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

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6o A SHORT METHOD OF PRAYER,

the Spirit of God, it experiences the witness of this divine sonship ; and this witness serves the more to increase its joy, as it makes it know that it is called to the liberty of the sons of God, and that the spirit it has received is not a spirit of bondage, but of liberty.

The Spirit of the divine motion is so necessary for all things, that Paul founds this necessity upon our ignorance of the things that we ask for. " The Spirit," he says, " helpeth our infirmities ; for we know not what we should pray for as wx ought ; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us, with groanings which cannot be uttered." This is conclusive : if we do not know what to pray for, nor how to ask as we ought for what is necessary for us, and if it is needful that the Spirit who is in us, to whose motion we abandon ourselves, should ask it for us, ought we not to leave Him to do it ? He does it " with groanings which cannot be uttered."

This Spirit is the Spirit of the Word, who is always heard, as He says Himself: " I know that Thou hearest me always" (John xi. 42). If we leave it to the Spirit within us to ask and to pray, we shall always be answered. Why so? O great apostle, mystic