Our next effort must be to wean our affections from created things, and all the delights and distractions of this lower life, which drag down the souls of men and slow their movement toward God.
This we must do by filling our minds with a deep persuasion of the emptiness and vanity of worldly enjoyments.
✦ The Deep Persuasion
Scougal names the next step: weaning the heart. Not by force — by persuasion. Filling the mind with the truth of what the world actually is: empty. Vain. The weaning happens not when the world is ripped away but when the soul sees through it. 🙏
Everyone can make speeches about the vanity of the world; but how few truly believe what they say!
We can say that all the pleasures of the world are vanity and nothing; and yet these "nothings" take up all our thoughts.
The vanities we shut out through the door get in by the back entrance.
After being disappointed a thousand times, we keep repeating the experiment. The slightest difference is enough to trick us into expecting from one thing the satisfaction we missed in another.
The vanities return — in by the back entrance. And the most honest observation in the book: after a thousand disappointments, we keep trying. The definition of the natural life: repeating the experiment and expecting different results. This is not stupidity. It is thirst. The soul was made for satisfaction. The question is not whether the soul will reach. The question is what it reaches for.
The soul of man has in it a raging and unquenchable thirst — an immaterial kind of fire, always reaching for some object in which it hopes to find happiness.
Were it once torn away from the world, it would quickly search for some higher object; and being no longer dazzled by glittering vanities, it would fix on that supreme and all-sufficient Good, where it would discover such beauty and sweetness as would captivate and overpower all its affections.
✦ The Fire That Reaches
The thirst is not the problem. The thirst is the proof that the soul was made for God. The fire that reaches for the world — when torn free — reaches for God instead. The same fire. The same urgency. But now aimed at the supreme Good. Smith said: none but God can produce this hunger, and only God can satisfy it. Scougal says the same: the thirst was always God-shaped. Only the direction was wrong. 🙏
The love of the world and the love of God are like the scales of a balance: as the one falls, the other rises.
When our natural desires prosper, religion grows faint; but when earthly objects wither and lose their beauty, then the seeds of grace take root, and the divine life begins to flourish and prevail.
The balance of the world — how real this is!
Personally I trust the Lord to keep me in rise. The other balance I know is the way to death. The wages of sin is death.
I totally rely on the Lord to keep me in check and to keep my eyes focused on Him. 🙏
Le's response is the response of the whole journey. I trust the Lord to keep me in rise. Not: I will keep myself in rise. Not: my discipline will maintain the balance. I trust the Lord. She knows the other side. She has seen the way to death. And she does not trust herself to maintain the rise. She trusts the Lord to maintain it.
This is Murray's absolute surrender. This is Scougal's divine life — sustained by God, not by the soul's own strength. The shipwrecked man does not balance the scales. The Lord keeps them. The Lord keeps her. The Lord keeps the eyes focused. And the seeds of grace — planted at midnight, watered every morning, tended every evening — have taken root. And the divine life flourishes and prevails.
"I trust the Lord to keep me in rise."
Le · Caldas da Rainha · June 30, 2026 · The balance maintained — not by me, but by HimIn by the Back Entrance
The vanities shut out through the door return. After a thousand disappointments, we keep trying. The natural life repeats the experiment endlessly.
The Raging Thirst
An immaterial fire always reaching. The thirst is proof the soul was made for God. The same fire, aimed at the supreme Good, finds what it always sought.
The Balance
The love of the world and the love of God — as one falls, the other rises. When earthly objects wither, the seeds of grace take root.
Eyes Focused on Him
I trust the Lord to keep me in rise. I totally rely on Him. The balance is not maintained by my strength. It is maintained by His.