A sick person who is really anxious to recover his health takes without hesitation the remedies prescribed by the physician, however sharp, bitter, and painful they may be. He who aims at perfection, which is the full health, and true holiness of the soul, finds nothing difficult that helps him to arrive at that end. Justice and judgment, that is to say correction, establish in him the seat of perfect wisdom. In a word, _better are the wounds of a friend_ (like those of a surgeon who probes only to heal) _than the deceitful kisses of a_ flatterer, _an enemy_.[3] [Footnote 1: 1 Mach. vi. 4.] [Footnote 2: Psalm cxl. 5.] [Footnote 3: Prov. xxvii. 6.] UPON THE PERFECTION AIMED AT IN RELIGIOUS HOUSES. Our Blessed Father was speaking to me one day on the subject of exterior perfection, and on the discontent expressed by certain Religions, who, in their particular order, had not found the strictness and severity of rule they desired. He said: "These good people seem to me to be knocking their heads against a stone wall. Christian perfection does not consist in eating fish, wearing serge, sleeping on straw, stripping oneself of one's possessions, keeping strict vigils, and such like austerities. For, were this so, pagans would be the more perfect than Christians, since many of them voluntarily sleep on the bare ground, do not eat a morsel of meat throughout the whole year, are ragged, naked, shivering, living for the most part only on bread and water, and on that bread of suffering, too, which is far harder and heavier than the blackest of crusts. If perfection consisted in exterior observances such as these, they would have to go back in perfection were they to enter even the most strictly reformed of our Religious Houses, for in none is a life led nearly so austere as theirs. "The question then is in what does the essential perfection of a Christian life consist? It must surely in the first place include the assiduous practice of charity, for exterior mortifications without charity are of no account. St. Paul, we know, reckons martyrdom itself as nothing, unless quickened by charity. "I do not exactly know what standard of perfection they who insist so much upon exterior mortification wish to set up. "Surely the greater or lesser degree of charity is the true measure of sanctity and the measure also of the excellence of religious rule. Now, in what rule is charity, the queen of the virtues, more recommended that in that of St. Augustine? which seems to be nothing but one long discourse on charity.