contained in the book of De Rojas, sprang from his erroneous doctrine that explicit acts of the understanding and will in prayer should be suppressed in order to eradicate the implicit acts, the habits, and tendencies of the soul, by which its intention and desire are directed toward its own supreme good and felicity in God. But this is no reason against the method itself, apart from a perversion no trace of which is to be found in Father Baker’s own language. The well-known and justly-revered Father Ramière, S.J., in his introduction to a little work by another Jesuit, Father De Caussade, entitled _L’Abandon à la Providence Divine_, remarks in reference to the doctrine of that book, which is quite similar in its spirit to the _Sancta Sophia_, as follows: “There is no truth so luminous that it does not change into error from the moment when it suffers diminution or exaggeration; and there is no nourishment, however salutary to the soul, which, if imprudently used, may not produce in it the effect of a noxious poison.” It would seem that some are so afraid of the perversion of the luminous truths of mystical theology, and of the abuse of the salutary nourishment it affords to the soul, that they would desire to avoid the danger by shutting out the light and locking up the food in a closet. They would restrict all persons whatever, in every stage and condition of the spiritual life, to certain methods of prayer and the use of certain books, excellent for the majority of persons while they are beginners or proficients, but unsuitable, or even injurious, to some who are of a peculiar disposition, or who have advanced so far that they need something of a different order. It is a great mistake to suppose that such a course is safe or prudent. There are some who cannot, even in the beginning, make use of discursive meditation. It is a generally-recognized rule that those who can, and actually do, practise this kind of mental prayer, ought, as soon as it ceases to be pleasant and profitable to them, to change it for a simpler method. Even those set methods which are not discursive, if they consist in oft-repeated acts of the understanding, the affections, and the will, become frequently, after the lapse of time, too laborious, wearisome, and insipid to be continued with any fervor. The soul needs and instinctively longs for the cessation of this perpetual activity in a holy repose, in tranquil contemplation, in rest upon the bosom of God. It is for such souls that the chapter on the prayer of interior silence was written.