lf, "I shall lose my health over this petitioning, for
as I do it, it is as though I gave my life-energy for the cause or
person for whom I pray." But my Good Angel whispered me not to
give in, but continue to be willing, continue to be generous, no
matter the cost. I am not generous, but I went on with it, and secretly
had the greatest dread of it; my whole nature shrank from the effort,
from the strange loss of vitality this petitioning brought.

Then at last, after more than two years, because of remaining willing,
because of trying to remain generous about this, to me, most
grievously hard prayer, one happy day God lifted away all the strain
and difficulty, all the pain and fatigue, and turned it into the sweetest
of prayers: into a new song, a new honey, new music, a new delight,
in which the soul has, as it were, but to sip at the nectar of His Love
and Beneficence, to bring it to a fellow-soul.

I found that God causes the soul to pray this joyous, this exquisite,
prayer for total strangers, passers-by in the street, fellow-travellers
by road and rail, here and there, this one and that, she knows which
one it is: how surprised these persons would be if they knew that a
total stranger, who never saw them before and never will see them
again, was joyously, lovingly, holding them up before God for His
help and His blessing! and they receive His blessing. God does not
prompt such prayers for nothing. Is this favoritism? No; they are
secretly seeking Him.

II

When the soul is united to God a great change comes over the mind,
which now thinks continually, lovingly, of God. God not merely
hoped for, looked for, as in the past, but God found and known, God
close and near; interruptions come and go, but the mind, like a
pendulum, swings back to God, nothing stops it; the soul streams to
Him: she discovers Him everywhere: she knows her way to Him,
and she has not far to go. Her own door is also His door. There are
many degrees of intensity about this condition, which can increase
to such an extent as to entirely interfere with our everyday duties.
When it is increased to this degree it would appear (certainly at
times) to be on purpose to teach the soul a self-abnegation which she
could not otherwise learn, because, together with an intense, almost
terrible, attraction and desire to be alone with God, will come the
pressure of a duty which it is obvious God would wish us to attend
to: this is a severe and a very cont