When God thus gives Himself to a soul, all that is ordinary becomes extraordinary; therefore it is that nothing appears of the great work which is going on in the soul; the way itself is so marvellous that it needs not the embellishment of marvels which belong not to it. It is a miracle, a revelation, a continuous enjoyment of God, interrupted only by little faults; but in itself it is characterized by the absence of anything sensible or marvellous, while it renders marvellous all ordinary and sensible things. _CHAPTER XII._ God assures to Faithful Souls a Glorious Victory over the Powers of Earth and Hell. If the divine action is veiled here below by an exterior of weakness, it is that the merit of faithful souls may be increased; but its triumph is no less sure. The history of the world is simply the history of the struggle maintained from the beginning by the powers of the world and hell with souls humbly submissive to the divine action. In the conflict all the advantage seems to be on the side of the proud; yet humility is always victorious. This world is represented to us under the form of a statue of gold, brass, iron, and clay. This mystery of iniquity which was shown in a dream to Nebuchadnezzar is but the confused assemblage of all the acts, interior and exterior, of the children of darkness. These are again represented by the beast coming up out of the abyss from the beginning of all ages, to make war upon the interior and spiritual man; and this war still continues. The monsters succeed one another; the abyss swallows them and vomits them forth again, while unceasingly emitting new and strange vapors. The combat begun in heaven between Lucifer and St. Michael still wages. The heart of that proud and envious spirit has become an inexhaustible abyss of every kind of evil; and his only aim since the creation of the world has been to ever raise up among men new workers of iniquity to replace those swallowed up in the abyss. Lucifer is the chieftain of those who refuse obedience to the Almighty; this mystery of iniquity is but the inversion of the order of God. It is the order, or rather the disorder, of Satan. This disorder is a mystery, for beneath a fair exterior it hides irremediable infinite evils. All the wicked who have declared war against God, from Cain to those who now lay waste the earth, have been seemingly great and powerful princes, famous in the world and worshipped of men. But their apparent splendor is a portion of the mystery; they are but the beasts which, one after another, rise from the abyss to subvert the order of God. But this order, which is another mystery, resists them with men truly powerful and great, who give the death-blow to these monsters; and even as hell vomits forth new monsters, heaven raises up new heroes to battle with them. Ancient history, sacred and profane, is but the record of this war. The will of God always triumphs. His followers share His victories and reap a happy eternity.