I am asked to explain that saying attributed to our Blessed Father St. Anthony, that he who prays ought to have his mind so fixed upon God as even to forget that he is praying. Here is the explanation in our Saint's own words. He says : " The soul must be kept steadfastly in this path (that, namely, of love and confidence in God) without allowing it to waste its powers in continually trying to ascertain what precisely it is doing and whether its work is satisfactory. Alas ! our satisfactions and con- solations do not always satisfy God ; they only feed that miserable love and care of ourselves which has to do neither with God nor with the thought of God. Certainly children whom our Lord has set before us as models of the perfection to be aimed at by us are, ^ Sir Edward Cook, The Life of FlorevM Nightingale, i. 489.
22 CEASELESS PRAYER
generally speaking, especially in the presence of their parents, quite untroubled about what is to happen. They cling to them without a thought of providing for themselves. The pleasures their parents procure them they accept in good faith and enjoy in simplicity, without any curiosity whatever as to their causes or effects. The love they feel for their parents and their reliance upon them is all they need. Those whose one des^'g is to please the Divine Lover have neither inclination nor 1^' ^^ to turn back upon themselves, for their minds tend conti ., n
the direction whither love carries them." ^
icnse c ^ So far is this "pray without ceasing" from being -a... ji, because extravagant, that every man's life is in some sense a con- tinual state of prayer. For what is his life's prayer but its ruling passion ? All energies, ambitions and passions are but expressions of a standing nisus in life, of a hunger, a draft, a practical demand upon the future, upon the unattained and the unseen. Every life is a draft upon the unseen. If you are not praying toward God you are toward something else. You pray as your face is set, towards Jerusalem or Babylon. The very egotism of craving life is prayer; the great difference is the object of it. To whom, for what, do we pray ? The man whose passion is habitually set upon pleasure, knowledge, wealth, honour or power is in a state of prayer to these things for them. He prays without ceasing. These are his real gods, on whom he waits day and night. He may from time to time go on his knees in church, and use words of Christian address and petition. He may even feel a momentary unction in so doing. But it is a flicker ; the other devotion is his steady flame. His real God is the ruling passion and steady pur- suit of his life taken as a whole. He certainly does not pray in the name of Christ. And what he worships in spirit and in truth is another God than he addresses at religious times. He prays to an unknown God for a selfish boon. Still he prays. The set and drift of his nature prays. It is the prayer of instinct not of faith. It is the prayer that needs total conversion. But he cannot stop praying either to God or to God's rival — to self, society, world, flesh, or even devil. Every life that is not totally inert is praying either to God or God's adversary .^
3. This attitude, this spiritual communion with God may be carried with us all day. It may pervade all we do, be a light and a joy, a principle and a motive in the midst of every duty, and in
^ J. P Camus, The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales, 246.
* P. T. Forsyth, in Prayer, by Dora Greenwell and P. T. Forsyth.
I THESSALONIANS v. 17 23
every position. In the case of husband or wife or child, parent or friend, or any one that we love sincerely, the love for them is not dropped at the threshold of the door. We cannot always be beside them to lavish endearments, or to whisper affection, but the thought of them goes with us, the sense of their presence comes unbidden to mould and inspire, to elevate and ennoble our whole life and acting. Carry something of that idea into our relations with Go;l. We have hours of close fellowship and converse with God, times when we are alone with Him, when our heart goes out in deeper intensity, in more earnest consecration, times of whisper- ings and breathings of love and tenderness between our soul and God. But the love of God and the thought of God are not con- fined to such times. The thought of God goes with us all the day long. Let us make it the wish and endeavour of our life that every thought, word, and action shall be ruled as if we felt that we were constantly under the eye of Omniscience. Our desire is that all may be done to please Him, that there may be nothing to offend Him, or opposed to what we know to be His will and wish. To have our life full of the consciousness of God, as if we heard ever the voice of God bidding us, and the eye of God looking on us, and the hand of God leading us, to do everything so that He may be pleased with and approve of it, that He may be honoured and glorified — this is what makes the whole life one great connected beautiful prayer.