In this department Father Le
Moine has acquired much fame, by his work entitled Devotion Made Easy,
composed for this very purpose. The picture which he draws of devotion
in this work is perfectly charming. None ever understood the subject
before him. Only hear what he says in the beginning of his work:
'Virtue has never as yet been seen aright; no portrait of her hitherto
produced, has borne the least verisimilitude. It is by no means
surprising that so few have attempted to scale her rocky eminence. She
has been held up as a cross-tempered dame, whose only delight is in
solitude; she has been associated with toil and sorrow; and, in short,
represented as the foe of sports and diversions, which are, in fact,
the flowers of joy and the seasoning of life.'"
"But, father, I am sure, I have heard, at least, that there have
been great saints who led extremely austere lives."
"No doubt of that," he replied; "but still, to use the language of
the doctor, 'there have always been a number of genteel saints, and
well-bred devotees'; and this difference in their manners, mark you,
arises entirely from a difference of humours. 'I am far from denying,'
says my author, 'that there are devout persons to be met with, pale
and melancholy in their temperament, fond of silence and retirement,
with phlegm instead of blood in their veins, and with faces of clay;
but there are many others of a happier complexion, and who possess
that sweet and warm humour, that genial and rectified blood, which
is the true stuff that joy is made of.
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