SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
interior being. This therefore is God's grace and His work, and to Him alone belongs eternal glory. From this I see how difficult it is for the learned, more indeed than for the unlearned, to arrive at such a faith, and consequently to conquer themselves so as to be able to smile at themselves; for man's worship of his own understanding must first of all be abolished and overthrown, and this is God's work and not man's. It is also God's work for man to continue him in that state. Faith is in this way separated from our understanding and resides above it. This is pure faith; the other, so long as it is mixed up with our own understanding, is impure. Man's understanding must be put in bonds, and under the government of faith. The ground of faith however must be this, that He who has spoken it is God over all and Truth itself. That we must become like little children is to be understood, it seems, in this sense. . . . Faith then is purely God's gift, and is received by man when he lives according to the commandments of God and continually prays to God for it."
Such experience and testimony is most valuable on the part of him who was at the very time en-
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