Therefore we must not judge of the virtue of things by the relations they bear to mind or body, for these relations are unimportant. It is the will of God alone which gives to all things, whatever they may be, the power to form Jesus Christ in the depth of our hearts. We must frame no laws for this will and place no limit to its action, for it is all-powerful. Whatever the ideas which fill the mind, whatever the feelings which the body experiences, were it for the mind but distractions and trouble, for the body but sickness and death, the divine will nevertheless is ever for the present moment the life of body and soul; for both one and the other, whatever their condition, are sustained by it alone. Bread without it is poison; and through it poison becomes a salutary remedy. Without it, books but confuse and trouble us; with it, darkness is turned into light. It is the wisdom, the truth, of all things. In all things it gives us God: and God is the infinite Being who holds the place of all things to the soul which possesses Him. _CHAPTER VI._ The Mind and other Human Means are Useful only in as far as they are the Instruments of the Divine Action. The mind with all its powers would hold the first place among the instruments of the divine will; but it must, like a dangerous slave, be reduced to the last. The simple of heart who know how to use it can derive great profit therefrom; but it can also do much injury when not kept in subjection. When the soul sighs after created means, the divine action whispers to the heart that it sufficeth; when she would injudiciously reject them, the divine action whispers that they are instruments not to be taken or rejected at will, but to be simply received from Providence and adapted to the order of God--the soul thus using all things as though not using them, being deprived of all things, yet wanting nothing. The divine action, being limitless in its fulness, can take possession of a soul only in as far as the soul is void of all confidence in her own action; for this confidence and self-activity fill the heart to the exclusion of the divine action. It is an obstacle which, existing in the soul herself, is more likely to arrest the divine action than exterior obstacles, which Providence can change at will into powerful aids; for it can work with all things, even those which are in themselves useless. With the divine will nothing is everything, and without it everything is nothing. Whatever the value in itself of meditation, contemplation, vocal prayer, interior silence, acts of the will whether sensible, distinct, or less perceptible, retreat, or active life,--better than all of them is what God wills for the soul at the present moment; and the soul should regard everything else with perfect indifference, as being of no value whatever.