DRESSER: Voices of Freedom, 46.

[58] Dresser: Living by the spirit, 58.

[59] Dresser: Voices of Freedom, 33.

"The time will come when in the busy office or on the noisy street you
can enter into the silence by simply drawing the mantle of your own
thoughts about you and realizing that there and everywhere the Spirit
of Infinite Life, Love, Wisdom, Peace, Power, and Plenty is guiding,
keeping, protecting, leading you. This is the spirit of continual
prayer.[60] One of the most intuitive men we ever met had a desk at a
city office where several other gentlemen were doing business
constantly, and often talking loudly. Entirely undisturbed by the many
various sounds about him, this self-centred faithful man would, in any
moment of perplexity, draw the curtains of privacy so completely about
him that he would be as fully inclosed in his own psychic aura, and
thereby as effectually removed from all distractions, as though he were
alone in some primeval wood. Taking his difficulty with him into the
mystic silence in the form of a direct question, to which he expected a
certain answer, he would remain utterly passive until the reply came,
and never once through many years' experience did he find himself
disappointed or misled."[61]

[60] Trine: In Tune with the Infinite, p. 214

[61] Trine: p. 117.

Wherein, I should like to know, does this INTRINSICALLY differ from the
practice of "recollection" which plays so great a part in Catholic
discipline? Otherwise called the practice of the presence of God (and
so known among ourselves, as for instance in Jeremy Taylor), it is thus
defined by the eminent teacher Alvarez de Paz in his work on
Contemplation.

"It is the recollection of God, the thought of God, which in all places
and circumstances makes us see him present, lets us commune
respectfully and lovingly with him, and fills us with desire and
affection for him.... Would you escape from every ill? Never lose
this recollection of God, neither in prosperity nor in adversity, nor
on any occasion whichsoever it be. Invoke not, to excuse yourself from
this duty, either the difficulty or the importance of your business,
for you can always remember that God sees you, that you are under his
eye. If a thousand times an hour you forget him, reanimate a thousand
times the recollection.

If you cannot practice this exercise continuously, at least make
yourself as familiar with it as possible; and, like unt