obligations only as hateful debts, which we always discharge with a bad grace, and never till we see ourselves forced to it.
But, in the first place, my brethren, you are unjust in attributing to virtue what springs from your own corruption; it is not piety which is disagreeable, it is your heart which is disordered; it is not the cup of the Lord which is to be accused of bitterness, says a holy father, it is your own taste which is vitiated. Every thing is bitter to a diseased palate: correct your dispositions, and the yoke will appear light to you; restore to your heart that taste of which sin has deprived it, and you will experience how pleasing the Lord is: hate the world, and you will comprehend how much virtue is amiable. In a word, Jesus Christ once become the object of your love, you will then feel the truth of every thing I say.
Do the upright experience those disgusts for pious works which you feel? Interrogate them: demand if they consider your condition as the happiest. They will answer, that, in their opinion, you appear worthy of compassion; that they are feelingly touched for your errors; to see you suffering every thing for a world which either despises you, wearies you, or cannot render you happy; to see you frequently running after pleasures more insipid to you than even the virtue from which you fly: they will tell you, that they would not change their pretended melancholy for all the felicities of the earth. Prayer consoles them; retirement supports them; holy reading animates them; works of piety shed a holy unction through their soul; and their happiest days are those which they pass with the Lord. It is the heart which decides our pleasures. While you continue to love the world, you will find virtue insupportable.
In the second place, if you wish to know why the yoke of Jesus Christ is so hard, and so burdensome to you, it is because you carry it too seldom: you give only a few rapid moments to the care of your salvation; certain days which you consecrate to piety; certain religious works of which you sometimes acquit yourselves; and, in accomplishing their immediate discharge, you experience only the disgusts attending the first efforts; you do not leave to grace the time necessary to lighten the weight; and you anticipate the comforts and the consolations which it never fails to shed upon the sequel. Those mysterious animals which the Philistines made choice of to carry the ark of the Lord beyond their frontiers, emblematic of unbelieving souls little accustomed to bear the yoke of Jesus Christ, bellowed, says the Scripture, and seemed to groan under the grandeur of that sacred weight: in place of which, the children of Levi, a natural image of the upright, accustomed to that holy ministry, made the air resound with songs of mirth and thanksgivings, while carrying it with majesty, even over the burning sands of the desert. The law is not a burden to the upright soul, accustomed to observe it. It is the worldly soul alone, little familiarized to the holy rules, who groans under a weight so pleas-
