ing. When Jesus Christ declares that his yoke is light and easy, he commands us, at the same time, to bear it every day. The unction is attached to the habit and usage of it: the arms of Saul were heavy to David, only because he was not accustomed to them. We must familiarize ourselves with virtue, in order to be acquainted with its holy attractions. The pleasures of sinners are only superficially agreeable; the first moments alone are pleasant; descend deeper, and you no longer find but gall and bitterness; and the deeper you go, the more will you find the void, the weariness, and the satiety that are inseparable from sin. Virtue, on the contrary, is a hidden manna: in order to taste all its sweetness, it is necessary to dig for it; but the more you advance, the more do its consolations abound; in proportion as the passions are calmed, the path becomes easy; and the more will you applaud yourselves for having broken asunder chains which weighed you down, and which you no longer bore but with reluctance and secret sorrow.
Thus, while you confine yourselves to simple essays in virtue, you will taste only the repugnances and the bitterness of it; and, as you will not possess the fidelity of the upright, you can have no right, consequently, to expect their consolations.
In a word, you perform the duties of piety without inclination, not only because you do them too seldom, but because you only, as I may say, half perform them. You pray, but it is without recollection; you abstain, perhaps, from injuring your enemy, but it is without loving him as your brother; you approach the holy mysteries, but without bringing there that fervour which alone can enable you to find in them those ineffable comforts which they communicate to the religious soul; you sometimes separate yourselves from the world, but you carry not with you into retirement the silence of the senses and of the passions, without which it is only a melancholy fatigue. In a word, you only half carry the yoke. Now, Jesus Christ, is not divided. That Simon of Cyrene, who bore only a part of the cross, was overcome by it, and the soldiers were under the necessity of using violence to force him to continue this melancholy office to the Saviour of the world. The fulness alone of the law is consolatory; in proportion as you retrench from it, it becomes heavy and irksome; the more you wish to soften it, the more it weighs you down. On the contrary, by sometimes adding extraneous rigours, you feel the load diminished, as if you had applied additional softness. Whence comes this? It is that the imperfect observance of the law takes its source from a heart which the passions still share. Now, according to the word of Jesus Christ, a heart divided, and which nourishes two loves, must be a kingdom and a theatre full of trouble and desolation.
Would you wish a natural image of it, drawn from the holy Scriptures? Rebecca, on the point of her delivery of Jacob and Esau, suffered the most cruel anguish: the two children struggled within her; and, as if worn out by her tortures, she intreated of
