Reflection IV. — I say resources: alas t my brethren, we find none but in virtue. The world wounds the heart, but it furnishes no remedies; it has its chagrins, but nothing to comfort them; it is full of disgusts and bitterness, but we find no resources in it. But in virtue there is no sorrow which has not its consolation; and if in it we find repugnances and disgusts, we find likewise a thousand resources which soothe them.
In the first place, peace of mind, and the testimony of the conscience. What luxury, to be at peace with ourselves; no longer to carry within us that importunate and corroding worm which pursued us every where; no longer to be racked by eternal remorses, which poisoned every comfort of life: in a word, to be delivered from iniquity! The senses may still suffer from the sorrows of virtue, but the heart at least is tranquil.
Secondly. The certainty that our sufferings are not lost; that our sorrows become a new merit for us; that our repugnances, in preparing for us new sacrifices, secure an additional claim to the promises of faith; that were virtue to cost us less, it would likewise bear an inferior price in the sight of God; and that he only renders the road so difficult, in order to render our crown more brilliant and glorious.
Thirdly. Submission to the orders of God, who has his reasons for refusing to us the visible consolations of virtue; whose wisdom consults our interest more than our passions; and who has preferred bringing us to himself by a less agreeable road, because it is a more secure one.
Fourthly. The favours with which he accompanies our sorrows; which sustain our faith at the same time that our violence lowers self-love; which fortify our heart in truth, at the same time that our senses are disgusted with it; which make our mind prompt and fervent, although the flesh is weak and feeble, insomuch, that he renders our virtue so much the more solid as to us it seems melancholy and painful.
Fifthly. The external succours of piety, which are so many new resources in our faintings and thirst: the holy mysteries, where Jesus Christ, himself the comforter of faithful souls, comes to console our heart; the truths of the divine writings, which promise nothing in this world to the upright but tribulation and tears, — calm our fears, by informing us that our pleasures are to come; and that the sufferings which discourage us, far from making us distrust our virtue, ought to render our hope more animated and certain: in a word, the history of the saints, who have undergone the same disgusts and trials; consequently, we have so much the less reason to complain, as characters so infinitely more pious than we, have experienced the same lot; that such has almost always been the conduct of God towards his servants; and that, if any thing in this life can prove his love toward us, it is that of his leading us by the same path that he did the saints, and treating us in this world in the same manner that he did the upright.
Sixthly. The tranquillity of the life and the uniformity of the
