to
mind what I have read on these matters in spiritual writers and the
Lives of the Saints. I reflect how from the very nature of the
purification of the soul this darkness, bitterness, and desolation
must be; but not a drop of consolation is distilled into my soul. The
only words which come to my lips are 'My soul is sad unto death,' and
these I repeat and repeat again. At all times, in rising and in going
to bed, in company and at my meals, I whisper them to myself, while
to others I appear cheerful and join in the talk. At the most I can
but die; this is the lot of all, and no one can tell the moment when.

"Withal, I try to have patience, resignation, endurance, and trust in
God, waiting on His guidance and leaving all in His hands."

"Since my last I have had some relief from my interior trials, and no
sooner does this take place than my body recovers some of its
strength. It would not have been possible for me to have borne much
longer the desolation which filled my soul. Each new trial, when
passed, leaves me more quiet and tranquil. Past periods of my life
give me hope that this trial will also come to an end. What will that
be? How will it happen? and when? God alone knows. He that has led me
so many years still guides me, and resistance to His will is worse
than vain. Judging from that same past, my expectations to return to
my former labors are not sanguine. It seems to me sometimes that I am
cut off from these to be prepared for a deeper and broader basis for
future action. But whether this will be so or not, is in the hands of
God. Whatever He wills me to do, I must do it. My own will has become
null, and all that is left for me to do is to wait on His good
pleasure and His own time. To act or not to act, to suffer or not to
suffer, to speak or to keep silence, to return to my former labors or
never to return, to live on or die, all have become indifferent to
me. I am in God's hands, with no will of my own; for He has taken it,
and it is for Him to do with me whatever He pleases. If this be a
source of pain to others, none but God knows what it has cost me.
There as nothing, therefore, left but to wait in trust on God's will
and His mercy and good pleasure."

And again the darkened heavens are above him:

"Death invited, alas! will not come. What a relief it would be from a
continuous and prolonged death!"

The obscurity of the drawing of the Holy Ghost, as well as of God's
designs, and his incessant