e," then said I to myself, "either of justice or mercy, all is equal
to me." I still had Geneva deeply at heart; but said nothing of it to
anybody, waiting for God to make known to me His all powerful will and
fearing lest any stratagem of the Devil should be concealed therein,
that might tend to draw me out of my proper place, or steal me out of
my condition. The more I saw my own misery, incapacity and nothingness,
the plainer it appeared that they rendered me fitter for the designs of
God, whatever they might be. "Oh, my Lord," said I, "take the weak and
the wretched to do thy works, that Thou mayest have all the glory and
that man may attribute nothing of them to himself. If Thou shouldst
take a person of eminence and great talents, one might attribute to him
something; but if Thou takest me, it will be manifest that thou alone
art the Author of whatever good shall be done." I continued quiet in my
spirit, leaving the whole affair to God, being satisfied, if He should
require anything of me, that He would furnish me with the means of
performing it. I held myself in readiness with a full resolution to
execute His orders, whenever he should make them known, though it were
to the laying down of my life. I was released from all crosses. I
resumed my care of the sick, and dressing of wounds, and God gave me to
cure the most desperate. When surgeons could do no more, it was then
that God made me cure them.

Oh, the joy that accompanied me everywhere, finding still Him who had
united me to Himself, in His own immensity and boundless vastitude! Oh,
how truly did I experience what He said in the Gospel, by the four
evangelists, and by one of them twice over, "Whosoever will lose his
life for my sake shall find it; and whosoever will save his life shall
lose it."

When I had lost all created supports, and even divine ones, I then
found myself happily compelled to fall into the pure divine, and to
fall into it through all those very things which seemed to remove me
further from it. In losing all the gifts, with all their supports, I
found the Giver. In losing the sense and perception of Thee in
myself--I found Thee, O my God, to lose Thee no more in Thyself, in Thy
own immutability. Oh, poor creatures, who pass all your time in feeding
upon the gifts of God, and think therein to be the most favored and
happy. How I pity you if you stop here, short of the true rest, and
cease to go forward to God Himself, through the loss of t