mind, to see whether it be really turned to God. He who wishes that
his prayers may be truly heard, must keep himself turned away from
all temporal and external things, and all that is not Divine,
whether it be friend or joy (Freund oder Freude), and all vanities,
whether they be clothes or ornaments, and from everything of which
God is not the true beginning and ending, and from everything that
does not belong to Him. He must cut off his words and his conduct,
his manners and his demeanour, from all irregularity, inward or
outward. Dream not that that can be a true prayer, when a man only
babbles outwardly with his mouth, and reads many psalms, gabbling
them rapidly and hastily, while his mind wanders this way and that,
backwards and forwards. Much rather must the true prayer be, as St
Peter tells us, "one-minded"[39]—that is, the mind must cleave to
God alone, and a man must look with the face of his soul turned
directly towards God, with a gentle, willing dependence on Him. (80)

If thy prayer has these conditions, thou mayst with true humility
fall at the feet of God, and pray for the gentle succour of God;
thou mayest knock at His fatherly heart, and ask for bread—that is,
for love. If a man had all the food in the world, and had not bread,
his food would be neither eatable, nor pleasant, nor useful. So it
is with all things, without the Love of God. Knock also at the door
through which we must go--namely, Christ Jesus. At this door, the
praying man must knock for three ends, if he wishes to be really
admitted. First he must knock devoutly, at the broken heart and the
open side, and enter in with all devotion, and in recognition of his
unfathomable poverty and nothingness, as poor Lazarus did at the
rich man's gate, and ask for crumbs of His grace. Then again, he
should knock at the door of the holy open wounds of His holy hands,
and pray for true Divine knowledge, that it may enlighten him and