BOOKS.
A MANUAL FOR INTERIOR SOULS.*
THIS is a very good translation of one of the most striking of the Roman Catholic manuals of devotion written in the last century. Pere Grou was a Jesuit, who was also in his way a man of great reality and simplicity and truthfulness of nature. He was driven out of France by the Revolution, and ended his days in a great English Catholic house, the house of the Welds of Dorsetshire. There is, of course, a good deal in the spiritual writings of the Jesuits, more especially their extreme and, as we think, unhealthy admiration for implicit obedience to human directors, with which those who are not Roman Catholics cannot at all agree; but it is an impressive thing to read the book of any one who, like Father Grou, really believed with all his heart that it mattered infinitely more whether or not he got his soul into the right order, and submitted himself wholly to the will of God with a cheerful heart, than it mattered whether he enjoyed or suffered, succeeded or failed, lived or died. Nobody can read • Manua/ for Interior Souls. A Collection of Unpublished Writings by the Rev. Father Grou, of the Society of Jesus. Translated by permission from the New Edition of Victor Lecoffre, 90 Sue Bonaparte, Paris. London: S. Azuselm's Society, Agar Street, Charing Cross. 1889. this book without seeing that here was a man who really thought holiness the one great object of life, and who. did not mean by holiness a fastidious and selfish holi- ness, but rather the frank willingness to do the duty God- had appointed in the right spirit, whether that were to take part cordially in a social gathering, or to wrestle alone with a great temptation. Such advice as the following,. for instance, is enough to make one feel that, however we may- differ from Father Grou on points on which his Jesuit training had formed in him a special type of character, we are at least always sure of his sincerity and simplicity and depth of purpose:— "The truly devout man studies to fulfil perfectly all the duties. of his state, and all his really necessary duties of kindness and courtesy to society. He is faithful to his devotional exercises, but he is not a slave to them; he interrupts them, he suspends them, he even gives them up altogether for a time, when any reason of necessity or of simple charity requires it. Provided he does not do his own will, he is always certain of doing the Will of God._ The truly devout man does not run about seeking for good works„ but he waits until the occasion of doing good presents itself to him. He does what in him lies to ensure success ; but he leaves the °wo- of the success to God. He prefers those good works which are obscure and done in secret to those which are brilliant and gain general admiration ; but he does not shrink from these latter ones when they are for the glory of God and the edification of his neigh- bour. The truly devout man does not burden himself with a great quantity of vocal prayers and practices which do not leave him time to breathe. He always preserves his liberty of spirit ; he is neither scrupulous nor uneasy about himself ; he goes on with simplicity and confidence. He has made a determination, once for all, to refuse nothing to God, to grant nothing to self-love, and never to commit a voluntary fault ; but he does not perplex him- self ; he goes on courageously ; he is not too particular. If he falls into a fault, he does not agitate himself ; he humbles himself at the sight of his own weakness ; he raises himself up, and thinks no more about it. He is not astonished at his weaknesses, at his falls or his imperfections ; he is never discouraged. He knows that he can do nothing, but that God can do everything. He does. not rely upon his own good thoughts and resolutions, but simply upon the grace and the goodness of God. If he were to fall a hundred times a day, he would not despair ; but he would stretch• out his hands lovingly to God, and beg of Him to lift him up and to take pity on him. The truly devout man has a horror of evil,. but he has a still greater love of good. He thinks more about practising virtue than about avoiding vice. He is generous, large-hearted, and courageous; and when there is a question of exposing himself to danger for God's sake, he does not fear wounds. In one word, he loves better to do what is good, even at the risk of falling into some imperfection, than to omit it, through fear of the danger of sinning. No one is so amiable in the ordi- nary intercourse of life as a really devout man. He is simple, straightforward, open as the day, unpretentious, gentle, solid, and true ; his conversation is pleasing and interesting ; he can enter into all innocent amusements ; and he carries his condescending kindness and charity as far as possible, short of what is wrong.. Whatever some persons may say, true devotion is never a melancholy thing, either for itself or for others."
That is a passage eminently characteristic of Father Grou. There is a simplicity and naturalness about his piety which distinguishes it from the rather strained and artificial state of mind which English Protestants are too apt to con- found with piety, the evangelical rigour, the sanctimonious manner, the want of heartiness in social life, which so often disfigure our piety. Father Grou aims at making the whole life of the soul thoroughly unaffected and easy, and yet in the truest sense devout ; and in the present day, when so much zeal is spent on reforming the outer world, and so little on reforming the inner world, there is something very striking in the book of a man whose whole faith is that nothing effectual can be done with the outer world at all without a complete revolution within. No doubt a great deal of the zeal for reforming the outer world is really due to a genuine improvement in man's inner world, but a good deal of it is only a form of fussy egotism, and not of a pure origin at all. What pleases us most in Father Grou's Manual is his distrust of conscious attitudes of soul, however sincere they may be,. and his preference for that part of the inner holiness which is unconscious, and has not its eyes fixed upon itself at all_ There is something of the truest depth and subtlety in the following short passage :— " We deceive ourselves if we think that there is no real prayer except that which is express, formal, and sensible, and of which we can give an account to ourselves. And it is because of this mistake that so many persons persuade themselves that they are doing nothing in prayer when there is nothing marked about it,. nothing that their mind or heart can perceive or feel ; and this often induces them to give up their prayer. But they ought to reflect that God • understands,' as David says, the preparation of our hearts;' that He does not need either our words or our thoughts to know the most secret disposition of our souls.; that our real
prayer is found already in germ and substance, in the very root of our will, before it passes into words or thoughts ; in short, that our most spiritual and direct acts precede all reflection, and are neither felt nor perceived unless we are keeping a most careful watch for them. Thus, when some one asked Saint Anthony what was the best method of praying, It is,' said he, • when, in praying, you do not think that you pray.' And what renders this way of praying most excellent, is that self-love can find nothing in it to rest upon, and cannot sully the purity of it by its touch.'
Of course, as we have already said, there is a good deal in this Manual with which it is not possible for any but a Roman Catholic to agree. But even in these passages the profound sincerity of the man obliges him to make reserves which really go far towards undermining his own teaching. For example, Father Grou insists that absolute obedience to a spiritual director is almost the only sure way to obtain the blessing of God. Then he puts the objection :—" But why,' you may still say, should I submit myself to a man who after all may be deceived, and may lead me wrong ?' The man to whom you submit yourself holds the place of God ; you need have no doubts about it ; God has appointed him to guide you in the way of salvation." But then it suddenly occurs to him that he should qualify what he has said. " I am always supposing, however," he adds, " that your director, in all his conversation and his conduct, has never given you any reason to to suspect his faith, or his piety, or his good life, or his capacity, because if the contrary is the case, then you must of course leave him." But what a qualification is there ! If, when- ever you have reason to distrust even your director's capacity, you must of course leave him, nothing can be more obvious than that, instead of standing in the place of God to the soul, he stands only in the place of a questionable human adviser, of whose capacity the soul may at any moment be led to form an unfavourable estimate. So that, after all, the counsel of perfection comes only to this,—that you should follow im- plicitly the best advice so long as you think it the best within your reach, and should cease to follow it the moment you have good reason to doubt its soundness.
Of course we find in the book of Father (Iron what we find even in the Imitatio Christi, the meditations of a mind brought up for the cloister as the truest kind of life. There is the same feeling pervading the book that the deeper human affections are in some sense derogatory to religion ; that there should be no competition between the love of God and the love of man ; that a man is not truly religious who can be so much occu- pied with the state of another's soul that he would, as St. Paul said, be ready to become accursed himself rather than that that other should be lost. Yet it is, to our minds, impos- sible to put the love of one's neighbour in its right place in the interior life, unless every man feels that there are others for whose spiritual life he is no less concerned, if not even more concerned, than for his own, with whom he identifies himself so completely that he cannot even conceive complete rest and peace for himself, unless it includes complete rest and peace for them. It appears to us that in even the most spiritual of the Roman Catholic books of devotion, this state of mind is hardly ever regarded as admissible, and certainly never enters into the calculations of those who write them. The whole language seems to imply that it should be possible to every man to surrender the spiritual destiny of every one, excepting oneself, absolutely and uncomplainingly to the will of God, even though that will should be the will of an austere and justly offended judge. But is it possible that if it is the divine will really to foster the highest and purest affections in men, men should be encouraged to care less for the spiritual life of those whom they love best, than they do even for their own P There is something anti-social in the ascetic teaching of those who treat the love of all creatures as an almost neglectable quantity in the heart of a truly religious man. Surely it ought to be one of the chief constituents of the spiritual life ?
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