Excerpt from Meditations on the Mysteries of Our Holy Faith, Vol. 6 of 6: Together With a Treatise on Mental Prayer 2. This St. Basil declared most excellently well, eu swering to a question which his monks put to him, to know with what affection they were to serve Almighty God, and in what this affection consists, to Whom he answered in these words - The good affection of the soul I suppose to be a vehement desire of pleasing God - and that, insatiable, stable, and immoveable; and it is obtained by a vigilant and continual contemplation of the greatness of the glory of Almighty God, and with a grateful repe tition and frequent remembrance of the benefits which God has given us, whereby that is engendered in the soul, thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, as he did who said, as the hart panteth after the fountains Of waters, so my soul panteth after Thee O God. With such affection, therefore, of mind, is God to be served, and that to be performed which He' said by the apostle, Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribu lation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or persecution, or the sword? (2) Thus says St. Basil, in which words this holy doctor briefly teaches us the principal end of the contemplative life in its highest degree, and the principal means that there are whereby to obtain it, and the fruit which is drawn from them. And at the same time, also, he declares the perfection with which the. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.