Ch. XIV. Spiritual Idleness, the third to seventh developments (paras 1220–1275)

To these two idlenesses, dissipation and sadness, we must add a third; it is a kind of sloth, or general languor, which it is very hard to describe; but the main features of which every one will recognize. Some time has passed since we had a clear view of ourselves. We have got out of sight of ourselves, and are journeying on like men driving in the dark. Then something occurs which wakes us up to a consciousness of our position. We find that we are continually making resolutions, and as continually breaking them. They form, as usual, part of our morning prayer, and in an hour or two they have passed from our minds as though we had never made them. Even if we reflect upon them, and make some little effort to put them into execution, we find that they are utterly nerveless, and without power or animation. We do not exactly turn a deaf ear to the inspirations which we are receiving at all hours, but we are dilatory in carrying them out, and so the time for them passes by, and another duty comes in the way, and it is too late. So that on the whole we hardly correspond to any of our inspirations.

All this is bad enough. But there is added to it a physical feeling of incapacity to make any exertion. It seems to us as if any effort was out of the question; and what is in truth merely a moral malady puts on all the semblance and feeling of a bodily indisposition, and soon causes one. We then begin to make light of serious twinges of conscience, and we are peevish and impatient of any warning or admonition, or of any attempt to bring spiritual matters before us. Everything that every body does seems inopportune, and out of good taste. Without rhyme or reason we have an almost universal nausea of men and things, and we give in to " the spirit of causeless irritation" which characterizes the paralytic, as Sir Walter Scott tells us of Chrystal Croftangry. It is as if life were worn out and we had got to the end of things, as if we had worked our way through the upper coats of existence down to what Bossuet calls " the inexorable ennui which forms the basis of human life." In this state we are not only distracted at prayer, but slovenly also; and even the sacraments we treat with a kind of lazy irreverence and formal familiarity, which it is frightening to think of. In fact our state is a kind of passive possession of the spirit of disgust and sloth; it is as if we had lost the power of being serious, and were numb, or in a trance, so far as spiritual things are concerned. It is this state to which dissipation is always tending; and if we are so unfortunate as not to have checked it in its earlier stages, but find ourselves actually under this oppression, we must rouse ourselves and act with as much vigour as if we had fallen into mortal sin.

A fourth kind of spiritual idleness may be called useless industry, which is a great temptation to active-minded men; for, as I said before, idleness is natural and pleasant to all temperaments, but has different phases for different characters. There is nothing in recreation which hinders our uniting ourselves to God; but there are a variety of unmeritorious occupations in which we can fritter away our time, and in which it is almost impossible for us to have any deliberate or distinct intention to glorify God. It is difficult to specify, but every one knows that recreating and idling are very different things, and that idling much more often consists in doing useless or childish things, than in doing nothing at all. There are many kinds of reading, which are not wrong in themselves, but which for some reasons in our own particular case will dissipate us, or prepare distractions for our meditation, or will feed future temptations, and supply them with images ready at hand, or will be dangerous to us because they will inordinately engross us; and in which, in spite of our intellectual conviction that they are not wrong, we have an interior reproach, which, if we were in a right state of mind, would act as a prohibition. So in these days of cheap and rapid postage we ought to be more jealous of our correspondence than we are. Is it too much to say that every letter we write is more or less a drain upon our spirituality? If this be so, ought we not to make a rule to ourselves against unnecessary letter-writing, against the writing of any letter which either business or social propriety or affection does not render practically unavoidable? Time is precious, and we have little of it; and yet how much is spent in writing letters, and how many pretend that all their letter-writing is safe because it is, they say, a veritable mortification! Attachments are multiplied and strengthened by correspondence, while it increases our objects of anxiety, magnifies our reasons for being nervous and restless, and caters for that idolatry of family ties which nowadays wages such a vigorous warfare against the manliness of Christian sanctity.

Letter-writing tends also to increase the natural exaggeration of our character. We express ourselves in an exaggerated manner, and our style at last transfers its exaggeration to our feeling. We thus form a false estimate of things; and are greatly troubled about small events, or highly excited about low expectations. What is the family circle generally, but ineffable trifles seen through a hugely magnifying medium? It reminds us at every turn of Wordsworth's real sufferer in the workhouse, when she says, I heard my neighbours in their beds complain Of many things which never troubled me! Unreality is another obvious effect of excessive correspondence; for to make much of little things is to be unreal. Sacraments and prayer cease to have their natural and legitimate proportions, when we are so eager, and decisive, and communicative about children, residences, visits, summer plans, and winter projects. We make a romance of ourselves in our letters, and paint life with an artificial rouge because its native complexion is for the most part unhealthy and dull. If our letters turn on religious subjects so much the worse; for then they are full of detraction, levity, and spiritual gossip.

Building castles in the air is another branch of this useless industry, and by far the least innocent. Did any one ever catch himself building a castle in the air, which did not in some way redound to his own honour and praise? Can religious men spend an hour in giving magnificent mental alms, or bearing crosses heroically, or undergoing martyrdom, or evangelizing continents, or ruling churches, or founding hospitals, or entering austere orders, or arranging edifying death-beds, or working miracles at their own tombs, without their being essentially lower and grosser, vainer and sillier men, than they were when the hour began? They acquire a habit of admiring fine things without practising them. It is worse than novel-reading, for here men write as well as read them. They become intoxicated with conceit and sentimentality. It gives a tincture of puerility to all they do, and lowers them in thought, feeling, and purpose. Do not be startled at the strong words, but this castle-building literally desolates and debauches the soul. It passes over it like a ruinous eruption, leaving nothing fresh, green, or fruit-bearing behind it, but a general languor, peevishness, and weariness with God.

There is no doubt that life is dull. But it is surprising how soon youth finds it out. Indeed the pressure of this sense of dulness appears to be more felt in boyhood and girlhood than in the opening years of mature life. Hence it is that young people are often so much given to building castles in the air. This is especially the case with children who have no brothers and sisters, or who are educated at home, or who have uninteresting homes and are not provided with that adequate amount of excitement which is such an essential element in wise education, or who are orphans living with relations, or who are the children of widows, around whom there is an atmosphere of sad stillness and soft melancholy. Children under these circumstances acquire with extraordinary facility a habit of thinking novels, making romances out of their thoughts as a recreation for themselves, romances at the bottom of all whose interesting situations self lies hid, and is often not so much as suspected. Such a habit should be regarded by parents and guardians with the greatest horror, and met by prompt and even severe remedies, remedies often amounting to temporary separation. For this form of castle-building is the ruin of after-life. It is the cause of a great amount of the unhappiness in marriage. I can hardly think of a habit of sin, which would frighten me more in young people than this peculiar form of castle-building; its poison is so penetrating, so tenacious, and so long-lived. Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte gives us a fearful picture of the misery and ruin, which may come of it even in its most favourable form, the form in which self appears to mingle least. A soul corrupted by this habit is the hotbed of every vice. Sin grows in it with almost visible rapidity, attains tropical stature, and brings forth with tropical exuberance. So far as future consequences are concerned, a boy or a girl might as well read the vilest novels all day long, as have a habit of thinking novels in their own heads. It would require a distinct treatise to trace out in all their unsuspected windings the deplorable contaminations of this habit. We must try to believe that no evil habit is incurable; but are there many amongst us who have had the comfort of knowing a case in which this habit was actually and radically cured?

The not managing our recreations well is of sufficient importance to form a fifth kind of spiritual idleness. I have already said that recreation is a matter of immense importance in the spiritual life. The whole tradition of the Church is in favour of it; and I doubt if ever there was a religious house, which persevered in strict observance for any length of time, without the recreations which are traditional in each Order. For an Order without traditions is an Order without life, at least without the full life of maturity. It is either dead, or still an infant. It sounds strange to a man in the world that recreation should be compulsory in religious houses; yet that it is so, is part of the universal heavenly wisdom common to all monastic legislators. But in the world recreation is an affair of much greater difficulty, because so few rules can be given about it. All we can say is, that one very important question concerns the kind of recreation in which we shall indulge. It must be suited to our state of life, and no less so to the particular point of advancement which we have reached in the spiritual life. It must be conformed to our natural character, and it must not throw us with companions who will do our souls an injury. The degree of it is another problem. God's glory must be kept in view, and we must never emancipate ourselves from a moderate fear of dissipation: and above all things it must be seasonable. For an inopportune recreation is always a loss of grace.

It is difficult to exaggerate the results of well-managed recreations. The spirit cannot always be on the stretch. The bow must be unstrung sometimes, or it will spoil. Now a well-managed recreation does three things; it preserves all the grace already acquired without suffering one fraction of it to be lost, or one degree of fervour to evaporate. The love of God runs on from the work into the recreation, and thus the habit of recollection remains unbroken, and we are keeping to the side of our heavenly Father in our amusements as closely as in our work or in our trials. Secondly, it not only keeps together the past, and preserves its spirit, but it gains us strength and freshness, bravery and promptitude, for the future. Old grace is consolidated, and the appetite for new is quickened. Children are said to grow more while they are sleeping than while they are awake. So it is with us in recreation. This is its third function. We grow in it. It is no standing still. It is not only a blessing for the past, and a blessing for the future; it is a present blessing, because it is present growth. It increases our cheerfulness; and whatever makes us cheerful in devotion, gives us more power. It would be a great thing if recreation merely kept us from sin, by filling up and occupying vacant hours when the infirmity of human nature compels us to intermit our direct attention to religious things. We should owe to it our preservation from a thousand sins of thought, and dissipating inutilities both of mind and heart. But this is far below its real work. Its function is not less important in the spiritual life than is that of sleep in the natural life; and, like sleep, it has need of a wise, considerate, and firm legislation.

I shall conclude the subject of recreation with the advice of Scaramelli. If our spirit ask of us imperfect things, such as diversions, conversation, and superfluous alleviations, which are not called for either by our health or the discharge of our relative duties, the laws of perfection require us to mortify ourselves. I know that these recreations are the very food of those who are weak in spirit; as the apostle says, He that is weak, let him eat herbs: for, being deprived of the consolations which grace brings to pure souls, they feed their hunger and weariness with these earthly consolations. Richard of St. Victor says that a man finds food in his own nature, the food of sweetness, and food in accidental causes, such as prosperity and success. But this is not the spiritual food wherewith Christ refreshed Himself. Nevertheless it is the food of the imperfect, the potherbs of the weak: and is often useful food; for it partly heals and soothes the disease of sloth, which the mind suffers because of the penury of grace. But persons who are seriously bent on the attainment of perfection must deprive themselves of these useless recreations, so as to dispose themselves to receive from God a greater abundance of grace and heavenly benedictions. If our spirit asks of us anything concerning food, sleep, clothing, and diversion, which is necessary to the maintenance of life or the preservation of health or the right performance of our duties, or anything which obedience, fittingness, and right reason also require, we must condescend to its requests and indulge ourselves in the necessary recreations. But in these cases a spiritual man must be careful to purify his intention, and to protest to himself that he only condescends to these things in order to do God's holy will, not to satisfy his own natural inclination, to please Him, not to please himself. So that his condescension may be rather to the instincts of nature than to its affections; and even in his condescension he may contrive to contradict his own satisfaction, and seek only the will and pleasure of God. In this manner the human spirit may have its appetite satisfied, without its satisfaction being any impediment to spiritual progress. I am aware that these things are difficult to put in practice, but St. Bernard says that we have but to lean confidently on God, and all will be accomplished, according to that word, I can do all things in Him who strengtheneth me.

A general indifference about the use of our time is a sixth manifestation of spiritual idleness. The use of time is a large subject; and it is one of far greater consequence than many suppose, in those who are aiming at perfection. Bellecius in his work on Solid Virtue gives a whole book to the one act of early rising, which is but a single instance of our use of time. We have to remember that time is the stuff out of which eternity is made, that it is at once precious and irrevocable, and that we shall have to give the strictest account of it at the last. Very few faults are irreparable, but the loss of time is one of those few; and when we consider how easy a fault it is, how frequent, how silent, how alluring, we shall discern something of its real danger. Idleness, moreover, when it has fastened upon us, is a perfect tyranny, a slavery whose shackles are felt whatever limb we move, or even when we are lying still. It is a captivating bondage also, whose very sweetness renders it more perilous. But the worst feature about it is its deceitfulness. No idle man believes himself to be idle, except in the lucid intervals of grace. No one will credit how strong the habit of losing time will rapidly become. To break away from it requires a vehemence and a continuity of effort to which few are equal. Meanwhile the debate-able land which lies between it and lukewarmness is swiftly traversed. The hourly accumulation of minute carelessness is clogging and hampering the soul, while it is also running us fearfully into debt to the temporal justice of God. It makes our life the very opposite of His. His minute notice of us stands in dreadful contrast with our half-intentional and half-unintentional oblivion and disregard of Him. I doubt if a jealous and conscientious use of time can ever, as many spiritual excellences can, become a habit. I suspect time is a thing which has to be watched all though life. It is a running stream, every ripple of which is freighted with some tell-tale evidence, which it hastens to depose with unerring fidelity in that sea which circles the throne of God. It makes us tremble to think of St. Alphonso just after he had made his solemn vow never to waste a moment of time. We feel that a man, who with his humility and discretion dared to commit himself to such a life, could only end by being raised upon the altars of the Church.

The seventh and last development of spiritual idleness is loquacity. Thomas à Kempis says that he never returned to his cell after a conversation, without entering it a worse man than he had left it; and another holy person said that he never in his life had repented of holding his tongue, whereas he had rarely ever spoken without being sorry for it afterwards. What an insight this gives us into the very core of a saint's life! In spirituality when the tired soul seeks some undue vent or recreation, there is no relief, except castlebuilding, more dangerous than loquacity; and it is one of the commonest of temptations. Some are tempted to be loquacious with every body who will be a listener; others only with certain people, who are sympathetic, and with whom to exchange sentiments is to rest their minds. Others are only tempted to talk at wrong times and on wrong subjects; and this is sometimes from the devil, and sometimes from the human spirit. As a general maxim it may be laid down, that in a spiritual person all effusion of heart is undesirable, except to God, and that it is equally undesirable whether it be about God or about some indifferent subject. There is nothing to choose between them. The evil is in the effusion. We fancy it relieves us in temptation. But there never was a greater mistake. With the exception of certain temptations, silence braces us up, where effusion weakens and enervates us. Pious people, before they begin to be saint-like, are notably loquacious; and it is often loquacity which retards the hour when the likeness of the saints will pass upon them, or frustrates the process altogether.

It is plain that every one of these seven idlenesses might be made the subject of a little treatise; but I have said enough for my purpose. Perfection in the world is a difficult affair, and many things are fatal to it. Idleness perhaps slaughters more growths in holiness than anything else; because it is so very hard for persons in the world not to be idle. Everything around us is pusillanimous and exaggerated. The ideas which pass current are little and low. The air we breathe is languor. The types we behold are pompous follies. Of spiritual romance there is enough, of spiritual foppery more than enough, but of healthy mortification and sincere manly devotion less than would seem possible, if the fact were not certain. Thus everything draws us to idleness and to inutility. It is a common observation that religious, of both sexes, are strikingly cheerful. This is owing in no slight degree to the preservation from idleness which rule and community life ensure. We have none of those helps, and therefore we have more to dread from this particular enemy. In fact the danger and the fatal character of idleness may be reckoned among the prominent characteristics of the attempt to attain perfection in the world. We have already found that for perfection in the world a peculiar exercise of patience is necessary, in order to supply the place of a religious rule. So now we must give a more than common attention to the industrious use of time and the discreet management of recreations, in order to meet dangers which religious are beautifully defended from by community life, and a community life invented by a saintly founder. Idleness must be a very prominent object in our warfare, else we shall never attain to the perfection which the saints tell us is open to people in the world.