"IV.---In my prayers my mind has difficulty in finding anything to say to God.My heart is not in it, or it is inaccessible to the thoughts of my mind.
"REPLY.-It is not necessary to say much to God.Oftentimes one does not speak much to a friend whom one is delighted to see; one looks at him with pleasure; one speaks certain short words to him which are mere expressions of feeling.The mind has no part in them, or next to none; one keeps repeating the same words.It is not so much a variety of thoughts that one seeks in intercourse with a friend, as a certain repose and correspondence of heart.It is thus we are with God, who does not disdain to be our tenderest, most cordial,-most familiar, most intimate friend.A word, a sigh, a sentiment, says all to God;it is not always necessary to have transports of sensible tenderness;a will all naked and dry, without life, without vivacity, without pleasure, is often purest in the sight of God.In fine, it is necessary to content one's self with giving to Him what He gives it to give, a fervent heart when it is fervent, a heart firm and faithful in its aridity, when He deprives it of sensible fervor.It does not always depend on you to feel; but it is necessary to wish to feel.Leave it to God to choose to make you feel sometimes, in order to sustain your weakness and infancy in Christian life; sometimes weaning you from that sweet and consoling sentiment which is the milk of babes, in order to humble you, to make you grow, and to make you robust in the violent exercise of faith, by causing you to sweat the bread of the strong in the sweat of your brow.Would you only love God according as He will make you take pleasure in loving Him? You would be loving your own tenderness and feeling, fancying that you were loving God.Even while receiving sensible gifts, prepare yourself by pure faith for the time when you might be deprived of them and you will suddenly succumb if you had only relied on such support.
"O forgot to speak of some practices which may, at the beginning, facilitate the remembrance of the offering one ought to make to God, of all the ordinary acts of the day.
"1.Form the resolution to do so, every morning, and call yourself to account in your self-examination at night.
"2.Make no resolutions but for good reasons, either from propriety or the necessity of relaxing the mind, etc.Thus, in accustoming one's self to retrench the useless little by little, one accustoms one's self to offer what is not proper to curtail.
"3.Renew one's self in this disposition whenever one is alone, in order to be better prepared to recollect it when in company.
"4.Whenever one surprises one's self in too great dissipation, or in speaking too freely of his neighbor, let him collect himself and offer to God all the rest of the conversation.
"5.To flee, with confidence, to God, to act according to His will, when one enters company, or engages in some occupation which may cause one to fall into temptation.The sight of danger ought to warn of the need there is to lift the heart toward Him by one who may be preserved from it."We both thanked her as she finished reading, and I begged her to lend me the volume that I might make the above copy.
I hope I have gained some valuable hints from this letter, and that Ishall see more plainly than ever that it is a religion of principle that God wants from us, not one of mere feeling.
Helen remarked that she was most struck by the assertion that one cannot forestall the graces that belong to a more advanced period.
She said she had assumed that she ought to experience all that the most mature Christian did, and that it rested her to think of God as doing this work for her, making repentance, for instance, a free gift, not a conquest to be won for one's self.
Miss Clifford said that the whole idea of giving one's self to God in such little daily acts as visiting, shopping, and the like, was entirely new to her.
"But fancy," she went on, her beautiful face lighted up with-enthusiasm, "what a blessed life that must be, when the base things of this world and things that are despised, are so many links to the invisible world and to the things God has chosen!""In other words," I said, "the top of the ladder that rests on earth reaches to heaven, and we may ascend it as the angels did in Jacob's dream.""And descend too, as they did," Helen put in, despondently.
"Now you shall not speak in that tone," cried Miss Clifford."Let us look at the bright side of life, and believe that God means us to be always ascending, always getting nearer to Himself, always learning something new about Him, always loving Him better and better.To be sure, our souls are sick, and of themselves can't keep 'ever on the wing,' but I have had some delightful thoughts of late from just hearing the title of a book, 'God's method with the maladies of the soul.' It gives one such a conception of the seeming ills of life ;to think of Him as our Physician, the ills all remedies, the deprivations only a wholesome regimen, the losses all gains.Why, as I study this individual case and that, see how patiently and persistently He tries now this remedy, now that, and how infallibly He cures the souls that submit to His remedies, I love Him so! I love Him so! And I am so astonished that we are restive under His unerring hand! Think how He dealt with me.My soul was sick unto death, sick with worldliness, and self-pleasing and folly.There was only one way of making me listen to reason, and that was just the way He took.He snatched me right out of the world and shut me up in one room, crippled, helpless, and alone, and set me to thinking, thinking, thinking, till I saw the emptiness and shallowness of all in which Ihad hitherto been involved.And then He sent you and your mother to show me the reality of life, and to reveal to me my invisible, unknown Physician.Can I love Him with half my heart? Can I be asking questions as to how much I am to pay towards the debt I owe Him ?"By this time Helen's work had fallen from her hands and tears were in her eyes.
