"You see now that in the theory you have unwittingly adopted you entirely destroy the nature of true merit, and are in danger of being shipwrecked on the same rock as those heretics of our day who hold that good works are unprofitable for salvation. I am convinced, as you may well believe, that you are as far from wishing to run the risk with them as you are from sharing their belief. "Remember this, that in order to do a good work in true charity you must not make your own interest your ultimate aim, but God's interest, which is nothing else but His exterior glory. The more, too, that you think of God's interest the more He will think of yours, and the less you trouble yourself about reward, the greater will your reward be in heaven, because pure love, never mercenary, looks only to the good of the beloved one, not to its own. This is the end and aim of the sacred teaching that we must seek first the _Kingdom of God_, that is to say, His glory, knowing assuredly that in seeking this all good things will be added unto us. "He who only wishes to merit for himself does nothing for God and merits nothing for himself: but, on the other hand, he who does everything for God and for His honour merits much for himself. "In this game he who loses, wins; and he who thinks only of winning for himself, plays a losing game. His good works are, as it were, hollow, and weigh too lightly in the divine balance. He falls asleep on his pile; of imaginary spiritual wealth, and awakening finds he has nothing in his hands. He has laboured for himself, not for God, and therefore receives his reward from himself and not from God. Like a moth, he singes his wings in the flame of a merit which is truly imaginary, no work being really meritorious except that which is done in a state of grace, and with God for its last end." "All this," replied the person, "does not at all satisfy me on the point which I brought forward, namely, as to whether work done by vow is not more meritorious than that which is done without it, seeing that to the action of the particular virtue which is vowed is added that of the virtue of religion which is the vow." "Certainly," replied our Blessed Father, "as regards the question whether it is more meritorious to say the Rosary by vow rather than of one's free choice, it is undoubtedly, as you say, adding one act of virtue to another to do so in discharge of one's vow, for is not prayer the highest of all religious actions? Again, if I pray with devotion and fervour, am I not adding to prayer another religious action, which is devotion? If I offer to God this prayer, as incense, or a spiritual sacrifice, or as an oblation, are not sacrifice and oblation two religious actions? Moreover, if by this prayer I desire to praise God, is not divine praise a religious act? If in praying I adore God, is not adoration one also?