Prostrate upon the ground, gazing with closed eyelids in the twilight of his cell upon the mirror of imagination, he had to _see_ the boundless flames of hell and souls encased in burning bodies, to _hear_ the shrieks and blasphemies, to _smell_ their sulphur and intolerable stench, to _taste_ the bitterness of tears and _feel_ the stings of ineffectual remorse.
[Footnote 166: _Inst.Soc.Jesu_, vol.iv.The same volume contains the Directorium, or rules for the use of the _Exercitia_.] He had to localize each object in the camera obscura of the brain.

If the Garden of Gethsemane, for instance, were the subject of his meditation, he was bound to place Christ here and the sleeping apostles there, and to form an accurate image of the angel and the cup.

He gazed and gazed, until he was able to handle the raiment of the Saviour, to watch the drops of bloody sweat beading his forehead and trickling down his cheeks, to grasp the chalice with the fingers of the soul.

As each carefully chosen and sagaciously suggested scene was presented, he had to identify his very being, soul, will, intellect, and senses, with the mental vision.

He lived again, so far as this was possible through fancy, the facts of sacred history.