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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Fountain, by Lilian Staveley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Golden Fountain
+       or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and
+       Confessions of One of His Lovers
+
+Author: Lilian Staveley
+
+Release Date: July 18, 2009 [EBook #29449]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN FOUNTAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ruth Hart
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN FOUNTAIN
+or,
+The Soul's Love for God
+Being some Thoughts and Confessions of One of His Lovers
+
+By
+
+Lilian Staveley
+
+
+London
+John M. Watkins
+21 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, W.C.2
+1919
+
+
+
+
+How many of us inwardly feel a secret longing to find God; and this
+usually accompanied by the perception that we are confronted by an
+impenetrable barrier--we cannot find Him--we can neither go
+through this barrier nor climb over it! We have faith. We are able to
+admit that He exists, for we cannot help but perceive a Will
+dominating the laws of the Universe; but something deep within us
+that we cannot put a name to, something subtle, secret, and strange,
+cries aloud, "But I need more than this, it is not enough; I need to
+personally find and know Him. Why does He not permit me to do
+so?"
+
+We might easily answer ourselves by remembering that if, in
+everyday life, we greatly desire to see a friend, our best way of
+doing so is by going in the direction in which he is to be found: we
+should consider this as obvious. Then let us apply this, which we say
+is so obvious, to God. We waste too much time looking for Him in
+impossible directions and by impossible means. He is not to be
+found by merely studying lengthy arguments, brilliant explanations
+of theological statements, or controversies upon the meanings of
+obscure dogmas. He is not even to be found through organising
+charity concerts and social reforms however useful. We shall find
+Him through a self stripped bare of all other interests and
+pretensions--stripped bare of everything but a humble and
+passionately seeking _heart._
+
+He says to the soul, "Long for Me, and I will show Myself. Desire
+Me with a great desire, and I will be found."
+
+* * *
+
+Scattered all through history are innumerable persons, both great
+and insignificant, who looked for the Pearl of Great Price: and not
+too many would seem to have found it. Some sought by study, by
+intelligence; some by strict and pious attention to outward
+ceremonial service; some by a "religious" life; some even by
+penance and fasting. Those who found sought with the heart. Those
+who sought with careful piety, or with intelligence, found perhaps
+faith and submission, but no joy. The Pearl is that which cannot be
+described in words. It is the _touch of God Himself upon the soul,_
+the Joy of Love.
+
+* * *
+
+The entrance to the land of happiness and peace is through union of
+the will to Christ, by love. How can this sense of love be reached?
+By centring the wheel of the mind, with its daily spinning thoughts,
+upon the Man Jesus, and learning to inwardly see and hold on to the
+perfect simplicity and love of Jesus Christ. We can form the habit of
+taking Jesus as our heart and mind companion. We are all aware of
+the unceasing necessity of the mind to fill itself: we cannot have
+_no_ thoughts until we have advanced in the spiritual life to a long
+distance. We may well see, in this, one of the provisions made by
+God for His own habitation in the mind of man--a habitation too
+often hideously usurped by every kind of unworthy substitute. Petty
+social interests and occupations, personal animosities, ambitions,
+worries, a revolving endless chaos of futilities, known and praised
+by too many of us as "a busy life"!--the mind being given
+opportunity only at long intervals, and usually at stated and set times,
+to dwell upon the thought of God, and the marvellous future of the
+human spirit. We are like travellers who, about to start out upon a
+great journey, pack their portmanteaus with everything that will be
+_perfectly useless to them!_
+
+Now, it is possible to put out and obliterate this chaotic and useless
+state of mind, which would appear to be the "natural mind," and to
+open ourselves to receive the might and force and the joys and
+delights of Christ's Mind. These joys are the Heart of Christ
+speaking to the heart of His lover. They are incomparable: beyond
+all imagination until we know them; and we receive them and
+perceive them and enjoy them as we have largeness and capacity to
+contain them. For there is no end. He has ever more to give if we
+will be but large enough to receive.
+
+We are too absorbed in the puerile interests and occupations of daily
+life. We make of these endless occupations a virtue. They are no
+virtue, but a deadly hindrance, for they keep us too busy to look for
+the one thing needful--the Kingdom of God. What is this world? It is
+a schoolhouse for lovers, and we are lovers in the making.
+
+Is baptism of itself sufficient to get us into this Kingdom? No. Is the
+leading of an orderly social life sufficient to find it? No. Is the hope,
+even the earnest expectation, that we shall, by some means or other
+(we do not know by what!), be brought to it, sufficient to find it? No;
+not without the _personal laying hold_ can we ever achieve it. Shall
+we find it in much outward study? No; and our aim is, not to be the
+student but the possessor; and the key to this possession is not in
+books, but, for us, in Jesus. He it is who must be invited and
+admitted into the heart with great tenderness--with all those virtues
+for which He stands--and made the centre point of thought. Out of
+constant thought grows tenderness; out of tenderness, affection; out
+of affection, love. Love once firmly fixed in the heart for Jesus, we
+get a perception (by contrast) of our own faults--very painful, and
+known as repentance. This should be succeeded at once by change
+of mind, _i.e._ we try to push out the old way of thinking and acting
+and take on a new way. We try, in fact, strenuously to please the
+Beloved, to be in harmony with Him; and now we have established a
+personal relationship between ourselves and Christ.
+
+With the perception of our own failings comes the necessary
+humility and the drastic elimination of all prides. We remember, too,
+that although Jesus is so near to us, and our own Beloved, He is also
+the mighty Son of God.
+
+He is also the mystical Christ, who, when we are ready, leads us to
+the Father: which is to say, that we are suddenly stricken with the
+consciousness of and the love for God; and here we enter that most
+wonderful of all earthly experiences--the Soul's great Garden of
+Happiness.
+
+To be a student of theories, dogmas, laws, and writings of men is to
+be involved in endless controversy; and we may study books till we
+are sick, and embrace nothing but vapour for all our pains. To be a
+pupil and possessor we must first establish the personal relationship
+between ourselves and Jesus. To do this we must realise more fully
+than we now do that He _still lives._ The mind is inclined to dwell
+on Him mostly as _having lived._ When we have taught ourselves to
+realise that Jesus is as intensely alive to everything that we do as He
+was when He visibly walked with men--that Jesus is as easily aware
+of our inmost thoughts and endeavours now as He was of the secret
+thoughts of His disciples,--then we shall have brought Him much
+closer into our own life.
+
+As the possessor of life is not the student of schools, but is the pupil
+of Christ, let us prepare ourselves to be pupils; and this again we do
+solely by the help of the Man-Jesus, who is in Christ, and Christ in
+Jesus. For the Christ-God is at first too strong a meat for us: we
+cannot with fullness understand that He is God, but He Himself will
+teach us this when we are ready to know it. To know this truth in its
+fullness is already to possess eternal life.
+
+As no man is able to give us eternal life, so no man is able to give us
+the knowledge that Christ is God, as He willed to reveal Himself to
+man. If we have doubts which hurt, let us drop them out, changing
+the thought quickly to the sweetness, simplicity, and gentleness of
+the Man-Jesus. If we have questionings, let us cease to question, and
+say with the man of old, "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief."
+
+We do well to avoid these questionings, pryings, and curiosities, for
+when we indulge in such things we are like that common servant
+who does not disdain to peep through the keyhole of his master's
+chamber! Let us put such spiritual vulgarities upon one side, and,
+opening our heart to lovely Love, take Him as our only guide. Love
+draws us very rapidly to His own abiding-place, for we are made of
+love, and because of love, and for love, and to Love we must return,
+for He awaits us with longing.
+
+* * *
+
+We often think, Where am I at fault? I am unable to _see_ myself as
+a sinner, though publicly I confess myself to be one. For I keep the
+commandments; I am friendly to my neighbours; I am just to my
+fellow-men; I can think of no particular harm that I do. Why, then,
+am I a sinner? And our very modesty and reverence may forbid us to
+compare ourselves with God. Yet here lies our mistake; for if we
+would enter the Garden of Happiness and Peace, which is the
+Kingdom of God, this is the commencement of our advance--that we
+should compare ourselves in all things with God, in whose likeness
+we are made, and, making such full observation as we are able of the
+terrible gulfs between ourselves and Him, should with tears and
+humility and constant endeavour be at great pains and stress to make
+good to Him our deficiencies.
+
+     "Be ye perfect as I am perfect."
+     "Be ye holy as I am holy."
+
+If this were not attainable, He would not have set so high a goal. In
+this, then, we are sinners--that we are not pure and lovely as God
+Himself! This is a prodigious, an almost unthinkable height; yet He
+wills us to attempt it, and all the powers of Heaven are with us as we
+climb.
+
+* * *
+
+Fear curiosity. Fear it more than sin. Curiosity is the root, and sin
+the flower. This is one of the reasons why we should never seek God
+merely with the intelligence: to do so is to seek Him, in part at least,
+with curiosity. God will not be peeped upon by a curious humanity.
+The indulgence in curiosity would of itself explain the whole
+downfall, so called, of man.
+
+The Soul is the Prodigal. Curiosity _to know_ led her away from the
+high heavens. Love is her only way of return.
+
+Curiosity is the mother of all infidelity, whether of the spirit or of
+the body.
+
+* * *
+
+Though on reading the Gospels carefully we may be unable to come
+to any other conclusion than that Jesus Christ neither prayed for nor
+died for all mankind, but only for the elect, yet we see equally
+clearly that all mankind is _invited to be the elect._ We are, then,
+not individually sure of heaven because Jesus died upon a cross for
+men; but sure of heaven for ourselves, only if we individually will to
+live and think and act in such a manner that _we become of the
+elect._
+
+"Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out," says the Voice
+of the Beloved.
+
+* * *
+
+In our early stages, how we shrink from the mere word, or idea, of
+perfection; and later, what we would give to be able to achieve it!
+Yet though we shrink so from the thought of it, we know
+instinctively that we must try to approach it; if we would stay near
+Him, we must be wholly pleasing to Him. We think of saints--we
+know nothing of saints, but think of them as most unusual persons
+midway between men and angels, and know ourselves not fashioned
+for any such position: and how change ourselves, how alter our
+character, as grown men and women?
+
+It is Christ who can show us the way.
+
+The Water of Life is the Mind of Christ, and the true object of life is
+to learn how to receive this Mind of Christ: for by it and with it we
+enter the Kingdom of God. And how shall we receive the Mind of
+Christ? Here is our difficulty. Firstly, we may do it through
+sympathy with, and a drawing near to, the Man-Jesus, accompanied
+by such drastic changes of mind as we are able to accomplish _to
+show our goodwill._ We may learn to become more unselfish, more
+patient, more sympathetic to others, and to curb the tongue, so that
+words which are untrue or unkind shall not slip off it. We can learn
+to govern the animal that is in us, instead of being governed by it.
+No one could have a better guide in how to improve the condition of
+his mind than Aaron Crane's book, _Right and Wrong Thinking._
+
+And next, having become well knitted to the Man-Jesus, the Christ
+will draw us forward step by step through all the next inward stages,
+we giving to Him our attention; and He will bring us finally to that
+marvellous condition of God-consciousness by which He is able to
+perpetually refresh and renew us. There is one great first rule to hold
+to, which is _to think lovingly of Jesus_: in this way we eventually
+and automatically _come into a state of love._ In which state He will
+teach us to put out our own little light, that we may learn to live by
+the lovely light of God. And we have entered the Kingdom!
+
+For myself, I experienced three conversions: the first two of terrible
+suffering, and the third of great and marvellous joy, in which it is no
+exaggeration to say that for a few moments I seemed to receive God
+and all the freedom of the Heavens into my soul. I am not able to
+say exactly how long this experience lasted, for I was dead to time
+and place, but I should judge it to have been from fifteen to twenty
+minutes.
+
+The first conversion came upon me one afternoon in my room, as I
+came in from walking. I had been thinking of Jesus while I walked,
+as I was often in the habit of doing. Without any intention or
+premeditation on my part, I was now suddenly overwhelmed by a
+most horrible, unbearable, inexplicable pain of remorse for my
+vileness: for I seemed suddenly to be aware of Him standing there in
+His marvellous purity and looking at me--not with any reproach, but
+with the sweetness of a wonderful Invitation upon His face. And
+immediately I saw myself utterly unworthy to come near Him: and I
+writhed in the agony of this fearful perception of my unworthiness
+till I could bear no more. I was sick and ill with remorse and regret, I
+was utterly broken up by it. I did not know then that this awful pain
+is what is known as repentance, and wondered secretly what could
+have come to me. After this I found myself far more constantly
+thinking of Jesus--exchanging, as it were, sweet confidences with
+Him, telling Him what I thought, and endeavouring in every
+possible way to follow His manner of thought. I am ashamed to say
+I was very remiss and lazy in prayers; upon my knees I prayed very
+little indeed. But I was very faithful and warm and tender to Him in
+my heart, and this had an effect upon my mind and actions, and
+continued for two years.
+
+I would be assailed by many questionings during this time. For
+instance, how could my sweet Jesus, whom I was always so near to,
+be the mighty Christ and God? But I dropped these out as they came,
+feeling myself altogether too small to understand these things, and
+very much frightened by such greatnesses.
+
+When I was alone with Jesus, all was so simple and so lovely; so I
+put away all other thoughts and held closely to Jesus.
+
+This having continued almost exactly the two years, upon Easter
+morning, at the close of the service, the horrible anguish came on
+me again as I knelt in the church. I was not able to move or to show
+my face for more than an hour; and to this day I am not able to dwell
+upon the memory of that awful pain, for I think I should go mad if I
+had to enter again into so great a torture of the spirit. I endured to
+the utmost limit of my capacity for suffering--for this I will say of
+myself, I did not draw back, but went on to the bitter end. And the
+suffering was caused by the sight of that most terrible of all sights:
+the vision of myself as over against the vision of Jesus Christ, and I
+died a death for every fault. Whoever has felt the true wailing of the
+soul, such an one knows the heights of all spiritual pain. The heart
+and mind, or creature, suffers in depths; but the soul in heights, and
+this at one and the same time, so that the pain of repentance is
+everywhere. And the depth of the suffering of the creature is coequal
+with the height of the suffering of the soul, and the joint suffering of
+both would seem to be of coequal promise and merit for their after
+joy and glory; so that it would seem that the more horrible our pain,
+the quicker is our deliverance and the greater our later joys.
+
+After this, Jesus, without my knowing how it came about, passed out
+from the Perfect Man into the Christ of God. I walked and talked
+with Him no longer just as sweet Jesus, but as the Marvellous and
+Mighty Risen Lord! And now I became far more changed. The
+world and all earthly loves began to fade; they no longer satisfied or
+filled me in the least. How could I contemplate His exquisite
+perfections, the ineffable beauties of His mind and heart, and,
+turning from these to the sight of the world and of the men and
+women that I knew, not feel the difference? Where among my
+friends could I find perfect love? Amongst husbands and wives? No.
+Amongst mothers and children? No. For everywhere I saw discord,
+secret selfishness, separate and divided desires, and many deceits. I
+found no love anywhere like His for us. I was always an epicure in
+the matter of love, and knew the best when I found it. I continued
+with my social and home life exactly as before: the change was an
+inward change.
+
+Almost immediately after this the war came, and, with it, torments
+of anxiety over my earthly loves.
+
+The fearful anxieties I was in drove me to prayer. I began to pray
+more regularly; but though I prayed, I remained as miserable as
+before. A painful illness came, and lasted four months. I had no
+home because of the war, and nowhere to be ill in peace: and I drank
+and ate wretchedness as my daily bread and wine, and wondered
+why I ever was born.
+
+I cannot recall I was ever rebellious. No, I never was. I walked in a
+maze of trouble, and endured like a poor dumb thing, _and did not
+throw out my heart to God enough_ in prayer. If I had done this I
+think I should have been through my pains in half the time.
+
+Two years went by, and, being in greater anxiety than ever because
+of a great battle that was going on and my love at the front of it, I
+went up on the hill where I often went, and standing there I
+contended with God, crying out, "It is too much--the pain of this war
+is too great and too long; I cannot bear it. I am at an end of
+everything. Help me! Help me!" And in my anguish I seemed at last
+to be melted and running like water before Him, and I came before
+Him as it were immediately before a mighty and living Presence,
+though I saw nothing.
+
+But though I was so near Him and appealed to Him with the whole
+of my strength, there was no answer, no reply, but the great silence
+of heaven.
+
+At last, my agony over, I walked for a little, very quiet and very sad,
+and all at once a marvellous thing happened to me. I will not here
+describe how it was done to me, but He filled me with love for
+Himself, an amazing, all-absorbing, and tremendous love--from the
+crown of my head to the soles of my feet I was filled with love. And
+this was His answer--and all my sorrows fled away in a great joy.
+
+This third conversion produced a fundamental alteration of my
+whole outlook and grasp on life. It brought me into direct contact
+with God, and was the commencement of a total change of heart and
+mind and consciousness; the centre of my consciousness, without
+any effort of my own, suddenly moving bodily from a concentration
+upon the visible or earthly to a loving and absorbed concentration
+upon, and a fixed attention to, the Invisible God--a most
+amazing, undreamed-of change, which remained permanent, though
+fluctuating through innumerable degrees of intensity before coming
+to a state of equilibrium. And now Christ went away from me, so
+that I adored Him in God. After this for some weeks I went through
+extraordinary spiritual experiences, the like of which had never
+previously so much as entered into my heart to imagine; again I will
+say nothing here of these. I came to all these experiences with great
+innocence and ignorance, never having read any religious or
+psychological book, and I think now that it is perhaps easier to have
+it so.
+
+Knowing that nothing is done without a purpose, I would question
+myself what I could possibly be intended to learn out of these things;
+and though I have never yet found a reason for any one given
+experience, yet I see this: the whole (which lasted for some
+weeks and was gone through at night and always in a state of
+semi-wakefulness, though not in a normal wakefulness, for the body
+would be stiff and set like a board)--the whole was the most
+convincing proof that He could have given me (without destroying
+my flesh) of the reality of the life unseen. For how otherwise could
+we be made to know of the reality of spiritual things if we were
+never _taken into_ them? And having been taken into them, and
+they being a thousand times more poignant than any earthly
+experience, how could we forget them? Whenever doubts upon
+anything presented themselves, I had nothing more to do than to
+Remember! Nothing He could have devised to do for me could have
+been of greater or more direct assistance to me. These experiences
+were to my creature what the centre-board is to the racing yacht.
+With these memories I could keep an even keel, and without them I
+must have capsized many a time.
+
+By these spiritual experiences He gives us an immense courage, and
+personal knowledge of a mysterious and hitherto unknown life of
+joys so great and so intense that all sufferings endured by us here
+appear to us in their true light as being a melting and cleansing
+agency infinitely worth while, that we may gain in permanence such
+exquisite felicity.
+
+Our means of reaching a personal experience, whilst still in the body,
+of such a life of joys is to harmonise the spirit of our human creature
+to the degree of purity required by the soul to enable her in
+unfettered freedom to perform her divine functions.
+
+We confuse in our minds the two separate essences--that of the soul
+and that of the human spirit (heart, intelligence, and will), which are
+widely different; the soul acting for us as the wings of the creature.
+And above and superior to the soul, and yet within it, is the divine
+and incorruptible Spirit or Sparkle of God, which in its turn acts as
+the wings of the soul. So we have the worm (or creature-spirit), the
+soul; and the Celestial Spark, or Divine Intelligence of the soul,
+which is the organ of God, and with which we are able to come in
+_sensible contact_ with the divine world and God Himself. What are
+our enemies? Selfishness, impatience, covetousness, pride,
+ill-temper, bodily indulgences, and, above all, indifference to God of
+the will of the creature.
+
+After this third, and last, conversion upon the hill, which so altered
+my whole life, I was for a period of some months in such a state of
+exaltation and enhancement of all my faculties that I did not know
+myself at all. I was, without any intention or endeavour on my own
+part, suddenly become like a veritable House of Arts! The most
+beautiful music flowed through my mind, in which I noticed certain
+peculiarities--there was no sadness in it, and it swayed me so that I
+seemed to go into a state of white-heat with emotion over it. It was
+extraordinarily much smoother than any earth-music I ever heard,
+and extremely consecutive, like a fluid. Now with earth-music I find
+that even Wagner is not able to achieve any consecutive perfection:
+he reaches to a height--only to fall back and disappoint. But this
+other music, which is not heard with the senses but is invariably felt
+by the soul, remains at extreme and fluid perfection, and casts such
+spells over the listener that he is beside himself with enjoyment.
+Colour and form, imagery of all kinds, would pass through me till I
+felt like an artist, and cried out with regret, "Oh, if I had only studied
+this or that art and knew the grounding of it, what heights of
+proficiency I could reach now!" An object of quite ordinary charm
+seemed, because of that something which now filled me, to expand
+into prodigious beauty! The very pavements and houses, mean and
+hideous as they are, overflowed with some inexplicable glamour.
+The world was turned into a veritable paradise! When I thought of it
+all I was filled with amazement, and still am, for how can we
+explain such changes in manner of living and seeing? At this time
+my only trouble or difficulty was to conceal my condition from
+others.
+
+But this wonderful state of things gradually passed away, and I went
+into a most difficult condition. At one time of the day I would be in
+an ecstasy of delight, and an hour later in some altogether
+unreasonable depth of wretchedness. I went to and fro from one
+extreme to the other, and my time was, I think, mostly spent in
+trying to regain some kind of balance. My love for God was as great
+as ever, but it had become a love all made of tears. Indeed, my
+whole being seemed made of tears. I thought often of these words,
+the peace of God; most certainly I had not found it. On the contrary,
+my life had become an indescribable turmoil. I found no help from
+my fellow-beings; I seemed to have lost the power of talking
+pleasantly with them, and my point of view had become different
+from theirs. Men could no longer please me, and I could not please
+God! I was entirely alone spiritually, and I said to myself it would
+be better if I could be alone physically as well; and I ached and
+longed and dreamed of solitude till it was like a sickness. But the
+only solitude I could have was in my own room.
+
+Now, believing myself to be a sensible and practical person, I would
+say to myself that my condition, being so unreasonable, must be got
+out of, and I must make every effort to do it. I prayed for two
+things--that I might love God with a cheerful countenance and not with
+tears, and that He would teach me quickly what to pray for; and He
+gave me the impulse to pray for more and greater love.
+
+Next, I banished my own feelings as much as I could (since love
+must not think of itself), paying as little attention to them as possible
+by perpetually dropping them out as they came and returning to the
+thought of Jesus, concerning myself at all times of the day to loving
+inward conversation with Him; and in this manner I fastened myself
+closer than ever to Him, continually praying for greater love to give
+Him and passionately offering Him all that I already had, whilst
+with all my will and strength I tried to climb out of my miserable
+state. Soon I succeeded--I was out of it in a matter of weeks.
+
+* * *
+
+How humanity is extolled by its own kind! How men are admired,
+even glorified! I am amazed, for where is the glory of any man? But
+rather, how wonderful and glorious is God! that He should cause to
+spring from one handful of dust such possibilities! Wonderful God!
+And blessed man, that he should have so wonderful a God!
+
+* * *
+
+Some men say that man has invented for himself the thought of God,
+because of the great need he feels within himself for such a Being.
+
+Yet look where we will in Nature, do we find a warrant for such a
+thought? Are babes inspired with the desire for milk, and is that milk
+withheld from the nature of all mothers? No; to the babe is given the
+desire because the mother has wherewith to satisfy. So with grown
+men: for to us is given a deep and secret desire for the milk of God's
+love, and to Himself He has reserved the joy of leading us to it and
+bestowing it upon us.
+
+* * *
+
+Sometimes for a short while the soul will suffer from a sickness (I
+speak now for persons already very well advanced); she is parched
+and without sweetness. Her love has no joy in it. This is not a
+condition to be accepted or acquiesced in, but must be overcome at
+once by a remedy of prayer: prayer addressed to the Father, _in the
+name of Jesus Christ,_ a prayer of praise and adoration--"I praise
+and bless and love and thank Thee, I praise and bless and love and
+worship Thee, I praise and bless and love and glorify Thee"--till the
+heart is fired and we return to the intimacy of love. Or the Lord's
+Prayer, very slow, and with an intention both outgoing and
+_intaking._ So far I have never known these remedies to fail, and
+joy floods the soul and sends her swinging up, up, on to the topmost
+heights again. It is magnificent.
+
+How is it that we can pass so, up from the visible into the Invisible,
+and become so oned with it, and feel it so powerfully, that the
+Invisible becomes a thousand times more real to us than the visible!
+It is like a different manner of living altogether. And when anyone
+so living finds himself even for a short time unfastened from this
+way of living and back again to what is known to the average as
+normal life, this normal life seems no better to him than some
+horrible chaotic and uneven turmoil, and his brain ready to be turned
+if he had to remain in it for long. When so unfastened, the whole
+savour of life is completely gone, and a smallness of mind and
+outlook is fallen back into from which the soul recoils in horror and
+struggles quickly to free herself.
+
+Is this the remnant of the unruly creature rising up and grappling
+with the soul again? Is this some deliberate trial of us by the Master?
+or some natural spiritual sickness? Whilst in this condition we must
+disappoint the Beloved. On the other hand, we find ourselves kept
+to the knowledge of our own impotence and nothingness and
+dependence, and the spirit is strengthened by the efforts made
+quickly to recover the lost beautiful estate.
+
+Also we become more able to feel true patience and compassion for
+such others as do not know the way of escape. So we gain, maybe,
+more than we lose.
+
+* * *
+
+We may wonder how it is that the Mighty Maker of the Universe
+should choose to condescend to the mere individual piece of clay. It
+is incomprehensible. It is so incomprehensible that there is but one
+way of looking at it. This is no favouritism to the individual, but the
+evidence of a Mind with a vast plan pursuing a way and using a
+likely individual. These individuals or willing souls He takes and,
+setting them apart, fashions them to His own ends and liking. Of one
+He will make a worker, and of another He fashions to Himself a
+lover. It would seem to be His will to use the human implement to
+help the human. As water, for usefulness to the many, must be
+collected and put through channels, so it would seem must the
+beneficence of God be collected into human vessels and channels
+that it may be distributed for the use of the many and the more
+feeble.
+
+* * *
+
+The more any man will consider humanity, the more he will see that
+the education of the heart and will is of more importance than the
+education of the brain. For in the perfectly trained and educated
+heart and will we find the evidence of highest wisdom.
+
+* * *
+
+Why mortify the body with harsh austerities? When we over-mortify
+the body with fastings, pains, and penances we are _remembering
+the flesh._ Let us aim at the forgetting and not the despising of the
+flesh. A sick body can be a great hindrance to the soul. By keeping
+the body in a state of perfect wholesomeness we can more easily
+pass away from the recollection of it. Chastise the mind rather than
+the body. Christ taught, not the contempt or wilful neglect of the
+body, but the humble submission of the body to all _circumstances,_
+the obedience of the will to God, and the glorious and immeasurable
+possibilities of the human spirit.
+
+* * *
+
+We know that the love of the heart can be beautiful and full of zeal
+and fervour; but the love of the soul by comparison to it is like a
+furnace, and the capacities of the heart are not worthy to be named
+in the same breath. Yet, deplorable as is the heart of man, it is
+evidently desired by God, and must be given to Him before He will
+waken the soul. To my belief, we are quite unable to awaken our
+own soul, though we are able to _will_ to love God with the heart,
+and through this we pass up to the border of the Veil of Separation,
+where He will _sting the soul into life_ and we have Perception.
+
+After which the soul will often be swept or plucked up into
+immeasurable glories and delights which are neither imagined nor
+contrived, nor even desired by her at first--for how can we desire
+that which we have never heard of and cannot even imagine? And
+these delights are unimaginable before the soul is caught up into
+them, and to my experience they constantly differ. The soul knows
+herself to be in the hands and the power of another, outside herself.
+She does not enter these joys of her own power or of her own will,
+but by permission and intention and will of a force outside herself
+though perceived and known inside herself. No lovers of arguments
+or guessing games can move the soul to listen when she has once
+been so handled. For to know is more than to guess.
+
+* * *
+
+How can a Contact with God be in any way described? It is not
+seeing, but meeting and fusion with awareness. The soul retaining
+her own individuality and consciousness to an intense degree, but
+imbued with and fused into a life of incredible intensity, which
+passes through the soul vitalities and emotions of a life so new, so
+vivid, so amazing, that she knows not whether she has been
+embraced by love or by fire, by joy or by anguish: for so fearful is
+her joy that she is almost unable to endure the might of it. And how
+can the heat or fire of God be described? It is very far from being
+like the cruelty of fire, and yet it is so tremendous that the mind
+knows of little else to compare it to. But it is like a vibration of great
+speed and heat, like a fluid and magnetic heat.
+
+This heat is of many degrees and of several kinds. The heat of Christ
+is mixed with indescribable sweetness: giving marvellous pleasure
+and refreshment and happiness, and wonderfully adapted to the
+delicacy of the human creature. The heat of the Godhead is very
+different, and sometimes we may even feel it to be cruel and
+remorseless in its very terrible and swift intensity. But the soul, like
+all great lovers, never flinches or hangs back, but passionately lends
+herself. If He chose to kill her with this joy she would gladly have it
+so.
+
+By these incomprehensible wonders He seems to say to the creature:
+"Come thou here, that I may teach thee what is Joy; come thou here,
+that I may teach thee what is _Life._ For none are permitted to teach
+of these things save I Myself."
+
+* * *
+
+There is another manner. The Spirit comes upon the soul in waves of
+terrible power. Now in a rapture God descends upon the soul,
+catching her suddenly up in a marvellous embrace: magnetising her,
+ravishing her. He is come, and He is gone. In an ecstasy the soul
+goes out prepared to meet Him, seeking Him by praise and prayer,
+pouring up her love towards Him; and He, condescending to her,
+fills her with unspeakable delights, and at rare times He will catch
+her from an ecstasy into a greater rapture. At least, so it is with me:
+the ecstasy is prepared for, but in the quicker rapture (or catching up)
+it is He that seeks the soul. These two conditions, though given very
+intermittently, become a completely natural experience. I should say
+that the soul lived by this way: it is her food and her life, which she
+receives with all the simplicity and naturalness of the hungry man
+turning to his bodily food. But these waves of power were
+something altogether new and very hard to endure. As each wave
+passed I would come up out of it, as it were, gasping. It was as if
+something too great for the soul to contain was being forced through
+her. It was as if one should try to force at fearful pressure fluid
+through a body too solid to be percolated by it. I understood nothing
+of what could be intended by such happenings, neither could I give
+accommodation to this intensity. I tried to make myself a wholly
+willing receptacle and instrument, but after the third day of this I
+could not bear any more. I was greatly distressed. I could not
+understand what was required of me. I gave myself totally to Him,
+and it was not enough. And at last I cried to Him, saying: "I
+understand nothing: forgive me, my God, for my great foolishness,
+but Thy power is too much for me. Do what Thou wilt with me; I
+am altogether Thine. Drown me with Thy strength, break me in
+pieces--I am willing; only do it quickly, my Lord, and have done
+with it, for I am so small. But I love Thee with all that I have or am;
+yet I am overwhelmed: I am still too little to be taught in this way, it
+is too much for my strength. Yet do as Thou wilt; I love Thee, I love
+Thee." And He heard me, and He ceased: and He returned to the
+ways that I understood and dearly loved, and for weeks I lived in
+Paradise. But my body was dreadfully shaken, and I suffered with
+my heart and breathing.
+
+Shortly after I began to know that another change had come into me.
+God had become intensely my Father, and Christ the lover was gone
+up again into the Godhead--as happened after my third conversion
+upon the hill.
+
+So great, so tremendous was this sense of the _Fatherhood_ of God
+become that I had only to think the word Father to seem to be
+instantly transported into His very bosom. Oh, the mighty sweetness
+of it! But it is not an ecstasy. The creature and soul are dead to
+world-life, as in a rapture or ecstasy; but the soul is not the bride,
+she is the child, and, full of eager and adoring intimacy, she flies
+into His ever-open arms, and never, never does she miss the way.
+Oh, the sweetness of it, the great, great glory of it, and the folly of
+words! If only all the world of men and women could have this joy!
+How to help even one soul towards it is what fills my heart and
+mind. How convince them, how induce them to take the first steps?
+It is the first steps we need to take. He does not drive, He calls.
+"Come to Me," He calls. It is this failure to have the will to go to
+Him which is the root of all human woe. Would we but take the first
+few steps towards Him, He will carry us all the rest of the way.
+These first few steps we take holding to the hand of Jesus. For the
+so-called Christian there is no other way (but he is no Christian until
+he has taken it). For the Buddhist, doubtless, Gautama is permitted
+to do the same. But for those who are baptized in Jesus Christ's
+name, He is their only Way.
+
+* * *
+
+God, once found, is so poignantly ever-present to the soul that we
+must sing and whisper to Him all the day.
+
+O marvellous and exquisite God! I am so enraptured by Thy
+nearness, I am so filled with love and joy, that there is no one,
+nothing, in heaven or earth to me save Thine Own Self, and I could
+die for love of Thee! Indeed I am in deep necessity to find Thee at
+each moment of the day, for so great is Thy glamour that without
+Thee my days are like bitter waters and a mouthful of gravel to a
+hungry man. How long wilt Thou leave me here--set down upon the
+earth in this martyrdom of languishing for love of Thee? And
+suddenly, when the pain can be endured no more, He embraces the
+soul. Then where do sorrow and waiting fly? and what is pain?
+There never were such things!
+
+* * *
+
+We do well never to recall past ecstasies. In this way the soul comes
+to each encounter with a lovely freshness and purity, and neither
+makes comparisons nor curious comments, but gives herself wholly
+to love. But by these contacts the soul gains a secret and personal
+knowledge of God: without sight and without reasoning she actually
+feels to partake of God, so that she passes by these means far up
+beyond belief, into experiences of knowledge which in their
+poignant intensity are at once an ineffable violence and a marvellous
+white peace.
+
+* * *
+
+I find the lark the most wonderful of all birds. I cannot listen to his
+rhapsodies without being inspired (no matter what I may be in the
+midst of doing or saying) to throw up my own love to God. In the
+soaring insistence of his song and passion I find the only thing in
+Nature which so suggests the high-soaring and rapturous flights of
+the soul. But I am glad that we surpass the lark in sustaining a far
+more lengthy and wonderful flight; and that we sing, not downwards
+to an earthly love, but upwards to a heavenly.
+
+To my mind, this is man's only justification for considering himself
+above the beasts--that we can love, and communicate with, God. For
+where otherwise is his superiority? He builds fine buildings which
+crumble and decay. He digs holes in the earth to take out treasures
+which he has not made; and if he makes himself the very highest
+tower of wealth or fame, he must come down from it and be buried
+in the earth like any other carcase.
+
+* * *
+
+It is better not to contend, either with others or against our own body.
+If we contend against anything we impress it the more firmly upon
+our consciousness. So if we would overcome the lusts of the body,
+let us do it not by harming or by contending against the body, which
+but emphasises its powers and importance, but let us rather proceed
+to ignore and make little of the body by forgetting it and passing out
+of it into higher things; and eventually we shall learn to live, not in
+the lower state, but in the joy of the soul. Why have a contempt for
+the body? I once did, and found that I was committing a great sin
+against the Maker of it.
+
+How dare we say "my body is vile," when He fashioned it! It is
+blasphemous, when we consider that it is His Temple.
+
+To my mind the body is a beautiful and wonderful thing, and is
+greatly sinned against by our evil hearts and minds and tongues. The
+body would do no harm if we, with our free-will, did not think out
+the wickedness first in our own hearts. For first we commit theft and
+adultery with the mind, and then we cause the body to carry out
+these things. We know that the body is under the law, and its
+appetites are under the law, but the heart and mind and tongue are
+perpetual breakers of this law. It is lawful for the body to take its
+meat and drink, but not to be surfeited and drunken. It is lawful for
+the body to have its desires and its loves, but not to be promiscuous
+and unfaithful.
+
+But we know that a better way is to turn all appetites and greeds to
+this, that we be greedy and ravenous for Christ. Only so shall we use
+the appetites of mind and heart and body for their true end, and that
+not by despising but by conversion.
+
+With great insistence I have been taught not to despise anything
+whatever in Creation of _things made_ in His most beautiful and
+wonderful world, though often I may cry with tears, "Lord God!
+raise me to a world holier and nearer to Thyself, for I am
+heartbroken here."
+
+Yet I am taught only to despise such things as lying, deceitfulness,
+hypocrisy, and uncleanness--in fact, stenches of the heart and
+mind,--and not to think too much about these, but, passing on, drop
+out the recollection of them in thoughts of finer things.
+
+His inward instruction has been this, quietly to lay upon one side all
+that which is not pleasing to God; and one by one, and piece by
+piece, to fold up and put away all that He does not love.
+
+Above all, He has taught me to have no self-esteem and no prides;
+and to such a degree do I have to learn this, that, without the
+smallest exaggeration, I am hardly ever able to think myself the
+equal of a dog. But the love of a dog for his master is a very fine
+thing.
+
+* * *
+
+I think we mistake our own power and capacity in even seeking to
+imitate the Christ; let us begin rather by taking into our heart and our
+mind the Christ as the Man-Jesus. For His love and power only can
+show us the way to imitate the Christ which is in Him.
+
+* * *
+
+Is the temporary loss of grace our fault, or is it a deliberate
+withdrawal and testing upon His part? Both. Every condition that we
+are in which is not pure and perfect of its kind, such as pure peace,
+pure joy, pure harmony, is because of failure on our part to _hold_
+to Him. Whenever, and for so long, as we keep ourselves in the
+single and simple condition of mind and heart necessary for the
+perception and reception of Him, for just so long shall we receive
+and perceive him; but this condition again we cannot maintain
+without grace. All loss of joy, of serenity, of contact, is failure, then,
+on our part or withdrawal upon His. Yet we learn a bitter but useful
+lesson by these losses of ability for connection. To return
+ignominiously to our dust is a most bitter humiliation and trial--indeed,
+a desolation. Now, if we did not so return we might suppose
+ourselves able, of our own power, not only to achieve momentary
+connection with the Divine, but to remain at will in this sublime
+condition, by which I mean in a state bordering upon ecstasy. The
+withdrawal of grace therefore would seem to be a necessary part of
+the education and of the constant humbling of the soul. To find
+ourselves, of our own unaided capacity, by the mere force of our
+own will, able to constantly go up to so high a level would
+inevitably foster pride; indeed, to attain such a capacity would seem
+to place us on a level with the angels!
+
+By these withdrawals of grace, which came at first very tenderly, but
+gradually with greater and greater severity, I have learnt this: that in
+spite of all that has been done for me, of all that I have experienced,
+in spite of all the heights to which at times I have been raised, I
+remain nothing better than the frailest and unworthiest thing! The
+sight of an ugly grey cloud, momentarily and gloriously illumined
+by the sun, is a sufficient illustration of the temporary
+transformation of our own selves touched by the light and the glory
+of God.
+
+For the carrying out of His plan, it would seem to be His good
+pleasure that we are just what we are--not angels, but little human
+things, full of simplicity and trust and love. "Like dear children," as
+St Paul says; and yet, oh! wonder of wonders! _far more than this._
+For whilst we patiently wait, from time to time He stoops and
+embraces the soul in an infinite bliss, in which we are no more
+children, but are caught up into High Love.
+
+At first when we begin this new kind of living He holds us firmly, as
+it were, to a condition suitable for contact with Him. If He did not
+do so, having had no previous practice, we should never remain in it
+for two moments together. Then little by little He teaches us to live
+with less frequent joy, and this is the cause of much difficulty and
+trouble. It is hard to endure being without this blessed state and
+these marvellous favours, and more and more I found He withdrew
+them whilst often my worldly and commonplace heart and mind still
+held me back--_even from peace._ If we could but rid ourselves
+quickly of all selfish desires and greeds! Not until I had learnt to do
+this was I given back my joys, and then sparingly.
+
+How I would turn towards that secret door--the door of the kingdom
+of love,--and calling to Him, hear no reply! Where is He gone?--why
+this desertion?--I would cry. How can He cause such pain, how can I
+bear such dreadful deprivations, and what is love but a sharp sword?
+Lord, let me hear Thy voice, for I am in despair; I cannot bear these
+pains, I fear for everything, my joy is lost. My bread is spread with
+bitterness; where is the honey that I love so well? Lord, call to me
+even from far away, and I shall hear and be consoled. Lord, I am
+sick and ill--how canst Thou leave me so? Hast Thou no pity for my
+pain?--is this Thy love? _My_ pain! Lord, I remember! Thou hast
+been kissed by pain more frequently than I. Oh, let me wipe the
+memory of Thy pain away with my warm love, and let me sing to
+Thee and be Thy lark, and do Thou go and wander where Thou wilt
+and I will love Thee just the same! And softly the Voice of the
+Beloved, saying: "I am here, I never left thee; but thou wast busy
+crying of thy pains and did not hear Me when I answered thee."
+Lord, so I was! I was so filled with self, and, asking for _Thy gifts, I
+did forget to give!_ and so lost love.
+
+* * *
+
+It is hard to conquer in small things, petty irritations, worries, cares
+of this world, likes and dislikes--all of these being subtle temptations,
+and all selfish. For instance, very often I find the human voice the
+most horrible thing that I know! I will be in a beautiful state of mind,
+and people around me will drag me from it with their maddening
+inanities of conversation. This one will speak of the weather, and
+that one of food; another of scandal, another of amusements. They
+will talk of their love for a dog, for a horse, for golf, for men or
+women; but never do I hear at any time, or anywhere, anyone speak
+of their love for God. I must listen to all their loves, but if I should
+venture to speak of mine they would look at me amazed; indeed, I
+never should dare to do it. And this is perhaps the greatest weakness
+that I have to fight against now, and one that spoils the harmony of
+the mind more than any other--that I cannot always control myself
+from secret though unspoken irritation, impatience, and criticisms;
+and to criticise is to judge, and in this there is wrong, and the
+smallest breeze of wrong is enough to blow to--even to close--the
+door into that other lovely world. And not only this, but every such
+failure is a disappointment to the Beloved. Many times I say to Him,
+"What canst Thou do with us all, Beloved--such a mass of selfish,
+foolish, blundering, sinful creatures, all hanging and pulling on to
+Thee at the same moment?" And I will be filled with a passionate
+desire to so progress that I may stand a little alone and not be a
+perpetual drag upon Him, and, feeling strong, perhaps I will say: "I
+will give up my share of Thee to someone else, and not draw upon
+Thee for a little while, my Beloved Lord." But oh, in less than an
+hour, if He should take me at my word! I could cry and moan like a
+small child, in my horrible emptiness and longing for Him. And
+where now is my strength?--I have not an ounce of it without Him!
+By this I learn in my own person how He is life itself to us, in all
+ways. He is the air, the bread, and the blood of the soul, and no one
+can live without at every moment drawing upon Him, though they
+do it insensibly. What a weight to carry, what a burden, this whole
+hungry clamouring mass of disobedient men and women! Oh, my
+Beloved, how frequently I weep for all Thy bitter disappointment--never
+ending!
+
+But this we may be sure of--that all the marvels of His grace are not
+poured out on some poor scrappit for no other reason than to give
+him pleasure. There is a vast purpose behind it all, and by keenest
+attention we must pick up this purpose, understand it, _and do it._
+This is the true work of man, to love God with all the heart and mind
+and soul and strength, and not those material works with which we
+all so easily satisfy ourselves and our consciences, and our _bodily_
+needs.
+
+He has marvellous ways (and very difficult to the beginner) of
+conveying His wishes. To my finding, the inward life of us is like a
+perpetual interchange of conversation between the heart and its
+many desires and the mind (which for myself I put into three
+parts--the intelligence, the will, the reason). Now, all these parts of my
+heart and of my mind formerly occupied themselves entirely with
+worldly things, passing from one thing to another in most disorderly
+fashion; but now they occupy themselves (save for bodily
+necessities) _solely_ with Him. There is a perpetual smooth and
+beautiful conversation between them _to_ Him and _of_ Him; and
+suddenly He will seem to enter into this conversation, suggesting
+thoughts which are not mine.
+
+Often He will stab the soul, but not with words, also the heart; and I
+have known such communications lie for weeks before they could
+be taken up by the mind, turned into words, and finally as _words_
+be digested by the reason. And another way to the soul only--rare,
+untransferable to words, and therefore not transmittable to others or
+to the reason. This way causes the creature a great amazement, and
+is like a flooding or moving of whiteness, or an inwardly-felt
+phosphorescence; it is a vitalising ministration greatly enjoyed by
+the soul. This is not any ecstasy, and is exceedingly swift; the soul
+must be at _high attention_ to receive this, yet neither anticipates
+nor asks for it, but is in the act of giving great and joyful adoration.
+
+* * *
+
+I do not remember when I first became fully conscious that the
+centre or seat of my emotions was changed, and that I now
+responded to all the experiences of life only with the higher parts of
+me.
+
+This change I found inexplicable and remarkable, for it was
+fundamental, and yet neither intended nor thought of by me. With
+this alteration in the physical correspondences to life came a
+corresponding alteration in the spiritual of me.
+
+Formerly I supposed that the soul dwelt in, or was even a part of, the
+mind. Now, though the mind must be filled wholly with God, and all
+other things whatsoever put out of it if we would contemplate Him
+or respond to Him, yet neither the brain nor the intelligence of the
+creature can come into any contact with Him; and this I soon learnt.
+
+Correspondence with the Divine is accomplished for the creature
+through the heart and by the uppermost part of the breast, this latter
+place (above the heart and below the mind) is the dwelling-place of
+the celestial spark of the soul, which lies, as it were, between two
+fires--that of the heart and that of the mind, responding directly to
+neither of these, but to God only.
+
+Before I was touched upon the hill I was not aware of the locality of
+any part of my soul, neither was there anything which could
+convince me that I even possessed a soul. I did no more than believe
+and suppose that I did possess one. But the soul, once revived,
+becomes the most powerful and vivid part of our being; we are not
+able any longer to mistake its possession or position in the body. She
+is indeed the wonderful and lovely mistress of us, with which alone
+we can unlock the mysteries of God's love.
+
+* * *
+
+How poor and cold a thing is mere belief! No longer do I _believe_
+in Jesus Christ: I do _possess Him._ So complete is the change that
+He brings about in us that I now only count my life and my time
+from the first day of this new God-consciousness that I received
+upon the hill, for that was the first day of my real life; just as
+formerly I would count my time from the first day of my physical
+birth, and from that on to my falling in love and to my marriage,
+which once seemed to me to be the most important dates.
+
+Whilst these changes were taking place in me I would often be filled
+with uneasiness and some alarm; asking myself what all this could
+mean, and if it could be the way of martyrs or saints, for I had no
+courage or liking to be one or the other and was very frightened of
+suffering. And I think my cunning heart would have liked to take all
+the sweets and leave the bitter. How well He knew this, and how
+exquisitely He handled me, never forcing, only looking at me,
+_inviting_ me with those marvellous perfections of His! How could
+I possibly resist Him? All the while, all my waking hours, I felt that
+strange, new, incomprehensible, steady, insistent _drawing_ and urgency
+of the Spirit in me. Little by little I went--and still go--_towards_
+perfection, whilst my cowardly heart endured many fears,
+but these are now past. It was not any desire for my own salvation;
+to this I have never given so much as two thoughts. It was the
+_irresistible attraction_ of our marvellous and beautiful God. He
+lured, He drew me with His loveliness, His holy perfections, His
+unutterable purity. _I longed to please Him._ The whole earth was
+filled with the glamour of Him, and I filled with horror to see how
+utterly unlike--apart from the glorious Beloved--I was. How
+frightful my blemishes, which must stink in His nostrils! Think of it!
+To stink in the nostrils of the Beloved! What lover could endure to
+do such a thing? No effort could be too great or painful to beautify
+oneself for Him. In this there is no virtue; it is the driving necessity
+of love, a necessity known by every lover worthy of the name on
+earth. To please and obey this ineffable and exquisite Being!--the
+privilege intoxicated me more and more.
+
+All these changes in my heart and mind continually filled me with
+surprise, for I was never pious, though inwardly and secretly I had
+so ardently sought Him. I was attentive, humble, and reverent,
+nothing more.
+
+But though I had perhaps little or no piety, and never read a single
+religious book, I had had a deep thirst for the perfect and the holy
+and the pure, as I seemed unable to find them here on the earth. In
+the quiet solemnity of church, or under the blue skies, I could detach
+myself from my surroundings and reach up and out with wistful
+dimness towards the ineffable holiness and purity of God--God who,
+for me at least, remained persistently so unattainable.
+
+And yet one blessed day I was to find Him suddenly, all in one
+glorious hour, no longer unattainable but immanently, marvellously
+near, and willing to remain for me so strangely permanently near
+that I must sing silently to Him from my heart all the day long--sing
+to Him silently, because even the faintest whisper would feel too
+gross and loud between my soul and Him. And in hours when I fall
+from this wonderful estate I think I come very near hell, so awful is
+my loss.
+
+Our greatest need is to relearn the will of God. For we are so
+separated from Him that we now look upon His Will as on a cross,
+as an incomprehensible sacrifice, as but self-abnegation, pain, and
+gloom. We repudiate it in terror.
+
+If we have the will to relearn His Will, we stand still and think of it,
+we walk to seek it, we try to accept it, trembling we bow down to it
+with obedience and many tears; and behold! it changes to an
+Invitation, a sigh of beauty, a breath of spring, the song of birds, the
+faces of flowers, the ever-ascending spiral of the mating of all loves,
+the sunshine of the Universe; and at last, intoxicated with happiness,
+we say: "My God, my Love, I sip and drink Thy Will as an
+ambrosial Wine!"
+
+* * *
+
+To the lover of God all affections go up and become enclosed, as it
+were, into one affection, which is Himself; so that we have no love
+for anyone or anything _apart_ from Him. In this is included, in a
+most deep and mysterious fashion, marriage-love in all its aspects.
+In every way it can become a sacrament: there is nothing in it which
+is not holy, in no way does the marriage bond of the body separate
+the spirit from acceptableness to God.
+
+But I was some time before I could arrive at this, and could see
+marriage as the physical prototype in this physical world of the
+spiritual union with Himself in the spiritual world. And this was
+arrived at, not by prudish questionings and criticisms, but by
+remembering that this relationship between men and women is His
+thought, His plan, not ours. We are responsible for our part in it only
+in so far as to keep the bond of it pure and clean and sweet, and
+submit ourselves in all things _as completely and orderly as possible
+to His plans, whatever they may be._ In this attitude of
+unquestioning, unresisting submission, the Holy Spirit finds a swift
+and easy channel through us. It is our opposition to the passage of
+the Holy Will which causes all the distress and uneasiness of life. He
+has no wish to impose distress and suffering upon us. His Will
+towards us is pure joy, pure love, pure peace, pure sweetness. This
+bond of earthly marriage is of the flesh and can be kept by the body,
+and yet the heart, mind, and soul remain in lovely perfect chastity;
+and I found that this exquisite freedom--after prolonged endeavours
+on the part of the soul and the creature--was at length given them as
+a gift by act of grace, and remained in permanence without variation.
+
+* * *
+
+We know that these things are deep mysteries and largely hidden;
+but this I know: as the heart feels love in itself for God, in that same
+instant comes God into the soul of the lover. Now, where God is we
+know that there is neither evil, nor sadness, nor unhappiness, nor
+any recollection of such things; therefore, to be a great and constant
+lover to Him is to be automatically lifted from all unhappinesses.
+
+This is our wisest and our best desire, to be a splendid lover to our
+Most Glorious God.
+
+The more I see of and talk with other people, the more I see how
+greatly changed I am. I am _freed._ They are bound. I find them
+bound by fears, by anxieties, by worries, by apprehensions of evil
+things, by sadness, by fears of death for their loved ones or for
+themselves. Now, we are freed of all these things _if we keep to the
+Way,_ which is the Road of Love. This change we do not bring
+about for ourselves, and do not perhaps even realise that it can be
+effected. For myself, I seemed to be lifted into it, or into a
+_capacity_ for it, on that day and in that moment in which I first
+loved God. This is not to say that since that moment I have not had
+to struggle, suffer, and endure, to keep myself in, and progress in
+this condition; but my sufferings, struggles, and endurances, being
+for love and in love and because of love, were and are in themselves
+beautiful, and leave in the recollection nothing inharmonious. They
+are the difficult prelude to a glorious melody.
+
+Another thing--we become by this love for Him so large that we
+seem to embrace within our own self the Universe! In some
+mysterious manner we become in sympathy with all things in the
+bond of His making.
+
+Are these things worth nothing whatever, that the majority of people
+should be content to spend their lives looking for five-pound notes
+and even shillings--and this not only the poor, but the rich more so?
+I am far more at a loss to understand my fellow-men than I am to
+understand God. We have need of the shillings, but of other and
+more lovely things besides, which cost no money and may be had by
+the poorest. It is rapidly becoming the only sorrow of my life that
+people do not all come to share this Life in which I live. How that
+parable knocks at the heart, "Go out into the highways and the
+hedges and compel them to come in!" To know all this _fullness_ of
+life and not to be able to bring even my nearest and dearest into it:
+what a terrible mystery is this!--it is an agony. Now, in this agony I
+share the Agony of Jesus. This is a part of the Cross, and only the
+Father can make it straight. I see Heaven held out, and _refused;_
+love held out, and _refused;_ perfection shown, and killed upon a
+cross. What is the crucifix but that most awful of all things--the
+Grief of God made Visible? Perfect Love submitting itself to the vile
+freewill of man and dying of wounds! My God! my God! and did
+_I_ ever have a hand in such a thing? I did.
+
+* * *
+
+What is it that seems more than any other thing whatever to throw us
+at last into the arms of God? Suffering. And this not because it is His
+will (for how much rather would He have us turn to Him in our joy
+and prosperity), but rather that it is _our_ will, that in our earthly
+joys and prosperities we turn away from Him, and only seek His
+consolations when we see the failure of our health or happiness. And
+having by His mercy and forgiveness found Him, we too often and
+too easily think to glorify ourselves and name each other saints! Did
+Jesus call us saints? These glorifications mankind would appear to
+bestow upon itself. He spoke of His flock, and of those who through
+Him should have life eternal, and of those who, because of the road
+they take, have their joys in this world only.
+
+* * *
+
+When I was being taught to pray for national things and for other
+persons, and found these prayers answered, I was inclined to be
+afraid; thinking, What am I that I should dare to petition the Most
+High? But He showed it me so, which, as in everything, is for all of
+us: "It is but a cloud which reflects the glories of the promise of My
+rainbow; so can the dust, such as thyself, reflect yet other fashions
+of My will and glory. There is no presumption in the cloud that it
+should glow with My power; neither is there presumption in thy dust
+that it should be My vehicle. Both the cloud and thy dust are Mine."
+
+* * *
+
+As we progress in this new way of living we find an increasing
+difficulty in maintaining petition; for on commencing to petition we
+will almost invariably be instantly lifted up to such a state of
+adoration that the whole soul is nothing but a burning song, a thing
+of living worship. At first I was inclined to blame myself, but now I
+know that it is acceptable for us to pass from petitioning (no matter
+who or what for) to high adoration, even though it is a great personal
+indulgence (and the petitioning is a _hard task)--_an indulgence so
+extreme that I cannot call to my mind anything in any experience or
+time of my life, excepting actual raptures, which could, or can, in
+any way compare or be named in the same breath with this most
+marvellous joy; for out of this joy of adoration flows the Song of the
+Soul.
+
+And all these previous years of my life I have lived with the greater
+part of me dead, and most persons the same! The more I think of it,
+the more amazed I am at our folly--working and fretting, and
+striving and looking for every kind of thing except the one thing,
+beautiful, needful, and living, which is the finding of the personal
+connection between ourselves and God and the Waters of Life.
+
+Looking to my own experiences, I see clearly how I never could
+have found without the most powerful and incessant assistance. We
+are, then, never alone. But first we must have _the will to seek these
+waters._ This is the secret of the whole matter. He can turn the vilest
+into a pure lover--if the vilest be willing to have the miracle
+performed on him! This is the grace of God, and what does it cost
+Him to pour out this mighty power through us? For everything has
+its price. My Lord! my Lord! we are not worthy of it all.
+
+This I notice, that when He removes this grace, very shortly the
+mind goes back to a false, uneven, inharmonious state; so we
+become like an instrument all out of tune, and are caused
+indescribable sufferings, like a musician whose ears and nerves are
+tortured by false notes, whilst his unmusical neighbours feel no pain!
+The musician pays a price for the privilege of his great gift; so the
+lover of Christ.
+
+Again, there is a price to pay for the immeasurable _joy_ of prayer,
+for prayers are not always sweet nor life-giving. The prayers to
+Christ are always a refreshment, but prayers to the Father may
+suddenly be turned without any previous thought or private intention
+into a most awful grief for the abominations of the whole world of
+us, a terrible wordless burnt-sacrifice of the soul, of unspeakable
+anguish. And high petitioning is a fearful and profound strain upon
+the soul and the whole creature.
+
+* * *
+
+We say that we have need of the purification and conversion of the
+soul; but rather it is first the conversion of the heart, mind, and will
+that we have need of. For this would feel to be the drama of our
+life--the human heart, intelligence, and will are the ego of the creature.
+Our soul is the visitor within this creature, containing within herself
+a pure, holy, and incorruptible sparkle of the Divine, and lies choked
+and atrophied in her human house until revived and awakened by
+her holy lover; and this awakening is not given to her till the heart
+and mind of her human house (or the will and spirit of the creature)
+is in a state of regeneration, or condition to go forward towards God.
+Which is to say, the creature has been touched by repentance and a
+desire for the pure and the holy. For if the soul should be awakened
+to an unrepentant creature, this Will and imperishable worm of the
+creature (which is of greater coarseness and lustiness than the
+delicate and fragile soul) will overcome the soul; and this is not the
+goal, neither is the death of the creature the goal, but the lifting up of
+the creature into the Divine--this is the goal.
+
+After being awakened, then, in her human house, the soul finds
+herself locked in with two most treacherous and soiled companions--the
+human heart and mind; and so great is her loathing and her
+distress, that for shame's sake these two are constrained to improve
+themselves. But their progress is slow, and now comes a long and
+painful time of alternation between two states. At one time the soul
+will conquer the creature, imposing upon it a sovereign beauty of
+holiness; and at another the creature will conquer the soul, imposing
+upon her its hideous designs and desires, and causing her many
+sicknesses. Hence we have the warring which we feel within
+ourselves, for the soul now desires her home and the creature its
+appetites.
+
+Until this awakening of the soul takes place, we mistake in thinking
+that we either live with our soul, or know our soul, or feel with our
+soul. She does but stir within us from time to time, awaking strange
+echoes that we do not comprehend; and we live with the mind and
+the heart and the body only--which is to say, we live as the creature;
+and this is why on the complete awakening of the soul we feel in the
+creature an immense and altogether indescribable enhancement of
+life and of all our faculties, so that in great amazement we say, "I
+have never _lived_ until this day." When first the will of the creature
+is wholly submitted to the lovely guidance of the divine part of the
+soul, then first we know the ineffable joys of the world of free spirit.
+For to live with the mind and the body is to be in a state of existence
+in nature. But to live with the soul is to live above nature, in the
+immeasurable freedom and intensity of the spirit. And this is the
+tremendous task of the soul--that she help to redeem the heart and
+mind from their vileness of the creature and so lift the human
+upwards with herself to the Divine from whence she came. This,
+then, is the transmutation or evolution by divine means of the human
+into the divine; and for this we need to seek repentance or change of
+heart and mind, which is the will of the creature turning itself
+towards the beauties of the spirit, that Christ may awaken in us the
+glories of that sleeping soul which is His bride.
+
+When the soul is fully revived we can know it by this, that we are
+not able any longer to content ourselves with anything nor anyone
+save God. Neither are we able to love any save God, for all human
+desires and loves mysteriously ascend and are merged into the
+Divine. So, though we love our friend, we love him in God, and in
+every man perceive but another lover for the Beloved.
+
+* * *
+
+To love God might commence to be expressed as being a great quiet,
+an intense activity, a prodigious joy, and the poignant knowledge of
+_the immensity of an amazing new life shared._
+
+The contemplation of God might be expressed as the folding up or
+complete forgetfulness of all earthly and bodily things, desires, and
+attractions, and the raising of the heart and mind and the centring of
+them in great and joyful intensity upon God, by means of love. Of
+this contemplation of God I find two principal forms: the passive
+and the active. In the first we are in a state of steady, quiet, and
+loving perception and reception, and at some farness; in this we are
+able to remain for hours, entering this state when waking at dawn
+and remaining in it till rising.
+
+In active contemplation we are in rapturous and passionate adoration
+with great nearness, and are not able to remain in it long because of
+bodily weakness. The soul feels to be never tired by the longest
+flight, but must return because of the exhaustion of the forlorn and
+wretched creature, which creature is complete in itself, having its
+body, of which, being able to touch it, we say, "It is my body," and
+its heart and mind with intelligence, of which we are wont to think,
+"This is myself"; yet it is but a part, for the intelligence of our
+creature is by no means the intelligence of the divine soul, but a far
+lesser light: for with the intelligence of the divine soul we reach out
+to God and attain Him, but with the intelligence of the creature we
+reach towards Him but do not attain, for with it we are unable to
+penetrate the veil. Therefore, who would know the joys of
+contemplation must come to them by love, for love is the only
+means by which the creature can attain. The soul attains God as her
+birthright, but the creature by adoption and redemption, and this
+through love. By love the creature dies and is reborn into the spirit.
+
+* * *
+
+The word "poverty," as used to express a necessary condition of our
+coming to God, is a most misleading term. For how can any
+condition be rightly named poverty which brings us into the riches
+of God? Rather let us use the words "singleness of heart," or
+"simplicity": which is to say, we _put out_ all other interests save
+those pleasing to God (to commence with), and afterwards we reach
+the condition in which we _have no_ interests but in God Himself--the
+heart and mind and will of the creature becoming wholly God's,
+and God filling them. How can we say, then, that it is poverty to be
+filled with God! Rather is it rightly expressed as being a heart fixed
+in singleness upon God, through drastic simplification of interests:
+the which is no poverty, but the wealth of all the Universe.
+
+* * *
+
+Some of us seem open to suggestion, others to the steadier effects of
+personal influence. I never came under the personal influence of
+another except once, when I came under the influence of the being I
+loved most--my brother. At ten he saved my life from drowning, and
+at eighteen his influence and total lack of faith in God, coupled with
+the searchings and probings of my own intelligence, took me away
+from God, in whom I had previously had a comfortable faith. At
+seventeen I began to lap up the hardest scientific books as a cat laps
+milk. I said to myself, "I must find truth, I must find out what
+everything really is"; but I could not reconcile science with Church
+teaching. I was not able to adjust the truths of science--which were
+demonstrable to both senses and intelligence--with the unprovable
+dogmas set forth by the Church as necessary to salvation. I slowly
+and surely lost what faith I had, and hung a withered heart upon the
+pitiless and nameless bosom of the Cosmos. Inward life became for
+me a horrible emptiness without hope. Surrounded with gaieties and
+the innumerable social successes of youth, I found that neither
+science nor society could satisfy my soul, or that something living
+within me which knew a terrible necessity for God. For two long
+and dreadful years I fought secretly and desperately to regain this
+lost belief, and when at last I succeeded there remained a monstrous
+and impenetrable wall between myself and God. But by comparison
+with the horrors of past loneliness it was heaven to me to feel Him
+there, even behind that wall. (Now that I have found Him by love, I
+am able to return to science as to a most exquisite unrolling of the
+majesty of His truths and powers and laws, and am brought nearer
+and nearer to Him the more I learn of science.) Outside the wall I
+remained for more than twenty years, seeking and searching for an
+opening in that mighty barrier.
+
+And after more than twenty years I found the Door--and it was Jesus
+Christ.
+
+* * *
+
+Lately I have seen the word "contemplation" used as expressing the
+heights of attainment in God-consciousness of men, and I find it
+inadequate. From the age of seventeen I fell into the habit of
+contemplation, not of God, but of Nature: which is to say, I would
+first place myself, sitting, in such a position that my body would not
+fall and I might completely forget it, and then would look about me
+and drink in the beauty of the scene, my eyes coming finally to rest
+upon the spot most beautiful to me. There they remained fixed. All
+thoughts were now folded up so that my mind, flowing singly in one
+direction, concentrated itself upon the beauty on which I gazed. This
+soon vanished, and I saw nothing whatever, but, bearing away into a
+place of complete silence and emptiness, I there assimilated and
+enjoyed inwardly the soaring essence of the beauty which I had
+previously drawn into my mind through my eyes, being now no
+longer conscious of seeing outwardly, but living entirely from the
+inward. This I did almost every day, but to do it I was obliged to
+seek solitude, and absolute solitude is a hard thing to find; but I
+sought it, no matter where, even in a churchyard! I saw no graves. I
+saw the sky, or a marvellous cloud pink with the kisses of the sun,
+and away I went. I judge this now to have been contemplation,
+though I never thought of it by so fine-sounding a name; it was only
+my delightful pastime, yet there was a strange inexpressible sadness
+in it. Nature and beauty were not enough. The more beauty I saw,
+the more I longed for something to which I could not put a name. At
+times the ache of this pain became terrible, almost agonising, but I
+could not forgo my pastime. Now, at last, I know what this pain was:
+my soul looked for God, but my creature did not know it. For just in
+this same way we contemplate God, savouring Him without seeing
+Him, and being filled to the brim with marvellous delights with no
+sadness.
+
+But this condition of contemplation is very far from being the
+mountain-top; it is but a high plateau from which we make the final
+ascent. The summit is an indescribable contact, and this summit is
+not one summit but many summits. Which is to say, we have contact
+of several separate forms--that of giving, that of receiving, and that
+of immersion or absorption, which _at its highest_ is altogether
+unendurable as fire.
+
+Of this last I am able only to say this: that not only is it inexpressible
+by any words, but that that which is a state of extreme beatitude to
+the soul is death to the creature by excess of joy. Therefore both
+heart and mind fear to recall any details of the memory of this
+highest attainment. I knew it but once. To know it again would be
+the death of my body. For more than two hours (as well as I am able
+to judge) before coming to this highest experience, my soul travelled
+through what felt to be an ocean, for she rose and fell upon billows
+in a state of infinite bliss.
+
+Of other forms of contact we have a swift, unexpected, even
+unsought-for attainment, which is entirely of His volition; that
+sudden condescension to the soul, in which in unspeakable rapture
+she is caught up to her holy lover.
+
+These are the topmost heights which the creature dare recall, though
+to the soul they remain in memory as life itself. The variations of
+these forms of contact are infinite, for God would seem to will to be
+both eternal changelessness and variation in infinitude.
+
+Because of this, and the marvellous depths and heights and breadths
+of life revealed to her, the soul is able to conceive of an eternity of
+bliss, for monotony ceases to be joy. In Nature we see that no two
+trees in a forest are alike, and two fruits gathered from one bough
+have not the same flavour.
+
+But to my feeling all degrees of attainment are only to be
+distinguished as varying degrees of union, the joy of which is of a
+form and a degree of intensity and purity which can enter neither the
+heart nor the mind to imagine, but must be experienced to be
+understood, and when experienced remains in part incomprehensible.
+It is not to be obtained by force of the will, neither can it be obtained
+without the will. It is, then, a mystery of two wills in unison, in
+which our will is temporarily fused into and consumed by the will of
+God and is in transports of felicity over its own annihilation! This is
+outside reason and therefore incomprehensible to the creature, but
+comprehensible to the soul, and becomes the aim and object of our
+life to attain in permanence, and is the uttermost limit of all
+conceivable rapture.
+
+When I first knew union and contact upon the hill I had the
+impression of a very great light outside of me. I never again had an
+outward impression of it.
+
+But when any sense of inward _light_ is felt I consider it to be a
+high ecstasy and hard for the body. It is the sweet and gentle
+touchings of Christ which are the great and unspeakable comfort of
+both soul and body. Inward heat I never felt till many months after
+my third conversion and more than four years from my first
+conversion. This extraordinary sensation, which to my mind is like a
+magnetic seething with heat and ravishment of joy, I felt inwardly
+only after I had learnt to know a sudden, secret, joyous delight of
+love in the soul, which is easiest described as sweetness of love, is
+from the Christ, and _very frequently_ given by Him. And some six
+months after the heat, fire, electric seething, or however best it may
+be named, I first knew the song of the soul. Now, although it is
+better not to dwell upon the memory of past spiritual joys, lest we
+become greedy, and equally wise not to dwell upon the memory of
+anguishes, lest we fall into self-pity, which of all emotions is the
+most sickly and useless (and our wisest is to live only from hour to
+hour with all the sweetness that we can, leaving to Him the choosing
+of our daily bread, whether it be high joy or pain), still I confess that
+I have thought over and compared these joys sufficiently to know
+very well which I love the best. Heat of love is very wonderful, and
+sweetness is very lovely, and raptures and ecstasies are outside
+words; but most beautiful of all is the song of the soul, and this is
+when--in highest adoration--passing beyond heat, and further than
+sweetness, the soul goes up alone upon the highest summit of love,
+and there like a bird pours out the rapturous and golden passion of
+her love. And His Spirit, biding very near, never touches her; for if
+He touch, it is at once an ecstasy, and because of the stress of this
+she would have neither words nor song with which to rejoice Him.
+
+Oh, the pure happiness of the soul in this wonderful song!
+
+Truly I think it is greater than in the rapture or the ecstasy, because
+in these the soul receives, but in the song, mounting right up to Him,
+she gives. And now at last we know the fuller meaning of Christ's
+words where He says: "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
+
+Beloved, Thou takest the creature and liftest it up; Thou takest the
+creature and liftest it high, so that nevermore can it offend Thee, and
+the soul is free to sing of her love. Then is it Thy will that the
+creature should love Thee? Or is it Thy will that the soul should
+adore? Beloved, I know not whether with my heart and mind I most
+adore Thee, or whether with my soul I love Thee more. And where
+is that secret trysting-place of love? I do not know; for whilst I go
+there and whilst I return I am blind, and whilst I am there I am
+blinded by Love Himself.
+
+O wondrous trysting-place I which is indeed the only trysting-place
+of all the world worthy to be named.
+
+For every other love on earth is but a poor, pale counterfeit of love--a
+wan Ophelia, wandering with a garland of sad perished flowers to
+crown the dust.
+
+* * *
+
+As the loving creature progresses he will find himself ceasing to live
+in things, or thoughts of things or of persons, but his whole mind
+and heart will be concentrated upon the thought of God alone. Now
+Jesus, now the High Christ, now the Father, but never away from
+one of the aspects or personalities of God, though his conditions of
+nearness will vary. For at times he will be in a condition of great
+nearness, at times in a condition of some farness, or, more properly
+speaking, of obscurity. He will be in a condition of waiting (this
+exceedingly frequent, the most frequent of all); a condition of
+amazing happiness; a condition of pain, of desolation at being still
+upon the earth instead of with God. He will be in a condition of
+giving love to God, or a condition of receiving love, of
+remembrance and attention. He will be in a condition of
+immeasurable glamour, an extraordinary illumination of every
+faculty, not by any act of his own, but poured through him until he is
+filled with the elixir of some new form of life, and feels himself
+before these experiences never to have lived--he but existed as a part
+of Nature. But now, although he is become more united to Nature
+than ever before, he also is mysteriously drawn apart from her,
+without being in any way presumptuous, he feels to be above her,
+not by any merits but by intention of Another. He is become lifted
+up into the spirit and essence of Nature, and the heavy and more
+obvious parts of her bind him no more. He is in a condition of
+freedom, he is frequently in a condition of great splendour, and is
+wrapped perpetually round about with that most glorious
+mantle--God-consciousness.
+
+These are man's right and proper conditions. These are the lovely
+will of God for us. And too many of us have the will to go contrary
+to Him. Oh, the tragedy of it! If the whole world of men and women
+could be gathered and lifted into this garden of love! Persuaded to
+rise from lesser loves into the bosom of His mighty Love!
+
+For the truly loving soul here on earth there are no longer heavens,
+nor conditions of heavens, nor grades, nor crowns, nor angels, nor
+archangels, nor saints, nor holy spirits; but, going out and up and on,
+we reach at last THE ONE, and for marvellous unspeakably glorious
+moments KNOW HIM.
+
+This is life: to be in Him and He in us, _and know it._
+
+* * *
+
+These beautiful flights of the soul cannot be taken through idleness,
+though they are taken in what would outwardly appear to be a great
+stillness. This stillness is but the necessary abstraction from physical
+activity, even from physical consciousness; but inwardly the spirit is
+in a great activity, a very ferment of secret work. This, to the writer,
+is frequently produced by the beautiful in Nature, the spirit
+involuntarily passing at sight of beauty into a passionate admiration
+for the Maker of it. This high, pure emotion, which is also an
+_intense activity_ of the spirit, would seem so to etherealise the
+creature that instantly the delicate soul is able to escape her loosened
+bonds and flies towards her home, filled with ineffable,
+incomparable delight, praising, singing, and joying in her Lord and
+God until the body can endure no more, and swiftly she must return
+to bondage in it. But the most wonderful flights of the soul are made
+during a high adoring contemplation of God. We are in high
+contemplation when the heart, mind, and soul, having dropped
+consciousness of all earthly matters, have been brought to a full
+concentration upon God--God totally invisible, totally unimaged,
+_and yet focussed to a centre-point by the great power of love._ The
+soul, whilst she is able to maintain this most difficult height of
+contemplation, may be visited by an intensely vivid perception,
+inward vision, and knowledge of God's attributes or perfections,
+very brief; and this _as a gift,_ for she is not able to will such a
+felicity to herself, but being given such she is instantly consumed
+with adoration, and _enters ecstasy._
+
+Having achieved these degrees of progress, the heart and mind will
+say: "Now I may surely repose, for I have attained!" And so we may
+repose, but not in idleness, which is to say, not without abundance of
+prayer. For only by prayer is our condition maintained and renewed;
+but without prayer, by which I mean an incessant inward
+communion, quickly our condition changes and wears away. No
+matter to what degree of love we have attained, we need to pray for
+more; without persistent but short prayer for faith and love we might
+fall back into strange woeful periods of cold obscurity.
+
+To the accomplished lover great and wonderful is prayer; the more
+completely the mind and heart are lifted up in it, the slower the
+wording. The greater the prayer, the shorter in words, though the
+longer the saying of it, for each syllable will needs be held up upon
+the soul before God, slowly and, as it were, in a casket of fire, and
+with marvellous joy. And there are prayers without words, and
+others without even thoughts, in which the soul in a great stillness
+passes up like an incense to the Most High. This is very pure, great
+love; wonderful, high bliss.
+
+* * *
+
+In the earlier stages of progress, when the heart and mind suffer
+from frequent inconstancy, loss of warmth, even total losses of love,
+set the heart and mind to recall to themselves by reading or thinking
+some favourite aspect of their Lord Jesus Christ. It may be His
+gentleness, or His marvellous forgiveness, as to Peter when "He
+turned and looked at him" after the denial; for so He turns and looks
+upon ourselves. Or it may be His sweetness that most draws us. But
+let us fasten the heart and mind upon whichever it may be, and in the
+warmth of admiration _love will return to us._
+
+* * *
+
+The mode of entrance into active contemplation I would try to
+convey in this way. The body must be placed either sitting or
+kneeling, and supported, or flat on the back as though dead. Now the
+mind must commence to fold itself, closing forwards as an open rose
+might close her petals to a bud again, for every thought and image
+must be laid away and nothing left but a great forward-moving love
+intention. Out glides the mind all smooth and swift, and plunges
+deep, then takes an upward curve and up and on till willingly it
+faints, the creature dies, and consciousness is taken over by the soul,
+which, quickly coming to the trysting-place, _spreads herself_ and
+there awaits the revelations of her God. To my feeling this final
+complete passing over of consciousness from the mind to the soul is
+by act and will of God only, and cannot be performed by will of the
+creature, and is the fundamental difference between the
+contemplation of Nature and the contemplation of God. The creature
+worships, but the soul alone knows contact. And yet the mode of
+contemplation is a far simpler thing than all these words--it is the
+very essence of simplicity itself; and in this sublime adventure we
+are really conscious of no mode nor plan nor flight, nought but the
+mighty need of spirit to Spirit and love to Love.
+
+* * *
+
+The picking out and choosing of certain persons, and the naming of
+them "elect" and "chosen" souls, when I first read of it, filled me
+with such a sinking that I tried, when coming upon the words, not to
+admit the meaning of them into myself; for that some should be
+chosen and some not I felt to be favouritism, and could not
+understand or see the justice of it. I never ask questions. He left me
+in this condition for eighteen months. Then He led me to an
+explanation sufficient for me. The way He showed it me was not by
+comparisons with great things--angels and saints and holy persons;
+but by that humble creature, man's friend, the dog, He showed me
+the elect creature. It was this way.
+
+One evening as I passed through the city I had one of those sudden
+strong impulses (by which He guides us) to go to a certain and
+particular cinematograph exhibition. I was very tired, and tried to
+put away the thought, but it pressed in the way that I know, and I
+knew it better to go. I sat for an hour seeing things that had no
+interest for me, and wondering why I should have had to come,
+when at last a film was shown of war-dogs in training--dogs trained
+especially to assist men and to carry their messages.
+
+These dogs were especially selected, not for their charm of outward
+appearance, but for their inward capacities; _not for an especial love
+of the dog_ (or favouritism), but for that which they were willing to
+learn how to do. The qualifications for (s)election were willingness,
+obedience, fidelity, endurance. Once chosen they were set apart.
+Then commenced the training, and we were shown how man put his
+will through the dog: he was able to do this _only because of the
+willingness of the dog._ The purport of the training was to carry a
+message for his master wherever his master willed. He must go
+instantly and at full speed; he must leap any obstacle; he must turn
+away from his own kind if they should entice him to linger on the
+way; he must subdue all his natural desires and instincts entirely to
+his master's desires; he must be indifferent to danger. And to secure
+this he was fired over by numbers of men, difficulties were set for
+him, and he was distracted from his straight course by a number of
+tests. Yet we saw the brave and faithful creatures running on their
+way at their fullest speed until, exhausted and breathless but filled
+with joy of _love and willingness,_ they reached the journey's end,
+to be caressed and cared for beyond other dogs until the next
+occasion should arise. Then we were shown the dog in his
+fully-trained condition. His master could now always rely upon him. A
+dog always ready, always faithful and self-forgetful, was then set
+apart into a still smaller and more (s)elect group and surrounded
+with most especial care and love. Never would it want for anything.
+In this there was justice. Forsaking all their natural ways, these dogs
+had submitted themselves wholly, in loving willingness, to their
+master's will, and he in return would lavish all his best on them. It
+was but just. Oh, how my heart leaped over it! At last I understood--for
+as the dog, so the human creature. We become chosen souls,
+not for our own sakes (which had always seemed to me such
+favouritism), but for our willingness to learn our Master's Will. And
+what is His will and what is His work? Of many, many kinds, and
+this is shown to the soul in her training. But the hardest to learn is
+not that of the worker, but of the messenger and lover. As the
+messenger, to take His messages, in whatever direction, instantly
+and correctly, and to take back the answer from man to Himself--which
+is to say, to hold before Him the needs of man on the fire of
+the soul, known to most persons under the name of prayer. And as
+the lover, to sing to Him with never-failing joyful love and thanks.
+
+But the learning and work of the soul is not so simple as that of the
+dog, who carries the message in writing upon his collar. The soul
+can have no written paper to assist her, and long and painful is her
+training; and exquisitely sweet it is when, having swiftly and
+accurately taken the message, she waits before Him for the rapture
+of those caresses that she knows so well.
+
+How I was spurred! For I said, "Shall dogs outdo us in love and
+devotion?" Only in a condition of total submission, self-forgetfulness,
+self-abnegation, can the soul either receive or deliver her
+message. In this way she is justified of the joys of her election.
+The dog, faithful in all ways to his master, receives in return all
+praise and all meats, whatever he desires. The faithful soul also
+receives all praise and all meats, both spiritual and carnal, for
+nothing of earthly needs will lack her _if she asks_; and without
+asking, her needs are mysteriously and completely given her. Her
+spiritual meats are, in this world, peace, joy, ecstasy, rapture; and of
+the world to come it is written that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
+neither have entered into the heart of man, the things that God has
+prepared for them that love Him.
+
+It might be supposed that only persons filled with public charities
+and social improvements, ardent and painstaking church workers,
+might most surely and easily learn to be messengers. But all these
+persons pursue and follow their own line of thought, the promptings
+of their own minds and hearts. They are admirable workers, but not
+messengers. For the hound of God must have in his heart no plan of
+his own. It is hard for the heart to say, "I have no wishes of my own;
+I have no interests, no plans, no ambitions, no schemes, no desires,
+no loves, no will. Thy will is my will. Thy desire is my desire. Thy
+love is my all. I am empty of all things, that I may be a channel for
+the stream of Thy will."
+
+With what patience, what tenderness, what inexpressible
+endearments He helps the soul, training her by love!--which is not to
+say that she is trained without much suffering of the creature. So we
+are trained by two opposite ways--by suffering and by joys; and the
+whole under an attitude of passionate and devoted attention on our
+part. The sufferings of the soul baffle all description with their
+strange intensities.
+
+Our encouragements are great and extraordinary sweetnesses,
+urgings, and joyful uplifting of the spirit. So that when we would
+stop, we are pressed forward; when we are exhausted, we are filled
+with the wine of sweetness; when we are in tears, we are embraced
+into the Holy Spirit.
+
+* * *
+
+Sin and ill are the false notes struck by man across the harmony of
+God's will, and to strike upon or even remember such notes is instant
+banishment from the music of His presence. Where all is joy, there
+joy is all_;_ and he who has not reached this joy does not know
+God--he is still a follower, and not a possessor, and he should refuse
+in his heart to remain satisfied with his condition, but climb on. Why
+stay behind? Climb on, climb on!
+
+How often I have been mystified and disturbed by the attitude of
+many religious and pious people, that to follow Christ is a way of
+gloom, of sadness, of heaviness! How often have I gathered from
+sermons that we are to give up all bright and enticing things if we
+would follow Him, and the preacher _goes no further!_ Has the
+Lord, then, no enticements, no sweetnesses, no brightness to offer us,
+that we should be asked to forsake all pleasantnesses, all brightness,
+all attractions if we follow Him? This to me always seemed terrible,
+and my heart would sink. Indeed, to my poor mind and heart it
+seemed nothing more hopeful than a going from bad to worse!
+
+All the pictures I have seen, either of the Crucifixion or the Way of
+the Cross (and especially those of more recent times and painting),
+portray His Blessed Face all worn with gloom; and I know now that
+this is far from the truth. For perfect love knows agony, but no
+gloom. He went through all His agony, lifted high above gloom, in a
+great ecstasy of love for us.
+
+To speak of _sacrifice_ in connection with following Him is, to my
+mind, the work of a very foolish person and one in danger of being
+blasphemous. For how dare we say that it is a sacrifice when, by the
+putting away of foolish desires, we find God! And to find God,
+through the following of Jesus Christ, is to _gain so much_ (even in
+this world, and without waiting for the next) that those who gain it
+never cease to be amazed at the vastness of it.
+
+We find this to be an absolute truth, that if we have not Him we
+have, and are, nothing, in comparison with that which we are and
+that which we have when we have Him.
+
+In my earlier stages I was greatly set back and disturbed by this
+gloom and sacrifice (which is no sacrifice) of myself so put forward
+by pulpit teaching. It was a great hindrance to me and blinded me to
+the truth. I was only a normal, ordinary creature, and they thrust a
+great burden into my arms.
+
+Little by little, as I was able to learn directly from His own heart, I
+came to know Him as He is; and I could not reconcile this
+knowledge of Himself which He gave me, especially of His high
+willingness and serenity, with pulpit teachings of heavy gloom. The
+Church too frequently spoke to me of following Him in terms which
+conveyed a burden: "Pick up thy cross, pick up thy cross!" they
+cried; and He spoke to me in terms which conveyed a great joy:
+"Come to Me, come to Me, for I love thee!"
+
+I thought I was very cowardly and sinned by this inability to like the
+gloomy burden, and one day I came upon this out of Jeremiah: "As
+for the prophet, or the priest, or the people, that shall say, The
+burden of the Lord, I will punish that man and his house . . . because
+ye say, The burden of the Lord, I will utterly forget you and forsake
+you, and cast you out of My presence."
+
+These words of Jesus, "Take up thy cross and follow Me": whoever
+will do it will be shown by Jesus that the cross of following Him is
+no burden, but a deliverance, a finding of life, the way of escape, a
+great joy, and a garland of love.
+
+The world thinks of joyousness as being laughter, cackling, and
+much silly noise; and to such I do not speak. But the Christ's
+joyousness is of a high, still, marvellous, and ineffable
+completeness--beyond all words; and _wholly satisfying_ to heart
+and soul and body and mind.
+
+It is written, "They shall love silver, and not be satisfied with it"--for
+why? Only those are _satisfied_ who know the gold of Christ.
+
+All of which is not to say that by following Him we shall escape
+from happenings and inconveniences and sorrows and illnesses
+common to life; but that when these come we are raised out of our
+distress into His ineffable peace.
+
+When the heart is sad, use this sadness in a comprehension of the
+deeper pain of Jesus, who was in the self-same exile as we ourselves.
+The more the soul is truly awakened and touched, the more she feels
+herself to be in exile; and this is her cross.
+
+But the remedy for her sadness is that she should courageously pass
+out of her woes of exile and go up to meet her lover with smiles.
+Now, He cannot resist this smiling courage and love of the soul, and
+very quickly He must send her His sweetness, and her sadness is
+gone.
+
+* * *
+
+When I say that if we will take a few steps alone towards Christ--which
+is to say, if we will make some strenuous efforts to cleanse
+ourselves and change our minds and ways--He will take us all the
+rest of the way, I speak from experience. For amongst many things
+this happened to me: at a certain stage, after my third conversion on
+the hill, He caused my former thoughts, desires, and follies to go
+away from me! It was as though He had sent a veil between me and
+such thoughts of my heart and mind as might not be pleasing to Him,
+so that they disappeared from my knowledge and my actions!
+
+By this marvellous act He removed my difficulties, and put me into
+a state of innocence which resembled the innocence I remember to
+have had up to the age of four or five years. But I find this new
+innocence far more wonderful than that of childhood, which is but
+the innocence of ignorance. But this new innocence--which is a gift
+of God--is innocence with knowledge. I am not able to express the
+gratitude and amazement and wonder that have never ceased to fill
+me about this. Such things can only be spoken of by the soul to her
+lover, and then not in words but in a silence of tears.
+
+What did I ever do that He should show me such kindness? I did
+nothing except this: I desired with all the force of my heart and soul
+and mind and body to love Him. I said, "Oh, if I could be the
+warmest, tenderest lover that ever thou didst have! Teach me to be
+Thy burning lover." This was my perpetual prayer. And my idea of
+Heaven was and is this, that without so much as knowing, or being
+known or perceived by _any save Himself,_ without even a name,
+yet retaining my full consciousness of individuality, I should be with
+Him for always.
+
+What is this love for God, and how define it? For myself, I never
+knew it until I was filled with it upon the hill. Many judge it to be _a
+following_ of Christ and His wishes, but this is only a part of it and
+the way we begin it, and often we begin from duty, fear of future
+punishment, desire for salvation or spiritual pre-eminence, and
+obedience; and in none of these is there the joy of love.
+
+By such standards I might count myself to have loved Him for
+twenty years; but know I did not. For ten years past I felt myself to
+have so great a need of Him, I sought Him so, that for me Heaven
+contained no re-met former earthly loves, much as I loved them here.
+I knew that He would be my all. Nevertheless, He was not yet my
+Love, but my Need.
+
+Love is a fire, for we feel the great heat of it.
+
+Love is a light, for we perceive the white glare of it.
+
+Of things known, to what can we compare it? Most perhaps to
+electricity, for here we have both light and heat, and the lightning
+flash strikes that which already contains the most of itself (or
+electricity). And the lightning of God's love strikes him whose heart
+contains the most love for Himself. And He strikes when He will,
+and afterwards visits when He will; and I do not count myself (for
+all my earthly loves) to have so much as known the outer edge of the
+meaning of the word love, till He struck me with His own upon that
+hill.
+
+Truly, fair and holy love is our warranty, our only pass for entering
+into Heaven.
+
+Brave and wilful, rapturous and insistent, love passes with bold yet
+humble ecstasy into the very presence of her Lord and God; and
+alone, out of all creation, is never denied the Right of Way.
+
+* * *
+
+I have seen it quoted, "Turn to the heights, turn to the deeps, turn
+within, turn without, everywhere thou shalt find the Cross." But I
+see it so: "Turn to the heights, turn to the deeps, turn within, turn
+without, everywhere thou shalt find His Love." Love to help on the
+way. Too much we might suppose, to hear pious people talk, that
+because of Christ's way we must be miserable and our life an
+endless Cross! And so life may be a cross, but He carries it for us.
+
+Do sinful men never suffer? Do the sinful escape disease? and live
+for ever without biting the dust in death or disappointment? Why,
+disease and suffering are the very twin-children of sin. I am amazed
+that people can take such a view of the Cross as to think it an
+unhappy, miserable way. For so marvellous is the beauty of such
+love that there is no other so desirable a thing upon earth.
+
+"Come, walk the way with Me," says the Beloved; "I am all serenity,
+all peace, all might, all power, all love. Come, walk with Me, and
+forget thy tiny cares in the peace of My bosom."
+
+* * *
+
+We do not love God because we do not yet know Him. And we do
+not know Him because we seek only to know and have our own
+desires: and having learnt to know these, we would have our
+unknown God accommodate Himself to us and them.
+
+But let us first seek to know God's desires by heart, and then
+accommodate our own to His: so shall we learn to be pleasing to
+Christ, that He may lead us, whilst here, into His Garden. For to the
+creature that ardently pursues God there comes at last a time when
+He reveals Himself to the searching soul, saying: "I Am Here.
+Come!" Then in secrecy we arise,--and go to Him out of the House
+of Vanity into the music of the great Beyond.
+
+There is small credit or virtue to the soul when, in a state of high
+grace or nearness, she burns with love for her God: for she is under
+the spell of the enticement of His Presence--how can she help but
+burn! It is as though two earthly lovers, in full sight and nearness,
+are filled each for each with great love, and are content.
+
+But this is a credit to the soul and the creature (as to the earthly
+lovers), that in separation and farness they should seek no other, but
+continue to dwell with great intentness upon the absent love. This is
+fidelity.
+
+At times it is as if her Lord said to the soul: "I have other to do than
+to stay by thee; and also thou hast had more than enough to thy
+share of My honey"; and, so saying, He departs.
+
+And this is fidelity of the soul and the creature, and a great virtue,
+that, without change of face, without complaint or petitioning, they
+should with all sweetness continue to pour up to Him their unabated
+love. If any can do this, he is a perfect lover and has no more to
+learn.
+
+When the love of the soul, as it were, exceeds itself, it passes up and
+beyond even the song of love; and being unable to express itself by
+words or by song, or by deep sighings, or by any of those subtle,
+silent, spiritual means known only between herself and God, when
+all means fail because of the too great stress of her adoration, then
+the soul passes into a great pain, which is the anguish of love and a
+hard thing to bear. This excess is to the fullness of the Godhead.
+
+And now the soul must turn to prayer for help, but not to the
+Godhead: for the more she turns to the Godhead the greater becomes
+her anguish. But coming down to His humanity, she must beseech
+sweet Jesus for His aid, and so regain her equilibrium.
+
+* * *
+
+Many of us are, perhaps unwittingly, impudent to God. In this way
+we are impudent: We question (even though it be in secret, hidden in
+the heart and not spoken) the justice of God, the ways of God, the
+plans of God, the love of God: by which means we argue with God
+and judge Him. And another manner of impudence we have is this,
+that we dare to attribute or to blame Him for the results of man's
+own filth, saying: "This and this is the will of God, for we see that it
+exists, and His will is omnipotent." Oh, beware of this impudence,
+drop it out of the heart and mind, and flee from it as from the plague!
+"How then can these things be, if He is omnipotent?" we say.
+Because of this, that in the trust of His great love He gave us the
+royal and Godly gift of free-will, and our souls have proved
+themselves unworthy to have it; and now the creature is brought
+before the Beautiful, and the Holy, and the Pure, but turning away,
+like the sow, prefers the mire and the festering sores proceeding
+from such wallowings. If there were no choice, there were no virtue,
+and no progress home. But let no man venture in his heart to
+attribute to that Holy and Marvellous Being whom we speak of as
+God, not knowing as yet His Name, any will towards festers and
+corruptions, for what does He say Himself? "Their sins rise up
+before Me and stink in My nostrils!"
+
+We surely forget that this world is not yet God's Kingdom, and that
+His will is not done here, and will not be until the Judgment Day.
+This world is but a tiny testing-chamber in His mighty workshop;
+and great and wonderful is the care He has for the workers in it.
+
+O man! whence come thy wretchednesses? Look round and think.
+Do they not all proceed from self and fellow-men, alive or dead?
+Then why blame God?
+
+"Why am I here?" we cry, "to suffer all these pains, and my consent
+not asked? A poor, sad puppet dancing to a tune I know not the
+rhythm of. Where is my recompense? And where my wages? I will
+take all I can of what is offered here, and give no thanks! It is but
+my scant due for all my wretchednesses!"
+
+O foolish man! so timid of all future possibilities of bliss that he
+must grasp and burn himself with such delights as he finds here!
+And equally mistaken and small-minded man who thinks that all our
+Mighty God will have to offer us hereafter are crowns, damp clouds
+and mists, and endless hymns! Such little hearts are far away indeed
+from knowing the _magnitudes of Life._
+
+O wretched man! why this distrust? Hast thou created even thine
+own palate and digestion? Hast thou invented any of those fond
+delights that so enslave thee now? Hast thou thyself devised the
+means wherewith to satisfy the longing of thy _creature_ for the
+sweets of life? They were provided thee; all that thou hast created is
+misuse! Thou art but a perverted thing!--a crooked tool of self, a fly
+drowning in the honey that it sought too greedily to own!
+
+O wretched, wretched man! so cloyed with sweets of earth thou
+canst not raise thy head to see the sunrise out beyond the world, and
+know true sweets! How many are the tears wept over thee by the
+great heart of God!
+
+* * *
+
+Since coming into this new way of living, the more I come into
+contact with music the more I sense a mysterious connection
+between melody--the soul--and her _origin._ Alone out of all the
+sciences and arts, music has no foundation upon anything on earth.
+There is no music in nature until the soul, come to a perfect
+harmony within herself, brings out the hidden harmony in all
+creation, and, turning it to melody within herself, returns it to her
+Lord in song, whether by outward instrument or inward love.
+
+The soul, indeed, would seem to have come out of a life of infinite
+melody and to have dropped into an existence of mere contrary and
+vexing time-beat.
+
+Who can by any means account for the variety of passions excited
+within him by the mere difference of the spacing, time, or rhythm of
+music? In my new condition of living I notice that the soul throws
+out with most disdainful impatience music that was formerly
+beautiful to my mind and heart (or my creature); and certain types of
+flowing cadences (very rarely to be found), sustained in high,
+flowing, delicate, and soaring continuity will produce in her
+conditions akin to a madness of joy. For one brief instant _she
+remembers! but cannot utter what!_
+
+Of visions I know nothing, but received all my experiences into my
+soul as amazingly real inward perceptions. That these perceptions
+are of unprecedented intensity, and more realistic than those which
+are merely visual, can be understood by bodily comparisons; for to
+_feel_ or to be one with fire is more than to _see_ it.
+
+To try to compare spiritual life with physical experiences would
+seem to be useless; for, to my feeling, while we live in the spirit we
+live at a great speed,--indeed, an incalculably great speed--and as a
+whole and not in parts. For with physical living we live at one
+moment by the eyes, at another with the mind, at another through
+the heart, at another with the body. But the spirit feels to have no
+parts, for all parts are of so perfect a concordance that in this
+marvellous harmony all is one and one is all. And this with
+_incredible intensity,_ so that we live not as now--dully--but at
+white heat of sensibility.
+
+_Prayer_
+
+Prayer is the golden wedding-ring between ourselves and God. For
+myself, I divide it into two halves--the one petitioning, the other
+offering.
+
+Of petitioning I would say that this is the _work_ of the soul; and of
+offering, that it is the pleasure of the soul.
+
+Of petitioning, that I come to it under His command; and of offering,
+that I come to it of my own high, passionate desire.
+
+I make upon my knees, three times a day, three short and formal
+prayers of humble worship, as befits the creature worshipping its
+Ineffable and Mighty God: and for the rest of my time I sing to Him
+from my heart and soul, as befits the joyful lover, adoring and
+conversing with the Ineffable and Exquisite Beloved.
+
+* * *
+
+This is the circle of His way with us. First is prayer; then love; and
+after love, humility. With humility comes grace; and after grace,
+temptation; and in temptation we must quickly enter prayer again.
+
+* * *
+
+O wonderful and ineffable God! who, while remaining hidden from
+His lovers in this life, yet so ravishes their hearts and minds and
+souls that they are unable to find truly sweet even the greatest of
+life's former joys--for nothing can now ever satisfy them but the
+secret and marvellous administrations of His love and grace! On one
+day feeling to be forsaken, the most desolate and lonely of all
+creatures in the Universe; and on another exalted to almost
+unbearable pinnacles of bliss, equal to the angels in felicity, and
+blest beyond all power of words to say--such and so are the lovers of
+God.
+
+* * *
+
+The soul has six wings: love, obedience, humility, simplicity,
+perseverance, and courage. With these she can attain God.
+
+We know very well that no man will find God either enclosed, held
+fast, or demonstrated within a circle of dogmatic words; but every
+man can find, in his own soul, an exquisite and incomparable
+instrument of communication with God. To establish the working of
+this communication is the whole object and meaning of life in this
+world--this world of material, finite, and physical things, in which
+the human body is at once a means and a debt.
+
+The key to progress is a continual dressing of the will and mind and
+heart towards God, best brought about by continually filling the
+heart and mind with beautiful, grateful, and loving thoughts of Him.
+At all stages of progress the thoughts persistently fly away to other
+things in the near and visible world, and we have need quietly and
+perpetually to pick them up and re-centre them on Him. With the
+mind turned in this way, steadily towards God, we are in that state
+known to science as polarisation: we are in that condition in which
+common iron becomes a magnet. It is so that God transforms us into
+a diminutive part-likeness of Himself.
+
+When at last the soul reaches union with Him, she is for a while so
+caressed, so held in a perpetual contact and nearness, that we may
+think ourselves already permanently entered into Paradise! But this
+is not the plan; and, our education being exceedingly incomplete, we
+return to our schooling.
+
+We commence to experience profound and even terrible longings to
+leave the world and all creatures, for we cannot bear either the sight
+or the sound of them, and seek all day long to be alone with the
+Beloved God. To conquer this last selfishness and weakness of the
+soul, we must go again--as in the beginning--to Jesus. He teaches us
+to go to and fro _willingly,_ gladly, from the highest to the lowest.
+To pick up our daily life and duties, our obligations to a physical
+world, in all humility, sweet reasonableness, and submission. He
+teaches us to willingly accept incessant interruptions, and with
+smiling face and perfect inward smoothness to descend from a
+high contemplation of God (and only those who know high
+contemplation can judge of the immensity of what I say) to listen
+and _attend to_ some most trivial want of a fellow-creature! Reader,
+it is the hardest thing of all. No sooner have we learnt the hard and
+difficult way of ascent than we must willingly come down it, even
+remain altogether in the valley below, and that with a smiling face
+and, if possible, no thought of impatience! This is the true sacrifice
+of the soul. Now, the sacrifices of the creature are the giving up of
+the near and visible joys and prides of the world to follow Christ,
+and are not real but seeming sacrifices, for, if done heartily and with
+courage, an exchange between these joys and the joys of the
+invisible is rapidly effected, and there remains no sacrifice, but "the
+hidden treasure" is ours! But the sacrifice of the soul is real and long;
+for having at last re-found God, she must resign her full joy of Him
+till the death of the body--and this willingly, thankfully, without
+complaint, not asking favours but pouring up her gratitude. In joy or
+in pain, in happiness or in tribulation--gratitude! gratitude!--and this
+not by her own strength but by strength of the Holy Ghost.
+
+* * *
+
+Because of this new way of living, the mind acquires a great
+increase of capacity and strength and clearness: being able to deal
+quickly and correctly with all matters brought before it with an ease
+previously altogether unknown to its owner. It is no exaggeration to
+say that the sagacity, scope, and grasp of the mind feels to be more
+than doubled from that which it previously was, and this not because
+of any study, but by an involuntary alteration. So that, though the
+mind and attention are now given almost exclusively to the things of
+God, yet when the things of the world have to be dealt with, this is
+accomplished with extraordinary efficiency and quickness, though
+very distasteful to the mind.
+
+* * *
+
+As the soul returns to her source nothing is more strongly
+emphasised to her than the strength and intensity of individuality;
+she is shown that the essence of all joy is Individuality in Union.
+
+In the marvellous condition of Contact, though we cease to be the
+creature or the soul adoring the Creator (but by an incomprehensible
+condescension we are accepted as one with Himself in love), yet we
+retain our own consciousness, which is our individuality.
+
+In the highest rapture I ever was in, my soul passed into a fearful
+extremity of experience: she was burned with so terrible an excess
+of bliss, that she was in great fear and anguish because of this excess.
+Indeed, she was so overcome by this too great realisation of the
+strength of God that she was in terror of both God and joy. It was
+three days before she recovered any peace, and more than a year
+before I dared recall one instant of it to mind.
+
+I am not able to think that even in Heaven the soul could endure
+such heights for more than a period. These heights are incomparably,
+unutterably beyond vision and union. They are the uttermost
+extremity of that which can be endured by the soul, at least until she
+has re-risen to great altitudes of holiness in ages to come.
+
+By contact with God we acquire certain wonderful and terrible
+realisations of truth and knowledge. For one thing, we learn the
+nature and mode of spirit-life, as over against body- or sense-life.
+We learn, at first with great fear, something of the awful intensities
+of pain, as of joy, which can be endured by the spirit when free of
+the body: for when we are in the spirit we do not _see_ fire, but we
+feel to _become it_ and yet live! And so equally of pain or joy--we
+do not feel these things delicately, as with, and in, the body, but we
+pass into the essence of these things themselves, in all their terrible
+and marvellous intensity, which is comparatively without limit.
+
+Woe to those who must gather the garland of pain--which is
+remorse-after death! It is easier to suffer a whole lifetime in the
+body than one day in the spirit. O soul! come to thy contrition here
+in this world, where pain has short limit! Repent and return!
+
+* * *
+
+Of the marvellous favours shown to the soul the heart cries out: "O
+mighty God! of the magnitude of Thy condescensions I am afraid
+even to think; they are too great for me, and I dare to recall them,
+but only with all the simplicity of a little child!"
+
+* * *
+
+Those who feel desire and need within themselves to reach the
+heights of inward life will do it best, not through diversity of
+interests in fellow-creatures, but by unification of all interests in
+God.
+
+God once found, and possessed, we return to the interests of
+creatures in moderation and with judgment.
+
+* * *
+
+What is pain? It is a mystery of separation, and we are gangrenous
+with sin and pain because of separation from the source of life.
+
+Truth now comes to us in such small segments that we no longer see
+the pattern of it; but this we are able to perceive: that the mystery of
+Separation is equal in degree with the mystery of Union, and that the
+child of separation is Pain.
+
+How did the soul ever become so separated from God? To my
+feeling, in curiosity of loves we may find the answer, and know the
+"fall" to be not that of the animal man but of the soul, which, once
+living in perpetual beatitude--knowing nothing of pain because of
+the unity with God, not understanding or being even grateful for her
+bliss because of its invariable presence, and given free-will,--in
+curiosity went out in search of newer and yet newer loves. And this
+is the retribution of the soul for her unfaithful wanderings--that as
+separation grows greater she commences to know pain, and,
+becoming anxious therefrom to return to the source of her
+remembered joys, she finds herself unable to accomplish this
+because of the weight and grossness of the nature of the loves to
+which she has hired herself, and from which _she is totally unable to
+free herself,_ and yet which she must by some means overcome that
+she may rise again to sanctity and return to God.
+
+Now comes the marvellous, the pitiful, the universal Christ to her
+aid--the Mighty Lover; and we may see in the whole scheme of
+Creation, as we know it here, from jelly-fish to man, a plan by
+which the soul may bring her wanderings to a term in time
+conditions instead of timeless sons. When all this earth is evolved
+for her great need, at last by the mercy of God she is interned in the
+body of finite man, and must clothe herself in the heart and mind of
+the human and take upon herself the nature of this creature man,
+made and fashioned to be a suitable instrument and habitation for
+her. To counterbalance the grossness and ineptitude of the creature's
+material body with its appetites, man is imbued with the knowledge
+of right, and with a secret longing for a _happiness which is not that
+of the beast._
+
+The soul must raise the brute in him, with all its appetites, to
+purity,--a mighty task, accomplished with much pain, yet in infinitely
+shorter duration of pain than if left in disembodied spirit-life; and,
+indeed, we may come to look upon pain in this world as one of our
+best privileges because of its powers of purification within a time-limit,
+and to know that by the mercy of the God of Love we may take our hell
+of cleansing in this world rather than in those worlds of disembodied
+spirits where progress is of infinite slowness--revolving and revolving
+upon itself, as a sand-spiral in a blast-furnace, without hope of death.
+
+Oh, how convey any warning of this terrible knowledge, which is
+not communicable by words! He said, "Though one return from the
+dead, ye would not believe." But, O soul! repent and return while
+still in the body! Lay hold on the Christ!
+
+In the life of this world, then, does our God of love and mercy give
+us rapid means (by conquest of the animal grossness and corruptible
+body, raising man to the ideal man, according to God's intention) to
+reunite ourselves with Him. And the soul of all animal creation is
+also thereby gradually raised with us into a universal adoration of
+the One Almighty God.
+
+This is no fallen but a rising world, in which all Creation is slowly
+and gloriously rising step by step.
+
+So may our soul repay her debt to God for her past infidelities.
+
+"Thy Maker is thine husband," says the voice of the prophet.
+
+And the creature, with its suffering heart and mind and body, has
+also its incomparable reward of bliss: for because of its love and
+obedience it is raised into the spiritual body, AND TOGETHER
+WITH THE SOUL BECOMES THE CHILD OF THE RESURRECTION.
+
+------
+
+[Transcriber's Notes:  The name of the author, Lilian Staveley, is not
+mentioned on the title page of this text, but I have added it here.  I
+have made one spelling change:  "enough to blow-to" to "enough to
+blow to".]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Fountain, by Lilian Staveley
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