About nothing are we in such a state of ignorance as about the laws which govern the give and take between God and Man. On the one hand is God the All-Giving, longing to bestow, and upon the other is Man the all-needing, aching to receive, and between them an impasse. Failure to fulfil God's laws is the cause of this impasse. There is both a law of like to like, and a law of like to opposite. We cannot know God without in some small degree first being like God, and to be like God we must not only be pure in heart but also conform to the God-like condition of giving. First we obey this law that the second may come into effect--that of like to opposite, or positive to negative, the All-Giving immediately meeting and filling the all-needing. We have nothing to give to God but our love, thanks, and obedience; but of these it is possible to give endlessly, and the more we give the more God-like do we become, and the more God-like the higher and further do we enter into the great riches and blisses of God. Therefore the more we give to God the more we receive. On going to partake of the Blessed Sacrament we do well to banish from the heart and mind all thought of what it may please God to still further give us and to make an offering _to_ God. The only way we can make an offering to God is upon the wings of love, and upon this love we hold up before Him the bread and wine as the Body and Blood of our Redeemer, repeating and repeating in our heart, "I eat and drink This as a memorial before Thee of the Perfect Love and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ." When we so do with _great_ love in our heart we find that we are able sensibly to receive great grace. _Of Prayer_ Of the many kinds and degrees of prayer first perhaps we learn the prayer of the lips, then that of the mind, then the prayer of the heart, and finally the prayer of the soul--prayer of a totally different mode and order, prayer of a strange incalculably great magnetic power, prayer which enables us to count on help from God as upon an absolute and immediate certainty. We find this about perfect prayer that it is not done as from a creature beseeching a Creator at an immense distance, but is done as a love-flash which, eating up all distance, is immediately before and with the Creator and is accompanied by vivid certainty at the heart; this latter is active faith; we have too much perhaps of that kind of faith which may be named waiting or passive faith. This combination of love with active faith instantly opens to us God's help. We may or may not receive this in the form anticipated by the creature, but later perceive that we have received it in exactly that form which would most lastingly benefit us. After a while we cease almost altogether from petitioning anything for ourselves, having this one desire only: that by opening ourselves to God by means of offering Him great love, we receive Himself. _Of Contemplation_