Word."[107] Such concentration can be improved by practice; hence the
value of regular meditation and contemplation to those who are in
earnest about the spiritual life, the quiet and steady holding in the
mind of the thought which it is desired to realize.

Psycho-therapists tell us that, having achieved quiescence, we should
rapidly and rythmically, but with intention, repeat the suggestion that
we wish to realize; and that the shorter, simpler and more general this
verbal formula, the more effective it will be.[108] The spiritual aspect
of this law was well understood by the mediæval mystics. Thus the author
of "The Cloud of Unknowing" says to his disciple, "Fill thy spirit with
ghostly meaning of this word Sin, and without any special beholding unto
any kind of sin, whether it be venial or deadly. And cry thus ghostly
ever upon one: Sin! Sin! Sin! out! out! out! This ghostly cry is better
learned of God by the proof than of any man by word. For it is best when
it is in pure spirit, without special thought or any pronouncing of
word. On the same manner shalt thou do with this little word God: and
mean God all, and all God, so that nought work in thy wit and in thy
will but only God."[109] Here the directions are exact, and such as any
psychologist of the present day might give. So too, religious teachers
informed by experience have always ascribed a special efficacy to "short
acts" of prayer and aspiration: phrases repeated or held in the mind,
which sum up and express the self's penitence, love, faith or adoration,
and are really brief, articulate suggestions parallel in type to those
which Baudouin recommends to us as conducive to bodily well-being.[110]
The repeated affirmation of Julian of Norwich "All shall be well! all
shall be well! all shall be well!"[111] fills all her revelations with
its suggestion of joyous faith; and countless generations of Christians
have thus applied to their soul's health those very methods by which we
are now enthusiastically curing indigestion and cold in the head. The