Motives for Prayer

222. When the will, the moment it feels any joy in sensible things, rises upwards in that joy to God, and when sensible things move it to pray, it should not reject them, it may and should make use of them for so holy an exercise ; because sensible things, under these con ditions, subserve the end for which God created them : namely, to be occasions of making Him better known and loved.

223. He whose senses are subject to the Spirit, purged from all sensible objects, even in his first move ments, elicits delight in the sweet knowledge and contemplation of God.

224. As it is a truth of sound philosophy that the life of every creature is in harmony with its constitution, so is it clear beyond all contradiction, that he whose life is spiritual — the animal life being mortified — must be wholly tending towards God.

225. The will of a devout person rests chiefly on the invisible ; he requires but few images for his use, and these are such as are more conformable to divine, than to human, taste, ordering himself herein after the ways of the other world, and not of this.

226. The chief thing to be regarded in images is devotion and faith ; if these be absent, the image will not be sufficient. What a perfect living image our Lord was upon earth, and yet those who had no faith, though . they were about Him, and saw His wonderful works, were none the better.