Worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power.  Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith; and this, of course, you also know.  The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things.  The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth.  This is charmingly illustrated by a little work with which I recently became acquainted, “The Practice of the Presence of God, the Best Ruler of a Holy Life, by Brother Lawrence, being Conversations and Letters of Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, Translated from the French."[7] I extract a few passages, the conversations being given in indirect discourse.  Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite friar, converted at Paris in 1666.  “He said that he had been footman to M. Fieubert, the Treasurer, and that he was a great awkward fellow, who broke everything.  That he had desired to be received into a monastery, thinking that he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he should commit, and so he should sacrifice to God his life, with its pleasures; but that God had disappointed him, he having met with nothing but satisfaction in that state....

“That he had long been troubled in mind from a certain belief that he should be damned; that all the men in the world could not have persuaded him to the contrary; but that he had thus reasoned with himself about it:  I engaged in a religious life only for the love of God, and I have endeavored to act only for Him; whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always continue to act purely for the love of God.  I shall have this good at least, that till death I shall have done all that is in me to love Him ... That since then he had passed his life in perfect liberty and continual joy.

“That when an occasion of practicing some virtue offered, he addressed himself to God, saying, ’Lord, I cannot do this unless Thou enablest me’; and that then he received strength more than sufficient.  That, when he had failed in his duty, he only confessed his fault, saying to God, ’I shall never do otherwise, if You leave me to myself:  it is You who must hinder my failing, and mend what is amiss.’  That after this he gave himself no further uneasiness about it.

“That he had been lately sent into Burgundy to buy the provision of wine for the society, which was a very unwelcome task for him, because he had no turn for business, and because he was lame, and could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks.  That, however, he gave himself no uneasiness about it, nor about the purchase of the wine.  That he said to God, ‘It was his business he was about,’ and that he afterward found it well performed.  That he had been sent into Auvergne, the year before, upon the same account; that he could not tell how the matter passed, but that it proved very well.