concrete life of faith, with its growth and its experiences, its richly
various working of one principle in every aspect of existence, its
correspondences with the Eternal World, its definitely ontological
references, is lived here and now; in and through the self's psychic
life, and indeed his bodily life too--a truth which is embodied in
sacramentalism. Therefore, sharing as it does life's plastic character,
it too is amenable to suggestion and can be helped or hindered by it. It
is indeed characteristic of those in whom this life is dominant, that
they are capable of receiving and responding to the highest and most
vivifying suggestions which the universe in its totality pours in on us.
This movement of response, often quietly overlooked, is that which makes
them not spiritual hedonists but men and women of prayer. Grace--to give
these suggestions of Spirit their conventional name--is perpetually
beating in on us. But if it is to be inwardly realized, the Divine
suggestion must be transformed by man's will and love into an
auto-suggestion; and this is what seems to happen in meditation and
prayer.

Everything indeed points to a very close connection between what might
be called the mechanism of prayer and of suggestion. To say this, is in
no way to minimize the transcendental character of prayer. In both
states there is a spontaneous or deliberate throwing open of the deeper
mind to influences which, fully accepted, tend to realize themselves.
Look at the directions given by all great teachers of prayer and
contemplation; and these two acts, rightly performed, fuse one with the
other, they are two aspects of the single act of communion with God.
Look at their insistence on a stilling and recollecting of the mind, on
surrender, a held passivity not merely limp but purposeful: on the need
of meek yielding to a greater inflowing power, and its regenerating
suggestions. Then compare this with the method by which health-giving