O Love too little known! Men think Thy marvels are o’er, and that we have but to copy Thy ancient works and quote Thy former teachings! And they see not that Thy inexhaustible action is an infinite source of new thoughts, new sufferings, new works, new Patriarchs, new Prophets, new Apostles, new Saints, who have no need to copy the life or writings one of the other, but only to live in perpetual self-abandonment to Thy secret operations. We are wont to quote the “first ages of the Church!--the times of the saints!” But is not all time the effects of the divine action, the workings of the divine will, which absorbs all moments, fills them, sanctifies them, supernaturalizes them? Has there ever been a method of self-abandonment to the divine will which is not now practicable? From the earliest ages had the saints other secrets of holiness than that of becoming from moment to moment what the divine action would make them? And will not this action even to the end of time continue to pour its grace upon those who abandon themselves to it without reserve? Yes, adorable, eternal Love! Love eternally fruitful and always marvellous! Will of my God, Thou art my book, my doctrine, my science; in Thee are my thoughts, my words, my deeds, my crosses. Not by consulting Thy other works can I become what Thou wouldst make me, but only by receiving Thee through all things in that one royal way of self-abandonment to Thy will--that ancient way, that way of my fathers. I will think, speak, and be enlightened like them; following in this way, I will imitate them, quote them, copy them, in all things. _CHAPTER X._ The Present Moment is the Manifestation of the Name of God and the Coming of His Kingdom. The present moment is like an ambassador which declares the will of God. The heart must ever answer _fiat_, and the soul will go steadily on by means of all things to her centre and her term--never pausing in her course, spreading her sails to all winds; all ways, all methods equally further her progress towards the great, the infinite. All things afford her equal means of sanctification. The one only essential the soul finds in the present moment. It is no longer either prayer or silence, retirement or conversation, reading or writing, reflections or cessation of thought, avoidance or seeking of spiritualities, abundance or privation, illness or health, life or death, but simply what comes to her each moment by the order of God. In this consists that privation, abnegation, renouncement of created things, whether real or in will, in order that a soul may be nothing of herself or for herself, but live wholly by the order of God, and at His good pleasure content herself with the duty of the present moment, as though it were the one thing in the world.