He was in everything perfectly at ease; content in his little round
of little tasks; going ahead toward heaven without any show or
heroics. He was doing just exactly the little things that God wants
us to do, and he was entirely happy in so doing.

It is true he had never been really unhappy in his whole life.
People who keep close to God never are. They have hard things to
put up with; they may be poor, or fall sick, or lose their relatives
or friends by death; they may have to fight very strong temptations.
They feel all these things as keenly as others feel them. But they
do not become unhappy. We may say they have a world of their own to
live in, that their inmost lives are spent in that world, very
little touched by the changes and accidents of the outer world. They
see that there is an outer world, but they choose deliberately to
ignore it; they will not go into it.

You know that if you go down deep into the sea, as men go in
submarines, you find calm there always, even though a storm be
raging up above and the waves toss with angry violence. So if you
once get inside your life, under the surface, in the heart of life
where God is, you will find calm there also and a certain peace
which is as near as we can come to entire happiness in this world.

But though Stanislaus had learned this secret, and had therefore
always kept his soul merry, he was happiest of all during the time
of his noviceship. The very air around him breathed of God and
heaven. His life there was really an unbroken prayer. He was like
a swimmer who has been fighting his way through nasty, choppy,
little waves, going ahead surely, but with great difficulty, and who