Lukewarmness and generosity with God - Fr Faber

We are quite capable of conceiving a man, a saint be could not be, exempt from all actual sin, and observing to the full all the Commandments in the letter, and yet without generosity to God. It is, of course, a theological impossibility; but we are capable of conceiving it. This sinless man might, without breaking any Commandment, be occasionally dull-hearted with God, grudging Him heroic service and counsels which did not oblige. He might be sometimes inclined to bargain with God, and to think he had now done quite as much as was discreet. Now and then he might give way to the feeling that his obedient life was irksome, because of the unwearied and unremitting sacrifice which it entailed. At intervals he might even have fits of lukewarmness, in matters plainly short of sin. He might look on Jesus without any glow of enthusiasm, and his acts of love might up to a certain point be remiss. All this is possibly and imaginably consistent with entire sinlessness. Yet what is the disposition of this unsinning monster, but the portrait of a devil, or something very like it? And why, except for the absence of all generosity with God? It is just this which stamps, not the unchristian, but the anti-Christian character upon it...

From Growth in Holiness.