Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/18

pardon of God for having so entirely loved a human creature. At the bedside of his dying brother he studied religion, and he there found in it a virtue superior to all others, the virtue of piety. Thenceforward his life was one of faith, love, and expiation; of devotion to the memory of his brother, and of prayer for the repose of his soul. Donoso wept and believed.

In reply to those who attributed this conversion to his own merits before God, he said: I cannot remember to have merited anything; but a certain feeling may have caused me cheerfully to return to God, for I can never behold a poor man at my door without thinking that I see in him a brother. He thus expresses himself, in a letter to Mr. Alberico de Blanche-Ruffin: "As you see, neither my understanding nor my reason have had any part whatever in my conversion. Had I depended upon my limited talents or my miserable reason, I should have descended into the tomb without coming to the knowledge of the true faith. The mystery of my conversion (for in every conversion a mystery is always involved) is a mystery of love. I did not love God; he wished me to love him, and I loved him, and was converted through love."

Notwithstanding his learning, Donoso, when converted, entered upon the path of Christian ignorance, and commenced to become sublime, by learning to be as a simple child, and, like the pilot of Homer, who at times watched the stars, and at times the sea, Donoso was not so entirely absorbed in celestial contemplations as to neglect mundane affairs: but, what is more meritorious, he considered this life as a necessary trial. We now behold him in full possession of truth and virtue, without being subjected to incessant contests, to harassing doubts, to cruel solicitude, to all of which had been added the difficulty of preserving the propensities of such a temperament as his in perfect equipoise. The works of St. Teresa and those of Father Lewis of Grenada, "the first mystic in the world," afforded nutriment to his own religious en-