“It is thus that the separation takes place between Matter, which so long has wrapped its darkness round you, and Spirit, which was in you from the beginning, the light which lighted you and now brings noon-day to your soul.  Yes, your broken heart shall receive the light; the light shall bathe it.  Then you will no longer feel convictions, they will have changed to certainties.  The Poet utters; the Thinker meditates; the Righteous acts; but he who stands upon the borders of the Divine World prays; and his prayer is word, thought, action, in one!  Yes, prayer includes all, contains all; it completes nature, for it reveals to you the mind within it and its progression.  White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer!  Prayer will give you the key of heaven!  Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light.  The universe belongs to him who wills, who knows, who prays; but he must will, he must know, he must pray; in a word, he must possess force, wisdom, and faith.

“Therefore Prayer, issuing from so many trials, is the consummation of all truths, all powers, all feelings.  Fruit of the laborious, progressive, continued development of natural properties and faculties vitalized anew by the divine breath of the Word, Prayer has occult activity; it is the final worship—­not the material worship of images, nor the spiritual worship of formulas, but the worship of the Divine World.  We say no prayers,—­prayer forms within us; it is a faculty which acts of itself; it has attained a way of action which lifts it outside of forms; it links the soul to God, with whom we unite as the root of the tree unites with the soil; our veins draw life from the principle of life, and we live by the life of the universe.  Prayer bestows external conviction by making us penetrate the Material World through the cohesion of all our faculties with the elementary substances; it bestows internal conviction by developing our essence and mingling it with that of the Spiritual Worlds.  To be able to pray thus, you must attain to an utter abandonment of flesh; you must acquire through the fires of the furnace the purity of the diamond; for this complete communion with the Divine is obtained only in absolute repose, where storms and conflicts are at rest.

“Yes, Prayer—­the aspiration of the soul freed absolutely from the body—­bears all forces within it, and applies them to the constant and perseverant union of the Visible and the Invisible.  When you possess the faculty of praying without weariness, with love, with force, with certainty, with intelligence, your spiritualized nature will presently be invested with power.  Like a rushing wind, like a thunderbolt, it cuts its way through all things and shares the