Here are two more excerpts from this week’s featured Anglican writer, William Law. See Monday’s post for more info on Rev. Law’s book, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. I have found the first excerpt to be particularly challenging.

Represent to your imagination that your bed is your grave; that all things are ready for your interment; that you are to have no more to do with this world; and that it will be owing to God’s great mercy if you ever see the light of the sun again or have another day to add to your works of piety. Then commit yourself to sleep as one that is to have no more opportunities of doing good, but is to awake among spirits that are separate from the body and waiting for the judgment of the last great day.

Such a solemn resignation of yourself into the hands of God every evening, and parting with all the world as if you were never to see it any moreand all this in the silence and darkness of the nightis a practice that will soon have excellent effects upon your spirit. For this time of the night is exceeding proper for such prayers and meditations. The likeness which sleep and darkness have to death will contribute very much to make your thoughts about it the more deep and affecting. So that I hope you will not let a time so proper for such prayers be ever passed over without them.

—A Serious Call

And this:

The first thing that you are to do when you are upon your knees is to shut your eyes. Then with a short silence let your soul place itself in the presence of God. That is, you are to use this or some other better method to separate yourself from all common thoughts, and make your heart as sensible as you can of the divine presence.

—A Serious Call