We often think we love someone, or something in God, and for God, when it is really only in ourselves, and for ourselves, that we do so. We think sometimes that we have only an eye to the interests of God, which is His glory, when it is really our own glory which we are seeking in our work. This is when we stop short voluntarily at the creature to the prejudice of the Creator; as comes to pass in all sin, whether mortal or venial. We must therefore watch and be constantly on our guard lest we fall into this snare. From it we must snatch our soul as we would a bird from the snare of the fowler. We shall be safe if we remember that every just and lawful love in us is always either in actual touch with the love of God, or can be brought into such touch, whilst self-love is never in such touch, nor can ever be brought into it. This is the test by which we can detect the false coin that is mixed up with the true. [Footnote 1: Rom. vii. 24.] UPON ABANDONING OURSELVES TO GOD. I cannot tell you, my sisters, how great a point our Blessed Father made of self-abandonment, _i.e._, self-surrender into the hands of God. In one place he speaks of it as: "The cream of charity, the odour of humility, the flower of patience, and the fruit of perseverance. Great," he says, "is this virtue, and worthy of being practised by the best beloved children of God."[1] And again, "Our Lord loves with a most tender love those who are so happy as to abandon themselves wholly to His fatherly care, letting themselves be governed by His divine Providence without any idle speculations as to whether the workings of this Providence will be useful to them to their profit, or painful to their loss, and this because they are well assured that nothing can be sent, nothing permitted by this paternal and most loving Heart, which will not be a source of good and profit to them. All that is required is that they should place all their confidence in Him, and say from their heart, _Into Thy hands I commend my spirit_, my soul, my body, and all that I have, to do with them as it shall please Thee."[2] You are inclined, my sisters, to say that we are not all of us capable of such entire self-renunciation, that so supreme an act of self-abandonment is beyond our strength. Hear then, too, what our Blessed Father goes on to say. These are his words in the same Conference: "Never are we reduced to such an extremity that we cannot pour forth before the divine majesty the perfume of a holy submission to His most holy will, and of a continual promise never wilfully to offend Him." [Footnotes 1, 2: Conf. 2.] UPON INTERIOR DESOLATION. As there are, more thorns than roses in our earthly life, and more dull days than sunny ones, so also in our spiritual life our souls are more frequently clouded by a sense of desolation, dryness, and gloom, than irradiated by heavenly consolations and brightness.