lity, charity, zeal for souls, and a strong desire
to vindicate the Divine honour, I still besought the Lord for an increase
in you of all these same virtues and perfections in order that you may
prove as accomplished in all these things as the dignity of your office
requires. Till it was discovered to me that you still wanted that which
is the foundation of every virtue, and without which the whole
superstructure dissolves, and falls in ruins. You want prayer. You want
believing, persevering, courageous prayer. And the want of that prayer
causes all that drought and disunion from which you say your soul
suffers. That which was shown me as the way your lordship is henceforth
to pray is this. You are to recollect and accuse yourself of all your
sins since your last time of like prayer. You are to divest yourself of
everything as if you were that moment to die. You are to begin by
reciting to yourself and to God the Fifty-first Psalm. And after that
you must say this. 'I come, O Lord, Bishop as I am, to Thy children's
school of prayer and obedience. I come to Thee not to teach, but to
learn. I will speak to Thee, who am but dust and ashes.' And all the
time set before the eyes of your soul Jesus Christ crucified, and
ruminate on Him in some such way as this. Fix your eyes on that
stupendous humility of His whereby He so annihilated Himself. Look on
His head crowned with thorns. Fix your eyes on His nailed hands, His
feet, and His side. Meditate on and interrogate every one of His wounds
for you. It behoves you also to go to prayer with a most entire
resignation and submission and pliantness to go that way in religion and
in life that God points out to you. Sometimes He will teach you by
turning His back on you: and, anon, by lifting up the light of His
countenance upon you. Sometimes by shutting you out of His presence, and
sometimes by bringing you into His banqueting-house. And you are to
receive it all with the same equability of mind, knowing that He always
acts for the best. Otherwise you will go to teach God in your prayers,
which is not the proper scope and intent of prayer at all. And when you
say that you are dust and ashes, you must observe and exhibit the proper
quality of such. In our Lord's prayer in the garden, He requested that
the bitterness and the terrible trial He felt in overcoming His human
nature might be taken away. He did not ask that His pains might be taken
away, but only t