July 7

AS the Heart worketh and willeth, such, and no other, is its Prayer. All else is only Form and Fiction, and empty beating of the Air. If therefore the working Desire of the Heart is not habitually turned towards God, if this is not our Spirit of Prayer, we are necessarily in a state of Prayer towards something else, that carries us from God. For this is the Necessity of our Nature; pray we must, as sure as our Heart is alive; and therefore, when the state of our Heart is not a Spirit of Prayer to God, we pray without ceasing to some or other Part of the Creation. The Man whose Heart habitually tends towards the Riches, Honours, Powers, or Pleasures of this Life is in a continual state of Prayer towards all these things. His Spirit stands always bent towards them; they have his Hope, his Love, his Faith, and are the many Gods he worships: And though when he is upon his knees, and uses Forms of Prayer, he directs them to the God of Heaven; yet these are in Reality the God of his Heart, and, in a sad sense of the Words, he worships them in Spirit and in Truth.

WILLIAM LAW

WORLDLINESS