What sets the Saints apart from the great number of good souls is that from the beginning they made God the pivot on which they made their whole existence on Earth to revolve, and that they abided constantly in this disposition. They unrolled their whole life's activity under the eye, and in the presence of God. They referred to Him in all things. They never identified themselves with their own life or their own life's tasks. They habitually asked themselves: "What will God say?" They looked upon each call on their human activity as coming, at the very moment of its happening, straight from the lips of God, they did not regard it as something springing from the condition of things. They lived, as it were, in God's house and not in their own. Life's tasks become household duties which they accomplished in such a way as to please the Master, but the tasks were His, not theirs. The value of these tasks for them were God's appointment, and not in that they were materials out of which to fashion for themselves a life and existence accommodated to egoistic ideals.

The revenue of their works went to God and not to themselves for they were not their works, but His. They looked to him in all things; His pleasure was the sole determinant of their activity. Love for Him, the desire to do His will out of love, was what made them do each thing, each day and at every moment of the day. They did merely the things we do, but they did them differently from us in this sense. They did them for God; we do them because they are ours to do, and because in the doing of them we evolve and build up our lives. They regarded their lives from God's angle of vision, not from their own. We wish, for instance, to indulge our own grief, undistracted by the thought of an Absolute Power which may enquire as to how we are bearing it.