Prayer is the golden wedding-ring between ourselves and God. For myself, I divide it into two halves--the one petitioning, the other offering. Of petitioning I would say that this is the _work_ of the soul; and of offering, that it is the pleasure of the soul. Of petitioning, that I come to it under His command; and of offering, that I come to it of my own high, passionate desire. I make upon my knees, three times a day, three short and formal prayers of humble worship, as befits the creature worshipping its Ineffable and Mighty God: and for the rest of my time I sing to Him from my heart and soul, as befits the joyful lover, adoring and conversing with the Ineffable and Exquisite Beloved. * * * This is the circle of His way with us. First is prayer; then love; and after love, humility. With humility comes grace; and after grace, temptation; and in temptation we must quickly enter prayer again. * * * O wonderful and ineffable God! who, while remaining hidden from His lovers in this life, yet so ravishes their hearts and minds and souls that they are unable to find truly sweet even the greatest of life's former joys--for nothing can now ever satisfy them but the secret and marvellous administrations of His love and grace! On one day feeling to be forsaken, the most desolate and lonely of all creatures in the Universe; and on another exalted to almost unbearable pinnacles of bliss, equal to the angels in felicity, and blest beyond all power of words to say--such and so are the lovers of God. * * * The soul has six wings: love, obedience, humility, simplicity, perseverance, and courage. With these she can attain God. We know very well that no man will find God either enclosed, held fast, or demonstrated within a circle of dogmatic words; but every man can find, in his own soul, an exquisite and incomparable instrument of communication with God. To establish the working of this communication is the whole object and meaning of life in this world--this world of material, finite, and physical things, in which the human body is at once a means and a debt. The key to progress is a continual dressing of the will and mind and heart towards God, best brought about by continually filling the heart and mind with beautiful, grateful, and loving thoughts of Him. At all stages of progress the thoughts persistently fly away to other things in the near and visible world, and we have need quietly and perpetually to pick them up and re-centre them on Him. With the mind turned in this way, steadily towards God, we are in that state known to science as polarisation: we are in that condition in which common iron becomes a magnet. It is so that God transforms us into a diminutive part-likeness of Himself.