fest. Pascal
is another Frenchman of pessimistic {281} natural temperament. He
expresses still more amply the temper of self-surrendering
submissiveness:--

"Deliver me, Lord," he writes in his prayers, "from the sadness at my
proper suffering which self-love might give, but put into me a sadness
like your own. Let my sufferings appease your choler. Make them an
occasion for my conversion and salvation. I ask you neither for health
nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of
my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory, for my
salvation, and for the use of the Church and of your saints, of whom I
would by your grace be one. You alone know what is expedient for me;
you are the sovereign master; do with me according to your will. Give
to me, or take away from me, only conform my will to yours. I know but
one thing, Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad to offend you.
Apart from that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know
not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or
poverty, nor anything else in the world. That discernment is beyond
the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets of your
Providence, which I adore, but do not seek to fathom."[170]

[170] B. Pascal: Prieres pour les Maladies, Sections xiii., xiv.,
abridged.

When we reach more optimistic temperaments, the resignation grows less
passive. Examples are sown so broadcast throughout history that I
might well pass on without citation. As it is, I snatch at the first
that occurs to my mind. Madame Guyon, a frail creature physically, was
yet of a happy native disposition. She went through many perils with
admirable serenity of soul. After being sent to prison for heresy--

"Some of my friends," she writes, "wept bitterly at the hearing of it,
but such was my state of acquiescence and resignation that it failed to
draw any tears from me.... There appeared to be in me then, as I find
it to be in me now, such an entire loss of what regards myself, that
any of my own interests gave me little pain or pleasure; ever wanting
to will or wish for myself only the very thing which God does." In
another place she writes: "We all of us came near perishing in a river
which we found it necessary to pass. The carriage sank in the
quicksand. Others who were with us threw themselves out in excessive
fright. But I found my thoughts so much taken up with God that