And, to go farther into this truth, and to enter into a detail which renders it more evident to you, you complain, in the first place, that your mind, incapable of a moment's attention in prayer, wanders from it, and flies off in spite of yourself. But how can it be otherwise; or how can you find it attentive and collected, if every thing you do takes off its attention and unsettles it; if, in the detail of conduct, you never recollect yourself; if you never accustom yourself to that mental reflection, to that life of faith, which, even amid the dissipations of the world, find ample sources of holy reflection? To have a collected mind in prayer, you must bring it along with you; it is necessary that even your intercourse with sinners, when obliged to live among them, the sight of their passions, of their anxieties, fears, hopes, joys, chagrins, and wretchedness, supply your faith with reflections, and turn your views toward God who alone bestows collectedness of mind and the tranquillity of prayer. Then, even on quitting the world and those worldly conversations, where duty alone shall have engaged your presence, you will find no difficulty in going to recollect yourself before God, and in forgetting at his feet those vain agitations which you have so lately witnessed. On the contrary, the designs of faith which you shall there have preserved j the blindness of the worldly, which you shall there have inwardly deplored, — will cause you to find new comforts at the feet of Jesus Christ; you will there, with consolation, recreate yourself from the weariness of dissipation and of worldly nothings; you will lament, with increased satisfaction, over the folly of men who so madly pursue after a vapour, a a chimerical happiness, which eludes their grasp, and which it is impossible ever to attain, for the world in which they seek it cannot bestow it; you will there more warmly thank the Lord for having, with so much goodness, and notwithstanding your crimes, enlightened and separated you from that multitude which must perish; you will there see, as in a new light, the happiness of those souls who serve him, and whose eyes, being opened upon vanity, no longer live but for the truth.
Secondly. You complain that your heart, insensible in prayer, feels nothing fervent for its God, but, on the contrary, a disgust which renders it insupportable. But how is it possible that your heart, wholly engrossed with the things of the earth, filled with iniquitous attachments, inclination for the world, love of yourself, schemes for exalting your station, and desires perhaps of pleasing; how is it possible, I say, that your heart, compounded with so many earthly affections, should still have any feeling for the things of heaven? It is wholly filled with the creatures; where then should God find his place in it? We cannot love both God and the world. Thus, when the Israelites had passed the Jordan, and had eaten of the fruits of the earth, " the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land, neither had the children of Israel manna any more;" as if to show, that they could not enjoy at the same time both the heavenly nourishment and that of the earth.
Love of the world, said St. Augustine, like a dangerous fever,
