fections. He no longer experiences that love, those consolations, which are the fruit of a fervent and faithful life: he no longer, as if with a new light, sees the holy truths, which confirm the soul in its contempt for the world and love for the things of heaven; and which, after its departure hence, make it regard, with new disgust, every thing which foolish man admires: he leaves it, no longer filled with that lively faith which reckons as nothing all the obstacles and disgusts of virtue, and with a holy zeal devours all its sorrows: he no longer feels, after it, more love for his duty and horror at the world; more determination to fly from its dangers; more light to know its nothingness and misery, and strength to hate and struggle with himself; more terror for the judgments of God, and compunction for his own weaknesses: he leaves it only more fatigued than before with virtue; more filled with the phantoms of the world, which, in the moment when at the feet of the Almighty, have, it appears, agitated more briskly his imagination, blasted and stained by all those images; more happy, by being quit of a burdensome duty, where he has experienced nothing so agreeable as the pleasure of finding it over; more eager, by amusements and infidelities, to supply this moment of weariness and pain; in a word, more distant from God, whom he has irritated by the infidelity and irreverence of his prayer. Such, my brethren, is the fruit which he reaps from it. In a word, all the external duties of religion, which support and rouse piety, are no longer to the lukewarm Christian but dead and inanimate customs where his heart is not; where there is more of habit than of love or spirit of piety; and where the only disposition he brings is the weariness and languor of always doing the same thing.
Thus, my brethren, the grace of this soul, being continually attacked and weakened, either by the practices of the world, which it allows itself, or by those of piety, which it abuses; either by sensual objects, which nourish its corruption, or by those of religion, which increase its disgusts; either by the pleasures which enervate it, or by the duties which fatigue it; all uniting to make it bend toward ruin, and nothing supporting it; — alas! what fate can it promise itself? Can the lamp without oil long continue to give light? The tree which no longer draws nourishment from the earth, can it fail to wither and be devoted to the fire? Now, such is the situation of the lukewarm Christian: entirely delivered up to himself, nothing supports him; surrounded by weariness and disgusts, nothing reanimates him; full of weakness and languor, nothing protects him: every consolation of the just soul is to him an increase of languor; every thing which gives support to a faithful Christian, disgusts and overpowers his; whatever renders the yoke more easy to others, makes him more burdensome; and the succours of piety are no longer but his fatigues or his crimes. Now, in this state, O my God! almost abandoned by thy grace, tired of thy yoke, disgusted with himself, as well as with virtue, weakened by diseases and their remedies, staggering at every step, a breath overturns him; he himself leans toward his fall, without any additional or foreign impres-
