THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE towards evil — a tendency to seek its own interest rather than God’s will, and a tendency to judge of its own interest by the vivid picturing of the imagination and not by the judgment of the reason. Grace does not of itself remove this unhappy bias. Man’s nature is by grace given powers to act above its own level: yet it retains that uneasy pull towards selfinterest and the too-dominant imagination. Grace helps it, principally, because these three new modes of action bring God closer and clearer. But the bias in the nature is cured only by steady striving to work with grace towards the will of God. And the striving may be marred by many a yielding — the lesser yielding of venial sin, the graver yielding of deliberate rejection of God for self. By such an act, the bond of love is broken, for one cannot at the same time love God and be in rebellion against Him : in technical language the soul loses the virtue of charity. The soul in mortal sin thus necessarily loses charity: it may retain hope and faith,* but without charity hope and faith are not supeinaturally alive and cannot sanctify the soul. The Supernatural Life and the virtue of charity are inseparable: the one cannot be without the other. Thus the first result of the possession of the Super* Faith, hope and charity being habits are only destroyed by actions contrary to them. Mortal sin — being rejection of God — is contra^ to love of God and therefore means the loss of Charity. But it is not necessarily contrary to Faith and Hope. Hope will be lost as a result of a mortal sin directly contrary to it — e.g. , despair — and Faith likewise by a mortal sin directly contrary to it — €,g., unbelief. 125