformed 
 ministers to the Church. But the possibility of this 
 mission work depended entirely on favourable 
 political conditions. The acceptance of the Catholic 
 Faith by Henry iv. in 1593, and his absolution by 
 the Pope in 1595, had facilitated the work of Francis, 
 but it was the recovery of the Chablais, the Genevois, 
 and the country of Gex by the Duke of Savoy which 
 had made the mission at all possible. Geneva itself 
 remained still independent. In 1602 Charles Em- 
 manuel, Duke of Savoy, made his famous attempt
 
 io8 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 to regain the city by surprise, which was foiled by 
 the indomitable courage of its citizens. Geneva 
 therefore remained obdurate to the appeals of 
 Francis. It was the great tragedy of his life, that 
 though consecrated titular Bishop of Geneva, he 
 was never received in his own see-city, nor permitted 
 to minister at the Altar of his own Cathedral. 
 
 The seventeenth century opened with happy 
 auguries for the work of the Church in such bene- 
 ficent and saintly activities as those of Francis de 
 Sales, Vincent de Paul in France, and Teresa in 
 Spain. But into the religious differences which 
 had arisen, such bitterness had been imported, and 
 so inseparably had political and religious issues 
 become entangled, that peaceful conversion was no 
 longer possible ; and in 1618 Europe was plunged 
 into the fierce carnage and intolerable miseries of 
 the Thirty Years' War, which postponed for more 
 than a century that renewal of religion, of which 
 the work of S. Francis de Sales was so hopeful an 
 anticipation. 
 
 B. 
 
 Francis de Sales was bom of noble family in 1567, 
 at the Castle of Sales in the country of Savoy. He 
 was the child of many prayers, dedicated by his 
 mother, like Gregory Nazianzen, to the service 
 of God. From his earliest childhood Francis re- 
 vealed a most loving, gracious, and generous char-
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 109 
 
 acter. He showed from the first a rare instinct of 
 devotion, and as a boy he loved to gather the 
 children of the village round him in church and 
 teach them to honour the Altar and the Font. At 
 the age of ten he received his First Communion, and 
 was confirmed at Annecy, where he was at school. 
 Already Francis had conceived a vocation to the 
 priesthood and had begun to live a disciplined fife, 
 with a rule of prayer, study, and Church worship 
 which he had drawn up for himself. His father had 
 other hopes for the boy's future. Such a love of 
 study, such gifts of attractiveness and power gave 
 promise of a great career, and M. de Boisy hoped 
 that his son would attain distinction in the 
 profession of the law. To that end, at the early 
 age of twelve, his father designed to send him to 
 Paris to the College of Navarre, which was the 
 favourite school of the nobility of Savoy. But 
 Francis shrank from an education which was purely 
 secular, and which exposed him to many temptations, 
 and at his own request was allowed to enter the 
 College at Claremont, where the newly established 
 Order of the Jesuits had successfully inaugurated a 
 system of education, which combined efficiency of 
 secular teaching with a sound religious and moral 
 training. 
 
 For six years Francis remained at Paris, an eager 
 student, a devout worshipper, and an enthusiastic 
 companion. His education was not confined to
 
 no FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 rhetoric and philosophy. He was trained in all the 
 varied accomplishments essential to the life of a 
 nobleman, to which he owed much both of his 
 sympathy and his influence with the courtiers of his 
 day. With his vocation to the priesthood becoming 
 clearer and dearer to him day by day, he applied 
 himself assiduously to theology, studying Hebrew, 
 and especially the writings of the Fathers and of 
 Thomas Aquinas. Towards the end of this period of 
 college life at Paris, at the age of seventeen, Francis 
 passed through an experience of spiritual desolation, 
 which for six weeks harassed him with the fear of 
 final damnation and eternal loss. The severity of 
 this religious trial, which he never forgot, made him 
 unusually tender and sympathetic in after j^ears 
 with all forms of spiritual temptation and doubt. 
 
 After his course at Paris his father, still nourishing 
 the hope of a legal career for his son, sent Francis 
 to the University of Padua in 1587. Padua offered 
 unusual attractions, not only as a distinguished 
 school of canon and ci\'il law, but also as a famous 
 seat of theological learning. Here Francis entered 
 eagerly upon fresh theological studies under the 
 guidance of his Jesuit director, and also gained his 
 first insight into the conditions of Italian Church 
 life, which was experiencing a renewal of activity 
 under the zealous leadership of Pope Sixtus v. It 
 was at Padua that Francis became acquainted with 
 Lorenzo Scupoli's Spiritual Combat. This book of
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " iii 
 
 devotion became his most treasured companion and 
 his daily guide, helping largely to fashion his own 
 spiritual life, and suppljdng him with the foundation 
 upon which his own Introduction to the Devout Life 
 was subsequently based. 
 
 Francis completed his education in Italy by \asit- 
 ing Rome, Loreto, Ancona, Venice, Verona, Milan, 
 and Turin, a diligent lover of all their beauties and 
 a worshipper at all their famous shrines. Returned 
 to Savoy, he went to Annecy to visit Claude de 
 Granier, the aged Bishop of Geneva, who quickly 
 detected in Francis the promise of illustrious service 
 in the cause of the Church. JNI. de Boisy still hoped 
 that Francis would accept some of the secular prefer- 
 ments which were now offered to him. But not even 
 the promise of a seat in the Senate could turn him 
 from his determination to seek the priesthood. His 
 father's consent was with difficulty won, even when 
 the dignity of Provost of the Chapter of the Cathedral 
 of Geneva was granted to him by the Pope in 1593. 
 But he was at length convinced of his son's irre- 
 vocable vocation, and accepted the overthrow of his 
 own long-cherished hopes with the words, " Do as 
 the Lord bids you. It is not for me to resist His 
 adorable Will." That very year Francis realised 
 his highest ambition, and was ordained both deacon 
 and priest by the Bishop of Geneva, who gladly 
 welcomed to his aid one who was so exceptionally 
 fitted, alike by holiness, by theological knowledge.
 
 112 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 and by personal charm, to commend the Faith of 
 the Church to those who had wandered from the 
 fold. 
 
 Geneva was still closed to the ministries of the 
 Catholic Church. Francis de Sales therefore made 
 his headquarters at Annecy, where he found ample 
 scope for his priestly zeal both as Penitentiary and 
 as Preacher. His sermons marked a new era in 
 popular preaching. They were exquisitely simple, 
 profoundly spiritual, and full of direct teaching. 
 He reahsed that the errors of Calvinism could only 
 be combated by frequent and simple repetition of 
 the great truths of the Catholic Faith, enforced by 
 the witness of a life of tireless Christian activity, of 
 winning courtesy, and radiant holiness. 
 
 The gifts of Francis were those of an ideal Evan- 
 gelist. And a worthy sphere for his mission labours 
 was soon found in the Chablais district of Savoy, 
 which had been lost to the Catholic Church since its 
 conquest by the Calvinists of Berne in 1536. The 
 acceptance of the Catholic Faith by Henry iv, of 
 France in 1593 offered an opportunity for the res- 
 toration of the Catholic religion in Savoy. Thonon, 
 on the south side of the Lake of Geneva, was chosen 
 as the centre of the Mission, to which, after the 
 failure of the first missioner, Francis de Sales 
 offered to dedicate himself. For five years Francis 
 laboured in the Mission with the utmost devotion, 
 with heroic courage, and with indomitable patience.
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 113 
 
 After three years of ceaseless preaching, of pains- 
 taking organisation and devoted self-sacrifice, he 
 began to reap the first fruits of his apostolic labours. 
 From that time the work continued with growing 
 success, until by the autumn of 1598 the last Pro- 
 testant ministers had either been reconciled or been 
 forced to withdraw, and the Chablais was once more 
 restored to the Catholic Church. The Mission had 
 revealed the singular ascendancy which Francis de 
 Sales could exercise over the hearts of men, through 
 the irresistible power of his patient love, the winning 
 eloquence of his glowing faith, and the steadfast wit- 
 ness of his personal devotion and unselfish service. 
 It was natural, after such a proof of his gifts, that 
 Francis de Sales should be chosen by the Bishop 
 of Geneva to be his Coadjutor in the difficult and 
 often dangerous work of his diocese. With great 
 reluctance Francis accepted the office, and after 
 long delays was consecrated Coadjutor-Bishop in 
 1602. His new position took him on a mission to 
 the Court of Henry iv. at Paris, where for the greater 
 part of a year he exercised his care of souls with his 
 wonted love and diligence. It was here that he 
 gained a close insight into the details of Court hfe. 
 To this experience was due the wise and practical 
 nature of the counsel which he was able afterwards 
 to give to those who sought his guidance in the 
 spiritual hfe, and which ultimately took permanent 
 form in his Introduction to the Devout Life. 
 
 H
 
 114 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 He gave himself untiringly to the work of his 
 diocese, showing in all his episcopal duties that 
 scrupulous attention to every detail, that pastoral 
 S5mipathy and zealous care for souls, that spiritual 
 insight and imperturbable patience, that simplicity, 
 courtesy, and humility, which unvaryingly inspired 
 all his ministerial work. His diocese lay partly in 
 Savoy and partly in France, and his frequent preach- 
 ing brought him into contact with an ever-growing 
 number of men and women who sought him for their 
 spiritual guide. While he was preaching the Lent 
 course at Dijon in 1604, he made the acquaintance 
 in this way of a widow, Madame de Chantal, whom 
 he presently designed to be the first Superior of a 
 new religious order, to be called the Order of the 
 Visitation, which was meant to bring the sympathy 
 and knowledge of cultured women, trained and dis- 
 ciplined in the spiritual life, to the help of the poor. 
 It was a novel enterprise in that age to combine in 
 this way the contemplative and the practical life 
 in the rule of a religious order. Francis saw how 
 needful it was to give definite and careful training 
 to the spiritual life of those who were to be entrusted 
 with the initiation of such a work, and the counsel 
 which he gave to Madame de Chantal and her com- 
 panions he presently gathered into the book which 
 he published in 1608 under the title An Introduction 
 to the Devout Life. 
 
 In 1610 his plans for the new Order were complete.
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 115 
 
 and the Order of the Visitation was instituted at 
 Annecy. The Sisters worked amongst the poor and 
 visited the sick, tending them dihgently in their 
 own homes, while they observed a simple Rule of 
 Devotion in their own community life. The need 
 of such an Order was evidenced by the rapid increase 
 of its Houses. 
 
 Another \dsit to Paris in 1618 extended his in- 
 fluence, and brought him into touch with Vincent 
 de Paul and with Mere Angehque, the Abbess of 
 Port-Royal. With Vincent de Paul Francis was in 
 peculiar sympathy. Vincent's establishment of the 
 Company of Mission Priests for the training and 
 reform of the Clergy and for the preaching of Missions 
 in country districts, fulfilled one of the dearest ideals 
 of Francis de Sales, and his institution of the Sisters 
 of Charity in 1634 was meant to satisfy a need very 
 similar to that for which the Order of the Visitation 
 had been created. Francis indeed chose Vincent de 
 Paul as the Superior of his o\vn Order of the Visitation 
 in Paris. 
 
 This was the last visit of Francis to Paris, where 
 he had exercised an abiding influence. In the 
 autumn of 1622 illness warned him of approaching 
 death, but he never spared himself, and up till the 
 very end he continued his usual duties, abating 
 nothing. His last counsel, given to the Sisters of 
 the Visitation in the one brief word " Humihty," 
 sums up the lesson of his life. With the sacred name
 
 ii6 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 of Jesus upon his lips, Francis de Sales passed to 
 his rest on Holy Innocents' Day, 1622, at the age of 
 fifty-five. 
 
 Few men have ever left such a universal impression 
 of holiness upon the minds of those amongst whom 
 they lived. To the courtier, the peasant, the in- 
 tolerant heretic, to the indifferent and the devout, 
 the appeal of Francis de Sales was alike irresistible. 
 He won the respect and affection of all by his trans- 
 parent unselfishness, his trustful and loving courtesy, 
 his unaffected simplicity and goodness. As the 
 Calvinists themselves said, " If all the Bishops were 
 like this one, we should soon be all Catholics." In 
 an age which had been marked by clerical laxity and 
 ignorance, Francis redeemed the Episcopate in the 
 eyes of the world, and showed where the power of 
 the Bishop really lay, in the punctual and loving ful- 
 filment of his pastoral care of the Diocese. While 
 he set himself to train the clergy and to place before 
 them a more saintly ideal of holiness, he won the 
 laity also to a higher standard of spiritual life, and 
 brought the Word of God and the Sacraments into 
 the lives of the workers and the peasants as weU as 
 into the homes of the cultured and the wealthy. 
 He found little time amidst all his diocesan cares 
 for writing books, but, in addition to his Introduction 
 to the Devout Life, he wrote a book on The Love of 
 God, which revealed the secret of his own saintliness. 
 
 Both books are indeed disclosures of his own deep
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 117 
 
 devotion and of the habits of his own rehgioiis Ufe 
 and thought. His was a hfe hved in conscious 
 union with God. The source of his strength, his 
 peace, and his untiring perseverance was the Blessed 
 Sacrament of the Altar. Asked why he communi- 
 cated so often, he would reply, " Our dear Lord is 
 my Teacher in holiness, and I go continually to Him 
 that I may learn His way. Learning without holi- 
 ness will avail me little." Meditation and Prayer 
 made the grace of his Communion effectual in his life. 
 Indifferent alike to spiritual comfort or desolation, 
 he lived calmly and worked happily in the power 
 of the realised Presence of Jesus. To do God's 
 Holy \\'ill, to do it perfectly, to do it lovingly — this 
 was the inspiration of his abundant service. The 
 work which he had begun in the life of the Church 
 of the seventeenth century was soon hindered and 
 undone by the confusion of the Thirty Years' War, 
 but Francis de Sales has left to us the story of a life 
 which, through aU the ages of the Church, will never 
 cease to be a saintly pattern of ministerial service 
 and a compeUing witness to the happiness and beauty 
 of the devout hfe. 
 
 The charm of An Introduction to the Devout Life is 
 its adaptability to the actual needs and conditions 
 of those who are li\'ing ordinary lives of daily busi-
 
 ii8 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 ness and activity in the world. It is written not 
 only with a marvellous insight into character and a 
 profound theological knowledge, but with a wealth 
 of illustration from natural history and from sacred 
 biography, which makes it very attractive to those 
 who have made no special study of devotion. 
 Much of the book is derived from the actual letters 
 of spiritual counsel which he had written to such 
 friends as Madame de Chantal and Madame de Char- 
 moisy. It had already stood the test of experience 
 before it was given to the world in 1608. Francis 
 de Sales makes every tender allowance for the 
 beginner in the spiritual life, and for those who are 
 hindered by special difficulties of any kind. All that 
 he demands of those who seek the devout life is 
 reality of purpose, sincerity of heart, and earnest 
 effort. 
 
 There are many points in which Francis is directly 
 indebted to Scupoli's Spiritual Combat, which had 
 so profoundly influenced his own religious life. But 
 the general method of Francis is very different from 
 that of Scupoli. Life is not presented as a supreme 
 military exercise, devotion does not bear the same 
 aspect of repression and struggle that it does with 
 Scupoli. Francis enters into the details of daily 
 work and discusses the various relations of family 
 life in a way which is foreign to The Spiritual Combat. 
 Life is rather the opportunity of developing latent 
 faculties aright, and presenting to God the fulness
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 119 
 
 of a manhood made perfect in all its varied oppor- 
 tunities of service and obedience to the Divine 
 Will. Francis writes more discursively and intro- 
 duces illustrations, often very vivid and arresting, 
 drawn from facts of natural history and from 
 the biographies of the saints, which afford ample 
 evidence of his wide reading and make a ready 
 appeal to the ordinary reader, but little trained in 
 the reading of works of devotion. In common with 
 the writings of all the masters of the spiritual life, 
 the book shows a careful knowledge of the Bible 
 story and a loving appreciation of the hidden 
 treasures of the Word of God. 
 
 Francis begins with a definition of Devotion, 
 which he defmes shortly as " nothing else but a true 
 love of God," that is a love which shows itself in 
 active and prompt beneficence. To be good, a man 
 must have charity, but to be devout he must have, 
 in addition to charity, a great vivacity and prompti- 
 tude in the works of charity. Devotion is needed 
 in all states and conditions of life, because " devotion 
 spoils nothing when it is true, but perfects aU things." 
 Francis had knowledge of almost all the books of 
 devotion which the teachers of Spain especially 
 had produced, such as Teresa's Way of Perfection, 
 Avila's Audi filia, Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, 
 Granada's Guide for Sinners. 
 
 Out of all these he chooses these words of Avila, 
 as " the counsel of counsels," with which to start
 
 120 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 upon the way of devotion. " Whatever you look 
 for, you will never find the Will of God so certainly 
 as by the way of that lowly obedience, which is so 
 much commended and practised by all the devout 
 men of old." 
 
 The first work is the purgation of the soul. But 
 after all, that is really the work of a lifetime, and 
 we must not be discouraged at imperfections. 
 
 How sad it is to see souls, when they find that they 
 are subject to many imperfections after having 
 practised devotion for some time, begin to be 
 anxious rnd disconcerted and discouraged, almost 
 allowing their heart to be carried away with the 
 temptation of giving up everything and going back 
 on the old way. — Let us not be at all disconcerted 
 by our imperfections, for our perfection consists in 
 fighting them, and we should not know how to fight 
 them without seeing them, or how to conquer them 
 without meeting them. Our victory does not lie 
 in our not feeUng them, but in our not consenting 
 to them. — It is a happy condition for us in this war, 
 that we are always conquerors, provided that we 
 are willing to fight [i. 4]. 
 
 Francis urges the necessity of a real and sincere 
 purpose to put away all sin as the first step in the 
 devout life. Confession must be made with full 
 preparation of contrition and resolute will to put 
 away, to hate, and to avoid all occasion of sin. 
 There must be left no tacit desire for sin. There 
 are those who " would like to be able to sin with-
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 121 
 
 out being damned." And when confession is made 
 we must say everything simply and openly, and 
 satisfy our conscience in that once for all. This is 
 so important that Francis suggests a long and 
 solemn declaration which should be engraved on 
 the Soul at the moment of Forgiveness, in which 
 a resolution of new life and tiiistful obedience is 
 promised in these words : — 
 
 Turning myself to God Who is gentle and pitiful, 
 I desire, propose, determine, and resolve irrevocably 
 to serve Him and love Him now and for evermore, 
 giving Him my spirit for this end, dedicating and 
 consecrating it with all its faculties, my soul with all 
 its powers, my heart with all its affections, my body 
 ^\'ith all its senses, declaring that I will never more 
 abuse any part of my being against His Divine Will 
 and Sovereign Majesty, to whom I sacrifice and 
 offer myself in spirit, to be for ever a loyal, obedient, 
 and faithful creature to Him, \\ithout ever wishing 
 to draw back or repent of my resolution. But alas, 
 if by the suggestion of the enemy, or by any human 
 infirmity, it should happen that I should break in 
 anything this my resolution and consecration, I 
 declare from this day forth, and propose, by the 
 grace of the Holy Spirit, to recover myself as soon 
 as I perceive my fall, turning myself anew to the 
 Di\dne mercy without any delay or hesitation what- 
 ever. This is my will, my intention, my inviolable 
 and irrevocable resolution, which I avow^ and con- 
 firm without reserve or exception, in the sacred 
 presence of my God, in sight of the Church trium- 
 phant, and in face of the Church miHtant, my 
 mother, who hears this my declaration in the
 
 122 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 person of him who as her officer hears me in tliis 
 action [i. 20]. 
 
 There is a thoroughness and solemnity about this 
 declaration which is characteristic of Francis de 
 Sales' continual realisation of the majesty of God 
 and of His demand for man's complete and fuUy 
 willed obedience. If a beginning is to be made at 
 all, it is worth while that it should be thorough. 
 And there is no one who need despair of the possi- 
 bility of a new beginning, for " there is no temper 
 so stubborn that may not by the grace of God in 
 the first place, and then by industry and diligence, 
 be subdued and overcome." 
 
 In this purgation of the soul Prayer takes its part, 
 for " Prayer by setting our understanding in the 
 brightness of Divine light, and exposing our wiU 
 to the warmth of heavenly love, is able more than 
 anything else to cleanse our understanding of its 
 ignorance and our will of its corrupt affections." 
 And the Prayer which Francis specially commends 
 is the prayer of meditation. " Above all I counsel 
 the practice of mental prayer, the prayer of the 
 heart, and particularly that which concerns itself 
 with the Life and Passion of our Lord. By gazing 
 on Him frequently in meditation, your whole soul 
 will be fiUed with Him, you will learn His ways, and 
 will form your actions on the model of His." Speak- 
 ing from the experience of his own invariable habit.
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 123 
 
 he lays great stress upon the necessity of daily 
 Meditation for the renewal of the spiritual life and 
 for the frequent recollection of the Presence of God. 
 He advises that the Meditation be made early in 
 the day and in church if it be possible. " Begin all 
 kinds of prayer, whether mental or vocal, in the 
 presence of God, and keep this rule without excep- 
 tion." He suggests a simple way by which the 
 imagination may be used to picture the scene and 
 reproduce the details of the sacred story, and shows 
 how the understanding may then take its part in 
 " stirring up our affections in God and things divine." 
 But he is most emphatic on the right approach to 
 meditation and the right conclusion to it, and very 
 careful to urge the need of patience with ourselves 
 in the practice of it. 
 
 We must always before prayer stir up our soul 
 to an attentive thought and consideration of the 
 presence of God. — Not only is God present in the 
 place where you are, but He is most particularly 
 in your heart, and at the very bottom of your spirit, 
 which He vivifies and animates with His divine 
 presence, being there as the heart of your heart and 
 the spirit of your spirit [ii. 2]. — Go gently and simply 
 in this business, without being in a hurry about 
 it [ii. 5]. — You must not stay too long in these 
 general affections without converting them into 
 special and particular resolutions for your correction 
 and amendment [ii. 6]. — At the end of the prayer 
 gather a little nosegay of devotion from the con- 
 siderations you have made. It sweetens the rest of
 
 124 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 the day [i. 9]. — Those who have walked in a beautiful 
 garden do not leave it willingly vvithout taking in 
 their hand four or five flowers, that they may smell 
 them and hold them on their way. So when our 
 mind has thought over some mystery by meditation, 
 we ought to choose one or two or three points which 
 we have found most to our taste and most fitting for 
 our progress, that we may think over them during 
 the rest of the day, and smell them spiritually [ii. 7]. 
 — You must above all, when you leave your medita- 
 tion, retain the resolutions and deliberations which 
 you have taken, that you may practise them care- 
 fully the same day. This is the chief fruit of medita- 
 tion, without which it is indeed often not only useless 
 but harmful [ii. 8]. 
 
 It is in this way by quickening the will to a more 
 steadfast daily obedience that Meditation purifies 
 the soul. And whether it bring with it spiritual 
 dryness or conscious ecstasy makes no difference 
 in its usefulness, as long as the will is stirred. It is 
 obedient service in the conscious presence of God, 
 not warm feelings of affection and desire that 
 Meditation is meant to inspire. 
 
 If you have no consolation, however great be your 
 dr^Tiess, do not trouble about it, but continue to 
 hold yourself in a devout attitude before God. How 
 many courtiers there are who go a hundred times a 
 year into the presence-chamber of the Prince \Aithout 
 hope of speaking with him, and only to be seen of 
 him and to pay their respects. So ought we to 
 come to holy prayer, purely and simply to pay our 
 respects and to bear witness to our faithfulness.
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 125 
 
 And if it should be pleasing to the Divine Majesty 
 to speak to us and to hold converse with us by His 
 holy inspirations and interior consolations, this will 
 doubtless be a great honour and a most dehghtful 
 pleasure. But if it does not please Him to give us 
 this grace, and He leaves us there without speaking 
 to us, as if indeed He did not see us, and as if we 
 were not in His presence, yet we ought not to leave 
 it. On the contrary, we ought to rest there before 
 His sovereign goodness, in a devout and peaceful 
 attitude [ii. 9]. 
 
 Francis leaves no simple detail of the devout life 
 unnoticed. He speaks of the way in which Morning 
 and Evening Prayer may be made definite and real. 
 Then he turns to the Prayer of Prayers, the Holy 
 Eucharist, which was to him the sum of all devotion 
 and the daily source of all his power of ministry and 
 spiritual happiness. He begins his chapter Of the 
 most Holy Mass and how to hear it with this beautiful 
 tribute to the Sacrament of Divine Love. 
 
 I have not yet spoken to you at all of the Sun of 
 spiritual exercises, the most holy, sacred, and all 
 sovereign Sacrifice and Sacrament of the Mass, the 
 centre of the Christian Religion, the heart of devotion, 
 the seal of piety, an ineffable mystery which includes 
 within itself the abyss of divine charity, and by 
 which God, by appl^dng Himself really to us, 
 communicates to us of His greatness. His graces, 
 and His favour. Prayer offered in imion mth this 
 divine Sacrifice has an unspeakable force. — Make 
 therefore every effort to be present daily at the Holy
 
 126 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 Mass, that you may offer with the Priest the Sacrifice 
 of your Redeemer to God His Father, for yourself 
 and for the whole Church [ii. 14]. 
 
 And with his accustomed definiteness Francis 
 speaks of the way in which we should guide our 
 thoughts and prayers at the Eucharist, so as to 
 make full use of this opportunity of Devotion. 
 Later on he urges frequent Communion as the rule 
 for those to whom it is possible, and suggests a suit- 
 able and simple way of preparation. We cannot 
 fail to note the admirable simplicity and persuasive 
 skill with which Francis presents the appeal to 
 Communion before those men and women of the 
 world to whom attendance at the Altar was not an 
 estabHshed way of life. 
 
 The Saviour has instituted the venerable Sacra- 
 ment of the Eucharist which really contains His 
 Body and His Blood, that he who eats of it may 
 hve eternally. Whosoever frequently makes use 
 of it with devotion, so strengthens the health and 
 life of his soul that it is nearly impossible for him to 
 be poisoned by any kind of evil affection [ii. 20]. — 
 Begin the evening before to prepare for the Holy 
 Communion by aspirations and ejaculations of love, 
 going a little earlier to bed, that you may be able to 
 rise a little eariier in the morning. — If the w^orldly- 
 minded ask you why you communicate so often, 
 tell them that you do it that you may learn to love 
 God, to purify yourself from your imperfections, 
 to deliver yourself from your misery, to console 
 yourself in your afflictions, to strengthen yourself
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 127 
 
 in your weakness. Tell them that two kinds of 
 people should communicate frequently : the perfect, 
 because being well disposed they would do great 
 wrong if they did not draw near to the source and 
 fountain of perfection ; the imperfect, that they 
 may be able rightly to reach out to perfection ; 
 the strong, that they may not become weak ; the 
 weak, that they may become strong ; the sick, that 
 they may be healed ; the healthy, that they may 
 not become sick ; and that for yourself, as being 
 imperfect, weak and sick, you have need of frequent 
 communion with Him, Who is your perfection, your 
 strength, your medicine [ii. 21]. 
 
 The whole wealth of the Church's treasures must 
 be laid under contribution for the inspiration of our 
 daily life. The Angels, the Saints, and the Faithful 
 Departed have their own part to play in enriching 
 and uplifting our lives. Their ministry is used by 
 God to bind us nearer to Himself. 
 
 Since God very often sends us inspirations by 
 His angels, we ought also frequently to send to Him 
 our aspirations by the same means. The holy souls 
 of the departed who are in Paradise with the angels, 
 do also for us the same office of inspiration by their 
 holy prayers. — Honour, revere, and respect with a 
 special love the Blessed and glorious Virgin Mary, 
 — Be very familiar with the Angels, regard them, 
 frequently as invisibly present in your life. And 
 above all, love and revere the Angel of the Diocese 
 in which you live, those of the persons among whom 
 you dwell and especially your own angel. Pray 
 frequently to them, praise them at all times, and
 
 128 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 seek their aid and help in all your affairs, whether 
 spiritual or temporal, that they may co-operate with 
 you in your intentions [ii. i6]. 
 
 The Bible is the constant companion of the soul 
 that would make progress in the devout life. " Be 
 reverent towards the Word of God." But God has 
 those who can interpret His message to us besides 
 the writers of Holy Scripture. " Have always near 
 you some good book of devotion." " Read also the 
 Histories and Lives of the Saints, in which you will 
 see, as in a mirror, the picture of the Christian life." 
 Even when they are more the subject of admiration 
 than of imitation, they nevertheless give a strong 
 general desire for the holy love of God. 
 
 After outlining in this way the exercises of de- 
 votion, Francis speaks of the different virtues of the 
 Christian life, holding up the ideal of perfection in 
 each separate excellence of the Christian character. 
 With rare insight and attention to the most minute 
 detail, and with the utmost tenderness and love, 
 he sketches the beauty and the helpfulness of each 
 virtue, and shows how each may be gradually gained 
 by the soul that really seeks God. With admirable 
 illustrations he wins and holds our attention, and 
 makes the least popular graces of the devout life 
 seem attractive, desirable, and possible for us all 
 to acquire. There is a thoroughness in his analysis 
 of such virtues as Patience and Humility, which is 
 bom of his own deep experience.
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 129 
 
 Be patient, not only with respect to the burden 
 and principal of the afflictions which come upon you, 
 but also with respect to the details and accidents 
 which arise from them. — We must have patience, not 
 only to be ill, but to be ill with the illness which 
 God wishes, in the place where He wishes, and 
 amongst the persons whom He wishes, and with the 
 inconvenience which He wishes. — Complain as httle 
 as possible of the wrong which has been done you, 
 for, as a rule, it is certain that he who complains 
 commits sin, inasmuch as self-love always makes us 
 think the injuries greater than they are. Above all, 
 never complain to persons who are ready to be 
 indignant and to think evil. If it is expedient to 
 complain to any one, you should do it to souls who 
 are calm and who love God [iii. 4]. — True humihty 
 makes no pretence of what it is, and scarcely even 
 utters the language of humility [iii. 5]. — You wish 
 to know what are the best kinds of humiliation. I 
 tell you plainly that the most profitable to the soul 
 and most agreeable to God are those which we get 
 by accident or by the condition of our hfe, because 
 we have not chosen them, but have received them 
 as God has sent them ; and His choice is always 
 better than our owti [iii. 6]. — Those fail greatly who 
 in the street are like angels and at home are like 
 devils [iii. 8]. — One of the good exercises of meekness 
 which we can practise is that of which the subject 
 is ourselves, never being fretful against ourselves 
 nor against our imperfections [iii. 9]. 
 
 That frequent spirit of worry which comes to us in 
 the midst of our work is due to a forgetfulness of 
 God's help and interest in all the affairs of our Ufe. 
 We need to " rest wholly upon the providence of
 
 130 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 God." Francis uses one of his homely analogies to 
 point the lesson. 
 
 Do like httle children, who with one hand cling 
 to their father, with the other gather strawberries 
 and blackberries along the hedges. In the same way, 
 while you are amassing and handling the good things 
 of this world with one of your hands, hold fast with 
 the other the hand of your heavenly Father, turning 
 from time to time to Him, to see if He approves of 
 your household arrangements or your occupations 
 [iii. lo]. 
 
 [ Francis knew what perfect obedience meant as 
 the safeguard of true self-discipline and the test of 
 genuine humility. 
 
 ^ Obey when you are ordered to do something 
 pleasant. Obey in things indifferent. Obey in 
 things difficult, rough and hard, and your obedience 
 will be perfect. Obey indeed gently without reply, 
 promptly without delay, gaily without grief, and 
 above all obey lovingly, for the love of Him Who 
 for love of us became obedient even to the death of 
 the Cross. — To learn to obey your superiors easily, 
 comply easily with the will of your equals [iii. ii]. 
 
 Love and friendship are dealt with tenderly and 
 wisely by one who was himself a very Apostle of 
 Love, who had fathomed the depths of true spiritual 
 friendship in his own Ufe. It is the love of God which 
 purifies all relations of affection and gives stability 
 to all the ties of true friendship. Indeed love is the
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 131 
 
 great safeguard against all the misuses of our gifts 
 and the surest defence against all temptation. 
 
 Have you never seen a great wood fire covered 
 with ashes ? When you come ten or twelve hours 
 after to look for the fire, you only find a little in the 
 midst of the hearth, and indeed have trouble to find 
 that. Yet there it is, for you find it there ; and with 
 it you can relight the rest of the charcoal which has 
 gone out. It is the same with charity, which is our 
 spiritual Ufe amid great and violent temptations. 
 For temptation, throwing its delights into the lower 
 parts, covers the whole soul, as it seems, with ashes, 
 and reduces the love of God to the last spark. For 
 it no longer appears in any part but the middle of 
 the heart, at the very bottom of the spirit. Indeed 
 it almost seems as if it was not there, and there is 
 great diificulty in finding it. Yet it is there indeed, 
 since, though everything be in trouble in our soul 
 and in our body, we have the resolution to consent 
 in no way to sin, nor to temptation, and the delight 
 which pleases our outward man is displeasing to 
 the inward man [iv. 4]. 
 
 Except for one short period in his life, Francis had 
 always himself experienced great happiness and 
 spiritual fervour in all his devotion. But he knew 
 well its true value and its danger and was ready 
 to endure spiritual dryness, " Devotion does not 
 consist in the gentleness, sweetness, consolation, and 
 sensible tenderness of the heart, which provoke us 
 to tears and sighs and give us a certain agreeable 
 and savoury satisfaction in some spiritual exercises."
 
 132 FRANCIS DE SALES 
 
 He knew that to carefully preserve the fruits of 
 consolation already received was the best way to 
 prepare for the temptations of dryness. In all 
 relations of life, and in all duties, peace comes 
 from referring all things immediately to God. " We 
 always do enough when God works with us." 
 
 Thus Francis reviews all the possibilities of 
 devotion in the life of those who, while they are 
 engaged in the busy duties of the world, yet wish 
 to serve God faithfully and to grow in the sense of 
 His Presence. To him the whole of life presents a 
 sphere of consecration. All the innocent amuse- 
 ments of social life — playing, dancing, tilting, fives, 
 and all games of recreation — keep the mind and the 
 body ready for God, and in all the little acts of 
 daily life God is offering us opportunities of dis- 
 cipline and service. 
 
 The more we read the Introduction to the Devout 
 Life, the more we realise it to be a transcript of 
 Francis de Sales' own life of devotion, and it stirs us 
 to new hope and fresh effort, just because we feel 
 that he has transmitted to us through his writing 
 that unswerving conviction of the beauty of Holiness, 
 and that sure reliance upon the prevailing power of 
 God, which make the higher life worth living. Other 
 writers of devotion, like Jeremy Taylor, have repeated 
 many of his maxims and have dwelt upon the same 
 themes with equal sincerity and faith, but no one 
 has ever revealed so wide a sympathy with all the
 
 " THE DEVOUT LIFE " 133 
 
 duties of secular life, nor appealed so tenderly and 
 so persuasively to that instinct of devotion which 
 lies hid in the heart of the men and women of the 
 world. He speaks with no uncertain voice. He 
 has very definite truths to declare and very clear 
 rules of life to lay down. If he has found peace and 
 joy himself in the abounding work of life, it is because 
 he has kept near to God and sought Him in the 
 fellowship of His Sacramental gifts. And perhaps 
 the secret of strength and happiness in our own 
 lives to-day may be found in obedience to his eager 
 injunction, " Keep yourself always near to Jesus 
 Christ crucified, spiritually by meditation, reaUy by 
 the Holy Communion."
 
 VI 
 
 WILLIAM LAW AND " A SERIOUS CALL TO 
 A DEVOUT AND HOLY LIFE" 
 
 /I SERIOUS call to a devout and holy life 
 adapted to the state and condition of all 
 orders of Christians is the name of a book which is 
 more often spoken of to-day than read. Few Enghsh 
 books of devotion have exercised so great an influence 
 as this enthusiastic appeal, with which in 1729 
 WilHam Law broke in upon the rehgious apathy of 
 the eighteenth century. Its method is quite different 
 from that of any other devotional book. While it 
 reveals the deep spiritual insight of Thomas a Kempis, 
 and the wise knowledge of the world which marked 
 Francis de Sales, and has all the magnificent en- 
 thusiasm of The Spiritual Combat, it abounds in a 
 subtle and fascinating wit, which no other writer 
 had ever yet dared to invoke as an ally on the side 
 of righteousness. 
 
 William Law was born in 1686 and lived until 
 1761. The seventeenth century had proved a time 
 
 131
 
 " A SERIOUS CALL " 135 
 
 of great distress for the English Church. The history 
 of the Church in the reign of Ehzabeth had vindicated 
 the Cathohc nature of the EngHsh Reformation and 
 had assured the continuity of Church Hfe both in 
 faith and government. That steady assertion of 
 Church principles had been made in the face of 
 repeated attempts on the part of such vigorous 
 Separatists as Cartwright and Travers to introduce 
 a Presbyterian discipline. Upon Hooker's learned 
 justification of the principles of the English Church 
 had followed the supremacy of Laud, who in the 
 practical discipline of Church life had emphasised 
 afresh the spirit of Catholic reform. 
 
 But the Laudian movement, supported as it was 
 by the royal favour and authority, was rather a 
 triumph of external discipline than a renewal of the 
 spirit of devotion. It was this which was really 
 needed after the sad trials and desolating conflicts 
 of the sixteenth century. There was not that inner 
 sense of religion and personal consecration among 
 Churchmen which could give immediate and lasting 
 vitahty to the work of Laud. That was no fault of 
 his. If the men of his generation had been able to 
 exhibit a life of holiness and consecration such as his 
 own, there would have been a fertile soil in which 
 his work would have borne abundant fruit. But it 
 was a grand defect of the Laudian policy that the 
 fortunes of the Church had been bound up in men's 
 minds with the vicissitudes of one political party.
 
 136 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 The cause of the Church had been inevitably 
 identified with the extravagant use of the royal 
 power. In the eyes of a nation, restless with un- 
 certainty and roused to suspicion, the Church was 
 made to appear the opponent of political freedom 
 and the enemy of personal liberty. In the conflict 
 that ensued, the Church suffered sorely at the hands 
 of its Puritan oppressors. The liturgy was pro- 
 scribed under severe penalties. The clergy were 
 deprived. Church property was alienated. Epis- 
 copacy was banned. 
 
 It was no wonder that the Church took a promi- 
 nent part in the national welcome which greeted the 
 restoration of the monarchy in 1660. It was natural 
 that the Church should take a leading part in 
 bringing back a Prince who would safeguard and 
 preserve its rights, and feel nothing but joy at the 
 pubhc recognition of its spiritual authority and 
 traditional prestige. The nation too, as a whole, 
 was unreservedly glad to see the Church come by its 
 own again. The experience of a few years' Puritan 
 tyranny had been a severe lesson in the perils of 
 ecclesiastical innovation. But though the cause of 
 the Church had triumphed, the errors of an earUer 
 age could not be immediately undone. The Church 
 had become inseparably involved in the political 
 issues of the day and had thereby lost much of her 
 moral independence. 
 
 In the Restoration, much as Queen Anne finally
 
 " A SERIOUS CALL " 137 
 
 succeeded in achieving, the Church still stood out in 
 men's minds as a political factor, rather than as a 
 vigorous and independent teacher of spiritual truth 
 and the bearer of Divine grace. Two generations 
 had passed in which the clergy had been but poorly 
 trained. They had been reduced frequently to 
 beggary, and losing much of their social influence 
 and position, had lost their accustomed opportunities 
 of directing public thought and education. There 
 was not wanting in the ranks of the clergy a suc- 
 session of men of brilliant intellect and massive 
 erudition. It was this very age that earned for the 
 English clergy the title stupor mundi, the wonder of 
 the world. The names of Berkeley, Bingham, Wake, 
 and Butler prove that the epithet was not unde- 
 served. But for the most part intellectual interest 
 was very low and spiritual earnestness was almost 
 dead in the life of the clergy. There was no real 
 personal grip of spiritual realities, either in priest 
 or people. The heart of the nation lay sleeping, 
 outworn by the harassing struggle of half a century 
 of suffering and strife. 
 
 Indeed religion was now become a subject of scorn 
 and ridicule. The new discoveries of science were 
 beginning to fill men's minds with wonder and to 
 absorb the attention of the thoughtful. Deism 
 brought a philosophic idea of God, which was an 
 open contradiction of the Christian story. Such 
 writers as Toland, Tindal, and Mandeville showed how
 
 138 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 anti-Christian Deism had become, while the latitudi- 
 narian Bishop Hoadly showed how the denial of the 
 miraculous and supernatural element in Christianity 
 had affected even the faith of professed Churchmen. 
 Bishop Butler throws an interesting light on the 
 rational spirit of the age, when in his advertisement 
 to The Analogy of Religion he said, " It is come, I 
 know not how, to be taken for granted, by many 
 persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject 
 of enquiry, but that it is now, at length, discovered 
 to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it, as if, 
 in the present age, this were an agreed point among 
 all people of discernment, and nothing remained 
 but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and 
 ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for its having 
 so long interrupted the pleasures of the world." 
 
 Amidst this open and profound disregard of re- 
 ligion, even the most earnest sometimes despaired of 
 the Church. Archbishop Leighton saw in it " a fair 
 carcase without spirit," and Bishop Butler himself, 
 even at the moment when his own brilliant Analogy 
 of Religion was routing the discomfited hosts of 
 Deism, gave up all hope of the continuance of the 
 life of the Church, so weak to his eyes was the hold 
 which it had upon the realities of spiritual life and 
 power. Butler was inspired with that moral earnest- 
 ness and passion for righteousness which marked the 
 spirit of William Law. But where Butler despaired, 
 Law saw his opportunity. A Serious Call to a Devout
 
 " A SERIOUS CALL " 139 
 
 and Holy Life was the book that awoke in that dead 
 age the slumbering spirit of devotion, and kindled 
 afresh that light of moral earnestness and that flame 
 of true religious enthusiasm, which since the days of 
 William Law has never quite died down. 
 
 B. 
 
 Such was the spiritual temper of his age. Of his 
 own life there is very Httle indeed to record. Born at 
 King's Cliffe, in Northamptonshire, in 1686, William 
 Law was the son of the village shopkeeper, and show- 
 ing a keen love of study he was sent to Emmanuel 
 College, Cambridge, where he obtained a sizarship 
 in 1705. Six years later he was ordained deacon and 
 elected Fellow of his college. But on the accession 
 of George i. there arose the question of the oath of 
 allegiance to the monarch of a new dynasty. 
 
 It was not the first time that Churchmen had 
 been placed in this difficult position. After the 
 Revolution in 1688, there were those who had found 
 it impossible with a free conscience to take the oaths 
 of allegiance to WiUiam and Mary, because they 
 had already taken similar oaths to James 11. They 
 had willingly sacrificed their position, their incomes, 
 and their prospects, and were known as the Non- 
 jurors. The death of James in 1707 had not released 
 them from their obligation. Their obedience had 
 been tendered not only to the monarch himself, but
 
 140 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 also to his heirs and lawful successors. The difficulty 
 indeed was increased when by an Act of Parliament 
 they were required to abjure the pretended Prince of 
 Wales, who was to their consciences the lawful heir 
 of James ii., and to acknowledge William and each 
 of his successors according to the Act of Settlement 
 as rightful and lawful king. This oath, involving 
 both allegiance and abjuration, became a necessary 
 condition of employment both in Church and State. 
 
 And now again on the accession of George i. 
 another Act was passed which required the acknow- 
 ledgment of George as rightful and lawful king and 
 the abjuration of the pretended Prince of Wales. 
 William Law felt himself bound in conscience to 
 refuse to take new oaths of allegiance and abjuration. 
 In 1716, therefore, he was deprived of his Fellowship 
 at Cambridge and lost all prospect of employment in 
 the Church. It was a signal proof of that sincerity 
 and singleminded thoroughness, which were so 
 eminently characteristic of William Law, and which 
 are reflected so clearly in the forthright directness of 
 A Serious Call. 
 
 It was one of the most serious hindrances to the 
 religious progress and influence of the Church in the 
 eighteenth century, that through the schism of the 
 Nonjurors so many of the keenest minds and most 
 spiritual characters were withdrawn from the 
 general life of the Church. It was to this that Law 
 owed his seclusion and his abstention from the more
 
 " A SERIOUS CALL " 141 
 
 public activities of the Church. But in his retire- 
 ment he was not debarred from taking a vigorous 
 part in rehgious controversy in defence of Church 
 principle and the Catholic Faith. The Deists 
 were denying the reality of the Incarnation, the 
 Latitudinarians were denying the reality of the 
 Divine life of the Church. Against both these 
 impugners of the traditional faith of the Church, 
 Law fought vigorously and trenchantly, but always 
 courteously and fairly. 
 
 At Putney, where Law had lived for a while as 
 tutor to the father of Gibbon the historian, he 
 gathered round him many admirers and disciples. 
 Among these were counted Charles and John 
 Wesley. The publication of A Serious Call in 1729 
 established his reputation and brought him into 
 fresh prominence, but he never made many friends. 
 In 1739 he retired to King's Cliffe again, where he 
 spent the remaining years of his life, assimilating 
 more and more the mysticism of Bohme, and interest- 
 ing himself in making careful and generous provision 
 for securing an education in Church principles for 
 the children of the Parish. In this placid retreat 
 the years of his life ran out. The Spirit of Prayer 
 and The Spirit of Love, published about 1752, show 
 at once the depth of his Mysticism and the secret of 
 his own content with the isolation of his life. In 
 1761 he passed to his rest. Perhaps no higher 
 testimony could be sought for the holiness of his life
 
 142 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 than the words of Gibbon : "He left the reputation 
 of a worthy and pious man, who believed all that he 
 professed and practised all that he enjoined." To 
 practise all that A Serious Call enjoins is to attain 
 indeed to a high ideal of earthly holiness. 
 
 C. 
 
 Every great book reflects the character and spirit 
 of its author. It is so pre-eminentl}/ with William 
 Law. For the chief characteristics of William Law 
 were sincerity and enthusiasm, and no book rings 
 more truly with the tone of unequivocal sincerity 
 and moral earnestness than A Serious Call. In many 
 ways the book challenges comparison with The 
 Imitation of Christ. Both of them deal with the 
 foundation principles of personal religion. Both of 
 them come out of an age that was destitute of 
 spiritual power. For if the fourteenth century was 
 an age of religious formality, moral turbulence, and 
 grave political confusion, the eighteenth century 
 has become a byword for indifference, apathy, and 
 indecision, both in the political and religious life of 
 England. But Law and Thomas a Kempis were 
 very different in the particular surroundings of their 
 personal lives. Thomas lived the ordered and 
 sheltered life of regular monastic habit, secluded 
 from political troubles and from harsh contact with 
 the daily problems of a difticult world. Law in the
 
 " A SERIOUS CALL " 143 
 
 earlier part of his life mixed fully in the social life of 
 London, and was not free from the entanglements in 
 which the course of English political life involved 
 every public man of his age. Both had the same 
 love of the disciplined hfe. Thomas found his ideal 
 in the ordered life, ready to his hand, of the Brothers 
 of Common Life, Law had to fashion it for himself 
 out of the midst of the difficulties of everyday life. 
 Already at Cambridge, in his undergraduate days, 
 he began to hve by rule. The very first rule which 
 he laid down for the guidance of his life sounded the 
 note of reality and serious purpose, which rang 
 through all his later teaching. He resolved " to 
 fix it deep in my mind that I have one business 
 upon my hands — to seek for eternal happinesss by 
 doing the Will of God." 
 
 It is there that all men of holiness are at one. 
 The Will of God gathers all the saints together in 
 one common devotion. It has been the theme of 
 each writer's enthusiastic appeal. But Law adopts 
 a method of appeal which is in many ways new, a 
 method suited admirably to the spirit of this age, 
 as its success eminently proclaimed, but a method 
 which was novel. Hitherto devotional writers had 
 moved within the sphere of earnest religious ex- 
 hortation, of clear and definite spiritual counsel, of 
 solemn presentation of the great truths of Chris- 
 tianity, of attractive and winning appeal to the 
 deepest moral and spiritual instincts of those for
 
 144 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 whom they had written. But Law sets himself to 
 reveal an enthusiasm which lies deep in the heart of 
 every man by appealing to the sense of reason, to 
 the love of truth, to the desire for reality, to the 
 common sense of the ordinary man. In an age 
 when the profession of Christianity had become the 
 subject of frequent ridicule, Law vindicated the 
 reasonableness of the Christian belief, and the 
 practical superiority of the consistent, thorough- 
 going Christian over both the lukewarm believer 
 and the indulgent worldling. 
 
 And he makes his appeal, not by direct dogmatic 
 teaching, nor by any elaborate argument, but by 
 drawing subtle character sketches of the ordinary 
 men and women of his day, revealing with the most 
 deft and delicate touches the inconsistencies and 
 weaknesses which were to be seen in the most familiar 
 actions of daily life and conduct. Each character 
 has his own fictitious name, which in most cases is a 
 Latin one, suggesting the virtue or the vice which is 
 the subject of illustration. Law draws his pictures 
 with inimitable skill. They present the most lifelike 
 portraiture, relieved with delightful touches of wit 
 and depicted with the utmost kindliness and good 
 humour. Law was careful to explain why most of 
 his figures portrayed the iniimiities rather than the 
 excellences of human character. He hoped that 
 every particular folly which we see would naturally 
 turn itself into an argument for the wisdom and
 
 " A SERIOUS CALL " 145 
 
 happiness of a religious life. So the more he 
 enumerates the folhes, anxieties, delusions, and 
 restless desires which go through every part of a 
 life devoted to human passions and worldly enjoy- 
 ments, the more we must be affected with that peace 
 and rest and solid content which religion gives to 
 the souls of men. Caelia, the grumbler, is an 
 exhortation to contentment. Fulvhis, the youth of 
 leisured disorder, preaches the disciplined life. 
 Mundanus, the successful man of business, teaches 
 the necessity of heavenly mindedness. Susurrus, the 
 unkind gossip, becomes an argument for the habit 
 of kindly intercession. But there are other char- 
 acters, which portray with great attractiveness the 
 beauty of the Christian life, like Ouranius, the good 
 priest, Paternus, the good father, and Miranda, the 
 woman of devoted life. 
 
 The power of this method of appeal is proved by 
 the wide influence which A Serious Call has en- 
 joyed. John Wesley, after reading it, said : " I was 
 convinced more than ever of the impossibility of 
 being half a Christian." Dr. Johnson's testimony 
 is equally striking. " When at Oxford," he says, 
 " I took it up expecting to find a dull book, and 
 perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an 
 over-match for me. And this was the first occasion 
 of my thinking in earnest of religion, after I became 
 capable of religious enquiry." John Keble's appre- 
 ciation of the solemn earnestness and austerity of 
 
 K
 
 146 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 the book is shown in the words with which he re- 
 buked Froude. " Froude, you said one day that 
 Law's Serious Call was a clever book. It seemed 
 to me as if you had said the Day of Judgment 
 would be a pretty sight." 
 
 So the method of Law is justified. But though 
 he does not obtrude any theology upon his reader, 
 his moral appeal is based upon a true doctrine of 
 God. As Paternus tells his son, God is aU love and 
 wisdom and goodness. God is love, yea, aU love, 
 and so all love, that nothing but love can come from 
 Him. And the Christian religion is nothing else 
 but an open, full manifestation of His universal love 
 to all mankind. There is no wrath that stands 
 between God and us, but what is awakened in the 
 dark fire of our own faUen nature, and to quench 
 this wrath, not His own, God gave His only begotten 
 Son to become man. The precious blood of His Son 
 was not poured out to pacify Himself, Who in 
 Himself had no nature toward man but love. But 
 it was poured out to quench the wrath and fire of 
 the fallen soul and kindle in it a birth of light and 
 love. As Law said in his reply to John Wesley, 
 " You would have a philosophical religion. But 
 there can be no such thing. Religion is the most 
 plain, simple thing in the world. It is only ' We 
 love Him, because He first loved us.' " AU begins 
 with the eternal Love of God. And upon this love is 
 based God's claim to man's obedience. " First of
 
 " A SERIOUS CALL " 147 
 
 all, my child," says Paternus to his son, " worship 
 and adore God, think of Him magnificently, speak of 
 Him reverently, magnify His providence, adore His 
 power, frequent His service, and pray unto Him 
 frequently and constantly." 
 
 That Love, as Law shows, is God's great appeal. 
 " He loves us in order to make us good." The true 
 human life is a real imitation of God. Man is to 
 imitate the Love and the Will of God. His power 
 to live the life of Divine imitation lies in his accept- 
 ance of the Divine grace, which, through the merits 
 of Christ's atoning death, comes by the ordered 
 channels of the Sacraments. " There is nothing 
 wise, or holy, or just, but the great Will of God. No 
 beings, whether in heaven or on earth, can be wise 
 or holy or just, but so far as they conform to this 
 Will of God. It is conformity to this Will that gives 
 virtue and perfection to the highest services of 
 Angels in Heaven. And it is conformity to the same 
 Will that makes the ordinary actions of men on 
 earth become an acceptable service imto God." 
 
 And of the Atonement as the basis of all human 
 perfection. Law says : " The Christian's great 
 conquest over the world is all contained in the 
 mystery of Christ upon the Cross. The Cross of 
 Christ is the glory of Christians, not as it signifies 
 their not being ashamed of a Master that was 
 crucified, but as it signifies their glorying in a religion 
 which was nothing else but a doctrine of the Cross,
 
 148 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 that called them to the same suffering spirit, the 
 same sacrifice of themselves, the same renunciation 
 of the worid, the same humility and meekness, the 
 same patient bearing of injuries, reproaches, and 
 contempts, and the same dying to all the greatness, 
 honours, and happiness of this world, which Christ 
 showed upon the Cross. To have a true idea of 
 Christianity, we must not consider our blessed Lord 
 as suffering in our stead, but as our Representative, 
 acting in our name, and with such particular merit 
 as to make our joining with Him acceptable unto 
 God. The Scripture sets forth our blessed Lord as 
 our Representative, acting and suffering in our 
 name, binding and obliging us to conform to all 
 that He did and suffered for us." 
 
 Law makes very little explicit mention of the 
 activity of the Holy Spirit. But in all that he says 
 of the exercise of the human will in obedience to 
 the Will of God, he presupposes the controlling 
 influence of the indwelling Spirit. In speaking of 
 what he means by enthusiasm, he says, " Every 
 Christian, as such, has the firstfruits of the Spirit, 
 a seed of life, which is his call and qualification to be 
 always in a state of inward prayer, faith, and holy 
 intercourse with God. All the ordinances of the 
 gospel, the daily sacramental service of the Church, 
 is to keep up and exercise and strengthen this faith, 
 to raise us to such an habitual faith and dependence 
 upon the light and Holy Spirit of God, that by
 
 " A SERIOUS CALL " 149 
 
 thus seeking and finding God in the institutions of 
 His Church, we may be habituated to seek Him and 
 find Him, to live in the hght, and walk by His Spirit, 
 in all the actions of our ordinary Ufe. This is the 
 enthusiasm in which every good Christian ought 
 to endeavour to live and die." 
 
 It is necessary to emphasise this dependence upon 
 the sacramental ministries of the Spirit, for it is very 
 easy for a hasty reader to misconceive the teaching 
 of so true a mystic as William Law, and to imagine 
 that in his insistent demand upon the constant 
 exercise of human will, he is relying upon the 
 inherent energies of imaided human nature. It 
 is Law himself, however, who warns us " not 
 to make a saint of the natural man." For him 
 aU human happiness and perfection begin and end 
 in God. 
 
 Such is the doctrinal foundation upon which 
 Law's brilliant work is based. But the theological 
 teaching does not obtrude itself upon the view, 
 Whcit he sets before us is the palpable evidence of 
 life, which is manifest to the eye of the ordinary 
 observer. He shows by his fascinating sketches of 
 character that the strong life, the effective life, the 
 life that tells and arouses the respect of the truly 
 reasonable and thorough man, is the life of the 
 consistent Christian. It is the man who, professing 
 to be a Christian, lives a pagan life, whom Law sets 
 out to shame in his own eyes.
 
 150 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 It is notorious that Christians are now not only 
 like other men in their frailties and infirmities. 
 This might be in some degree excusable. But the 
 complaint is, they are like Heathens in all the main 
 and chief articles of their lives. They enjoy the 
 world, and live every day in the same tempers and 
 the same designs and the same indulgences as they 
 did who knew not God, nor of any happiness in 
 another hfe. Everybody that is capable of any 
 reflection must have observed, that this is generally 
 the state even of devout people, whether men or 
 women. You may see them different from other 
 people so far as to times and places of prayer, but 
 generally like the rest of the world in all the other 
 parts of their lives, that is, adding Christian Devotion 
 to an Heathen life [i.]. 
 
 Christianity is not only a life, as one among many, 
 but it is the life, the supreme happiness, the one 
 thing that satisfies and endures. It is the pearl of 
 great price, for which all else must be surrendered. 
 Thus Law brings every individual life to the test of 
 perfect sincerity. If Christianity is anything at aU, 
 it is the one thing that matters, the one pursuit that 
 must be maintained with relentless perseverance 
 and utmost devotion. And that, because it is the 
 outcome of God's Love and the opportunity of man's 
 obedience. Christian devotion covers the whole of 
 life. 
 
 Devotion signifies a life given or devoted to God. 
 He therefore is the devout man, who lives no longer 
 to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world,
 
 " A SERIOUS CALL " 151 
 
 but to the sole Will of God, who considers God in 
 everything, who serves God in everything, who 
 makes all the parts of his common life parts of 
 piety, by doing everything in the name of God and 
 under such rules as are conformable to His glory [i.]. 
 — If therefore we desire to Uve unto God, it is 
 necessary to bring our whole life under this law, 
 to make His glory the sole rule and measure of our 
 acting in every employment of life. For there is 
 no other true devotion, but this of living devoted 
 to God in the common business of our lives [iv.]. — 
 We must devote, not only times and places to 
 prayer, but be ever}' where in the spirit of devotion, 
 with hearts always set towards heaven, looking up 
 to God in all our actions, and doing everything as 
 His servants, living in the world as in a holy temple 
 of God, and always worshipping Him, though not 
 with our lips, yet with the thankfulness of our 
 hearts, the holiness of our actions, and the pious and 
 charitable use of all His gifts [iv.]. — Worldly busi- 
 ness is to be made holy unto the Lord, by being done 
 as a service to Him and in conformity to His Divine 
 Will [iv.]. 
 
 There is no single action of life, no sphere of man's 
 work, no moment of his leisure, which is not caught 
 up into the inspiration of this high purpose. What 
 men need above all things is a more conscious and a 
 more continuous direction of the will. " The first 
 and most fundamental principle of Christianity is 
 an intention to please God in all our actions." To 
 intend to please God in all the actions of life, as the 
 happiest and best thing in the world — this is the
 
 152 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 great principle of human life, which Law so power- 
 fuDy and so persuasively vindicates. In the char- 
 acters which he sketches, he shows the various 
 forms which self-deceit takes in human life, and 
 exposes the irrational weaknesses and foolish in- 
 consistencies of those who in the ordinary pleasures 
 and duties of life are satisfied with any lower ideal. 
 Thus, in the spirit of kindly love, he holds up before 
 us the mirror of our own folly, makes us laugh at our 
 own self-conceit, and shames us gently into better 
 things. 
 
 We may be surprised at the wonderful variety of 
 the lifelike characters which illustrate Law's keen 
 insight into the secret motives of the human heart. 
 The figures are sketched in with such a light touch 
 and with so few strokes of the pen. There is Julius, 
 the formal Christian. In a couple of lines he stands 
 clearly pictured before us. " Julius is very fearful 
 of missing prayers. All the parish supposes Julius 
 to be sick, if he is not at Church." There is Caecus, 
 the rich man, of good breeding and very fine parts, 
 the embodiment of happy self-conceit. " Caecus no 
 more suspects himself to be proud than he suspects 
 his wants of sense." There is Calidus, the busy 
 merchant, living in a perpetual rush and whirl. 
 " Calidus will tell you with great pleasure that he 
 has been in this hurry for so many years, and that it 
 must have killed him long ago, but that it has been a 
 rule with him to get out of the town every Saturday
 
 " A SERIOUS CALL " 153 
 
 and make the Sunday a day of quiet and good 
 refreshment in the country." The worldly minded 
 Flavia, who " would be a miracle of piety, if she 
 was but half so careful of her soul as she is of her 
 body " — the light-hearted Feliciana, whose " heart 
 has been too gay and cheerful to consider what is 
 right or wrong in regard to eternity " — Cognatus, 
 the wealthy parson, " a sober, regular clergyman, of 
 good repute in the world and well esteemed in his 
 parish, who is very orthodox and full of esteem for 
 our English liturgy, and if he has not prayers on 
 Wednesdays and Fridays, 'tis because his pre- 
 decessor had not used the parish to any such custom, 
 who makes it a matter of conscience to keep a sober 
 curate whom he hires to take care of all the souls in 
 the parish at as cheap a rate as a sober man can be 
 procured — Leo, the good-natured fellow, who loves 
 good company and " has concerned himself so little 
 with religion that he hardly knows the difference 
 betwixt a Jew and a Christian." — What wonderful 
 types these figures are of everyday insincerity. 
 Gibbon's judgment is indeed a true one. " His 
 precepts are rigid, but they are founded on the 
 gospel. His satire is sharp, but it is drawn from 
 the knowledge of human life. If he finds a spark of 
 piety in his reader's mind, he will soon fan it into a 
 flame. And a philosopher must allow that he exposes 
 with equal severity and truth the strange contradic- 
 tion between the faith and the practice of the world."
 
 154 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 Law is careful to show that devotion is more than 
 the verbal offering of prayers. But he is equally 
 concerned to show that there can be no life of 
 devotion without the earnest study of the art of 
 prayer. The necessary duties of daily work may 
 absorb most of our time. But the worker wiU 
 make opportunity to learn how to pray, to school 
 himself in the discipline of prayer, while the person 
 of leisure will consider that his freedom from the 
 cares of necessary labour is a caU to greater dedica- 
 tion to the life of prayer. There is scarcely any 
 book which is a more convincing and more sug- 
 gestive manual of prayer than A Serious Call. 
 Its rules are based upon the tried experience of 
 William Law himself. He is full of helpfulness in 
 his suggestions with regard to the use of Scripture 
 in our prayers. 
 
 When at any time, either in reading the Scripture, 
 or any book of Piety, you meet with a passage, 
 that more than ordinarily affects your mind, and 
 seems as it were to give your heart a new motion 
 towards God, you should try to turn it into the form 
 of a petition and then give it a place in your prayers. 
 By this means you would be often improving your 
 prayers, and storing yourself with proper forms of 
 making the desires of your heart known unto God 
 [xiv.]. — If people were to collect the best forms of 
 devotion, to use themselves to transcribe the finest 
 passages of scripture-prayers, if they were to collect 
 the devotions, confessions, petitions, praises, re- 
 signations, and thanksgivings which are scattered
 
 " A SERIOUS CALL " 155 
 
 up and down, the Psalms, and range them under 
 proper heads, as so much proper fuel for the flame of 
 their owti devotion, if their minds were often thus 
 employed, sometimes meditating upon them, some- 
 times getting them by heart, and making them as 
 habitual as their o^\'n thoughts, how fervently would 
 they pray, who came thus prepared to prayer [xiv.]. 
 
 There is no detail of prayer about which Law is 
 not ready to give definite counsel, and always his 
 advice is practical and sound. Both in the use of 
 set forms of prayer, in the value of a set place and 
 time for prayer, and in the manner of approach to 
 God, he speaks in no uncertain tones. 
 
 The generality of Christians ought to use forms of 
 prayer at all the regular times of prayer. It seems 
 right for every one to begin with a form of prayer. 
 And if in the midst of his devotions, he finds his 
 heart ready to break forth into new and higher 
 strains of devotion, he should leave his form for a 
 while and follow those fervours of his heart, till it 
 again wants the assistance of his usual petitions. 
 This seems to be the true liberty of private devotion. 
 It should be under the direction of some form, but 
 not so tied down to it but that it may be free to 
 take such new expressions, as its present fervours 
 happen to furnish it with, which sometimes are 
 more affecting and carry the soul more pow^erf ally to 
 God than any expressions that w^ere ever used before. 
 — All people that have ever made any reflections upon 
 what passes in their own hearts, must know that 
 they are mighty changeable in regard to devotion.
 
 156 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 It is therefore highly necessary to provide against 
 this inconstancy of our hearts, by having at hand 
 such forms of prayer as may best suit us when our 
 hearts are in their best state, and also be most likely 
 to raise and stir them up, when they are sunk into 
 dulness [xiv.]. 
 
 The search after the most excellent attributes of 
 God which the Scriptures reveal will not only help 
 us to approach God with a better sense of His 
 Majesty and Greatness, but will also store our minds 
 with language more suited by its dignity to be the 
 vehicle of prayer. 
 
 When you begin your petitions, use such various 
 expressions of the attributes of God, as may make 
 you most sensible of the greatness and power of the 
 Divine Nature. For these representations of the 
 Divine Attributes, which show us in some degree the 
 majesty and greatness of God, are an excellent 
 means of raising our hearts into lively acts of worship 
 and adoration [xiv.]. — Although prayer does not 
 consist in fine words or studied expressions, yet as 
 words speak to the soul, as they have a certain power 
 of raising thoughts in the soul, so those words which 
 speak of God in the highest manner, which most fully 
 express the power and presence of God, which raise 
 thoughts in the soul most suitable to the greatness 
 and providence of God, are the most useful and 
 most edifying in our prayers [xiv.]. 
 
 Much of Law's own careful scheme of daily 
 devotion is adaptable to our own use. No one has
 
 "A SERIOUS CALL" 157 
 
 ever insisted more strongly on the need of prepara- 
 tion and on the necessity of growth in prayer pro- 
 portionate to our general progress in knowledge and 
 experience. For this purpose we must jealously 
 use all the opportunities of self-improvement, which 
 even the busiest hfe offers. For " though the spirit 
 of devotion is the gift of God and not attainable by 
 any mere power of our own, yet it is mostly given 
 and never withheld from those who by a wise and 
 diligent use of proper means, prepare themselves for 
 the reception of it." 
 
 Part of the helpfulness of Law's suggestions about 
 prayer is that he proposes very definite subjects for 
 the different hours of devotion, so that no time is 
 lost in uncertainty at the moment of prayer, and 
 the use of a clear and fixed scheme brings all the 
 subjects of prayer before us in due rotation, so that 
 there is no neglect nor want of due proportion. 
 
 The plan of daily devotion which Law had 
 arranged for himself so methodically, and which he 
 describes so carefully, deserves the most attentive 
 study. He particularly emphasises the dignity 
 which belongs to praise and thanksgiving. It may 
 not be possible for us to adopt his own habit, and 
 chant the psalms in our private prayers as a mark 
 of joy and thankfulness. But we can pay careful 
 heed to his appreciation of the true place of Praise 
 and Thanksgiving in our private devotion. He 
 would make Praise and Thanksgiving and the
 
 158 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 oblation of self to God always the fixed subject of 
 our first prayers in the morning. 
 
 There is no state of mind so hoi}'', so excellent, 
 and so truly perfect, as that of thankfulness to God, 
 Would you know who is the greatest saint in the 
 world ? It is not he who prays most or fasts most. 
 It is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent 
 for temperance, chastity, or justice. But it is he 
 who is always thankful to God, who wills everything 
 that God willeth, who receives everything as an 
 instance of God's goodness, and has a heart always 
 ready to praise God for it. All prayer and devotions, 
 fastings and repentance, meditation and retirement, 
 all sacraments and ordinances, are but so many 
 means to render the soul thus divine and conformable 
 to the Will of God, and to fill it with thankfulness 
 and praise for everything that comes from God. If 
 any one would tell you the shortest, surest way to 
 all happiness and all perfection, he must tell you to 
 make it a rule to yourself, to thank and praise God 
 for everything that happens to you. For it is 
 certain that whatever seeming calamity happens to 
 you, if you thank and praise God for it, you turn it 
 into a blessing. Could you therefore work miracles, 
 you could not do more for yourself, than by this 
 thankful spirit, for it heals with a word speaking, 
 and turns aU that it touches into happiness [xv.]. 
 
 There is no more beautiful figure in the book than 
 the picture of Ouranius, the village priest, who by 
 Intercession has prayed away all his haughtiness of 
 temper and contempt for the poor folk of the country- 
 side. " Every soul in it is as dear to him as himself.
 
 "A SERIOUS CALL" 159 
 
 And he loves them all, as he loves himself, because 
 he prays for them all, as often as he prays for him- 
 self." For " there is nothing that makes us love a 
 man so much as praying for him." 
 
 Such are the high levels of life along which A 
 Serious Call would lead us. In his own day William 
 Law's book awoke a new enthusiasm in the Church 
 and laid the foundation of that new spirit of religious 
 revival which, blossoming first in the earnest 
 devotion and missionary zeal of George Whitefield 
 and John Wesley, afterwards yielded abundant 
 fruit in the arousal of a new sense of Church life 
 through the disciplined enthusiasm of the Tractarian 
 movement. 
 
 The lesson which William Law recalls and enforces 
 with such realism and intensity is the lesson which 
 re-echoes from saint to saint through all the ages — 
 Gloria Dei vivens homo — the life of man is the glory 
 of God. Obedience to the Will of God is the one 
 strength and happiness of human life. Law's 
 early resolution, with which he fortified himself for 
 the battle of hfe, reveals the true spirit of saintly 
 service. He who would serve God and use his 
 opportunities to the full must fix it deep in his mind 
 that he has but one business upon his hands — to 
 seek for eternal happiness by doing the WiU of God. 
 It is good to have the experience of earlier ages 
 confirmed by the witness of one who lived in days so 
 much nearer to our own, and to be assured anew, in
 
 i6o WILLIAM LAW 
 
 the words of WiUiam Law, " that there is nothing 
 wise or great or noble in a human spirit, but rightly 
 to know and heartily worship and adore the great 
 God, that is the support and life of all spirits, whether 
 in heaven or on earth." 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press, Scotland
 
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