When, after a mature and serious examination of the matter at issue, you have calmly discovered what course to adopt, it is then time to enlist the service of the imagination to aid your will, and get it interested in the work that you have to do, in order to impart new energy to the soul, and new light to the intelligence; when it is docile to the orders of the will it is a powerful auxiliary for good.
Never forget that the liberty of the mind and heart is an indispensable condition to judge rightly, to love with security, and to act with prudence; and that whatever tends to diminish this liberty should arouse your suspicions, no matter what may be its apparent advantages; for these can never equal the advantages accruing from an unshackled heart and mind.
CHAPTER XI.
PIETY.
Most appropriately indeed was the name piety given by our fathers in the faith to the sentiment which elevates the mind and heart to God. It establishes an intimate union between God and the Christian soul, for it is an affection composed of the most generous qualities of the human heart. In woman, it is a mixture of respect, devotedness and tenderness, which are enhanced still more by a certain blending of fear, confidence, and candor. Man is pious towards God and his parents; but the woman whose heart is not vitiated by anything fictitious is pious towards those whom she loves, for in each one of her affections may be found, combined in different degrees, all the shades of sentiment that we have mentioned above; but it is in her piety towards God that they are especially striking.
Woman's heart languishes for God, because it thirsts after the good and beautiful; and all her efforts to satisfy its cravings will prove futile until it is immersed in the bosom of the Divinity, the Source of all goodness and beauty. With woman the heart is the great receptacle of grace, the principal agent in the practice of piety and virtue. If this precious disposition of her heart offers many and great advantages, it carries with it also its inconveniences. The heart is a near neighbor of the imagination, and the latter often allures the former by its charms. Its activity is often developed and exercised at the expense of the will, by diminishing and enfeebling the power and influence of the latter. It not unfrequently happens that the heart becomes the seat of dangerous illusions, when it not only favors, but even indulges in that tender and sensible piety, which is founded on and fed by lively sentiments and beautiful images. In this state it costs no little effort to will and act.
The reading of a pious book, the meditating on the mysteries of the passion and death of our Saviour will melt the heart to tenderness. Thus, nature has a greater share than grace in piety and fervor of this stamp. Self-complacency and self-love are here most adroitly concealed under the garb of humility, and it requires a rare sagacity to discover their presence. The Christian soul in this state seeks not to please God or others, but it seeks rather its own pleasure, and for many women this kind of piety is a form of affectation and vanity. With those fine sentiments and enthusiastic transports they remain unmortified, vain and curious lovers of flattery and averse to reproof, retaining all their faults, which they endeavor to conceal under the mask of external piety.
Do not ask such women to bridle their will or to restrain the sallies of their humor,—speak not to them of the good derived from self-mortification, self-abnegation and the love of the Cross,—words such as these have no signification for them. They are satisfied with simply feeling and giving expression to those virtues, after the manner of artists who, by a happy disposition of mind, are expert in becoming penetrated with ideas and sentiments in which their will has no part whatever; and which have no moral influence over their life.
They are delighted to go with Jesus on Mount Tabor and contemplate Him in the splendor of His glory; but when there is question of participating in His ignominy on Calvary they most shamefully abandon Him. And when He asks them to aid Him to carry His cross they do it, if at all, as reluctantly as did Simon of Cyrene. They willingly multiply prayers and exterior practices of piety, which flatter natural inclinations; they frequent the Sacraments, and this furnishes them the occasion and means of producing those lively and tender sentiments upon which the heart loves to feast.
Their doleful condition is rendered still more deplorable by the use of the most sacred things to nourish their self-love and sensibility. Grace, according to their views of the spiritual life, is only a means to render natural sensibility more delicate and refined. Thus, led on from one delusion to another, such women come to the end of their life, rich in foliage and flowers, but without ever having produced any fruit.