ouls, willing to risk all, to
sacrifice all in the service of their leader. If you are excessively
timid and fearful of making a misstep in your every action, it is a
fault of character, and unless you overcome it you will never do great
things for yourself or others.

When reason and conscience point the way, plunge boldly forward,
trusting to the Lord for all the necessary helps you may need to carry
out your designs. He will never desert you when once you enlist under
His flag. When it comes to "supposing," there is no end to the
dreadful things that _might_ happen, but never _will_. Little children
have a game called "supposing," each one making his supposition in
turn, but even they do not anticipate that their creations of fancy
will ever prove true. A man once said: "I have lived forty years, and
have had many troubles, but most of them never happened," meaning that
he had often anticipated and dreaded evils which never came to pass.

Let us, however, grant that occasionally a novice leaves his order: is
that such a disgrace? By no means; he, at least, deserves credit for
attempting the higher life. He is far more courageous than many
Christians who are too timorous even to try. After all, what is a
novitiate for, if not to discover whether the candidate has the
requisite qualities? And judicious superiors will be the first to
advise a young man or woman to leave, if he or she has wandered into
the wrong place.

There is, moreover, a danger on the opposite side that wavering souls
often fail to take into account. What if they make a mistake by not
entering religious life? Is it better to err on the side of generosity
to God, or on the side of pusillanimity? If one make a mistake by
entering religion he can easily retrace his steps before it is too
late, but once he commits himself to worldly obligations, he can
seldom break their fetters; and many a man, when overwhelmed with the
cares and anxieties of life, has regretted, when all too late, that he
had not hearkened to the voice of grace that invited him to the calm
and peace of the cloister.

St. Ignatius thus forcibly expresses the same thought: "More certain
signs are required to decide that God wills one to remain in the
secular state, than that He wishes him to enter on the way of the
counsels, for the Lord so openly urged the counsels, while He insisted
on the great dangers of the other state." (Directory, c. 23.)

The devil, who employs every ruse t