authority of God is not binding on me physically, for men have refused
and still do refuse to submit to His authority and the authority He
communicated to His Church. And I know that I, too, can refuse and
perhaps more than once have been tempted to refuse, my assent to truths
that interfered too painfully with my interests and passions.

Besides, faith is meritorious, and in order to merit one must do
something difficult and be free to act. The difficulty is to believe
what we cannot understand, through pride of intelligence, and to bring
that stiff domineering faculty to recognize a superior. The difficulty
is to bend the will to the acceptance of truths, and consequent
obligations that gall our self-love and the flesh'. The believer must
have humility and self-denial. The grace of God follows these virtues
into a soul, and then your act of faith is complete.

Herein we discover the great wisdom of God who sets the price of faith,
and of salvation that depends on it, not on the mind, but on the will;
not on the intelligence alone, but on the heart. To no man is grace
denied. Every man has the will to grasp what is good. But though to all
He gives a will, all have not the same degree of intelligence; He does
not endow them equally in this respect. How then could He make
intelligence the first principle of salvation and of faith? God
searches the heart, not the mind. A modicum of wit is guaranteed to all
to know that they can safely believe. Be one ever so unlettered and
ignorant, and dull, faith and heaven are to him as accessible as to the
sage, savant and the genius. For all, the way is the same.



CHAPTER XXI.