These Christians, so ardent and so desirous after God, begin to rest in their condition, and gradually and insensibly to lose the loving activity in seeking after God which formerly characterised them, being satisfied with their joy which they substituted for God Himself; and this rest would be to them an irreparable loss, if God, in His infinite goodness, did not draw them out of this state to lead them into one more advanced. But before speaking of it, let us look at the imperfections of this stage. CHAPTER V. IMPERFECTIONS, INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR, OF THIS FIRST DEGREE--MISTAKES THAT ARE MADE IN IT--ITS PASSIVITY--SPIRITUAL DRYNESS, MINGLED WITH A TENDER BUT SELF-INTERESTED LOVE, WHICH NEEDS THE EXPERIENCE AND PURIFICATIONS OF THE FOLLOWING DEGREE. The soul in the degree of which I have just spoken can and does make great advances, going from love to love, and from cross to cross; but it falls so frequently, and is so selfish, that it may be said to move only at a snail's pace, although it appears to itself and to others to progress infinitely. The torrent is now in a flat country, and has not yet found the slope of the mountain down which it may precipitate itself, and take a course which is never to be stopped. The faults of those in this degree are a certain self-esteem, more hidden and deeply rooted than it was before they had received these graces and favours from God; a certain secret contempt for others whom they see so far behind themselves, and a certain hardness for sin and sinners; a zeal of St John before the descent of the Holy Ghost, when he wanted to call down fire from heaven upon the Samaritans to consume them; a certain confidence in their own safety and virtue; a secret pride, which causes them to grieve specially over the faults which they commit in public: they appropriate the gifts of God, and treat them as though they were their own: they forget weakness and poverty in the strength which they possess; so that they lose all self-distrust. Though all this and much more is to be found in persons in this degree, they are themselves unconscious of it; but these faults will make themselves known in time. The grace which they feel so strongly in themselves being an assurance to them that they have nothing to fear, they allow themselves to speak without being divinely commissioned. They are anxious to communicate what they feel to every one else. It is true that they are of use to others, for their burning words take hold of the hearts of those who hear them; but apart from the fact that they cannot do the good they would do, if God would have them impart to others what they have received, they are giving out of their necessity and not of their abundance; so that they exhaust themselves; as you have seen several pools of water under a fountain. The fountain alone gives out of its abundance, and the pools only send into each other of the fulness which is communicated to them; but if the fountain be closed or turned