Anyone who has reached the period of spiritual life known as the Night of the Senses will find that prayer has so changed its character as to be almost a new kind of human activity. Hitherto the time devoted to actual prayers will have been divided up between liturgical practices and private meditations. The Christian will have become accustomed, perhaps through the habits formed during many years, to set about these devotions in a methodical way, always bearing in mind the adage that if he wishes to prosper he must, while leaving all to God in his petitions, act as though all depended on himself. He will have learned a manner of assisting at Mass; he will have recited the same number of Paters and Aves, acts of contrition and charity, while he knelt beside his bed at morning and night; his rosary or ‘stations’ will be prominent in his regular horary; and finally his times of quiet at meditation will be organised by a method, interspersed with ‘acts’ and sometimes predominantly concerned with struggles against distractions and drowsiness.