IX. Love holds the place of all things to souls who walk in the way of abandonment 149 X. The faithful soul finds in submission to the will of God more force and strength than the proudest of those who resist Him 154 XI. The soul abandoned to God learns to recognize His will, even in the proud who resist Him. All creatures, whether good or evil, reveal Him to her 158 XII. God assures to faithful souls a glorious victory over the powers of earth and hell 160 APPENDIX. PAGE I. A very easy means of acquiring peace of heart, by Fr. Surin 165 II. On perfect abandonment, by Bossuet 172 III. A short and easy method of making the prayer of faith, and of the simple presence of God, by Bossuet 173 IV. Exercise of loving union of our will with that of God, by St. Francis de Sales 185 V. Acts of abandonment 188 Book First. The Nature and Excellence of the Virtue of Holy Abandonment. _CHAPTER I._ The Sanctity of the Righteous of the Old Law, and of Joseph and of Mary herself, consisted in Fidelity to the Order of God. God speaks to-day as He spoke to our fathers, when directors were not so numerous, nor methods of direction so well defined. All their spirituality consisted in simple fidelity to the order of God; but it was not reduced to a science which explained it so sublimely or minutely, or contained so many precepts, so many maxims, so much instruction. Our present wants, no doubt, require this explanation. It was not so in the first ages of the Church, when men were more simple and upright. Each moment brought a duty to be faithfully fulfilled: this was sufficient for interior souls of that day. Their whole attention was concentrated simply upon the duty of each successive moment with the fidelity of the hour-hand of a clock which steadily traverses stroke by stroke the circle in which it is appointed to move. The mind, unceasingly moved by divine grace, turned insensibly to the new duty which presented itself in the order of God every hour. Such were the hidden springs of Mary’s life, the most perfect example of simple and absolute self-abandonment to the will of God. The simple words, _Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum_, with which she was content to answer the angel, expressed all the mystic theology of the ancients. Then, as now, it was all reduced to the simplest and most absolute abandonment of the soul to the will of God under whatever form it manifested itself. This noble and exalted disposition, the basis of all Mary’s spirituality, is brilliantly manifested in the words _Fiat mihi_. Observe how perfectly they accord with those which our Lord would have ever on our lips and in our hearts: _Fiat voluntas tua_.