--all share the same tremendous sentence. God establishes Himself
in the soul, not only supreme, but as the _only inhabitant_. Whatsoever
remains to be done in this world is done as a duty, often as a most
obnoxious duty. Love for the souls that Christ has redeemed is the only
human feeling that is left unsubjugated; and wheresoever the emotions of
natural affection and friendship mingle with this Christian love, they
are watched, and restrained with unsparing severity, that the heart may
come at last to love nothing, except _in_ Christ Himself.

All this, indeed, repeatedly takes place in the case of persons in
whom the purely miraculous life of the Christian Saint is never even
commenced. It is that which all monks and nuns are bound to struggle
for, according to the different rules to which they have respectively
received their vocation. And, by the mercy of God, this perfect
detachment from earth, and this marvellous crucifixion of the flesh, is
accomplished in many a devout religious, to whom the _extraordinary_
gifts of the Holy Ghost are as unknown as His extraordinary graces are
familiar. Still, in those exceptional instances where miraculous powers
of any species are bestowed, this bitter death, this personal renewal
(as far as man can renew it) of the agonies of Calvary, is ordinarily
the necessary preparation for admission to the revelations of the Divine
glory, and to the other mysteries of the miraculous life.

The physical nature, then, being thus subdued, and taught to be the
obedient servant of the sanctified will, the history of the Catholic
Church records a long series of instances in which the soul has been
brought into direct communion with God, with angels, and with devils,
more or less through the _sensible_ instrumentality of the bodily
senses, thus spiritualised and exalted to a new office. The ineffable
glories of the _life_ of Christ are renewed in those who have thus