the more we give to God the more we
receive.

On going to partake of the Blessed Sacrament we do well to banish
from the heart and mind all thought of what it may please God to
still further give us and to make an offering _to_ God. The only way
we can make an offering to God is upon the wings of love, and upon
this love we hold up before Him the bread and wine as the Body and
Blood of our Redeemer, repeating and repeating in our heart, "I eat
and drink This as a memorial before Thee of the Perfect Love and
Sacrifice of Jesus Christ." When we so do with _great_ love in our
heart we find that we are able sensibly to receive great grace.

_Of Prayer_

Of the many kinds and degrees of prayer first perhaps we learn the
prayer of the lips, then that of the mind, then the prayer of the heart,
and finally the prayer of the soul--prayer of a totally different mode
and order, prayer of a strange incalculably great magnetic power,
prayer which enables us to count on help from God as upon an
absolute and immediate certainty.

We find this about perfect prayer that it is not done as from a
creature beseeching a Creator at an immense distance, but is done as
a love-flash which, eating up all distance, is immediately before and
with the Creator and is accompanied by vivid certainty at the heart;
this latter is active faith; we have too much perhaps of that kind of
faith which may be named waiting or passive faith.

This combination of love with active faith instantly opens to us
God's help. We may or may not receive this in the form anticipated
by the creature, but later perceive that we have received it in exactly
that form which would most lastingly benefit us.

After a while we cease almost altogether from petitioning anything
for ourselves, having this one desire only: that by opening ourselves
to God by means of offering Him great love, we receive Himself.

_Of Contemplation_

To enter the contemplation of God is not absence of will, nor
laziness of will, but great energy of will because of, and for, love: in
which love-condition the energy of the soul will be laid bare to the
energy of God, the two energies for the time being becoming closely
united or oned, in which state the soul-will or energy is wholly lifted
into the glorious God-Energy, and a state of unspeakable bliss and
an _immensity_ of _living_ is immediately entered and shared by
the soul. Bliss, ecstasy, rapture, all are energy, and according as the
sou