"You will not always feel like now" ? We said yesterday that such a doctrine is the last we should teach new converts. They should be told that they have only begun in the Christian life and that their piety must consist in making progress. They should be taught to progress and "grow in grace" continually. God says : "The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, and its brightness increases until the middle of the day" (Proverbs 4:18). Now, from whom is the path that becomes darker and darker until the full night ?

One must produce in them such a disposition of mind that the first indications of a decline in their piety or zeal, alarm them and stimulate them to duty. It is not a necessity for new converts to relax. Paul did not fall into laxity. And I do not doubt that this doctrine : "You will not always feel so," is one of the greatest ruses of Satan, to produce the result it predicts.

"Wait to have strength before carrying your cross". This motto is applied to various religious duties, sometimes to prayer, as if prayer were a cross. I have heard advising new converts not to try to pray in their families, not to "try right now" to pray in fraternal meetings. "Wait to have strength." As if one could take strength without exercise. Strength comes from exercise, laziness kills it.

Leave a baby still lying in his cradle, and he will never have strength. Nothing can replace the exercise to produce strength. It is the same for the mind, the affections, the judgment, and the conscience. All the faculties of the soul are strengthened by exercise. I do not need to explain the logic of something everyone knows if the mind is not exercised, the brain does not grow, and we become silly. If the affections are not exercised, one becomes stoical. If he wants to grow in strength, let him go to work.

Jeremy Sourdril