Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious
faith; and this, of course, you also know. The turbulent billows of the
fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to
him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly
vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant
things. The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full
of equanimity, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring
forth. This is charmingly illustrated by a little work with which I
recently became acquainted, "The Practice of the Presence of God, the
Best Ruler of a Holy Life, by Brother Lawrence, being Conversations and
Letters of Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, Translated from the French."[7]
I extract a few passages, the conversations being given in indirect
discourse. Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite friar, converted at Paris in
1666. "He said that he had been footman to M. Fieubert, the Treasurer,
and that he was a great awkward fellow, who broke everything. That he
had desired to be received into a monastery, thinking that he would
there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he should
commit, and so he should sacrifice to God his life, with its pleasures;
but that God had disappointed him, he having met with nothing but
satisfaction in that state.
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