"Consider yourself as always wrong, as having gone aside, and lost your right path, when any delight, desire, or trouble is suffered to live in you, that cannot be made a part of this prayer of the heart to God.  For nothing so infallibly shows us the true state of our heart, as that which gives us either delight or trouble; for as our delight and trouble is, so is the state of our heart: if therefore you are carried away with any trouble or delight, that has not an immediate relation to your progress in the divine life, you may be assured your heart is not in its right state of prayer to God."

— William Law (1686-1761), The Spirit of Prayer [1749]

[TO BE CONTINUED.]