"Anxiety and misgiving," wrote Fénelon, "proceed solely from love of self. The love of God accomplishes all things quietly and completely; it is not anxious or uncertain. The spirit of God rests continually in quietness. Perfect love casteth out fear. It is in forgetfulness of self that we find peace. Happy is he who yields himself completely, unconsciously, and finally to God. Listen to the inward whisper of His Spirit and follow it--that is enough; but to listen one must be silent, and to follow one must yield."
The quiet and perfect obedience to the divine will, taught by Fénelon, has nothing in common with a mere passive and blind acceptance of events as they occur. Obedience to the Heavenly Vision is not in standing still, but in following. It finds its best expression in energy and not in inactivity. The more absolutely one abandons himself to the divine will, the more unceasingly will he fill every hour with effort toward the working out of the higher and the more ideal conditions. An ideal once revealed is meant to be realized. That is the sole reason for its being revealed at all, and the way of life is to unfalteringly work toward its realization. It is a curious fact that there can be no achievement of life so improbable or so impossible that it cannot be realized by the power--the absolutely invincible power--of mental fidelity. Let one hold his purpose in thought, and the unseen forces thus generated are working for it day and night. Like one of the new inventions in electricity, so thought--a force infinitely more potent than electricity--sets up a certain rate of vibration in the spiritual atmosphere and works as with irresistible sway. The individual who is held to possess great strength of will is, really, simply the one capable of holding the thought, of keeping a certain tenacity of purpose. This power alone redeems one from living on shifting sands, and being perhaps, at last, engulfed and swallowed up in the quicksands of his own shattered visions and ideals, which never grew to fulfilment because of his infirmity of will and his closing his eyes to the star that had shone in his firmament.
The very pain and trial and multiplying obstacles that one may encounter who definitely sets his steps along a certain way, are only helps, not hindrances. One gains the strength of that which he overcomes. He transforms obstacles into stepping-stones. For we live and move and have our being in an ethereal atmosphere, which is universal, and which unerringly registers every thought and every energy, and transmutes these into living forces. Thought is creative, and if the thought be held with sufficient intensity, it acts upon every element that has to do with the final achievement. Imagination--which is simply clairvoyant vision--discerns the ideal in the dim distance, and thought is the motive force by means of which it is achieved. To be "infirm of will" is, therefore, the greatest of misfortunes, as it inevitably produces complete failure in all the affairs of life. However hopeless a certain combination of events may look, it really is not so. Nothing is ever hopeless, because nothing is final. Conditions are forever flowing like a river, and may be modified and transformed at any moment.