ntly left vacant, so that the Spirit, escaping from it, rises into
contemplation of the divine Perfection, and reflects within himself the
divine Image. "Meditation is silent or _unuttered_ prayer, or as Plato
expressed it: 'the ardent turning of the Soul towards the Divine; not to
ask any particular good (as in the common meaning of prayer), but for
good itself, for the Universal Supreme Good.'"[305]

This is the prayer that, by thus liberating the Spirit, is the means of
union between man and God. By the working of the laws of thought a man
becomes that which he thinks, and when he meditates on the divine
perfections he gradually reproduces in himself that on which his mind is
fixed. Such a mind, shaped to the higher and not the lower, cannot bind
the Spirit, and the freed Spirit leaping upward to his source, prayer is
lost in union and separateness is left behind.

Worship also, the rapt adoration from which all petition is absent, and
which seeks to pour itself forth in sheer love of the Perfect, dimly
sensed, is a means--the easiest means--of union with God. In this the
consciousness, limited by the brain, contemplates in mute exstasy the
Image it creates of Him whom it knows to be beyond imagining, and oft,
rapt by the intensity of his love beyond the limits of the intellect,
the man as a free Spirit soars upwards into realms where these limits
are transcended, and feels and knows far more than on his return he can
tell in words or clothe in form.

Thus the Mystic gazes on the Beatific Vision; thus the Sage rests in the
calm of the Wisdom that is beyond knowledge; thus the Saint reaches the
purity wherein God is seen. Such prayer irradiates the worshipper, and
from the mount of such high communion descending to the plains of earth,
the very face of flesh shines with supernal glory, translucent to the
flame that burns within. Happy they who know the reality which no words
may convey to those who know it not. Those whose eyes have seen "the
King in His beauty"[306] will remember, and they will understand.

When prayer is thus understood, its perennial necessity for all who
believe in religion will be patent, and we see why its practice has
been so much advocated by all who study the higher life. For the student
of the Lesser Mysteries prayer should be of the kinds grouped under
Class B, and he should endeavour to rise to the pure meditation and
worship of the last class, eschewing altogether the lower kinds. For h