So far as the imprudent misuse of mystical theology is concerned, we need not waste words on a truism of spiritual direction, that beginners and unlearned, inexperienced persons must follow the counsel of a guide, if they can have it. If not, they must direct themselves as well as they can by good books, which will instruct them gradually and soberly in the first principles of solid virtue and piety, and afterwards lead them on to perfection. They cannot have a better guide than _Sancta Sophia_. It is a book that will last for years, and even for a lifetime; for it is a guide along the whole way, from the gate at the entrance to the river of death, for such as are really and earnestly seeking to attain perfection by prayer, and desire to lead an interior life amid the external occupations, duties, and trials of their state in life, or even in the most strict cloistral seclusion. The exterior persecutions to which the church is subject, the disorders of the times, and the multifarious troubles of every kind, both outward and inward, to which great numbers of the best-disposed and most virtuous people are subjected, have an effect to throw thoughtful persons on the interior life as a refuge and solace. Pius IX., whose long experience and great sanctity, as well as his divine office, make him as a prophet of God to all devout Catholics, has told us that the church is now going through the exercises of the purgative way as a preparation for receiving great gifts from the Holy Spirit, which will accompany a new and glorious triumph of the kingdom of Jesus Christ on the earth. Whatever external splendor the reign of Christ over this world may exhibit, it is in the hearts of men that his spiritual royalty has its seat. There is nothing on earth for which, so to speak, he really cares, except the growth of the souls of men. The world and the church were made for this purpose. The wisdom of the ancients was an adumbration of the truth, and that doctrine which teaches the full and complete form of it alone deserves to be called in the highest sense wisdom, and to win the love and admiration of all men for its celestial beauty. [14] _Sancta Sophia; or, Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation, etc._ Extracted out of more than forty treatises written by the late Father Augustin Baker, a monk of the English Congregation of the Holy Order of St. Benedict; and methodically digested by R. F. Serenus Cressy. Doway, A.D. 1657. Now edited by the Very Rev. Dom Norbert Sweeney, D.D., of the same order and congregation. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. [15] P. 492, note. [16] _L’Abandon à la Providence Divine_, pp. 164-167. [17] Complete Works, Lewis’ Trans., vol. ii. p. 75. [18] _Ib._ pp. 158, 159. [19] Complete Works, etc., vol. ii. pp. 267-270. [20] Complete Works, vol. ii pp. 198, 199. EVENING ON THE SEA-SHORE.