Help yourselves, and He will
help you. If you ask for His help, He will give it. But what is the
use of His giving it, if you do not use it? To him who has shall be
given, and he shall have more; but from him who has not shall be
taken away even what he seems to have. Therefore do not merely pray,
but struggle and try YOURSELVES. Train yourselves as St. Paul did;
train yourselves to keep your temper; train yourselves to bear
unpleasant things for the sake of your duty; train yourselves to keep
out of temptation; train yourselves to be forgiving, gentle, thrifty,
industrious, sober, temperate, cleanly, as modest as little children
in your words, and thoughts, and conduct. And God, when He sees you
trying to be all this, will help you to be so. It may be hard to
educate yourselves. Life is a hard business at best--you will find
it a thousand times harder, though, if you are slaves to your own
fleshly sins. But the more you struggle against sin, the less hard
you will find it to fight; the more you resist the devil, the more he
will flee from you; the more you try to conquer your own bad
passions, the more God will help you to conquer them; it may be a
hard battle, but it is a sure one. No fear but that everyone can, if
he will, work out his own salvation, for it is God Himself who works
in us to will and to do of His good pleasure.
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