to undertake while yet weak beginners the heroic works of the perfect; to anticipate by self-will the time and call which God appoints, and pervert the orderly course of his providence; to strive by our own natural powers to accomplish what requires the special gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, is imprudent, contrary to humility, and full of peril. The dupe of false spirituality may, therefore, either take an entirely wrong road or attempt to travel the right road in a wrong manner; in either case sure to fail of reaching his intended goal, if he persists in his error. The sound and orthodox doctrine of Catholic mystical theology presents God as he is in his own intrinsic essence, as the object of his own beatific contemplation, and of the contemplation of the blessed who have received the faculty of intuitive vision by the light of glory. The nearest approach to this beatific state, as well as the most perfect and immediate preparation for it, is the state of quiet, tranquil contemplation of God by the obscure light of faith. The excellence and blessedness of this state consists in the pure love of God. It is of the nature of love and the intention of the mind toward the sovereign good, by which the will is directed in its motion toward the good which it loves and in the fruition of which it finds its repose, that the consideration of the object precede the consideration and desire of the fruition of the object. Liberatore, who is a good expositor of the doctrine of St. Thomas and all sound Catholic philosophers on this head, proposes and proves this statement in the clearest terms. The object is first apprehended and loved for its intrinsic goodness. Reflection on the enjoyment which is received and delight in this enjoyment, though a necessary consequence of the possession of the chief good, is the second but not the first act. St. John of the Cross teaches the same truth: “As the end of all is love, which inheres in the will, the characteristic of which is to give and not to receive, to the soul inebriated with love the first object that presents itself is not the essential glory which God will bestow upon it, but the entire surrender of itself to him in true love, without any regard to its own advantage. The second object is included in the first.”[20] Father Mazzella, S.J., of Woodstock College, in his admirable work on the infused virtues, makes a lengthened exposition of the distinction between that love of benevolence and complacency toward God which is the principle of perfect contrition, and by itself takes away sin and unites the soul with God, and the love of desire which terminates on the good received from God. The first considers God as the sovereign good in himself; the second considers him directly and explicitly as the source and giver of good to us. It manifests itself as an efficacious desire for the rewards of everlasting life, accompanied by a fear of the punishment of sin in