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A short method of prayer, and Spiritual torrents, tr. by A.W. Marston

49

 
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A SHORT METHOD OF PRAYER. 49

We must cease to be, so that the Spirit of the Word may be in us. In order that He may come to us, we must yield our life to Him, and die to self that He may live in us, and that we being dead, our life may be hidden with Christ in God (Col. iii. 3).

" Come unto me,'* says God, " all ye that be desirous of me, and fill yourselves with my fruits'* (Ecclus. xxiv. 19). But how can we be filled with God ? Only by being emptied of self, and going out of ourselves in order to be lost in Him.

Now, this can never be brought about except by our becoming nothing. Nothingness is true pra)'er, which renders to God " honour, and glory, and power, for ever and ever" (Rev. v. 13).

This prayer is the prayer of truth. It is wor-shipping the Father in spirit and in truth. In spirit, because we are by it drawn out of our human and carnal action, to enter into the purity of the Spirit, who prays in us; and in truth, because the soul is led into the truth of the all of God, and the nothing of the creature.

There are but these two truths, the all and the NOTHING. All the rest is untruth.