1. To live the spiritual life to its fullness we need the
instinctive governances of the Holy Ghost. All day long, and even
all through the hours when consciousness is asleep, the Holy
Spirit is speaking to us in many ways. He is offering us His
heavenly counsel, enlightening our minds to an ever more complete
understanding of the deep truths of faith, and generally imparting
to us that deep knowledge without which we cannot make advance.
Reason and common sense have their own contribution to make in
opening our minds and hearts to a proper interpretation of all
that is about us and within us; but reason and common sense have
themselves also to be supernaturalized, to be illumined by the
light of a far higher plane of truth. Hence the need of this
divine instinct is patent to anyone who considers the purpose and
destiny of the soul. But it is difficult at times to understand
and to grasp surely the words of divine wisdom, since by sin's
coarseness the refinement of the soul is dulled and rendered but
little responsive; or, rather, it is not so much a matter of being
responsive to a message as primarily of hearing and understanding
it. It seems to be very obvious that God must be speaking to me
almost without ceasing; it is equally obvious that very little of
this is noticed.
2. Here, then, am I in the world and needing the governance of
God's instinct. Here, too, is this whispered counsel and
enlightenment of God, perpetually being made to me. Yet, though
made by God, and needed by me, this counsel and enlightenment, I
can be certain, must frequently be entirely lost to me. It is as
though I lived in a perfectly beautiful country, with stretching
landscape about, and beautiful glimpses of hills and woodland, and
yet never saw or appreciated the view; as though heavenly music
were about me, to which I never paid the slightest attention; as
though my best loved friend stood by me and I never lifted my
eyes, and so did not know of his presence. Of course it is really
a great deal worse than that, for I do not need with an absolute
necessity the view, or the music, or the friend; whereas I do most
certainly need this divinely offered help, guidance,
enlightenment. Hence it is clear that neither my need nor God's
instinct suffice. Something else is required by means of which I
am able to make use of that instinct, to hear its message, to
discover its meaning, to apply its advice to myself; else am I no
better than a general who possesses the full plan of his allies,
in all its details, but written in a cypher that he cannot read.
3. To produce this reaction or perception is the work of the
sevenfold gifts. They are habits infused into the soul, which
strengthen its natural powers, and make them responsive to every
breath of God and capable of heroic acts of virtue. By the gifts
my eyes are made able to see what had else been hidden, my ears
quick to catch what had else not been heard; the gifts do not, so
to say, supply eye or ear, but make more delicate, refined,
sensitive, the eye and ear already there. Their business is to
intensify rather than to create powers established in me by grace.
Less excellent necessarily than the theological virtues which
unite me to God, they are yet more excellent than the other
virtues, though, being rooted in charity and thereby linked up
among themselves, they are also part of the dowry that charity
brings in her train. On this account it is clear that from the
moment of Baptism the sevenfold gifts are the possession of the
soul, and whosoever holds one holds all; yet by the sacrament of
Confirmation it would appear certain that something further is
added, some more delicate perception, some livelier sensitiveness;
or it may be, as other theologians point out, that by Confirmation
they are more steadily fixed in the soul, more fully established,
more firmly held. But in any case it is clear what they are to me,
habits whereby I am perfected to obey the Holy Spirit of God.