we may enjoy much. Such is the ordinary course of the Divine dealings
with the soul since the Cross received its full mysterious saving power.

And to the full as mysterious is the new character imprinted upon
the miraculous life of Christian sanctity. The phenomena of that new
existence, in which certain souls are brought into mystic communion with
the unseen world, bear the print of the wounds of the Eternal Son in
a manner which fills the ordinary Christian mind with amazement and
trembling. It is by a painful crucifixion of the natural man, both soul
and body, carried to a far more than ordinary perfection, that the soul
is introduced into this miraculous condition. Imprisoned in her fleshly
tabernacle, which, though regenerated, is through sin foul, earthly,
and blinding as ever, the mind can only be admitted to share in the
communion which Jesus Christ unceasingly held with His Father and with
the world invisible, by attaining some portion of that self-mastery
which Adam lost by his fall. The physical nature must be subdued by the
vigorous repetition of those many painful processes by which the animal
portion of our being is rendered the slave of the spiritual, and the
will and the affections are rent away from all creatures, to be fixed on
God alone. Fasting and abstinence are the first elements in this ascetic
course. The natural taste is neglected, thwarted, and tormented, till,
wearied of soliciting its own gratification, it ceases to interfere with
the independent action of the soul. The appetite is further denied
its wonted satisfaction as to quantity of food. By fasts gradually
increasing in severity, new modes of physical existence are introduced;
that which was originally an impossibility becomes a second law of
nature; and the emaciated frame, forgetting its former lusts, obeys
almost spontaneously the dictates of the victorious spirit within.
The hours of sleep are curtailed under judicious control, until that
mysterious sentence which compels us to pass a third of our existence in