particular opposition to order and righteousness, which our past morals, and our first passions, have left in our hearts; that love for the world and its pleasures; that dislike to virtue and its maxims; that empire of the senses, fortified by a voluptuous life; that invincible indolence, to which every thing is a burden, and to which whatever is a burden becomes almost impossible; that pride, which knows neither how to bend nor break: that inconstancy of heart, incapable of end or uniformity, which presently tires of itself; which cannot submit to rule, because that is always the same; which wishes, and wishes not; passes in a moment from the lowest state of dejection to a vain and childish joy, and leaves scarcely the interval of a moment between the sincerest resolution and the infidelity which violates it.
Now, in a situation so miserable, what, O my God, can the most just accomplish, delivered up to his own weakness and all the snares which surround him; bearing in his heart the source of all his errors, and in his mind the principles of every illusion? The grace of Jesus Christ, therefore, can alone deliver him from so many miseries; enlighten him in the midst of so much darkness; support him under so many difficulties; restrain him from following the dictates of so many rapid desires, and strengthen him against so many attacks. If left a moment to himself, he inevitably stumbles, and is lost. If an Almighty hand ceases an instant to retain him, he is carried down by the stream. Our consistency in virtue is, therefore, a continual grace and miracle. All our steps in the ways of God are new motions of the Holy Spirit; that is to say, of that invisible guide which impels and leads us on. All our pious actions are gifts of Divine mercy; since every proper use of our liberty comes from him, and he crowns his gifts in recompensing our merits. All the moments of our Christian life are like a new creation, therefore, in faith, and in piety: that is to say, (this spiritual creation does not suppose a non-existence in the just, but a principle of grace, and a liberty which co-operates with it,) that as, in the order of nature, we should again return to our nonentity, if the Creator ceased for an instant to preserve the being he has given us; in the life of grace, we should again fall into sin and death, did the Redeemer cease a single moment to continue, by new succours, the gift of righteousness and holiness, with which he had embellished our soul. Such is the weakness of man, and such is his continual dependence on the grace of Jesus Christ. The fidelity of the just soul is therefore the fruit of continual aids of grace; but it is likewise the principle. It is grace alone which can accomplish the fidelity of the just; and it is the fidelity alone of the just which merits the preservation and increase of grace in the heart.
For, my brethren, the ways of God toward us being full of equity and wisdom, there must necessarily be some order in the distribution of his gifts and grace. The Lord must communicate himself more abundantly to the soul which faithfully prepares its heart for his ways; he must bestow more continual marks of his protection and mercy on the upright heart which gives him con-
