If I strive to concentrate all my thoughts in the one
thought of the Divine Presence, all my senses in an act of submission to
the Divine Will, I derive only pain and discouragement from it. I feel
like the beast of burden which falls under its load, and which, at the
first cut of the whip, makes an effort to rise, and falls again; at a
second blow, at a third, or a fourth, it only shivers, and does not
attempt to rise. If I open the Gospels or the _Imitation_, I find no
flavour in them. If I recite prayers, weariness overpowers me, and I am
silent. If I prostrate myself upon the ground, the ground freezes me. If
I make complaint to God at being treated thus, His silence seems to grow
more hostile. If, on the authority of the great mystics, I say to myself
that I am wrong to feel such affection for spiritual joys, to suffer
thus when deprived of them, I answer myself that the mystics err, that
in the state of conscious grace one walks safely, but that in this
starless night of spiritual darkness one cannot see the way; there is no
other rule than to withdraw one's foot when it touches the soft grass,
and that is not sufficient, for there is also the danger of setting the
foot in empty space.
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