But even as, throughout all nature, a state of death is an imprisoned
fire, so throughout all nature is there only one way of kindling life.
You might as well write the word "flame" on the outside of a flint and
expect it to emit sparks as to imagine that any speculations of your
reason will kindle divine life in your soul.

No; Would you have Fire from a Flint; its House of Death must be
shaken, and its Chains of Darkness broken off by the Strokes of a
Steel upon it. This must of all Necessity be done to your Soul, its
imprisoned Fire must be awakened by the sharp Strokes of Steel, or
no true Light of Life can arise in it.[2]

All life, whether physical or spiritual, means a death to some previous
condition, and must be generated in pain. 6 1: _An Appeal, Works_,
vol. vi. pp. 166. 2 _Ibid._, p, 82.

If this mystical view of Fire be clear, it will be easy enough to
follow what Law says about Light and Darkness, or Air, Water, and Earth,
interpreting them all in the same way as "eternal Things become gross,
finite, measurable, divisible, and transitory."[47]

_The Spirit of Prayer_ is of all Law's works the one most steeped in
mystic ardour, and it possesses a charm, a melody of rhythm, and an
imaginative quality rarely to be found in his earlier work. It should be
read by those who would see Law under a little known aspect, and who do
not realise that we have an English mystic who expresses, with a
strength and beauty which Plotinus himself has rarely surpassed, the
longing of the soul for union with the Divine.

Burke, Coleridge, and Carlyle are three very different writers who are