cause things go
wrong, or because he thinks they are wrong. The conditions of life are
not necessarily wrong because contrary to what one might desire. Perhaps
it is the desire itself which was wrong, and the conditions which are
right; and which are the expression of God's will and are thus to be
joyfully accepted. The test of all circumstances and influence lies in
unchanging fidelity, in unswerving allegiance to the divine ideal of
life. The "devastator of a day" need not be welcomed to make unlimited
waste of time and energy that have their due channels, but the
interruption may be met with patience and sweetness, as well as with
firmness of purpose in declining to be turned aside from the duty in
hand. The adverse circumstances of life,--loss of money, of friends,
disaster in one way or another, that may come without visible relation
to any error on one's own part,--shall not such adverse conditions teach
a divine lesson of patience and incite new springs of energy to overcome
trial, and to gain by it a higher spiritual vantage-ground on which to
live? Cannot even denial and defeat be held as developing qualities that
might otherwise lie latent? May they not teach the divinest lesson of
all,--the one most invaluable to human life,--absolute trust in God?

Gaining this, the soul really gains all that it was sent on earth to
learn through all the varied phenomena of joy and sorrow, of triumph and
failure. There is a common expression of one's "embracing religion and
turning away from the world." It is a contradiction of terms. The world
is the place in which any real religion is tested and proved, and it is
there that the soul must recognize and receive the Divine Action.

In the marvellous sermons of Pere Lacordaire are found suggestions that
might well serve as a daily manual on this sublime and vital truth of
the relation between the will of God and the daily experience. These
sermons are among the world's treasures of help toward a higher
spirituality. The argument of Pere De Caussade--one equally entitled to
consideration--is that God reveals himself to us now, in ordinary
events, as mysteriously and as adorably and with as much reality as in
the great events of history or in the Holy Scriptures. "When the will of
God reveals itself to a soul manifesting a desire to wholly possess
her," says Pere De Caussade, "if the soul freely gives herself in
return, she experiences most powerful assistance in all difficultie