exercise.

Among books, he recommended chiefly, _The Spiritual Combat_, _The Imitation
of Jesus Christ_, _The Method of Serving God_, _Grenada_, _Blosius_,
and such like. Among the virtues, as you know well, his favourites
were gentleness and humility, charity--without which others are of no
value--being always pre-supposed.

On this subject of advancement towards perfection, he speaks thus in the
ninth of his Conferences:

"If you ask me, 'What can I do to acquire the love of God?' I answer,
_Will_; i.e., _try_ to love Him; and instead of setting to work to find out
how you can unite your soul to God, put the thing in practice by a frequent
application of your mind to Him. I assure you that you will arrive much
more quickly at your end by this means than in any other way.

"For the more we pour ourselves out the less recollected we shall be, and
the less capable of union with the Divine Majesty, who would have all we
are without reserve."

He continues: "One actually finds souls who are so busy in thinking how
they shall do a thing that they have no time to do it. And yet, in what
concerns our perfection, which consists in the union of our soul with the
Divine Goodness, there is no question of knowing much; but only of doing."

Again, in the same Conference, he says: "It seems to me that those of whom
we ask the road to Heaven are very right in answering us as those do who
tell us that, in order to reach such a place, we must just go on putting
one foot before the other, and that by this means we shall arrive where we