tionality of devotion making a
sacrificial gift of all it has (its sensibilities, namely) to the
object of its adoration--we must go to autobiographies, or other
individual documents.

[181] That of the earlier Jesuit, Rodriguez, which has been translated
into all languages, is one of the best known. A convenient modern
manual, very well put together, is L'Ascetique Chretienne, by M. J.
Ribet, Paris, Poussielgue, nouvelle edition, 1898.

Saint John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic who flourished--or rather who
existed, for there was little that suggested flourishing about him--in
the sixteenth century, will supply a passage suitable for our purpose.

"First of all, carefully excite in yourself an habitual affectionate
will in all things to imitate Jesus Christ. If anything agreeable
offers itself to your senses, yet does not at the same time tend purely
to the honor and glory of God, renounce it and separate yourself from
it for the love of Christ, who all his life long had no other taste or
wish than to do the will of his Father whom he called his meat and
nourishment. For example, you take satisfaction in HEARING of things
in which the glory of God bears no part. Deny yourself this
satisfaction, mortify your wish to listen. You take pleasure in SEEING
objects which do not raise your mind to God: refuse yourself this
pleasure, and turn away your eyes. The same with conversations and all
other things. Act similarly, so far as you are able, with all the
operations of the senses, striving to make yourself free from their
yokes.

"The radical remedy lies in the mortification of the four great natural
passions, joy, hope, fear, and grief. You must seek to deprive these
of every satisfaction and leave them as it were in darkness and the
void. Let your soul therefore turn always:

"Not to what is most easy, but to what is hardest;

"Not to what tastes best, but to what is most distasteful;

"Not to what most pleases, but to what disgusts;

"Not to matter of consolation, but to matter for desolation rather;

"Not to rest, but to labor;

"Not to desire the more, but the less;

"Not to aspire to what is highest and most precious, but to what is
lowest and most contemptible;

"Not to will anything, but to will nothing;

"Not to seek the best in everything, but to seek the worst, so that you
may enter for the love of Christ into a complete destitution, a perfect
poverty of spirit, and an absolute renunci