“The spirit of the soul is in itself nothing else but a spirit breathed forth from the life of God, for the sole purpose that the life, nature, working, and inclinations of God might be manifest in it.
“The Spirit of prayer is a pressing forth of the soul out of this earthly life; it is a stretching with all its desires after the life of God; it is a leaving, as far as it can, all its own spirit, in order to receive a Spirit from above—to be one life, one love, one spirit with Christ in God. This prayer, which is an emptying all of its own natural desires an opening of itself for the light and love of God to enter into it, is the prayer in the name of Christ to with nothing is denied. The love that God has for the soul—His eternal, never ceasing desire to enter into it, to dwell in it, and to open the birth of His Holy Word and spirit in it—stays until the door of the heart opens for it. For nothing can keep God out of the soul, or hinder His holy union with it, except the heart that is turned away from Him.
“A will that is surrender to worldliness is much like Nebuchadnezzar, who ‘was driven from men and ate grass like oxen’ (Daniel 4.33). Such a will has the same life as the beasts of the field, for earthly desires maintain the same life in a man as an ox. It is suitable for earthly food to be only desired and use for the support of the earthly body; but when the desire, the delight, the longing of the soul is set up on earthly things, then humanity is degraded, is fallen from God, and the life of the soul is made as earthly and animal as the life of the body.”
—William Law as quoted by Andrew Murray in God's Best Secrets.
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