Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, give grace to the soul, and
flow immediately into it; even the highest angel, in spite of his
great nobility, cannot do this. Grace looses us from the snares of
many temptations; it relieves us from the heavy burden of worldly
cares, and carries the spirit up to heaven, the land of spirits. It
kills the worm of conscience, which makes sins alive. Grace is a
very powerful thing. The man, to whom cometh but a little drop of
the light of grace, to him all that is not God becomes as bitter as
gall upon the tongue. (86)

Grace makes, contrary to nature, all sorrows sweet, and brings it
about that a man no longer feels any relish for things which
formerly gave him great pleasure and delight. On the other hand,
what formerly disgusted him, now delights him and is the desire of
his heart--for instance, weakness, sorrow, inwardness, humility,
self-abandonment, and detachment from all the creatures. All this is
in the highest degree dear to him, when this visitation of the Holy
Ghost, grace, has in truth come to him. Then the sick man, that is
to say the external man, with all his faculties is plunged
completely into the pool of water, even as the sick man who had been
for thirty-eight years by the pool at Jerusalem, and there washes
himself thoroughly in the exalted, noble, precious blood of Christ
Jesus. For grace in manifold ways bathes the soul in the wounds and
blood of the holy Lamb, Jesus Christ. (22)

PRAYER

THE essence of prayer is the ascent of the mind to God, as holy
teachers tell us. Therefore every good man, when he wishes to pray,
ought to collect his outer senses into himself, and look into his