ment; "But if you have said it is sufficient, you have perished." ' If you have said that you have already attained sufficient perfection, you are lost; for not to advance in the way of God is to retrograde. And, as St. Bernard says, "Not to wish to go forward, is certainly to fail." Hence St. John Chrysostom exhorts us to think continually on the virtues which we do not possess, and never to reflect on the little good which we have done; for the thought of our good works "generates indolence and inspires arrogance," and serves only to engender sloth in the way of the Lord, and to swell the heart with vain-glory, which exposes the soul to the danger of losing the virtues she has acquired. "He that runs," continues the saint, "does not compute the progress he has made, but the distance he has to travel." He that aspires after perfection does not stop to calculate the proficiency he has made, but directs all his attention to the virtue he has still to acquire. Fervent Christians, as they that dig a treasure, advance in virtue as they approach the end of life. As St. Gregory says, in his comment on this passage of Job, that the man who seeks a treasure, the deeper he has dug the more he exerts himself in the hope of finding it; so the soul that pants after holiness multiplies its efforts to attain it in proportion to the advancement it has made.
IV. The fourth means is that which St. Bernard employed to excite his fervor. " He had," says Surius, " this always in his heart, and frequently in his mouth:
