will, which has caused too many sufferings, die away and be lost. Even so a wounded man sees his blood, his life-blood, flowing away, and feels himself the easier.

But who is to make good within you, and fill up the void left by this draining away of moral personality, by which you escape from yourself?-in two letters - he.

He, the patient cunning man, who, day by day, taking from you a little of yourself, and substituting a little of himself, has gently subtilised the one, and put the other in its place. The soft and weak nature of women, almost as yielding as that of children, is well adapted for this transfusion. The same woman, seeing ever the same man, takes, without knowing it, his turn of mind, his accent, his language, nay more, something of his gait and physiognomy. She speaks as he does, and walks in the same manner as he. In only seeing her pass by, a person of any penetration would see that she is he.

But this outward similarity is but a weak sign of the profound change within. What has been transformed is the intimate, most intimate part. A great mystery has been effected, that which Dante calls transhumanation; when a human person, melting away without knowing it, has assumed (substance for substance) another humanity; when the superior replacing the inferior, the agent the patient, no longer needs to direct him, but becomes his being. He is,

the other is not; unless we consider him as an accident, a quality of this being, a pure phenomenon, an empty shadow, a nothing.

Why did we just now speak of influence, dominion, and royalty? This is a much higher thing than royalty-this is divinity. It is to be the god of another.

If there be in this world an occasion on which we may become mad, it is this. The thought of the man who has reached this point, in whatever humility he may cloak himself, is that of the pagan: "Deus factus sum!" I was man, I am God!

More than God. He will say to his creature, "God had created you so, and I have made you another person; so that, being no longer his, but mine, you are myself, my inferior self, who are only to be distinguished from myself by your adoring

me."

Dependent creature, how could you have helped yielding?-God yields to my word when I make him descend to the altar. Christ becomes humble and docile, and comes down at my hour, at my sign, to take the place of the bread that is no more.

*

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*

Origen thinks that the priest must be a little God, to do an act that is beyond the power of angels." Father Fichet (a Jesuit), "Life of Madame de Chantal," p. 615. If you require a more serious Jesuit than Fichet, here is Bourdaloue: "Though the priest be in this sacrifice only the substitute of Jesus Christ, it is nevertheless certain, that Jesus Christ submits to him, that he becomes his subject, and renders him,

We are no longer surprised at the furious pride of the priest, who, in his royalty of Rome, has often carried it to greater extremes than all the follies of the emperors, making him despise not only men and things, but his own oath, and the word, which he gave as infallible. Every priest being able to make God, can just as well make odd even, or things done things undone, things said things unsaid. The angel is afraid of so much power, and stands back respectfully before this man to see him pass."

Go, boast to me now of your privations and mortifications! I am indeed much touched by them!— Do you think, then, that through that plain robe and meagre body, ay, in that pale heart, I do not see the deep, exquisite, and maddening enjoyment of pride, which composes the very being of a priest?

every day upon our altars, the most prompt and exact obedience. If faith did not teach us these truths, could we think that a man could ever attain to such an elevation, and be invested with a character that enables him, if I may say so, to command his sovereign Lord, and make him descend from heaven?"

* One of the new priests, under the orders of St. François de Sales, often saw his guardian angel. Having arrived at the church-door, he stopped. They asked him the reason: he answered ingenuously, that "he was accustomed to see his guardian angel walk before him, and that this prince of heaven had then stopped and stood aside, out of respect for his character, giving him the precedence." Maupas du Tour, Life of St. François de Sales, p. 199. Molinos says boldly, (Guida, lib. ii. c.1.) “If God had given angels to guide men, they might have been blinded by the demons, who disguise themselves as angels of light. Happily," &c.

What he carried within his robe, and broods over so jealously, is a treasure of terrific pride. His hands tremble with it, a bright ray of delight gleams in hist downcast eyes.

Oh! with what fervour he hates every thing that is an obstacle to him, every thing that prevents his infinity from being indeed infinite! How does he desire with all his infinite heart to annihilate it! Oh! how diabolical it is to hate in God!

A great suffering is connected with this great enjoyment of being the god of another soul: all that is wanting to complete this divinity causes horrible pangs. You cannot be surprised if this man pursues with an insatiable ardour the absorption of a soul which he hopes to assimilate. You may easily understand the real and profound cause of this strange avidity, which wants to see and know every thing, both the trivial and the important, the principal and the accessory, the essential and the indifferent, and which, not satisfied with enveloping it outwardly, tries to reach the bottom, and probing lower and lower in the very depth, would attain the essence, Suppose even this to be reached, still it will cry out for-more! Alas! it may ever acquire more, and again more; but something will ever remain beyond. Who can measure a soul? It preserves in its recesses, unknown to itself (and to you also), both space and depth. That soul which seemed to you already acquired, and which you thought in your entire possession, hides

behind it, perhaps, a world of liberty which you can never reach.

This is humiliating, gloomy, nay, almost despair. Horrible suffering! not to have all, is, for a god, to have nothing.

Then, even then, in their very pride, an ironical voice is heard, scoffing at their pride; it is the voice of desire, which they had silenced till now: "Poor god," says she, "you are no god; it is your own fault; I told you so before. Come, leave off your school-divinity, and your distinguo of the corporeal and spiritual natures. To possess, is to have all. He alone has possession who can both use and abuse. For the soul to be really thine, one thing is still wantingthe body."