Ah! if those who find it so difficult to leave themselves to God could only experience this, they would confess that though the way might be arduous, a single day of this life was a sufficient recompense for years of trouble. But by what means does God bring the soul here? By ways altogether opposed to natural wisdom and imagination. He builds up by casting down; He gives life by killing. Oh! if I could tell what He does, and the strange means which He uses to bring us here. But silence! men are not able to hear it; those who have experienced it know what it is. Here there is no need of place or time; all is alike, all places are good; and wherever the order of God may take us, it is well, because all means are useless and infinitely surpassed: when we have reached the end, there is nothing left to wish for. Here all is God: God is everywhere and in everything, and therefore to the soul all is the same. Its religion is God Himself, always the same, never interrupted; and if sometimes God pours some stream of His glory upon its natural powers and sensibilities, it has no effect upon the centre, which is always the same. The soul is indifferent either to solitude or a crowd: it no longer looks forward to deliverance from the body in order that it may be united to God. It is now not only united, but transformed, changed into the Object of its love, which causes it no longer to think of loving; for it loves God with His own love, and naturally, though not inamissibly. CHAPTER III. IN WHICH IS EXPLAINED BY A COMPARISON THAT WHICH CONCERNS PERFECT UNION OR DEIFORMITY--SECRETS OF GOD REVEALED TO HIS HIDDEN ONES, AND BY THEM TO OTHERS--PERMANENCE AND PROGRESS OF THIS CONDITION, THOUGH VARIABLE--NATURAL CAPACITY MUST BE LOST--THE PARTICIPATED CAPACITY OF GOD BY TRANSFORMATION GLOWS INFINITELY. A similitude occurs to my mind which appears very appropriate to this subject: it is that of grain. First it is separated from the husk, which sets forth conversion and separation from sin: when the grain is separate and pure, it must be ground (by affliction, crosses, sickness, &c.); when it is thus bruised and reduced to flour, there must still be taken from it, not that which is impure, for this is gone, but all that is coarse, that is, the bran; and when there is nothing left but the fine flour, then it is made into bread for food. It appears as though the flour were soiled, blackened, and blighted; that its delicacy and whiteness were taken from it, in order that it may be made into a paste which is far less beautiful than the flour. Lastly, this paste is exposed to the heat of the fire. Now this is precisely what happens to the soul of which I have been speaking. But after the bread is baked, it is fit for the mouth of the king, who not only unites it to himself by contact with it, but eats it, digests it, consumes it, and annihilates it, that it may enter into his composition, and become part of himself.