**I have felt this same yearning to know prayer as I have seen in those such as Tozer, Muller, Ravinhill, Washer. This is the marked difference between those who would know the Lord and those who would know about Him only. May we press on to take hold of a relationship with our Lord and Savior...may we know the assurance and love of this Friend and King.
A lady, an exile, came to my father's house. He offered her an apartment which she accepted, and she stayed a long time. She was one of true piety and inward devotion. She had great esteem for me because I desired to love God. She remarked that I had the virtues of an active and bustling life, but I had not yet attained the simplicity of prayer which she experienced. Sometimes she dropped a word to me on that subject. As my time had not yet come, I did not understand her. Her example instructed me more than her words. I observed on her countenance something which marked a great enjoyment of the presence of God. By the exertion of studied reflection and thoughts I tried to attain but to little purpose. I wanted to have, by my own efforts, what I could not acquire except by ceasing from all efforts.
My father's nephew, of whom I have made mention of before, was returned from Cochin, China, to take over some priests from Europe. I was exceedingly glad to see him, and remembered what good he had done me. The lady mentioned was no less rejoiced than I. They understood each other immediately and conversed in a spiritual language. The virtue of this excellent relation charmed me. I admired his continual prayer without being able to comprehend it. I endeavored to meditate and think on God without intermission, to utter prayers and ejaculations. I could not acquire, by all my toil, what God at length gave me Himself, and which is experienced only in simplicity. My cousin did all he could to attach me more strongly to God. He conceived great affection for me. The purity he observed in me from the corruption of the age, the abhorrence of sin at a time of life when others are beginning to relish the pleasures of it, (I was not yet eighteen), gave him a great tenderness for me. I complained to him all my faults ingenuously. These I saw clearly. He cheered and exhorted me to support myself, and to persevere in my good endeavors. He would fain have introduced me into a more simple manner of prayer, but I was not yet ready for it. I believe his prayers were more effectual than his words.
No sooner was he gone out of my father's house than You, O Divine Love, manifested Your favor. The desire I had to please You, the tears I shed, the manifold pains I underwent, the labours I sustained, and the little fruit I reaped from them moved You with compassion. This was the state of my soul when Your goodness, surpassing all my vileness and infidelities, and abounding in proportion to my wretchedness, granted me in a moment what all my own efforts could never procure. Beholding me rowing with laborious toil, the breath of Your divine operations turned in my favor and carried me full sail over this sea of affliction.
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