(3) Eighteen Years of Misery in Prayer.—It is not without very good reason that I have dwelt so long on this part of my life. It will give no one any pleasure to see any one so base as I was. And I wish all who read this to have me in abhorrence. I failed in all obedience, because I was not leaning on my strong pillar of prayer. I passed nearly twenty years of my life on this stormy sea, constantly tossed with tempest and never coming to harbour. It was the most painful life that can be imagined, because I had no sweetness in God, and certainly no sweetness in sin. I was often very angry with myself on account of the many tears I
shed for my faults, when I could not but see how little improvement all my tears made in me. All my tears did not hold me back from sin when the opportunity returned. Till I came to look on my tears as little short of a delusion: and yet they were not. It was the goodness of the Lord to give me such compunction even when it was not as yet accompanied with complete reformation. But the whole root of my evil lay in my not thoroughly avoiding all occasions of sin, and in my confessors, who helped me at that time so little. If they had only told me what a dangerous road it was I was travelling in, and that I was bound to break off all occasions of sin, I do believe, without any doubt, that the matter would have been remedied at once. Nevertheless, I can trace distinctly the mercy of God to me in that all the time I had still the courage to pray. I say courage, because I know nothing in the whole world that requires greater courage than plotting treason against the King, knowing that He knows it, and yet continuing to frequent His presence in prayer. I spent more than eighteen years in that miserable attempt to reconcile God and my life of sin. The reason that I tell and repeat all this so often is that all who read what I write may understand how great is that grace God works in the soul when He gives it a disposition to pray on, even when it has not yet left off all sin. If that soul perseveres, in spite of sin, and temptation, and many relapses, our Lord will bring that soul at last—I am certain of it—to the harbour of salvation, to which He is
surely bringing myself. I will say what I know by experience,—let him never cease from prayer, who has once begun to pray, be his life ever so bad. For prayer is the only way to amend his life, and without prayer it will never be mended. Let him not be tempted of the devil, as I was, to give up prayer on account of his unworthiness. Let him rather believe that if he will only still repent and pray, our Lord will still hear and answer. For myself, very often I was more occupied with the wish to see the end of the hour. I used actually to watch the sand-glass. And the sadness I sometimes felt on entering my oratory was so great, that it required all my courage to force myself in. In the end our Lord came to my help: and, then, when I had done this violence to myself, I found far greater peace and joy than when I prayed with regale and rapture. If our Lord then bore so long with me in all my wickedness, why should any one despair, however wicked he may be? Let him have been ever so wicked up till now, he will not remain in his wickedness so many years as I did after receiving so many graces from our Lord. And this more I will say,—prayer was the true door by which our Lord distributed out all His grace so liberally to me. Prayer and trust. I used indeed to pray for help: but I see now that I committed all the time the fatal mistake of not putting my whole trust in His Majesty. I should have utterly and thoroughly distrusted and detested and suspected myself. I sought for help. I sometimes took great pains to get it. But I did not understand of how little use all that is unless we
root utterly all confidence out of ourselves, and place it at once, and for ever, and absolutely in God. Those were eighteen miserable years.
(4) Aridity in Prayer.—Let no one weary or lose heart in prayer because of aridity. For the Hearer of prayer comes in all such cases very late. But at last He comes. And though He confessedly comes late, He correspondingly makes up to the soul for all His delays, and rewards her on the spot for all her toil, and dryness, and discouragement of many years. I have great pity on those who give way and lose all this through not being taught to persevere in prayer. It is a bad beginning, and very prejudicial to proficiency in prayer, to use it for the gust and consolation that a man receives at the time. I know by my own experience, that he who determines to pray, not much heeding either immediate comfort or dejection, he has got into one of the best secrets of prayer. I am troubled to hear that grave men, and men of learning and understanding, complain that God does not give them sensible devotion. It proceeds from ignorance of the true life of prayer, and from not carrying the cross into prayer as into all the rest of the spiritual life. He who begins to pray should be well told that he begins to plant a fine garden in very bad soil; a soil full of the most noxious and ineradicable weeds. And that after good herbs and plants and flowers have been sown, then he has to weed and water and fence and watch that garden night and day and all his life. Till the Lord of the garden is able to come and recreate and regale Himself where once there was
nothing but weeds, and stones, and noxious vermin. Prayer, howsoever perfect in itself it may be, must always be directed in upon the performance of good works. We must not content ourselves with the gift of prayer, or with liberty and consolation and gust in prayer. We must come out from prayer the most rapturous and sweet only to do harder and ever harder works for God and our neighbour. Otherwise the prayer is not good, and the gusts are not from God. The growth and maturity and fruitfulness of the soul do not stand in liberty in prayer, but in love. And this love is got not by speaking much but by doing and suffering much. For my part, and I have been long at it, I desire no other gift of prayer but that which ends in every day making me a better and better woman. By its fruits your prayer will be known to yourselves and others.
At other times I find myself so arid that I am not able to form any distinct idea of God, nor can I put my soul into an attitude of prayer, though I am in the place of prayer, and though I feel that I know something of God. This mind of mine at such times is like a born fool or some idiot creature that nothing can bind down. I cannot command myself. I cannot properly say one Credo. At such times I laugh bitterly at myself, and see clearly my own natural misery. I come then to see the exceeding favour of the Lord in that He ever holds this insane fool fast in prayer and holiness. What would those who love and honour me think if they saw their friend in this dotage and distraction? I reflect at such times on the great hurt our original sin has
done us. For it is from our first fall that all this has come to us that we so wander from God, and are so often utterly incapable of God. But it is not so much Adam’s sin as my own that works in me all this alienation and inability and aridity. Methinks I love God; but my actions, and the endless imperfections I see in myself, cause me great fear, and deep and inconsolable distress.
(5) Prayer after Sin.—Never let any one leave off prayer on any pretence: great sins committed, or any other pretence whatsoever. For by leaving off prayer the soul will be finally lost, while every return to prayer is new life and new strength, as I am continually telling you. I tell you again that the leaving off of prayer was the most devilish and the most deadly temptation I ever met with.
(6) Meditation in Prayer.—He who prays should often stop to think with whom he speaks: who he himself is who speaks: who Jesus Christ is through whom he speaks: what that country is to which he aspires: how he may best please Him who dwells there: and what he is to do so that his character and disposition may suit with God’s disposition and character. Mental prayer, as I am wont to call it, is the constant meditation of such things as these. And mental prayer ought to be endeavoured after by all, though they have no virtues, because it is the beginning of them, and therefore the one interest of all men is at once to begin such prayer. But it will be exercised with no little difficulty unless