merchant never finds in one country all he wants, but often travels into different countries to find many things; even so a religious ought to seek for his spiritual advancement not only in prayer, meditation, and interior consolations, but also in resisting temptations, in mortifying his senses, in suffering injuries, pain, and labour, and in discharging his duty on all occasions that present themselves.
If we seek, in this manner, after virtue, we shall be rich in a short time. " If you seek for wisdom," says Solomon, " as men seek for riches; and if you dig for it, as you would to find a treasure, you shall then know what is the fear of the Lord, and you shall learn the true science of God." (Prov. ii. 4, 5.) What God demands of us here, says St. Bernard, is not much; since for gaining the treasure of true wisdom, which is God himself, he requires no more exertion on our part than is usually made to gain earthly riches which are subject to a thousand accidents, and whereof the enjoyment is so short and so troublesome. To keep, then, a proportion in things, were it not proper, that as there is an infinite difference between spiritual and temporal goods, so there should also be as great a difference between our manner of seeking the one and that of our seeking the other. It is also a great shame and confusion to us, that worldly men desire those things that are pernicious to them with more earnestness than we desire those things that are of the greatest advantage, and that they run faster to death, than we do to life.
It is set down in Ecclesiastical History (Part II. B. VI. c. i.) that the holy Abbot Pambo going one day to Alexandria, and meeting with a courtezan very finely dressed, began to weep bitterly, crying out several times: Alas! what a wretched man I am! And his disciples having asked him, why he wept so bitterly? he answered: Would you not have me weep to see this unfortunate woman take more care and diligence to please men, than I do to please God; and to see her take more pains to lay snares for men, in order to drag them into hell, than I use endeavours to gain them to Jesus Christ, and to conduct them to heaven? We read also of St. Francis Xaverius that he was ashamed and extremely troubled on seeing that merchants had arrived before him in Japan, and that they had been more diligent to sail thither to sell their merchandise, than he had been to carry thither the treasures of the gospel, to propagate the faith, and to increase the kingdom of God. Let us adopt
