There would be ground for this reproach if Father Caussade promised to give his readers a complete treatise on Christian and religious perfection; but this he does not do. He addresses himself to souls already advanced in virtue and accustomed not only to faithfully fulfil the essential precepts of Christianity, but also to observe the prescriptions of religious discipline. Like the young man in the Gospel who from his youth had kept the commandments, and who begged our Saviour to show him a higher perfection, these souls ask Father Caussade what they must do to sanctify themselves after having accomplished all the duties imposed upon their free will. The man of God answers them like our Saviour: If you would be perfect, rid yourself of all that may still cling to you of attachment to your own interests, your own ideas, your own will, and abandon yourself completely to God. Practise the virtue of abandonment; practise it so habitually that it will become the constant state of your soul: thus you will cease to live to yourself, to live only in God. This is a summary of the book we are re-editing to-day. To understand it we must bear in mind, as we read it, the situation of the author, and that of the souls to whom his counsels are addressed; viz., that it is not, as we have already said, a complete treatise of Christian perfection which he has claimed to write; his only object was to set forth the advantages of a special virtue and a particular state. It is true that this virtue is one of the most essential bases of sanctity, and that this state is sanctity itself as far as it is attainable on earth. But it is no less true that Father Caussade had no idea whatever of telling all Christians what they should do to save their souls. Therefore it would be a serious mistake to believe ourselves dispensed from all duties of which he makes no mention, in order to devote ourselves only to this great duty of abandonment, the importance of which he so justly and eloquently portrays. To avoid this dangerous error, and reap all the profit of this true and very consoling doctrine of Father Caussade, it will be sufficient to cast a general glance over the divine economy in the salvation of souls, and to see what place abandonment to divine Providence occupies in this great work. We all know that sanctification is a work both divine and human. It is divine through its immediate principle, the Holy Spirit; through its meritorious cause, the Incarnation and the death of the Son of God; through its end, the happiness of the Holy Trinity, in which holy souls are to participate for all eternity; finally, through its chief means, the teachings and the graces of Jesus Christ transmitted to men through the Church. But this work is human also, since the graces of the Holy Spirit, the merits of the Son of God, the designs of the Holy Trinity, and all the efforts of Providence can bear fruit in a soul only as far as she freely co-operates with them.