First.  God alone can instruct us in our duty.  The teachings of men, however wise and well disposed they may be, are still ineffectual, if God do not shed on the soul that light which opens the mind to truth.  The imperfections of our fellow creatures cast a shade over the truths that we learn from them.  Such is our weakness that we do not receive, with sufficient docility, the instructions of those who are as imperfect as ourselves.  A thousand suspicions, jealousies, fears, and prejudices prevent us from profiting, as we might, by what we hear from men; and tho they announce the most serious truths, yet what they do weakens the effect of what they say.  In a word, it is God alone who can perfectly teach us.

St. Bernard said, in writing to a pious friend—­If you are seeking less to satisfy a vain curiosity than to get true wisdom, you will sooner find it in deserts than in books.  The silence of the rocks and the pathless forests will teach you better than the eloquence of the most gifted men.  “All,” says St. Augustine, “that we possess of truth and wisdom is a borrowed good flowing from that fountain for which we ought to thirst in the fearful desert of this world, that, being refreshed and invigorated by these dews from heaven, we may not faint upon the road that conducts us to a better country.  Every attempt to satisfy the cravings of our hearts at other sources only increases the void.  You will be always poor if you do not possess the only true riches.”  All light that does not proceed from God is false; it only dazzles us; it sheds no illumination upon the difficult paths in which we must walk, along the precipices that are about us.

Our experience and our reflections can not, on all occasions, give us just and certain rules of conduct.  The advice of our wisest, and most sincere friends is not always sufficient; many things escape their observation, and many that do not are too painful to be spoken.  They suppress much from delicacy, or sometimes from a fear of transgressing the bounds that our friendship and confidence in them will allow.  The animadversions of our enemies, however severe or vigilant they may be, fail to enlighten us with regard to ourselves.  Their malignity furnishes our self-love with a pretext for the indulgence of the greatest faults.  The blindness of our self-love is so great that we find reasons for being satisfied with ourselves, while all the world condemn us.  What must we learn from all this darkness?  That it is God alone who can dissipate it; that it is He alone whom we can never doubt; that He alone is true, and knoweth all things; that if we go to Him in sincerity, He will teach us what men dare not tell us, what books can not—­all that is essential for us to know.