time was not come. It ended by his telling me to put aside all those thoughts, and go on as I was. So I did, and was without any idea of the kind till the middle of this second retreat, which I entered with no view but to get on better where I was for another year. The same meditations raised up again the same battle within me as at Louvain, and I saw no way but to go into the matter, and make my election according to the rules given by St. Ignatius; which, if they were applied more often to questions of importance which people have to settle, ah! we should have many resolutions come to different to what are come to in the world. I soon came to determine for a change of state; then came the question which body to choose, and for a whole day nearly this was working my thoughts up and down. I could see no prospect of deciding between the two which came before me at first and for which I found my feelings and my judgment alternately inclining me--these were the Jesuits and the Institute of Charity. I saw no prospect of making up my mind that day, though Father Clarke told me now was the time for such a choice, and not when I had gone out again into the world, and I knew that God whom I had sought in solitude would give me light. At last, when I had just finished my last meditation of that portion of the retreat, and still could not settle, I thought I must have recourse after the retreat was over to Father Dominic, as a neutral judge, to help me to choose between the other two; when, in a minute, as in the fable of the two men who found the oyster and called in the third to judge between {346} them, I saw that Father Dominic himself was to have me, such as I was, and all my doubts vanished. Father Clarke came soon afterwards to pay me his daily visit, and confirmed my choice with a manner and tone as unhesitating as the choice itself had been, and would not let me afterwards give way to the fear of any difficulties, saying, once for all, when I was questioning how I could get over some of them, 'Well, if you do not get over them, God has been deceiving you.' How I extol now and praise the practice of spiritual exercises, and St. Ignatius, the great founder of the system of them, and the Jesuits in their conduct of them, as exemplified in Father Clarke, whose way with me so completely gave the lie to what people are disposed to think, that the Jesuits must bring everything and everybody to themselves when they get them into their hands. I intend to express my sense of obligation to them and St. Ignatius, by taking his name as my future designation, after I am admitted to the religious habit. So I hope in time I may come to be known no more by my own name, but by that of _Ignatius of St. Paul_. And as God gives me this _nomen novum_ may he add the _manna absconditum_, and make me in spirit as different from what I have been as in name.