"I am resolved to save my soul." And in spite of her opposition he entered religion; but after some time his ardor cooled, and tepidity stole into his heart. His mother died, and a little after her death he was seized with a dangerous malady. In his sickness he thought he saw himself before the judgment-seat of God, and his mother reproaching him with the violation of his first resolution: My son, said she, you have forgotten the words, "I am resolved to save my soul," by which you replied to all my entreaties. You have become a religious, and is it thus you live? He recovered from his infirmity, and, reflecting on his first fervor, he began a life of holiness, and practised such mortifications that his companions advised him to moderate his austerities. To their admonitions he answered: "If I have not been able to bear the rebuke of my mother, how shall I, if I abuse his graces, support the reproaches of Jesus Christ in judgment?" The reading of the Lives of the saints is very profitable to us; their examples humble us, and make us know and feel our own miseries. The poor understand their poverty only when they see the treasures of the rich.
VI. The sixth means is, not to lose courage when you perceive that you have not as yet arrived at the perfection to which you aspire. To be discouraged by the imperfections which you desire to correct, would be to yield to a great illusion of the devil. St. Philip Neri used to say, that to become a saint is not the work of a day. It is related in the Lives of the Fathers, that a certain monk, after having begun his religious career with great fervor, relaxed his zeal, and remained for some time in a state of tepidity; but reflecting on his unhappy condition, he began to sigh after his former piety, and became greatly afflicted because he knew not how to recover it. In this disposition of mind he sought advice from an aged Father. The good Father con-
