ing upon it either as a wearisome duty, or as a lost trouble, they abridge its length, and think themselves happily quit of a yoke and of a slavery, when this moment of weariness and restraint is over.
Now, I say, that nothing is more unrighteous than to estrange ourselves from prayer, on account of the disgusts and wanderings of the mind, which render it painful and disagreeable to us; for these disgusts and wanderings originate, — first, from our lukewarmness, and our infidelities, — or, secondly, in our being little accustomed to prayer, — or, thirdly, in the wisdom even of God, who tries us, and who wishes to purify our heart, by withholding for a time the sensible consolations of prayer.
Yes, my brethren, the first and the most common source of the disgusts and the dryness of our prayers, is the lukewarmness and the infidelity of our life. — It is, in effect, an injustice to pretend that we can bring to prayer a serene and tranquil mind; a cool imagination, free from all the vain phantoms by which it is agitated; a heart affected with, and disposed to relish the presence of its God, — while our whole life, though otherwise virtuous in the eyes of man, shall be one continual dissipation; while we shall continue to live among objects the most calculated to move the imagination, and to make those lively impressions on us which are never done away; in a word, while we shall preserve a thousand iniquitous attachments in our heart, which, though not absolutely criminal in our eyes, yet trouble, divide, and occupy us, and which weaken in us, or even totally deprive us of any relish for God and the things of heaven.
Alas! my brethren, if the most retired and the most holy souls; if the most recluse penitents, purified by long retreat, and by a life altogether devoted to Heaven, still found, in the sole remembrance of their past manners, disagreeable images, which force their way even into their solitude, to disturb the comfort and the tranquillity of their prayers; do we expect that in a life, regular I confess, but full of agitation, of occasions by which we are led away, of objects which unsettle us, of temptations which disquiet, of pleasures which enervate, of fears and hopes which agitate us, we shall find ourselves in prayer, all of a sudden new men, purified from all those images which sully our mind, freed from all those attachments which come to divide and perhaps corrupt our heart, in tranquillity from all those agitations which continually make such violent and such dangerous impressions upon our soul; and that, forgetting for a moment the entire world, and all those vain objects which we have so lately quitted, and which we still bear in our remembrance and in our heart, we shall, all of a sudden, find ourselves raised, before God, to the meditation of heavenly things, penetrated with love for eternal riches, filled with compunction for innumerable infidelities which we still love, and with a tranquillity of mind and of heart, which the profoundest retirement, and the most rigorous seclusion from the world frequently do not bestow? Ah! my brethren, how unjust we are, and into what terrible reproaches against ourselves shall the continual complaints made by us against the duties of piety one day be turned!
