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It must grow by a succession of abstinences from returning evil for evil, by a succession of leaving off contention before the first angry word escapes. It may help to cultivate this virtue, to practise some forethought.
The saint relates how for many months she refrained from prayer, and as we know that prayer was the source of all her joy, a joy touching ecstasy, often above the earth and resplendent with vision, we can imagine the anguish that these abstinences must have caused her. "To destroy confidence in God the Demon spread a snare, his most insidious snare.
He fixes the date of the hunt, prepares himself by a series of abstinences, and at the appointed time assembles the men, recites spells addressed to ancestors, and passing along the lines of the hunters imitates the movements of the animal sought.
Abstention from this dissipation now added a few weekly shillings to the great adventure fund. To the same end I gave up cigarettes, confining myself to the one foul old briar pipe. And there were other such minor abstinences, all designed to increase the weight of the envelope I handed across the bank counter each week.
He avoided the churchyard, and took a path across the fields. He was hungry and thirsty. In one of his sermons there occurred this passage: "We should habituate ourselves to hold our appetites in check. By constantly accustoming our selves to abstinence little abstinences in our daily life we alone can attain to that true spirituality without which we cannot hope to know God."
Later on, he was wont to say that this poverty had been the best possible thing for him, its enforced abstinences having come just at the time when he had begun to "wallow" his word for any sort of excess; and "wallowing" was undoubtedly a peril to which Norbert's temper particularly exposed him.
As regards abstinences, indeed, it would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be aware that the action is one that, if practised generally, would be generally injurious, and to not feel a sense of obligation on that ground; but such an amount of regard for the general interest is required under every system of morals.
That rule means neither painful nor frantic abstinences nor any forced way of living. Purity, cleanliness, health, none of these things are for themselves, they are for use; none are magic, all are means. The sword must be sharp and clean. That does not mean that we are perpetually to sharpen and clean it which would weaken and waste the blade.
His talk, alas, was distinguished, like himself, by irresolution: it disliked to be troubled with conditions, abstinences, definite fulfilments; loved to wander at its own sweet will, and make its auditor and his claims and humble wishes a mere passive bucket for itself!
The food was doubtless necessary after the great trial of the flesh she had been through, likewise pleasant after her long abstinences. She grew happy in the tide of new blood flowing in her veins, and might easily have abandoned herself in the seduction of these carnal influences. But her moral nature was of tough fibre, and made mute revolt.
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