Excerpt from Christian Considerations
There is great difference between a book for meditation, a book of meditations, and a meditation-book. The first simply suggests thoughts worthy of spiritual reflection; the second contains meditations in form, or model exercises of mental prayer already developed and perfected; the third is a practical helper and prompter to the soul that would practise mental prayer. Of the first class, the imitation of Christ is the master-piece, and stands unrivalled. Books of meditations abound, and excellent ones too, but of meditation-books we know of none which seem to us to fulfil their purpose, except this work of Father Crasset. Other authors, no doubt, have aimed at the same end, but so far as our acquaintance goes, the most successful can be said to have done little more than present good spiritual reading to the public in form of meditations. The aspirant to mental prayer who kneels down with such books before him, finds each thought presented to his mind developed and complete, and nothing is left for his own mind to do. The words of the author, if they have point and unction, may go to his heart and do him good, but not otherwise than any good book of spiritual reading. He may rise from his knees a better man, but he has not made a meditation.
It is not so with these "Considerations" of Crasset. Their excellence consists in this, that they are eminently suggestive. They never exhaust any thought, but simply propose it in such strong and striking terms, and with such a wonderful animation and depth of feeling, that the attention is arrested, the mind is interested, and put forward at once upon a train of reflection. They have, besides this, all that same deep meaning, that earnestness, that expressive simplicity, that unction, that semblance of inspiration, which illuminate the pages only of those privileged writers, whose own souls have first been illuminated by close converse with God. Long exercise in meditation made Father Crasset the interior man he was, and gave him unquestionably his peculiar power as an author. The elasticity, freshness, and freedom from servile constraint of method which characterize his meditations, may be owing in part to another cause. His contemplative spirit was for a long time subjected to unskilful hands, which endeavored to compress it into a narrow and mechanical system of meditation, and so barely escaped destroying it. This at least taught him to appreciate afterwards the difficulties of others, and to understand how important it is to leave God room to talk to souls after his own way.
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