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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prodigal Returns, 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 Prodigal Returns
+
+Author: Lilian Staveley
+
+Release Date: July 18, 2009 [EBook #29450]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRODIGAL RETURNS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ruth Hart
+
+
+
+
+THE PRODIGAL RETURNS
+
+By
+
+Lilian Staveley
+The Author of "The Golden Fountain" and "The Romance of the
+Soul"
+
+
+London
+John M. Watkins
+21 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, W.C. 2
+1921
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+Part I.     7
+Part II.   63
+Part III.  81
+Part IV.  102
+Part V.   151
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+Sunshine and a garden path . . . flowers . . . the face and neck and
+bosom of the nurse upon whose heart I lay, and her voice telling me
+that she must leave me, that we must part, and immediately after
+anguish--blotting out the sunshine, the flowers, the face, the voice.
+This is my first recollection of Life--the pain of love. I was two
+years old.
+
+Nothing more for two years--and then the picture of a pond and my
+baby brother floating on it, whilst with agonised hands I seized his
+small white coat and held him fast.
+
+And then a meadow full of long, deep grass and summer flowers,
+and I--industriously picking buttercups into a tiny petticoat to take to
+cook, "to make the butter with," I said.
+
+And then a table spread for tea. Our nurses, my two brothers, and
+myself. Angry words and screaming baby voices, a knife thrown by
+my little brother. Rage and hate.
+
+And then a wedding, and I a bridesmaid, aged five years--the church,
+the altar, and great awe, and afterwards a long white table, white
+flowers, and a white Bride. Grown men on either side of
+me--smilingly delightful, tempting me with sweets and cakes and wine,
+and a new strange interest rising in me like a little flood of
+exultation--the joy of the world, and the first faint breath of the
+mystery of sex.
+
+Then came winters of travel. Sunshine and mimosa, olive trees
+against an azure sky. Climbing winding, stony paths between green
+terraces, tulips and anemones and vines; white sunny walls and
+lizards; green frogs and deep wells fringed around with maidenhair.
+Mountains and a sea of lapis blue, and early in the mornings from
+this lapis lake a great red sun would rise upon a sky of molten gold.
+In the rooms so near me were my darling brothers, from whom I
+often had to part. Beauty and Joy, and Love and Pain--these made
+up life.
+
+At ten I twice narrowly escaped death. From Paris we were to take
+the second or later half of the train to Marseilles. Late the night
+before my father suddenly said, "I have changed my mind; I feel we
+must go by the first train." This was with some difficulty arranged.
+
+On reaching an immense bridge across a deep ravine I suddenly
+became acutely aware that the bridge was about to give way. In a
+terrible state of alarm I called out this fearful fact to my family. I
+burst into tears. I suffered agonies. My mother scolded me, and
+when we safely reached the other side of the bridge I was severely
+taken to task for my behaviour. The bridge broke with the next train
+over it--the train in which we should have been. Some four hundred
+people perished. It was the most terrible railway disaster that had
+ever occurred in France.
+
+A few weeks later, death came nearer still. Having escaped from our
+tutor, with a party of other children we ran to two great reservoirs to
+fish for frogs. Laughing and talking and full of childish joy, we
+fished there for an hour, when all at once I was impelled, under an
+extraordinary sense of pressure, to call out, "If anyone falls into the
+water, no one must jump in to save them, but must immediately run
+to those long sticks" (I had never noticed them until I spoke) "and
+draw one out and hold it to whoever has fallen in." I spoke
+automatically, and felt as much surprised as my companions that I
+should speak of such a thing.
+
+Within five minutes I had fallen in myself. My brother remembered
+my words, but before he could reach me with the stick I was under
+the water for the third and last time. It was all that they could do to
+drag my weight up to the ledge, for the water was a yard below it.
+Had my brother jumped in, as he said he most surely would have
+done had I not forewarned him, we must both have been drowned,
+for they would have had neither the strength nor the time to pull us
+both out alive. I was not at all frightened or upset till I heard
+someone say that I was dead; then I wept--it was so sad to be dead!
+The pressure put upon me to speak as I did had been so great that I
+have never forgotten the strange impression of it to this day. On both
+these occasions I consider that I was under immediate Divine
+protection.
+
+I believed earnestly in God with the complete and peaceful faith of
+childhood. I thought of Him, and was afraid: but more afraid of a
+great Angel who stood with pen and book in hand and wrote down
+all my sins. This terrible Angel was a great reality to me. I prayed
+diligently for those I loved. Sometimes I forgot a name: then I would
+have to get out of bed and add it to my prayer. As I grew older, if the
+weather were cold I did not pray upon the floor but from my bed,
+because it was more comfortable. I was not always sure if this were
+quite right, but I could not concentrate my mind on God if my body
+was cold, because then I could not forget my body.
+
+I saw God very plainly when I shut my eyes! He was a White Figure
+in white robes on a white throne, amongst the clouds. He heard my
+prayers as easily as I saw His robes. He was by no means very far
+away, though sometimes He was further than at others. He took the
+trouble to make everything very beautiful: and He could not bear
+sinful children. The Angel with the Book read out to Him my faults
+in the evenings.
+
+When I was twelve years old my grandmother died, and for three
+months I was in real grief. All day I mourned for her, and at night I
+looked out at the stars, and the terrible mystery of death and space
+and loneliness struck at my childish heart.
+
+After thirteen I could no longer be taken abroad to hotels, for my
+parents considered that I received too much attention, too many
+presents, too many chocolates from men. I was educated by a
+governess, and was often very lonely. My brothers would come back
+from school; then I overflowed with happiness and sang all day long
+in my heart with joy. The last night of the holidays was a time of
+anguish. Upstairs the clothes were packed. Downstairs I helped them
+pack the "play-boxes," square deal boxes at sight of which tears
+sprang to my eyes and a dreadful pain gripped my heart. Oh, the
+pain of love at parting! there never was a pain so terrible as suffering
+love. The last meal: the last hour: the last look. There are natures
+which feel this anguish more than others. We are not all alike.
+
+I had been passionately fond of dolls. Now I was too old for such
+companions, and when my brothers went away I was completely
+alone with my governess and my lessons. I fell into the habit of
+dreaming. In these dreams I evolved a companion who was at the
+same time myself--and yet not an ordinary little girl like myself, but
+a marvellous creature of unlimited possibilities and virtues. She
+even had wings and flew with such ease from the tops of the highest
+buildings, and floated so delightfully over my favourite fields and
+brooks that I found it hard to believe that I myself did not actually
+fly. What glorious things we did together, what courage we had,
+nothing daunted us! I cared very little to read books of adventure,
+for our own adventures were more wonderful than anything I ever
+read.
+
+Not only had I wings, but when I was my other self I was extremely
+good, and the Angel with the Book was then never able to make a
+single adverse record of me. And then how easy it was to be good:
+how delightful, no difficulties whatever! As we both grew older the
+actual wings were folded up and put away. The virtues remained,
+but we led an intensely interesting life, and a certain high standard
+of life was evolved which was afterwards useful to me.
+
+When, later on, I grew up and my parents allowed me to have as
+many friends as I wanted, and when I became exceedingly gay, I
+still retained the habit of this double existence; it remained with me
+even after my marriage and kept me out of mischief. If I found
+myself temporarily dull or in some place I did not care for, clothed
+in the body of my double, like the wind, I went where I listed. I
+would go to balls and parties, or with equal ease visit the mountains
+and watch the sunset or the incomparable beauties of dawn, making
+delicate excursions into the strange, the wonderful, and the sublime.
+I gathered crystal flowers in invisible worlds, and the scent of those
+flowers was Romance.
+
+All this vivid imagination sometimes made my mind over-active: I
+could not sleep. "Count sheep jumping over a hurdle," I was advised.
+But it did not answer. I found the most effective way was to think
+seriously of my worst sins--my mind immediately slowed down,
+became a discreet blank--I slept!
+
+I grew tall and healthy. At sixteen I received my first offer of
+marriage and with it my first vision of the love and passion of men. I
+recoiled from it with great shyness and aversion. Yet I became
+deeply interested in men, and remained so for very many years.
+From that time on I never was without a lover till my marriage.
+
+II
+
+At seventeen my "lessons" came to an end. I had not learnt much,
+but I could speak four languages with great fluency. I learnt perhaps
+more from listening to the conversation of my father and his friends.
+He had always been a man of leisure and was acquainted with many
+of the interesting and celebrated people of the day, both in England
+and on the Continent. I was devoted to him, and whenever he guided
+my character he did so with the greatest judgment. He taught me
+above all things the need of self-control, and never to make a remark
+of a fellow-creature unless I had something pleasant or kind to say.
+There was no subject upon which he was unread; and when my
+brothers, who were both exceedingly clever, returned from college
+and the University, wonderful and brilliant were the discussions that
+went on. Both my parents were of Huguenot descent, belonging to
+the old French noblesse. I think the Latin blood had sharpened their
+brains, and certainly gave an extra zest to life.
+
+My father was a great believer in heredity, and the following
+personal experience may show him somewhat justified in his belief.
+In quite early childhood I commenced to feel a preference for the
+_left_ side of my body: I washed, dried, and dressed the left side
+first; I preserved it carefully from all harm; I kept it warm. I was,
+comparatively speaking, totally indifferent to my right side.
+
+As I grew older I observed that the place of honour was upon the
+right-hand side: I understood that God had made the world and ruled
+it with His right hand! I was wrong, then, in preferring my left hand.
+I determined to change over. It was very difficult to do: so deep was
+the instinct that it took me some years to eradicate the love for my
+left side and transfer it to my right, and when I had at last
+accomplished it I was still liable to go back to my first preference.
+No one ever detected my peculiarity.
+
+
+I was already eighteen or nineteen years old when one day I entered
+my father's room, ready dressed to go out. I had on both my gloves.
+Suddenly I remembered that I had put on my left glove first.
+Immediately I took off both my gloves--then I replaced the right one,
+and then the left. My father was watching me and asked me for an
+explanation. I gave it him, and he looked very grave, almost alarmed.
+After a moment of silence he said, "I want you to give that habit up--I
+want you to break yourself of it immediately. I had it myself as a
+youth: it took me years to conquer. No one should permit himself to
+be the slave of _any_ habit."
+
+I asked him which side he had loved. "The _left_ side," he said. At
+five-and-twenty he had conquered the habit, and I was not born till
+he was almost sixty-one! yet I had inherited it. We never referred to
+it again, and in two years I, also, had conquered it.
+
+We spent the winter of the year in which I was seventeen in Italy, to
+which country a near relative was Ambassador, and there I went to
+my first ball. That night--and how often afterwards!--I knew the
+surging exultation, the intoxication of the joy of life. How often in
+social life, in brilliant scenes of light and laughter, music and love, I
+seemed to ride on the crest of a wave, in the marvellous glamour of
+youth!
+
+This love of the world and of social life was a very strong feeling for
+many years: at the same time and running, as it were, in double
+harness with it was a necessity for solitude. My mind imperatively
+demanded this, and indeed my heart too.
+
+It was during this year that I first commenced a new form of mental
+pleasure through looking at the beautiful in Nature. Not only
+solitude, but total silence was necessary for this pastime, and, if
+possible, beauty and a distant view: failing a view I could
+accomplish it by means of the beauties of the sky. This form of
+mental pleasure was the exact opposite of my previous dreamings,
+for all imagination absolutely ceased, all forms, all pictures, all
+activities disappeared--the very scene at which I looked had to
+vanish before I could know the pleasure of this occupation in which,
+in some mysterious manner, I inhaled the very essence of the
+Beautiful.
+
+At first I was only able to remain in this condition for a few
+moments at a time, but that satisfied me--or, rather, did not satisfy
+me, for through it all ran a strange unaccountable anguish--a pain of
+longing--which, like a high, fine, tremulous nerve, ran through the
+joy. What induced me to pursue this habit, I never asked myself.
+That it was a form of the spirit's struggle towards the Eternal--of the
+soul's great quest of God--never occurred to me. I was worshipping
+the Beautiful without giving sufficient thought to Him from Whom
+all beauty proceeds. Half a lifetime was to go by before I realised to
+what this habit was leading me--that it was the first step towards the
+acquirement of that most exquisite of all blessings--the gift of the
+Contemplation of God. Ah, if anyone knows in his heart the call of
+the Beautiful, let him use it towards this glorious end! Love, and the
+Beautiful--these are the twin golden paths that lead us all to God.
+
+III
+
+Certainly we were not a religious family. One attendance at church
+upon Sunday--if it did not rain!--and occasionally the Communion,
+this was the extent of any outward religious feeling. But my father's
+daily life and acts were full of Christianity. A man of a naturally
+somewhat violent temper, he had so brought himself under control
+that towards everyone, high and low, he had become all that was
+sweet and patient, sympathetic and gentle.
+
+About this time a devouring curiosity for knowledge commenced to
+possess me. What was the truth--what was the truth about every
+single thing I saw? Astronomy, Biology, Geology--in these things I
+discovered a new and marvellous interest: here at last I found my
+natural bent. History had small attraction for me: it spoke of the
+doings of people mostly vain or cruel, and untruthful. I wanted
+truth--irrefutable facts! No scientific work seemed too difficult for me;
+but I never, then or later, read anything upon the subject of religion,
+philosophy, or psychology. I had a healthy, wholesome young
+intelligence with a voracious appetite: it would carry me a long way,
+I thought. It did--it landed me in Atheism.
+
+To a woman Atheism is intolerable pain: her very nature, loving,
+tender, sensitive, clinging, demands belief in God. The high moral
+standard demanded of her is impossible of fulfilment for mere
+reasons of race-welfare. The personal reason, the Personal
+God--these are essential to high virtue. Young as I was, I realised this.
+Outwardly I was frivolous; inwardly I was no butterfly, the deep
+things of my nature were by no means unknown to me. I not only
+became profoundly unrestful at heart but I was fearful for myself,
+and of where strong forces of which I felt the pull might lead me. I
+had great power over the emotions of men: moreover, interests and
+instincts within me corresponded to this dangerous capacity. I felt
+that the world held many strange fires: some holy and beautiful;
+some far otherwise.
+
+Without God I knew myself incapable of overcoming the evil of the
+world, or even of my own petty nature and entanglements. I
+despaired, for I perceived that God does not reveal Himself because
+of an imperious demand of the human mind, and I had yet to learn
+that those mysteries which are under lock and key to the intelligence
+are open to the heart and soul. But indeed there was no God to
+reveal Himself. All was a fantastic make-believe! a pitiful childish
+invention and illusion!
+
+My intelligence said, "Resign yourself to what is, after all, the truth:
+console yourself with the world and material achievements." The
+heart said, "Resignation is impossible, for there is no consolation to
+the heart without God." I listened to my heart rather than my
+intelligence, and for two terrible years I fought for faith. I was
+always reserved, and never admitted anyone into the deep things of
+my life--but when I was twenty my father perceived that I was going
+through some inward crisis. He knew the books that I read, and
+probably guessed what had happened to me. At any rate he called
+me into his room one day and asked me, out of love and obedience
+to himself, to give up reading all science. This was an overwhelming
+blow to me: yet I loved him dearly, and had never disobeyed him in
+my life. Again I let my heart speak; and I sacrificed my mind and
+my books.
+
+I threw myself now more than ever into social amusements, and in
+my solitary hours sought consolation in my "dream-life." I was
+afraid to turn to the love of Nature--to my beautiful pastime,--for the
+pain in it was unbearable.
+
+Towards the end of two years my struggles for faith commenced to
+find a reward. Little by little a faint hope crept into my mind--fragile,
+often imperceptible. A questioning remark made by my younger
+brother helped me: "If human life is entirely material and a
+part of Nature only, then what becomes of human thoughts and
+aspirations?" Science had proved to me that nothing is lost--but has
+a destiny--in that it evolves into another form or condition of activity.
+Evolution! with its many seeming contradictions to Religion--might
+it not be merely a strong light, too strong as yet for my weak mind,
+blinding me into temporary darkness? What raised Man above the
+beasts but his thoughts and aspirations; and if even a grain of dust
+were imperishable, were these thoughts and aspirations of Man
+alone to end in nothing--to be lost! It was but a reasonable inference
+to say No. These invisible thoughts and aspirations have also a
+future--a destiny in a, to us, still invisible world--in the Life of the
+Spirit. To this my mind was able to agree. It was a step. In the realm
+of Ideal Thought I might find again my Faith. I had indeed been
+foolish to suppose that a system which provided for the continuation
+of a grain of sand should overlook the Spirit of Man. This was
+presupposing the existence of a spirit in Man; but who could be
+found to truly and reasonably hold that the mysterious high and
+soaring thoughts of Man were one and the same thing as mere
+animalism? they were too obviously of another nature to the merely
+bovine, to the solids of the flesh: for one thing, they were free of the
+law of gravity which so entirely overrules the rest of Nature--they
+must therefore come to their destiny in another world, another
+condition of consciousness.
+
+IV
+
+That winter we again spent in Italy, in continuous gaiety amongst a
+brilliant cosmopolitan world of men and women who for the most
+part lived in palaces, surrounded with art and luxury. Here in Rome
+on every side was to be found the Cult of the Beautiful. Wonderful
+temples, gems of classical sculpture, masterpieces of colour in oil
+and fresco--the genius and the aspirations of men rendered
+permanent for us by Art; but the Temples, those silent emblems of
+man's worship of an Unknown God, with their surroundings of
+lovely nature, affected me far the most deeply: indeed, I do not
+pretend that sculptures and pictures affected me at all. I was
+interested, I greatly admired--they were a part of education, but that
+was all. But in the vicinity of those Temples what strange echoes
+awoke in me, what mysterious sadness and longing, what a mystery
+of pain! Something within me sighed and moaned for God. If I could
+but find Him--if I could even truly Believe and be at peace! But
+already I had commenced to Believe.
+
+During the late winter we went to one of the great ceremonies at the
+Vatican: we had seats in the Sistine Chapel. It was an especial
+occasion, and the number of persons present was beyond all seating
+accommodation. To make way for someone of importance I was
+asked to give up my seat and go outside into the body of the great
+Cathedral; here I was hurriedly pushed into the second row of a
+huge concourse of waiting and standing people. Already in the
+distance the Pope was approaching. Lifted high in his chair on the
+shoulders of his bearers, he came slowly along in his white robes,
+his hand raised in a general blessing upon all this multitude. As he
+came nearer I saw the delicate ivory face--the great dark eyes
+shining with a fire I had never seen before. For the first time in my
+life I saw holiness. I was moved to the depths of my being.
+Something in my gaze arrested his attention; he had his chair
+stopped immediately above me, and, leaning over me, he blessed me
+individually--a very great concession during a large public
+ceremony. I ought to have gone down on my knees--but I had no
+knees! I no longer had a body! There was no longer anything
+anywhere in the world but Holiness--and my enraptured soul.
+
+Holiness, then, was far beyond the Beautiful. I had not known this
+till I saw it before me.
+
+Life hurried me on: glowing hours and months succeeded each other.
+In the autumn I fell in love. I came to the consciousness of this, not
+gradually, but all in one instant. I had no chance of drawing back,
+for it was already fully completed before I realised it. I came to the
+realisation of it through a dream (sleep-dreams were always
+exceedingly rare with me): on this occasion I dreamed a friend
+showed me the picture of a girl to whom she said this lover (he had
+been my lover for a year) was engaged. I awoke, sobbing with
+anguish. I could not disguise from myself the fact that I must be in
+love. When the time came to speak of it to my parents, my mother
+would not hear of the marriage--there was no money: I must make
+another choice. Two brilliant opportunities offered
+themselves--money--position; but I could not bring myself to think of
+either. Love was everything: a prolonged secret engagement followed. I
+went into Society just as before. At this time an aptitude for
+"fortune-telling" showed itself: it amused my friends--I told fortunes
+both by palmistry, which I studied quite seriously, and by cards.
+With both I went largely by inspiration. I found this "inspiration"
+varied with the individual. There were many persons to whom I
+could give the most extraordinarily accurate details of past, present,
+and future; others moderately so; others were a total blank, in which
+case I either had to remain silent or "try to make up." I got such a
+reputation for this--I was so sought after for it by even total
+strangers--that in a couple of years I pushed it all far away from me
+as an intolerable nuisance.
+
+V
+
+The Faith that had been growing up in me was of a very different
+form from that which I had had before: wider, purer, infinitely more
+powerful, and, though I did not like to remember the pain of them, I
+felt that those struggling years of doubt and negation had been worth
+while--without those struggles I felt I never could have had so
+powerful a faith as I now had. God was at an indefinite and infinite
+distance, but His Existence was a thing of complete certainty for me.
+
+Of the mode and means of Connection with Him I had no smallest
+knowledge or even conception. I addressed Him with words from
+the brain and the lips. An insuperable wall perpetually separated me
+from Him.
+
+Now my father became ill with heart trouble. Doctors, nurses, all the
+dreaded paraphernalia of sickness pervaded the house. During two
+terrible years he lingered on. Heart-broken at the sight of his
+sufferings, I hardly left his bedside. Finally death released him. But
+my health, which had always been good, was now completely
+broken down; I became a semi-invalid, always suffering, too
+delicate to marry. Under pressure of this continued wretchedness I
+sank into a nerveless condition of mere dumb endurance--a passive
+acceptance of the miseries of life "as willed by God," I assured
+myself.
+
+I entered a stagnant state of _mere_ resignation, whereas
+accompanying the resignation there should have been a forward-piercing
+endeavour to reach out and attain a higher spiritual level through
+Jesus Christ: a persistent effort to light my lamp at the
+Spiritual Flame to which each must _bring his own lamp,_ for it is
+not lit for him by the mere outward ceremony of Baptism--that
+ceremony is but the Invitation to come to the Light: for each one
+individually, _in full consciousness of desire,_ that lighting must be
+obtained from the Saviour. I had not obtained this light. I did not
+comprehend that it was necessary. I understood nothing; I
+was a spiritual savage. Vague, miserable thoughts, gloomy
+self-introspections, merely fatigue the vitality without assisting the
+soul. What is required is a persistent endeavour to establish an inwardly
+felt relationship first to the Man Jesus. His Personality, His
+Characteristics are to be drawn into the secret places of the heart by
+means of the natural sympathy which plays between two hearts that
+both know love and suffering, and hope and dejection. Sympathy
+established--love will soon follow. Later, an iron energy to
+overcome will be required. The supreme necessity of the soul before
+being filled with love is to maintain the will of the whole spiritual
+being in conformity with the Will of God. In the achievement of this
+she is under incessant assistance: in fact everything in the spiritual
+life is a gift--as in the physical: for who can produce his own sight
+or his own growth? In the physical these are automatic--in the
+spiritual they are accomplished only, as it were, "by request," and
+this request a deep all-pervading desire.
+
+We cannot of our own will climb the spiritual heights, neither can
+we climb them without using our will. It is Will flowing towards
+Will which carries us by the power of Jesus Christ to the Goal.
+
+VI
+
+With recovered health, I married, and knew great happiness; but as a
+bride of four months I had to part from my husband, who went to the
+South African War. Always, always this terrible pain of love that
+must part. Always it was love that seemed to me the most beautiful
+thing in life, and always it was love that hurt me most. He was away
+for fifteen months. I made no spiritual advance whatever. Mystified
+by so much pain, I now began to regard God if not as the actual
+Author of all pain, at any rate as the Permitter of all pain. More and
+more I fell back in alarm at the discovery of the depths of my own
+capacities for suffering. A tremendous fear of God now commenced
+to grow up in me, which so increased that after a few years I listened
+with astonishment when I heard people say they were afraid of
+_any_ person, even a burglar! I could no longer understand feeling
+fear for anyone or anything save God. All my actions were now
+governed solely by this sense of weighty, immediate fear of Him.
+This continued for some ten years.
+
+When my husband at last returned from the War we took up again
+our happy married life, and we lived together without a cross word,
+in a wonderful world of our own, as lovers do. It was remarkable
+that we were so happy, for we had no interests in common. My
+husband loved all sports and all games, whereas interest in those
+things was frankly incomprehensible to me. In the winter, when he
+was out in the hunting-field, I spent much time by myself; but I was
+never dull, for I could walk out amongst Nature and indulge in my
+pastime, if the weather were fine: and if not, I could observe and
+admire everything that grew and lived close at hand in the
+hedgerows and fields, and I would work for hours with my needle,
+for then I could think; I worked hard in the garden.
+
+
+A dreadful question now often presented itself to me: Had I really a
+soul at all, or was I merely a passing shadow, here momentarily for
+God's amusement? If I had an eternal soul, where did it live--in my
+head with my brain as a higher part of my mind?
+
+Men had souls, I was sure of that; and they asserted the possession
+of them very positively--but women? I understood Mahomed
+grudgingly granted them a half-soul, and that only conditionally.
+Scriptures spoke harshly of women; Paul was bitter against them; all
+the sins and troubles of the world were laid upon their delicate and
+beautiful shoulders. In Revelation I found no mention whatever of
+Woman in the life of the Resurrection.
+
+All this hurt me. What profound injustice--to suffer so much and to
+receive no recognition whatever whilst men walked off with all the
+joys after leading very questionable lives! Why continue to struggle
+to please God when His interest in me would so soon be over? I
+went through very real and great spiritual sufferings, and
+temptations to throw myself again solely into world-interests, to
+console myself with the here and now, for I had the means: it was all
+to my hand. I swayed to and fro: at one time I felt very hard towards
+God, terribly hurt by this love-betrayal. But when I looked at the
+beauties of Nature and the glories of that endless sky, ah, my heart
+melted with tenderness and admiration for the marvellous Maker of
+it all. Truly, He was worthy of any sacrifice upon my part. If my
+poor, tiny, suffering life afforded Him amusement, I was willing to
+have it so. After all--for what wretched, ugly, and miserable men
+women frequently sacrificed themselves without getting any other
+reward for it than neglect and indifference. How much better to
+sacrifice oneself to the All-Perfect, All-Beautiful God!
+
+I finally resigned myself entirely and completely to this point of
+view, and, having done so, I thus addressed, in all reverence and
+earnestness, the Deity:--
+
+"Almighty God, if it is Thy Will to blot out Woman from Paradise I
+most humbly assure Thee of this--Man will miss her sorely; and
+Thou Thyself, Almighty God, when Thou dost visit Paradise, wilt
+miss her also!"
+
+After this I seldom said any private prayers, for I was not of the
+Acceptable Sex. But I paid a public respect to God in the church,
+where I worshipped Him with profound reverence and great sadness.
+But I thought of Him in my heart constantly, with all those tender,
+loving, longing thoughts which are the heart's bouquet held out to
+God.
+
+Happiness for me, then, must be found entirely in this world, and I
+found it in my love for my husband. Happiness was that which the
+whole world was looking for; but I could not fail to notice more and
+more the ridiculous picture presented by Society in its pretences of
+being the means of finding this happiness. None of its ardent
+devotees were "happy" people; they were excited, egotistical,
+intensely vain and selfish, often bitter and disappointed, filled with a
+demon of competition, jealous, and full of empty, insincere smiles. I
+perceived the chagrins from which they secretly suffered--the tears
+behind the laughter. I was not in the least deceived or impressed by
+any of them, but wondered how they managed to hang together and
+deceive each other. More and more I looked for purely mental
+pleasures. Mind was everything. I now began to despise my body--I
+almost hated it as an incubus! Social successes or failures grew to be
+a matter of complete indifference to me, and social life resolved
+itself into being solely the means of bringing mind into contact with
+mind. The question of fashionable environment ceased to exist for
+me, but the question of how and where to meet with thinking minds
+was what concerned me: it was not an easy one to solve in the usual
+conditions of country life, with its sports and its human-animal
+interests.
+
+Finally, total mental solitude closed around me. In spite of my doubt
+as to the existence of a woman-soul, I still felt the same piercing
+desire and need for God--the acquisition of knowledge in no way
+lessened this pain. What, after all, is knowledge by itself? The light
+of the highest human intelligence seems hardly greater than the wan
+lamp of a diminutive glow-worm, surrounded by the vastness of the
+night. In sorrow, in trouble, in pain, could knowledge or the mind do
+so much more for me than the despised body? No, something more
+than the intelligence was needed to give life any sense of adequacy:
+even human love was insufficient. God Himself was needed, and the
+ever-recurring necessity would force itself upon me of the need for a
+personal direct connection with God.
+
+I continued to find it utterly impossible to achieve this. Mere faith
+by no means fulfilled my requirements. God, then, remained
+inaccessible--the mind fell back from every attempt to reach Him.
+He was unknowable, yet not unthinkable--that is to say, He was not
+unthinkable as Being, but only in particularisation and in realisation.
+I could know Him to Be; but in that alone where was any
+consolation?--I found it totally inadequate. It was some form of
+personal Contact that was needed; but if my mind failed to reach this,
+with what else should I reach it? Ah, I was infinitely too small for
+this terrible mystery; but, small as I was, how I could suffer! Why
+this suffering? Why would He not show Himself? Harsh, rebellious,
+criticising thoughts frequently invaded me: the whole scheme of
+Nature and of life at times appeared cruel, unreasonably so. All the
+old ever-to-be-repeated cycle of bitter human thoughts had to be
+gone all through again in my own individual atom. Here and there
+the bitterness might vary: as, for instance, the collapse and
+corruption of the body with its hideous finale never caused me
+distress. I had become too indifferent to the body; but I found that
+most persons clung to it with extraordinary tenacity, indeed
+appeared to regard it as their most valuable possession! What I did
+resent, and was deeply mystified by, was the capacity for suffering
+and pain which had no balance in any corresponding joy. It was idle
+to say that the joy of festivities, even of human love, equalled the
+anguish of grief over others, or the sufferings of physical ill-health.
+They did not counterbalance it; sorrow was more weighty than joy,
+and far more durable. Later I became convinced that there did exist a
+full equivalent of joy, as against pain, and that I merely had no
+knowledge of how to find it.
+
+Years succeeded each other in this way, bringing greater loosening
+of earth-ties, more abstraction, certainly no improvement of
+character.
+
+My husband's duties as a soldier took us to many parts of the world.
+During a visit to Africa I was struck by lightning, and for ten days
+my sufferings were almost unendurable; every nerve seemed
+electrocuted. It was long before I quite recovered. Whilst this illness
+lasted, though it caused him no inconvenience and he led his life
+exactly as usual, I yet noticed a change in my husband's love. I was
+deeply pained, almost horrified, by this revelation of the natural
+imperfection of human love: profoundly saddened, I asked myself
+was it nothing but lust which had inspired and dictated all the poems
+of the world? I thought more and more of Jesus' love; I began to
+know that nothing less than His perfect love could satisfy me. In this
+illness I was tremendously alone.
+
+VII
+
+I commenced to meditate upon the life and the character and the
+love of Jesus Christ. I was now about thirty-six. Gradually He
+became for me a secret Mind-Companion. I began to rely upon this
+companionship--though it appeared intensely one-sided, for at first it
+seemed always to be I who gave! Nevertheless I found a growing
+calm arising from this apparently so one-sided friendship. A subtle
+assistance and comfort came to me, it was impossible to say how,
+yet it came from this companionship as it came from nothing else.
+
+That Jesus Christ was God I knew to be the faith of the Church, but
+that He actually was so I felt no conviction of whatever: indeed, it
+was incomprehensible to me. I thought of Him as a Perfect Man,
+with divine powers. He was my Jesus. I denied nothing, for I was far
+too small and ignorant to venture to do so: I kept a perfectly open
+mind and loved Him for Himself, as the Man Jesus.
+
+This went on for some years. In all my spiritual advancement I was
+incredibly slow!
+
+What had delayed me in progress was lack of using the right
+Procedure and the right Prayer. I sought for God with persistence
+and great longing; but I sought Him as the Father, and the Godhead
+is inaccessible to the creature. On becoming truly desirous of finding
+God it is necessary that with great persistence we pray the Father in
+the name of Jesus Christ that He will give us to Jesus Christ and nil
+the heart and mind with love for Christ. Only through Jesus Christ
+can we find the Godhead, and we cannot be satisfied with less than
+the Godhead. With the creature we cannot come into contact with
+the Godhead--but with the soul only. The soul is awakened, revived,
+reglorified by Grace of Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit effects the
+repentance and conversion of the heart and mind, for without this
+conversion towards a spiritual life the soul remains in bondage to the
+unconverted creature.
+
+VIII
+
+One day I returned from a walk, and hardly had I entered my room
+when I commenced thinking with great nearness and intimacy of
+Jesus; and suddenly, with the most intense vividness, He presented
+Himself before my consciousness so that I inwardly perceived Him,
+and at once I was overcome by a great agony of remorse for my
+unworthiness: it was as though my heart and mind broke in pieces
+and melted in the stress of this fearful pain, which
+continued--increased--became unendurable, and lasted altogether an
+hour. Too ignorant to know that this was the pain of Repentance, I
+did not understand what had happened to me; but now indeed at least I
+knew beyond a doubt that I had a soul! My wonderful Lord had
+come to pay me a visit, and I was not fit to receive Him--hence my
+agony. I would try with all my strength to improve myself for Him.
+
+I was at first at a standstill to know even where to commence in this
+improvement, for words fail to describe what I now saw in myself!
+Up till now I had publicly confessed myself a sinner, and privately
+calmly thought of myself as a sinner, but without being disturbed by
+it or perceiving how I was one! I kept the commandments in the
+usual degree and way, and was conscientious in my dealings with
+others. Now all at once--by this Presentment of Himself before my
+soul--which had lasted for no more than one moment of time--I
+suddenly, and with terrible clearness, saw the whole insufferable
+offensiveness of myself.
+
+For some time, even for some weeks, I remained like a person
+half-stunned with astonishment. Then I determined to try to become less
+selfish, less irritable and impatient, to show far more consideration
+for everyone else, to be rigidly truthful: in fact, try to commence an
+alteration.
+
+For one thing--about telling lies--I had always been quite truthful in
+large things, but often told some social lies for my own convenience,
+and sometimes told them for no reason at all! This spontaneous Evil
+filled me with more astonishment than shame; whence did this Evil
+come? I could never account for this strange Intruder which seemed
+to have a separate life and will of its own, and which, with no
+conscious invitation upon my part, would suddenly visit me! and _in
+all manner of shapes and ways!_ But whatever my difficulties, I had
+always this immense incentive--to please my Jesus, tender and
+wonderful, my Perfect Friend.
+
+Two years went by, and on Easter morning, at the close of the
+service as I knelt in prayer in the church, He suddenly presented
+Himself again before my soul, and again I saw myself, and again I
+went down and down into those terrible abysses of spiritual pain;
+and I suffered more than I suffered the first time: indeed, I have
+never had the courage to quite fully recall the full depths of this
+anguish to mind.
+
+After this my soul knew Jesus as Christ the Son of God, and my
+heart and mind accepted this without any further wonder or question,
+and entirely without knowing how this knowledge had been given,
+for it came as a gift.
+
+A great repose now commenced to fill me, and the world and all its
+interests and ways seemed softly and gently blown out of my heart
+by the wings of a great new love, my love for the Risen Christ.
+
+Though outwardly my friends might see no change, yet inwardly I
+was secretly changing month by month. Even the great love I had
+for my husband began to fade: this caused me distress; I thought I
+was growing heartless, and yet it was rather that my heart had grown
+so large that no man could fill it! I felt within me an immense,
+incomprehensible capacity for love, and the whole world with all its
+contents seemed totally, even absurdly, inadequate to satisfy this
+great capacity. I suffered over it without understanding it.
+
+IX
+
+I had a garden full of old-fashioned flowers, surrounded by high
+walls with thatch. As I grew in my heart more and more away from
+the world, I worked more in the garden, and whilst I worked I
+thought mostly about God--God so far away and hidden, and yet so
+near my heart.
+
+There were many different song-birds in the garden, and one robin. I
+loved the robin best of all. His song was not so beautiful as the
+blackbird's or so mellow as the thrush's; but they hid and ran away
+from me, whilst the robin sought me out and stayed with me and
+sang me, all to myself, a little, tiny, gentle song of which I never
+grew tired. If I stayed quite still, he came so close he almost touched
+me; but if I moved towards him, he flew away in a great fright.
+
+It seemed to me I was like that robin, and I wanted to come close,
+close to the feet of God. But He would not let me find Him. He
+would not make me any sign. He would not let me feel I knew Him.
+Did He in His wisdom know that if He showed Himself too openly I
+should go mad with fear or joy? I could not tell. But every day as the
+robin sang to me in the garden I sang to God a little gentle song out
+of my heart--a song to the hidden God Who called me, and when I
+answered Him would not be found, and, still remaining hidden,
+called and called till I was dumb with the pain and wonder of this
+mystery.
+
+Then suddenly came the Great War. My husband was amongst the
+first to have to go. All my love for him which I had thought to be
+fading now rose up again to its full strength: it was no mere weakly
+sentiment, but a powerful type of human love which had been able
+to carry me through fifteen years of married life without one hour of
+quarrelling; its roots were deep into my heart and mind: the very
+strength and perfection of it but made of it a greater instrument for
+torture. Why should this most beautiful of all human emotions carry
+with it so heavy a penalty, for which no remedy appeared to exist? It
+had not then been made clear to me that all human loves must first
+be offered up and ascend into the love of God: then only are they
+freed from this Pain-Tax. God must first be All in All to us before
+we can enter amongst the number who are all in all to Him--constantly
+consoled by Him. This condition of being all in all is demanded as
+a right by all men and women in mutual love, yet we deny this right
+to God: we are not even willing to attempt it! this failure to be
+willing is the grave error we make. Our attitude to God is not one
+of love, but of an expectancy of favours. An identical sacrifice
+is demanded of us in marriage--father, mother, brothers, sisters,
+friends: all these loves must become subservient to the new love,
+and with what willingness and smiles this sacrifice is usually
+made! Not so with our sacrifices to God--we make them with bitter
+tears, hard hearts, long faces. Is He never hurt by this perpetual
+grudgingness of love?
+
+But I had not yet learnt any of this, and I could not accept, I could
+not swallow this terrible cup. I thought of Christ in the Garden
+of Gethsemane. He understood and knew all pain; I had His
+companionship, but He offered me no cessation of this pain. It must
+be borne; had He not borne His own up to the bitter end? I shrank,
+appalled, from the suffering I was already in and the suffering that
+lay before me. Relief from this agony, relief, relief! But there was no
+relief. In utter darkness all must be gone through. At least I was not
+so foolish as to attribute all this horror that was closing in upon the
+world to the direct Will of God: I could perceive that, on the
+contrary, it was the spirit of Anti-Christ, it was the will of Man with
+his greeds, his cruelty, his self-sufficient pride, together with a host
+of other evils, which had brought all this to pass. But could
+not--would not--God deliver the innocent; must all alike descend into
+the pit?
+
+I tried to obtain relief by casting this burden on to Christ, and was
+not able to accomplish it. I tried to draw the succour of God down
+into my heart, and I tried to throw myself out and up to Him--I could
+do neither: the vast barrier remained; Faith could not take me
+through it.
+
+A horrible kind of second sight now possessed me, so that, although
+I never heard one word from my husband, I became aware of much
+that was happening to him--knew him pressed perpetually
+backwards, fighting for his life, knew him at times lying exhausted
+out in the open fields at night. At last I began to fear for my reason; I
+became afraid of the torture of the nights and sat up reading, forcing
+my mind to concentrate itself upon the book--the near-to-hand help
+of the book was more effective than the spiritual help in which
+something altogether vital was still missing. Relief only came when
+after a month a letter reached me from my husband, saying that the
+terrible retreat was over and he safe.
+
+Months and years dragged by. Sometimes the pain of it all was
+eased; sometimes it increased.
+
+As grass mown down and withered in the fields gives out the
+pleasant scent of hay, so in her laceration and her anguish did the
+soul, I wondered, give off some Pain-Song pleasing to Almighty
+God.
+
+At first I recoiled with terror from this thought; finally love
+overcame the terror--I was willing to have it so, if it pleased Him.
+My soul reached down into great and fearful depths. I envied the
+soldiers dying upon the battlefields; life was become far more
+terrible to me than death. Looking back upon my struggles, I see
+with profound astonishment how unaware I was of my impudence to
+God in attributing to Him qualities of cruelty and callousness, such
+as are to be found only amongst the lowest men!
+
+Yet good was permitted to come out of this evil; for where I
+attributed to God a callousness and even an enjoyment of my
+sufferings, I learnt self-sacrifice, the effacement of all personal gain,
+and total submission for love's sake to His Will, cruel though I might
+imagine it to be. With what tears does the heart afterwards address
+itself in awed repentance to its Beloved and Gentle God!
+
+A painful illness came and lasted for months. Having no home, I
+was obliged to endure the misery of it as best I could among
+strangers. At this time I touched perhaps the very lowest depths.
+How often I longed that I might never wake in the morning! I
+loathed my life.
+
+During this illness I came exceedingly near to Christ, so much so
+that I am not able to describe the vividness of it. What I learnt out of
+this time of suffering I do not know--save complete submission. I
+became like wax--wax which was asked to take only one impression,
+and that pain. I was too dumb; I should have remembered those
+words, that "men ought not to faint, but to pray."
+
+Bewildered, and mystified by my own unhappiness and that of so
+many others all around me, I sank in my submission too much into a
+state of lethargic resignation, whereas an onward-driving resolution
+to win through, a powerful determination to seek and obtain the
+immediate protection and assistance of God, a standing before God,
+and a claiming of His help--these things are required of the soul: in
+fact that importunity is necessary of which Jesus spoke (Luke xi. 7-9):
+"And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not . . . I
+cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you he will not rise and give
+him because he is his friend, yet _because of his importunity_ he
+will rise and give him as many as he needeth. And I say unto you,
+Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it
+shall be opened unto you."
+
+Such times of distress are storms, fearful battles of the soul in which
+she must not faint but rise up and walk towards God and clamour for
+help; and she will receive it. In His own good time He will give her
+all that she asks and more even than she dreamed of. She must claim
+from God a continual restrengthening, and search with glowing
+aspiration for a more joyous love.
+
+X
+
+It was summer-time: a great battle was raging in France. A friend
+wrote me that my husband was up in the very foremost part of it. I
+heard no word from my husband; weeks passed, and still the same
+ominous silence. At last the day came when the shadow of these two
+fearful years rose up and overwhelmed me altogether. I went up on
+to the wild lonely hill where I so often walked, and there I
+contended with God for His help. For the first time in my life there
+was nothing between God and myself--this had _continually_
+happened with Jesus Christ, but not with God the Father, Who
+remained totally inaccessible to me. Now, like a man standing
+in a very dark place and seeing nothing but knowing himself
+immediately near to another--so I knew myself in very great
+nearness to God. I had no need for eyes to see outwardly, because of
+the immense magnetism of this inward Awareness. At one moment
+my heart and mind ran like water before Him--praying Him,
+beseeching Him for His help; at another my soul stood straight up
+before Him, contending and claiming because she could bear no
+more: and it felt as though the Spirit of God stood over against my
+spirit, and my spirit wrestled with God's Spirit for more than an hour.
+But He gave me no answer, no sign, no help. He gave me nothing
+but that awful silence which seems to hang for ever between God
+and Man. And I became exhausted, and turned away in despair from
+God, and from supplication, and from striving, and from contending,
+and, very quiet and profoundly sad, I stood looking out across the
+hills to the distant view--how gentle and lovely this peace of the
+evening sky, whilst on earth all the nations of the world were
+fighting together in blood and fury and pain!
+
+I had stood there for perhaps ten minutes, mutely and sadly
+wondering at the meaning of it all, and was commencing to walk
+away when suddenly I was surrounded by a great whiteness which
+blotted out from me all my surroundings. It was like a great light or
+white cloud which hid all my surroundings from me, though I stood
+there with my eyes wide open: and the cloud pricked, so that I said
+to myself, "It is an electric cloud," and it pricked me from my head
+down to my elbows, but no further. I felt no fear whatever, but a
+very great wonder, and stood there all quite simple and placid,
+feeling very quiet. Then there began to be poured into me an
+indescribably great vitality, so that I said to myself, "I am being
+filled with some marvellous Elixir." And it filled me from the feet
+up, gently and slowly, so that I could notice every advance of it. As
+it rose higher in me, so I grew to feel freed: that is to say, I had
+within me the astounding sensation of having the capacity to pass
+where or how I would--which is to say I felt freed of the law of
+gravity. I was like a free spirit--I felt and knew within myself this
+glorious freedom! I tasted for some moments a new form of living!
+Words are unable to convey the splendour of it, the boundless joy,
+the liberty, the glory of it.
+
+And the incomprehensible Power rose and rose in me until it
+reached the very crown of my head, and immediately it had quite
+filled me a marvellous thing happened--the Wall, the dreadful
+Barrier between God and me, came down entirely, and immediately
+I loved Him. I was so filled with love that I had to cry aloud my love,
+so great was the force and the wonder and the delight and the might
+of it.
+
+And now, slowly, the vivid whiteness melted away so that I saw
+everything around me once more just as before; but for a little while
+I continued to stand there very still and thoughtful, because I was
+filled with wonder and great peace.
+
+Then I turned to walk home, but I walked as a New Creature in a
+New World--my heart felt like the heart of an angel, glowing white-hot
+with the love for God, and all my sorrows fled away in a vast joy!
+This was His answer, this was His help. After years and years of
+wrestling and struggling, in one moment of time He had let me find
+Him, He had poured His Paradise into my soul! Never was such
+inconceivable joy--never was such gladness! My griefs and pains
+and woes were wiped away--totally effaced as though they had
+never existed!
+
+Oh, the magnificence of such splendid joy! The whole of space
+could scarcely now be large enough to hold me! I needed all of it--I
+welcomed its immensity as once I was oppressed by it. God and my
+Soul, and Love, and Light, and Space!
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+At last my little suffering life is sheltered in the known, the felt,
+protection of the Ineffable and Invisible Being. The Being
+Who, without revealing Himself to me by sight or sound, yet
+communicates Himself to me in some divine manner at once
+all-sufficing and inexpressible. I ask no questions: I am in no haste of
+anxious learning. My heart and my mind and my soul stand still and
+drink in the glory of this happiness. All day, often half the night, I
+worship Him. I love Him with this new love, so different from
+anything known before. The greatest earthly love, by comparison to
+it, has become feeble, impure, almost grotesque in its inefficiency--a
+tinsel counterfeit of this glistening mystery which must still be
+spoken of as love because I know no other name.
+
+I find it difficult, almost impossible, to speak to my fellow-creatures,
+because I have only two words, two thoughts in my entire being: my
+God, and my love for Him.
+
+I am like a thing that is magnetised, held: I am not able, day or night,
+to detach my mind from God.
+
+I wake with His name upon my lips, with His glory in my soul. In all
+this there is no virtue on my part; there is no effort; the capacity for
+this boundless devotion is a free gift. Coming immediately after my
+anguished prayer on the hill, it appears to me to have come solely on
+account of that one prayer--the previous prayers, struggles,
+endeavours of five-and-twenty years are entirely forgotten. I
+comprehend nothing of the mystery, neither as yet do I feel any
+desire to comprehend it; but in a world where only love, beauty,
+happiness, and repose exist, I walk and talk and live alone with God.
+
+Yet the war was continuing as usual, my husband was in the same
+danger, I became ill with influenza, my friends continued to die of
+wounds, my relations to be killed one by one; but in all this there
+was no pain: the sting, the anguish, had gone out of every single
+thing in life.
+
+My consciousness feels to be composed of two extremes: I am a
+child of a few years of age, to whom sin, suffering, pain, evil, and
+temptation are not known, and yet, though knowing so little, I know
+the unutterably great--I know God. This cannot be expressed--merely,
+it can be said that two extremes have met.
+
+This new consciousness, this new worship, this new love is for the
+Godhead. Christ is gone up into the Godhead, and I worship Him in,
+and as One with, the Godhead. For three months this continues
+uninterruptedly. Then Jesus Christ presents Himself to my
+consciousness. Jesus, Who led me to this happiness, now calls and
+calls to my soul. Immediately I commence to respond to Him. He is
+drawing me away; He is teaching me something--at first I do not
+know what, but soon I know that He is leading me out of this Eden,
+this paradise of my childhood: I know it, because I begin to feel pain
+again, and to recognise evil. O my Jesus, my Jesus, must I really
+follow Thee out of Paradise back into pain? Yes, in less than two
+weeks I am fully back in the world again--but not the same world,
+_because I know how to escape from it._ The Door that I knocked at,
+and that all in one moment was opened to me, is _never closed._ I
+can go in and out. God never closes to me the right of way; never
+severs those secret wires of Divine Communication.
+
+But my soul is not nursed, as it were, in His Hands day and night--she
+must learn to grow up. Woeful education, deadly days of learning,
+stony paths that hurt, that hurt all the more because of the felicity
+that only so recently was mine.
+
+For three months I am walking further and further out of Eden and
+back into the horrors of the world--following Jesus.
+
+One night I compose myself as usual for sleep, but I do not sleep,
+neither can I say that I am quite awake. It is neither sleep, nor is my
+wakefulness the usual wakefulness. I do not dream, I cannot move.
+My consciousness is alight with a new fiery energy of life; it feels to
+extend to an infinite distance beyond my body, and yet remains
+connected with my body. I live in a manner totally new and totally
+incomprehensible, a life in which none of my senses are used and
+which is yet a thousand, and more than a thousand, times as vivid. It
+is living at white heat--without forms, without sound, without sight,
+without anything which I have ever been aware of in this world, and
+at a terrible speed. What is the meaning of all this? I do not know:
+my body is quite helpless and is distressed, but I am not afraid. God
+is teaching me something in His own way. For six weeks every night
+I enter this condition, and the duration and power or intensity of it
+increase by degrees. It feels that my soul is projected or travels for
+incalculable distances beyond my body--(long afterwards I
+understand through experience that this is not the mode of it, but that
+the soul _remaining in the body_ is by some de-insulation exposed
+to the knowledge of spirit-life as and when free of the flesh)--and I
+learn to comprehend and to know a new manner of living, as a
+swimmer learns a new mode of progression by means of his
+swimming, which is not his natural way.
+
+By the end of three weeks I can remain nightly for many hours in
+this condition, which is always accompanied by an intense and vivid
+consciousness of God.
+
+As this consciousness of God becomes more and more vivid so my
+body suffers more and more. By day I can only eat the smallest
+morsels of food, which almost choke me, but I drink a great quantity
+of water. I am perfectly healthy, though I have hardly any sleep and
+very little, indeed almost no, food--the suffering is only at night with
+the breathing and the heart when in this strange condition. But I
+have no anxiety whatever; I am glad that He shall do as He pleases
+with me. Nothing but love can give us this supreme confidence.
+
+During the whole of these experiences I live in a state of very
+considerable abstraction. But this now suddenly increases, increases
+to such an extent that I hardly know whether to call it abstraction or
+the extremity of poverty. I now become divested of all interests
+outside and inside, divested of the greater part of my intelligence,
+divested of my will. I am of no value whatever, less than the dust on
+the road.
+
+In this awful nothingness I am still I. My consciousness continues
+and is not confounded with or lost in any other consciousness, but is
+reduced to stark nakedness and worth nothing: and this worthless
+nothing is hung up and, as it were, suspended nowhere in particular
+as far from earth as from heaven, totally unknown and unwanted by
+both God and Man. I am naked patience--waiting. I have a few
+thoughts, but very few: I think one thought where in normal times I
+should think ten thousand. I feel and know that I am nothing, and I
+feel that this has been done to me; just as before, all that I had was
+also done to me and was a gift. So I acknowledge that I once had
+and was perhaps something and that now I possess and certainly am
+nothing--I acknowledge it, I accept it, without hesitation, without
+protest. One of my few thoughts is that I shall remain for the rest of
+my natural life in this pitiful state where, however, I shall hope to be
+preserved from further sinning simply because I have not a
+sufficiency of will, intelligence, or thought with which to sin! I am
+too completely nothing to be able to sin. I have another thought,
+which is that as I no longer have any intelligence with which to deal
+with the ordinary difficulties of life, such as street life and traffic, I
+shall shortly be run over and killed; and so I put a card with my
+address on it into my little handbag, for the convenience of those
+who shall be obliged to deal with my body afterwards.
+
+I have just sufficient capacity left me to automatically, mechanically,
+go through with the necessities of life. I have not become idiotic. I
+live in a tremendous and profound solitude, such a solitude as would
+frighten many people greatly. But my beautiful pastime had
+accustomed me to solitude and also to something of this
+nothingness--a brief nothingness was a necessary part of the
+beautiful pastime: so I have no fears now of any kind; but I wonder.
+Perhaps I am just four things--wonder, patience, resignation, and
+nothing.
+
+Yet through this dreadful solitude penetrates the inspiration of some
+unseen guide. As regards this particular time I am convinced that
+this guide is an outside presence. I depend in all my goings and
+comings upon the guidance of this guide who proves incredibly
+accurate in every detail, in details of even the smallest necessities. If
+this guide is a part of myself, it is that of me with which I have not
+previously come in contact; and it is not the Reason, but far beyond
+the Reason, for it _divines._ It is then either a spiritual guide,
+companion, or guardian angel, or it is a power possessed by the soul
+herself--a foretasting cognisance, a mysterious intuition of which we
+as yet comprehend little or nothing, and which we have not yet
+learnt to command: it presents itself; it absents itself; but it
+condescends to every need; it is always helpful, always beneficent; it
+sees that which it sees before the event; it hears that which it hears
+before the words are spoken. It guides by what would seem to be
+two very different modes: the greater things come by a mode
+altogether indescribable; but for the small things of every day I will
+take simple examples here and there. I am abroad. Someone in the
+family at home is taken dangerously ill. I am urgently needed; but
+the trains are overcrowded, I am unable to get my seat transferred to
+an earlier date, I cannot let them know at home when I shall return:
+all is uncertain, all is chaos. I am painfully anxious, I am ashamed to
+say I am greatly worried: I turn as always to my Lord, asking Him to
+forgive these selfish fears and to help me. A little while later a scene
+presents itself to me--I see my own room, I hear the voice of a page-boy
+standing in the door and saying, "You are wanted on the
+telephone"; then I am at the telephone, and a voice is saying to me,
+"_Your train accommodation is transferred to Friday the 19th._"
+That is all, because I am rung off.
+
+Five days pass. I am in my room, and the page is really standing at
+the door, and he says, "You are wanted on the telephone." I go to the
+telephone, and a voice says, "_Your train accommodation is
+transferred to Friday the 19th._" That is all, because I am rung off.
+
+Again, there is a young lay-reader, closely in contact with Christ; he
+has a wife and young child. The weather is bitterly cold. A picture
+suddenly comes before me of this family, and there is a voice saying,
+"_He was gathering together the last little pieces of fuel when your
+present came._" Immediately I understand that I am required to send
+coal to these people, and to do it at once without delay. The
+following day the wife comes with tears to thank me, and she tells
+me, "We were in despair; my husband's heart is so weak he cannot
+bear the cold, he becomes seriously ill. _He was gathering together
+the last little pieces of fuel when your present came._"
+
+Or, again, I very badly need a pair of walking shoes, but for weeks I
+have been so absorbed in contemplation that the pain of bringing
+myself from this holy joy to do shopping is too great, and I delay
+and delay; I cannot bring myself to it; but shoes are a necessity of
+earthly life. Having exceedingly narrow feet, I am obliged always to
+get my shoes from a certain maker, and now, during the war, he
+makes so few shoes. To-day a picture of the shop comes before me,
+and the words "Go to-day, go to-day," urge themselves upon my
+consciousness. Then a picture comes of the assistant; I show her my
+foot, and she says, "_There is only one pair left; how fortunate you
+came to-day!_" So I understand I must go to my shopping and,
+greatly against my will, I go that afternoon. The assistant comes
+forward, and I show her my foot, and she says, "_There is only one
+pair left; how fortunate you came to-day!_"
+
+Always in this mode of the guiding are the little picture and the
+_exact_ words: all of it of the easiest to describe; but of the other
+and the greater guiding I do not know how to tell. It is sheer pure
+knowledge, received not in parts, pictures, or words, but as a whole
+and in a mode so exquisitely mysterious as to be at once too intricate
+for description, and yet simplicity itself!
+
+Sure, perfect, and serene mode of knowledge! Royal knowledge
+which knows no toil, no sweat of work, no common drudgery, art
+thou of the soul herself, or art thou altogether from outside the soul?
+This I know, that though the first mode would seem to be very small
+and to deal with littleness, and the last mode seems to be entirely
+apart from it because of the greatnesses with which it deals that they
+are linked and that the power is one power soaring to the highest,
+condescending to the smallest.
+
+So now, in the time of this strange abstraction and poverty, when the
+cinematograph of my mind is closed down, and with it the delicate
+mechanism which takes up, uses, and connects all that we take
+in by the senses, and which makes the world so real and so
+comprehensible, is become unhitched and disconnected, so that
+nothing in the world seems any longer real or possesses either value
+or meaning, and I stand before it all defenceless, seemingly unable
+to deal with it, utterly indifferent to it; then and now Reason may
+very well say to me, "You are in very great danger"; but I am not in
+any danger, because I am guided whenever necessary by some
+condescending sagacity far more sagacious than my poor Reason,
+infinitely more penetrative and effectual than any sense of eye or ear.
+I remain fully convinced that at this time, at any rate, it was an
+outside sagacity which guided me--truly a guardian angel.
+
+This period of intense abstraction, this strange valley of humiliation,
+poverty, solitude, seemed a necessary prelude to the great, the
+supreme, experience of my life. As I came slowly out of this poverty
+and solitude, the joyousness of my spiritual experience increased:
+the nights were no longer at all a time of sleep or repose, but of
+rapturous living.
+
+The sixth week came, and I commenced to fear the nights and this
+tremendous living, because the happiness and the light and the
+poignancy and the rapture of it were becoming more than I could
+bear. I began to wonder secretly if God intended to draw my soul so
+near to Him that I should die of the splendour of this living, My
+raptures were not only caused by the sense of the immediate
+Presence of God--this is a distinctive rapture running through and
+above all raptures, but there are lesser ecstasies caused by the
+meeting of the soul with Thoughts or Ideas, with melodies which
+bear the soul in almost unendurable delight upon a thousand
+summits of perfection; and with an all-pervading rapturous Beauty
+in a great light. There is this peculiarity about the manner of these
+thoughts and melodies and beauties--they are not spoken, heard, or
+seen, but _lived._ I could not pass these things to my reason and
+translate the Ideas into words or the melodies into sounds, or the
+beauty into objects, for spirit-living is not translatable to earth-living,
+and I found in it no words, no sounds, no objects, and I
+comprehended and I lived with that in me which is above Reason
+and of which I had, previously to these experiences, had no
+cognisance.
+
+There came a night when I passed beyond Ideas, beyond melody,
+beyond beauty, into vast lost spaces, depths of untellable bliss, into a
+Light. And the Light is an ecstasy of delight, and the Light is an
+ocean of bliss, and the Light is Life and Love, and the Light is the
+too deep contact with God, and the Light is unbearable Joy; and in
+unendurable bliss my soul beseeches God that He will cover her
+from this most terrible rapture, this felicity which exceeds all
+measure. And she is not covered from it. And she beseeches Him
+again; and she is not covered; and being in the last extremity from
+this most terrible joy, she beseeches Him again: and immediately is
+covered from it.
+
+* * *
+
+My soul, my whole being, is terrified of God, and of joy. I dare not
+think of Him, I dare not pray; but, like some pitiful and wounded
+child, I creep to the feet of Jesus.
+
+When on the following evening once more the day closes and I
+compose myself for the night, I wonder tremblingly to what He will
+again expose me; but for the first time in six weeks I fall into a
+natural sleep and know no more until the morning.
+
+Then I understand that the lesson is over. Mighty and Terrible God,
+it was enough!
+
+In the light of these measureless joys what is any earthly joy? What
+is the very greatest experience of earthly happiness but so much
+waste paper?
+
+What are the joys of those vices for which men sell their souls, but
+soap-bubbles!
+
+The whole meaning of life, together with all the graduated and
+accepted values of it, becomes for ever changed in the light of the
+knowledge of Celestial Happiness.
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+I
+
+Wonderful, beautiful weeks went by, filled with divine,
+indescribable peace. The Presence of God was with me day and
+night, and the world was not the world as I had once known it--a
+place where men and women fought and sinned and toiled and
+anguished and wondered horribly the meaning of this mystery of
+pain and joy, of life and death. The world was become Paradise, and
+in my heart I cried to all my fellow-souls, "Why fret and toil, why
+sweat and anguish for the things of earth when our own God has in
+His hand such peace and bliss and happiness to give to Every man?
+O come and receive it, Every man his share."
+
+And the glamour of life in Unity with God became past all
+comprehension and all words.
+
+Is life, then, a poem? is it a melody? I cannot say; but it is one long
+essence of delight--a harmony of flowing out and back again to God.
+O blessed life! O blessed Man! O blessed God!
+
+II
+
+One morning in my room I began thinking and reasoning about a
+wonderful change that I knew had crept all through me. If God
+should now come at any moment of the day or night and turn over
+every secret page of heart and mind, He would not find one thought
+or glimmer of any sort or kind of lust, whether of the eye, of the
+heart, of the mind, or of the body; and all in one moment I realised
+the miracle that Christ had worked in me, and the words came over
+my mind, "Though thy sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as
+snow." And I stood there, gazing before me, speechless, and the
+tears of a joy that was an agony of gratitude poured and poured
+down my face like a rain. I did not sob, I could not speak, and very
+quietly I took my heart and my mind and my soul and laid them for
+ever at the feet of Christ.
+
+III
+
+One evening as I knelt to say my prayers, which were never long,
+because since the Visitation on the hill my natural habit--whether
+walking, sitting, working, travelling, or on my bed--had come to be
+a continual sending up from my heart and mind the tenderest and
+most adoring, the most worshipping and thanking little stream of
+thoughts to God (very much as a flower, if we could but see it, sends
+its scent to the sun).
+
+And because this mode of prayer is so smooth and joyous, so easy,
+so unutterably sweet, in that during it the Presence of God laves us
+about as the sun laves the flower--so because of this it was only for
+short and set times that I worshipped Him as the creature in prayers
+upon its knees; but those few moments of prayer would always be
+intense, the heart and the mind with great power bent wholly and
+singly upon God.
+
+So now, this evening as I knelt and dwelt in great singleness on God,
+He drew me so powerfully, He encompassed me so with His
+glamour, that this singleness and concentration of thought continued
+much longer than usual on account of the greatness of the love that I
+felt for Him, and the concentration became an intensity of
+penetration because of this magnetism, He turned on to me, and my
+mind became faint, and died, and I could no longer think of or on
+God, _for I was one with Him._ And I was still I; though I was
+become Ineffable Joy.
+
+When it was over I rose from my knees, and I said to myself, for
+five wonderful moments I have been in contact with God in an
+unutterable bliss and repose: and He gave me the bliss tenderly and
+not as on that Night of Terror; but when I looked at my watch I saw
+that it had been for between two and three hours.
+
+Then I wondered that I was not stiff, that I was not cold, for the
+night was chilly and I had nothing about me but a little velvet
+dressing-wrapper; and my neck was not stiff, though my head had
+been thrown back, as is a necessity in Communion with God; and I
+thought to myself, it is as if my body also had shared in the blessing.
+
+And this most blessed happening happened to me every day for a
+short while, usually only for a few moments. In this way God
+Himself caused and enabled me to contemplate and _know_ Him;
+and I saw that it was in some ways at one with my beautiful pastime,
+but with this tremendous difference in it--that whereas my mind had
+formerly concentrated itself upon the Beautiful, and remaining Mind
+had soared away above all forms into its nebulous essence in a
+strange seductive anguish, it now was drawn and magnetised beyond
+the Beautiful directly to the Maker of it: and the soaring was like a
+death or swooning of the mind, and immediately I was living with
+that which is above the mind: in this living there was no note of pain,
+but a marvellous joy.
+
+Slowly I learnt to differentiate degrees of Contemplation, but to my
+own finding there are two principal forms--Passive and Active (or
+High) Contemplation.
+
+In meditation is little or no activity, but a sweet quiet thinking and
+talking with Jesus Christ. In Passive Contemplation is the beginning
+of real activity; mind and soul without effort (though in a secret state
+of great love-activity) raise themselves, focussing themselves upon
+the all-unseen Godhead: now is no longer any possible picture in the
+mind, of anyone nor anything, not even of the gracious figure or of
+the ways of Christ: here, because of love, must begin the sheer
+straight drive of will and heart, mind and soul, to the Godhead, and
+here we may be said first to commence to breathe the air of heaven.
+
+There is no prayer, no beseeching, and no asking--there are no
+words and no thoughts save those that intrude and flash unwanted
+over the mind, but a great undivided attention and waiting upon God:
+God near, yet never touching. This state is no ecstasy, but smooth,
+silent, high living in which we learn heavenly manners. This is
+Passive or Quiet Contemplation.
+
+High Contemplation ends in Contact with God, in ecstasy and
+rapture. In it the activity of the soul (though entirely without effort
+on her part) is immensely increased. It is not to be sought for, and
+we cannot reach it for ourselves; but it is to be enjoyed when God
+calls, when He assists the soul, when He energises her.
+
+And then our cry is no more, Oh, that I had wings! but, Oh, that I
+might fold my wings and stay!
+
+IV
+
+Having come so far as this on the Soul's Great Adventure all alone
+as far as human guidance and companionship was concerned, and
+having for more than a year known the wonders of the joy of Union
+with God--which I did not know or understand to call Union, but
+called it to myself Finding God and coming into Contact with Him,
+because this is how it _feels,_ and the unscholarly creature
+understands and knows it in that way--well, having come so far, I
+had a great longing to share this knowledge, this exquisite balm,
+with my fellows, and I desired immensely to speak about it, to know
+how they fell about it, if they had yet come to it, or how far on the
+way they were to it, because I was all filled with the beauty of it, as
+lovers are filled with the beauty of their love. But I was frightened to
+speak to them, something held me back: also they felt to me to be so
+exceedingly full of the merest trifles--clothes and tea-parties and
+fashionable friends; and each time I tried to speak, in some
+mysterious way I found myself stopped. So I thought that I would
+speak to a friend that I had in the Church. Several times I had heard
+him preach very beautiful sermons, and I felt I very greatly needed
+the guidance of _someone who knew._ I wanted, I longed for, a
+human intermediary. I knew that I was in the hands of the God
+Whom for so many years I had so passionately sought; but He was
+so immeasurably great, and I so pitifully small, and I needed a
+human being--someone to whom I might speak about God.
+
+Yet something warned me not to commence as though speaking of
+myself, but of another person. I said only a few words, of the joy of
+this person in finding and loving God, and immediately my friend
+spoke very severely of persons who imagined they had found, and
+loved, God. God was not to be found by our puny, shifting and
+uncertain love: He was to be found by duty, by obedience to Church
+rules, by pious attendance _At Church._ He explained to me various
+dogmas which helped me no more than the moaning of the wind; he
+explained the absolute necessity (for salvation) of certain beliefs and
+written sentences, and ceremonials in the Church. Love was not the
+way. Love was emotion, emotion was deceptive: the mind, and
+severe firm attention to the dictates of The Church was what was
+required; in fact, he unfolded before me the Ecclesiastical Mind. I
+shrank back from it, dismayed, frightened. Were all the deep needs
+and requirements of the soul to be satisfied in the singing of hymns
+and Te Deum, in the close and reverent attention to the Ceremonies
+before the altar, and of the actions of Priests! Did, or could, any
+reasoning creature truly think to Find God by merely repeating,
+however reverently, the same prayers and ceremonies Sunday after
+Sunday! Could the great mountain up which my soul had sweated,
+and which each soul must climb--could it be climbed by kneeling in
+a pew in church? No; a total change of _character_ was needed, and
+Christ Himself was necessary for this change--Jesus Christ gliding
+into the heart and mind and soul, and _biding_ there because of that
+heart's, that mind's, invitation to, and love for, Him. Secretly--in
+one's own chamber, every hour of the day, in the streets, in the
+fields--in this way it might be accomplished.
+
+With Christ biding in the heart all the Church service would
+_become_ a thing of beauty as between the Soul and God; but
+without this Jesus Christ dwelling in the heart, the connection was
+not yet made between the Soul--the service--and the Godhead.
+
+Perhaps amongst Romans I should find the understanding that I
+looked for. I had a friend, a Dominican: I approached him, and I
+could see that for (as he thought) my own good he longed to convert
+me to the Roman Church: it did not seem that he wanted, or by any
+means knew how, to bring me into contact with God, but his thought
+was to bring me to _The Church._ "Does anyone," I asked him,
+"love God with all their heart, and mind, and soul, and strength?"
+"No," said he, "that is hardly possible--what is required is--"; and
+here he gave me once more the contents of the Ecclesiastical Mind:
+more authoritatively, more positively; but he spoke as I now
+commenced to realise all Churchmen would speak--that is to say, as
+persons having learnt by study, by careful rule and rote, by
+paper-knowledge, that which can only be learnt in the spirit direct from
+God. How immense is the difference to the Soul between this
+knowledge that comes of the spirit and the knowledge that comes of
+study--the knowledge which too easily becomes mechanical religion!
+
+I thought of the beautiful and gracious simplicity of the knowledge
+that Christ gives to the soul: I saw the nature of the sore disease that
+afflicts the soul of Christ's Church, I saw also a terrible pain for
+Christ in all this of which I had previously been unaware.
+
+I was thrown back and into myself by it all, and into a great
+loneliness as far as my fellow-beings were concerned. Yet I
+continued to need to share Christ with humanity, piercingly,
+pressingly. I would go to a library and find a book--but, on the other
+hand, I did not know the name of a single religious book or writer.
+So I wrote my need to a friend, and she sent me the life of one,
+Angela of Foligno. This book was a great delight to me, because,
+though written in tiresome mediaeval language, it yet expressed and
+shared exactly what I also knew and loved, and folded in strange
+wrappings of the fashion of the thought of long ago lay the same
+exquisite jewel that I also knew--the pearl for which men gladly sell
+all that they have in order to keep it--the knowledge of the Secret of
+the Kingdom of Heaven, of the Union of the Soul with God.
+
+A few months went by, and I wrote asking for another book, and this
+time came Richard Rolle to my acquaintance--a little dried-up
+hermit, a holy man too, though I noticed how very discourteous he
+was to women; severe, critical, and suspicious, merely because they
+were women. How often I noticed this peculiarity, both in the monks
+of to-day with their averted eyes, as if the shadow of a woman
+falling on them were pollution, and long ago, Paul, and Peter also,
+and Moses, and many others, showed surprising weakness of
+intolerance and harsh judgment against Woman!
+
+Where was Wisdom in all this? Surely it was Folly flaunting and
+laughing and dressing herself cunningly to deceive, for did none of
+these men, from Adam downwards--did they never come to know
+themselves well enough to see that their danger lay not in the
+Woman, but in _their own inclination to sin!_
+
+Oh, the righteousness of the greatest saint was, and is, but as dust
+and ashes before the righteousness of Jesus! and I came to wonder if
+there ever was or could be a saint, save one--Jesus.
+
+But this Richard Rolle, this person so discourteous to some
+fellow-beings, could all the same be very tender and loving towards God:
+he, too, held in his heart the Pearl without Price. He, too, knew that
+marvellous incense of the heart to God--that song of the soul, and
+called it by the same name as I; but how could it be called by any
+other name? for every soul that knows it, it must ever be the same.
+Oh, how intimately I knew those two people of centuries ago, and
+how intimately they knew me! A strange trio we made--he, the little
+wizened English hermit; she, the Italian woman in her nun's habit;
+and I in my modern Bond Street clothes: outwardly we were indeed
+incongruous, we had no links, but inwardly we were bound together
+by bonds of the purest gold.
+
+Of whether my friend sent me another book or not I cannot be sure;
+but my interest was becoming altogether removed from the past,
+because Christ was pressing me more and more to the present and
+the living.
+
+V
+
+God says to the aspiring soul: Come, taste of paradise and taste of
+heaven, and then return thou to the earth and wait, but not in
+idleness, and suffer many things till thou become perfect.
+
+So I found that in the earlier stages, in order to show me the heights
+to which I might by perseverance attain, He turned His Power and
+Glamour on to me, and I became a creature transfixed and held by
+love. I had one desire--God; I had one thought--God; I had one
+consciousness--God. There was no effort needed on my part: it was
+Pure Grace and the result of _past_ efforts. Having climbed and
+endured and endeavoured up to a certain degree, it was necessary for
+further advance that there should be more knowledge, and a more
+complete ineffaceable assurance. He therefore exposed the soul to as
+much as she could enjoy of heavenly pleasures and consciousness,
+without death to the flesh. In these experiences the soul found and
+knew God to be the fulfilment of all desires and all needs. The soul
+stood steadied before God in an unutterable Happiness which she
+perceived had no limit but God's Will, and her own capacity to
+endure the rapture of Him.
+
+What is it that would seem to determine this immeasurable privilege
+of Access to Him? It would seem to be a healthy willing will
+towards Him under all circumstances (to begin with).
+
+In due time He converts this mere will into a sweet love, the natural
+love of the heart and mind--by Gift of the Father we love Jesus
+Christ. This is salvation.
+
+But beyond salvation it would feel to be this way--after a further
+great endeavour and endurance on our part, a further great striving
+towards Him, He will awaken and prick to new life the soul and fill
+us with Holy Love. This is the second baptism, the baptism of the
+Spirit of Love. This is the entry to the Kingdom, and immediately
+we taste of the Godhead. What this is, what this ravishment of
+happiness is, cannot be known or guessed till we ourself have
+experienced it.
+
+In all this we progress by the communicated Power of Christ. How
+is this Power to be recognised, how is it communicated? Can we
+stand still and receive it like the dew, without work? At first, no--but
+later it would almost seem to be yes; or else it is that the exact
+attitude of heart and mind necessary for the reception of Grace
+becomes so habitual, so natural, that eventually we come to live in a
+state in which the communication of this Power becomes nearly
+continuous--though at any time by negligence or by a wrong attitude
+of Spirit _we fall away from it and lose it completely,_ and in all
+times of temptation or of testing we are cut off from _sensible_
+contact with it.
+
+We learn then that Grace awaits every creature that attunes himself
+to the Will of Christ: it awaits good and bad, saint and sinner, it
+transforms the sinner into the saint, and but for its deliberate
+withdrawals we might suppose its action to be automatic, we might
+suppose it a fixed power like the sun, shining upon worthy and
+unworthy alike in degree. But Grace is far more subtle and
+mysterious than this. Grace is the most sublime, the most exquisite
+secret of all the mysteries which exist between the Soul and her
+Maker.
+
+* * *
+
+I find that He works upon my soul by two opposite ways: He draws
+her up to contact and sublime content; He sets her down to solitude
+and hides Himself: He is there, and will not speak.
+
+And she suffers horribly: and why not? Where is the injustice of this
+pain?
+
+Countless ages ago--who can count them?--the soul, born in a palace,
+has deliberately willed and chosen to become the Wanderer, the
+Street Walker; therefore fold up self-pity and lay it aside, because it
+does not live in the same house with Truth.
+
+Cast off self-consciousness and pride, because they are ridiculous,
+and a man can only be great or noble in just so far as he has
+abandoned them.
+
+* * *
+
+What is it that often makes it so much harder for the soul to refind
+God when she is enclosed in the male body? Perhaps the greater
+strength of the natural lusts of the male: perhaps the pride of
+"Being"--as lord of creation; or the pride of Intelligence which says,
+I rely easily upon myself, I need no religion of hymn tunes, I leave
+hymn tunes to women, for the ardour and capacity of my manhood
+rush to far different aims.
+
+But can any sane man think that the Essential Being who has created
+the universe, with all its infinite wonders, and this earth with its
+beauty and its wonderful flesh, and so much more that is not flesh
+but the still more wonderful spirit--can any sane man really think
+that this Essential Being is stuck fast at hymn tunes (which are
+Man's own invention!) and knows not how to satisfy the needs and
+longings of that which He has Himself created!
+
+Ardent and greatly mistaken Sinner, know and remember that to
+Find God is to Live Tremendously.
+
+* * *
+
+O beloved Man with thy strangely vain and small pursuits and
+pleasures--thy pipe, thy wine, thy women, thy "busy" city life, thine
+immense sagacity which once in twenty times outwits a fool or
+knave--thy vaunted living is a bubble in a hand-basin!
+
+Find God and Live!
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+I
+
+It would seem that lazily, reposefully, comfortably, easily, we can
+make no entry into the kingdom of heaven, but must enter by contest,
+by great endeavour. The occasions of these contests will be
+according to the everyday circumstances of each individual; the
+stress or distress of everyday life; for this is Christ's Process--to take
+the everyday woes and happenings of life in the flesh and use them
+for spiritual ends. What does the Saviour Himself tell us of the
+means of entry into the Kingdom? He uses two parables--that of the
+loaves of bread, and that of the Widow, and both speak of persistent
+importunity. If we would find God, we must besiege Him.
+
+Of entry to Christ's Process first it is necessary that we try in
+everything to please Him: subjecting our plans, desires, thoughts,
+intentions, to His secret approval, asking ourselves, Will this please
+Him best, or that?
+
+Then the soul commences to truly know, and to respond to, Christ.
+
+But she is not satisfied: she requires more. Woes may assail the
+whole creature: Christ offers no alleviation. He leads her straight
+into the woes: will she follow, will she hold back? The point to
+remember here is this, that whether we follow Christ or no we shall
+have woes: if we forsake Him, we are not rid of woes; if we follow
+Him, we are not rid of woes--not yet, but later we become eased,
+and even rid, by means of Consolations, for God is able by His
+Consolations to entirely overbalance the woe and make it happy
+peace, though the cause of the woe remains. Remember this in the
+days of visitation, and follow Christ, no matter where He leads.
+Christ leads _through_ the woe, because it is the shortest way. The
+unguided soul wanders _beside_ the woe, hating and fearing it,
+unable to rid herself of it, gaining nothing by it, suffering in vain,
+and no Companion comes to ease the burden with His company.
+
+The progress of our spiritual advance would feel to be that because
+we become more and more aware of the failure of earthly
+consolations and amusements, and more and more aware of the
+suffering, the sin, and the evil that there is about us, so more and
+more our desires go out towards the good, and more and more we
+turn to Christ. Then Christ may deliberately make Himself
+non-sufficient for the soul, and if He so does she must reach out after the
+Godhead; then by means of more woes the soul and the creature
+clamour more and more after the Godhead and will not be satisfied
+with less than the Godhead, and, continuing to clamour, are brought
+by Christ to the new birth, the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
+
+Immediately the soul and creature become rid of Woe; and, living a
+life altogether apart from the world, in a marvellous crystal joy they
+taste of the Godhead and of Eternal Pleasures.
+
+This for a short time only: we have entered the Kingdom, but are
+still the smallest of spiritual children: tenderly, wonderfully God
+cares for us, but we must grow, we must learn heavenly manners. So
+Jesus Christ calls us again, and where does He lead us? Straight
+back into the world, the daily life from which we thought we had
+escaped! Here truly is a Woe, a Woe worse than any Woe we ever
+had before. Now we enter the Course of spiritual temptations, woes,
+and endurances, and in the midst of the pots and pans of daily life
+Christ teaches us heavenly manners.
+
+II
+
+Since Contemplation is so necessary for Union with God and for the
+soul's _enjoyment_ of God--is it a capacity common to all persons?
+Yes, though, like all other capacities, in varying degrees; but few
+will give themselves up to the difficulties of developing the capacity;
+and it is easy to know why, for our "natural" state is that we work
+for that which brings the easiest, most immediate, and most
+substantially visible reward.
+
+Those who could most easily develop their powers of contemplation
+are those to whom Beauty speaks, or those who are delicately
+sensitive to some ideal, nameless, elusive, that draws and then
+retreats, but in retreating still draws. The poet, the artist, the dreamer
+_that harnesses his mind_--all can contemplate.
+
+The Thinker, _thinking straight through,_ the proficient business
+man with his powers of concentration, the first-rate organiser, the
+scientist, the inventor--all these men are contemplatives who do not
+drive to God, but to the world or to ambition. Taking God as their
+goal, they could ascend to great heights of happiness; though first
+they must give up ("sacrifice") all that is unsavoury in thought and
+in living: yet such is the vast, the boundless Attraction of God that
+having once (if only for a few moments) retouched this lost
+Attraction of His, we afterwards are possessed with no other desire
+so powerful as the desire to retouch Him again, and "sacrifice"
+becomes no sacrifice.
+
+Truly, having once known God, we find life without Him to be
+meaningless and as unbeautiful as a broken stem without its flower:
+pitiful, naked, and helpless as the body of a butterfly without the
+wings.
+
+III
+
+At this time I read Bergson's _Creative Evolution_--a masterpiece of
+thinking by a man who, like most others, is seeking for God. But I
+am unable to read the book through because of the pain it causes.
+The pain is partly the same pain which I knew (and which I re-enter
+again in sympathy with the writer) when I tried in my youth to climb
+to God by the intelligence and will of my mind; but there is also a
+new pain, wide as an ocean, the pain of Compassion--for it is so
+long this way to God that Bergson pursues, so long, so long; and the
+particular way of this book is to me not like climbing, but
+descending: it resembles the frenzied action of a man searching for
+lilies downwards, digging with painful persistence in the dark earth
+amongst roots. How much more joyous to find the lily where she
+blooms, above in the light! There is another way of the Intelligence:
+a way of climbing to icy heights, bare, unwarmed by any ray of love,
+but less painful than this descent amongst dark roots. Cold, hard
+Intelligence, once to slip upon thy frozen way is to be broken on thy
+pitiless bosom! O God, in thy tender pity incline our hearts to seek
+Thee by the way of Love! For the road of Love comes easily to
+knowledge, but the road of knowledge comes not easily to Love.
+
+And we know that love is above learning and wisdom. Did not
+Solomon choose wisdom? and we think him so wise to have made
+this choice, but he had been far wiser to have chosen holy love. For
+wisdom lost herself and him in the arms of unworthy love: so we see
+the highest degree of the Wisdom of Man held in bondage to, and
+undone by, even the lowest degree of love.
+
+* * *
+
+Dig deeply, and what do we find is at bottom our great, our
+persistent need? What is it that instinctively we look for and desire?
+Happiness, and the Ever-new.
+
+In and out of every day persistently, desperately, endlessly we seek.
+And because we seek amongst the near-to-hand, the visible, the
+small, we seek in vain: we discover there is nothing in this world
+which can wholly and permanently satisfy either of these desires.
+
+God Himself is Happiness. God Himself is the Ever-new.
+
+In Divine Love there is no monotony: the soul finds that each
+encounter with God is ever new, the Ever-new tremulous with the
+beauty of rapture: new and wonderful as the first dawn.
+
+IV
+
+Not only is God a Mystery of Holiness, of Truth, of Love and
+Beauty: He is also Generosity, a mystery of Eternal Giving, and His
+giving is and must for ever be, the supreme necessity of the
+Universe: for without He gave how should we receive life, truth,
+beauty, love, or Himself?
+
+And it cannot be too deeply impressed upon the soul that would
+come to His Presence that because of His law of like to like she
+must conform to this law in order to come to His Presence. By
+thinking it over we shall see that it is more difficult for us to be
+perfect holiness, perfect truth, perfect love, perfect beauty, than it is
+for us to be perfectly generous: it is easier for us to give God all that
+we have, to empty heart, mind and soul, and worldly goods at His
+feet, than it is to reach to any other perfection; for generosity
+appears to be more universal, more within our capacities, more
+"natural" to us than any other virtue--do we not see it continually
+used, exercised, spent, thrown away on the merest trifles? Let us
+take, for instance, the tennis player: to win the game he must give
+every ounce of himself to it--mind, eye, heart, and body,--sweating
+there in the glare of the sun to win the game. Would he give himself
+so, would he sweat so, in order to find God, or to please God? Oh no!
+Yet in the hour of death and afterwards, will he be helped by this
+victory of flying balls? If by chance we could lift a corner of the veil,
+we might catch a glimpse of the face of Folly, mockingly, cunningly
+peering at us, as all too easily she persuades us to give of our royal
+coins of generosity to wantons, to phantom enterprises, to balls
+filled with air, to dust and vanity.
+
+Generosity is our easiest means of coming to God, because it is also
+the way of love: if the tennis player did not love the game, he would
+not give himself so to it. But we cry, "I have nothing whatever to
+give to God; it is to God I turn in order that He may give everything
+to me." Quite so: there is too much of that. We have obedience to
+give: obedience is a great gift to God, or, more truthfully speaking,
+in His magnanimity He accepts it as such; we have also love to give,
+and again we may cry, "But my love is puny, shifting; it is nothing
+at all, a mere trifle." That is true of "natural" love, of the love that
+we commence of our own human nature to love Him with; but it is
+not true of the love which we receive of the Holy Ghost when He
+baptizes us.
+
+When we offer this Peculiar Love, offer it as only it can be offered--for
+love's sake,--immediately we are in the Presence of God, secretly,
+marvellously united to Him; we are in the Consolations of God, and
+we have no need to ask for anything whatever; indeed, we find
+ourselves unable to ask, because we are filled to the brim,
+overflowing, inexpressibly satisfied, utterly blessed.
+
+But supposing that we do not _give_ to God, but, earnestly seeking
+Him, we merely ask some favour, and sit and wait for Him to give?
+Then probably we shall not be sensible of receiving anything from
+Him whatever; we shall feel at an immense distance from Him; then
+we shall become uneasy, depressed, fancy ourselves neglected,
+imagine we have lost Him--and so we have till we gloriously
+recover Him by means of giving.
+
+And if at times in the stress of this giving, when He makes no
+response, we feel it is too much, we can give no more, we are too
+discouraged to continue, let us remember the strain and stress and
+endeavour that we and all our friends give to trifles, and quietly use
+our common sense to judge whether in the winning of a game of ball,
+or in the pleasing and finding of God, we shall be the more blessed.
+For God is to be found: He waits.
+
+* * *
+
+The truth about our endeavours is that we have one pre-eminent,
+pressing need above all other needs, which is to Find God. When we
+have accomplished this we discover without any further teaching
+that we no longer care to pass our time with air-balls, because they
+appear so paltry, so inadequate. We are grown up and are no longer
+puerile in our desires: at the same time we are not without desires,
+but, on the contrary, we glow with a new, more ardent, and larger set
+of desires.
+
+V
+
+What I know of the soul's actual Finding and Contact with God I
+keep very closely to myself. Here and there to a few, a very few
+souls, I may speak: to all others I am forbidden to speak. I am
+stopped; and I understand perfectly why this is: it is that I should do
+more harm than good. Anyone looking at me would say (and all the
+more so because I am dressed in the fashion of the day, and not in
+some peculiar way, or in a nun's habit, for such trifling things affect
+many minds), "That person is demented to think that she knows
+what it is to have Contact with God," and it would seem a scandal to
+them. But the explanation of the mystery is not so simple as this. I
+am not demented. I never was so sane, so capable in my life as now.
+I never was so perfectly poised as now. But if you say to me,
+"Explain what it is that you know, in order that I too may know,"
+then I can say to you nothing more than, "Come and know for
+yourself, for God awaits you."
+
+To illustrate a mere fraction of the difficulty of passing such a
+knowledge from one self to another self, let us take such a case as
+that of a man born blind. He sits beneath a tree, on the grass. You
+put a blade of grass in his fingers, and also a leaf from the tree, and
+you say to him, "This is grass, and this is the leaf of the tree which
+shelters you, and both are green." "And what," he asks, "is green?"
+And to save your life you cannot make him know what it is, or make
+him know the tree, or know the grass, though he touches them both
+with his hands. How, then, shall God, Who can be neither seen, nor
+heard, nor touched, how shall He be made known from one to
+another? He must be experienced to be known. And if you should
+say to me, "What does it feel like to have found God?" then I should
+say, "It feels that the roof is lifted off the world, and wherever we
+may be or stand it is a straight line from us to God and nothing
+between, nothing between, day or night."
+
+VI
+
+To come to the contemplation of God it is not necessary to go
+through any lengthy toil, some process of throwing out this or that,
+painfully, slowly, denying the existence of everything in order to
+arrive at God. The way is not denying, but concentrating; and in the
+act of concentration, because of love, all other things whatsoever in
+creation fall away into nothing and are no more, because God in all
+His graciousness reveals Himself, and then He alone exists for the
+enraptured soul.
+
+VII
+
+Supposing that we have found Jesus Christ, supposing that we know
+Him so well and have come to love Him so much that our love for
+Him is become stronger than any other love, very much stronger
+than any other love, and still, in spite of hopes and endeavours, we
+know that we have not found the Godhead, we have not found
+Union with the First and Third Person of the Holy Trinity--the
+heavens have not, as it were, been opened to us to let our souls slip
+through to God. Are we to be discouraged because of this? Are we
+to think ourselves less favoured, less loved? A thousand times no.
+We are, perhaps, in neither heart, mind, or soul quite sufficiently
+prepared for the great ordeals that must be gone through _after
+Union with God,_ To find God is Victory. But Victory has dangers.
+We have perhaps not yet sufficiently developed just those exact
+qualities which it is essential we must have in order to _maintain_
+the connection with God in the face of all obstacles when once He is
+found. When God reveals Himself to a soul she is in great danger,
+and she knows it, because to fail Him now, to turn away now, to be
+unfaithful now--this is a terrible disaster to the soul. God in His
+mercy exposes no soul to such dangers until she is as ready as may
+be, but He bides and He works in her till she is ready. So it may very
+well be that it is not in this life that we come to Union, but later; and
+the fact that we have not come to Union is a sign to increase our
+nearness to Christ by as much as we can: the very smallest advance
+that we make in this life is of the utmost value to us later.
+
+VIII
+
+The soul that is seeking Union with God must not, upon any pretext
+whatever, engage itself in spiritualism. Spiritualism may have its
+great uses for the heart and mind which are without, or are
+struggling for, belief--the heart and mind of Thomas seeking to
+touch, to have a proof; but remember the words of the Saviour to
+Thomas: "Blessed are they," He says, "who have not seen, and yet
+have believed." And we do not need to wait for death to receive this
+blessing, but we receive it here. The soul that would find God must
+go to Him by means of His Holy Spirit, and no other spirit but the
+Spirit of God can take us to Him; and to try to hold communications
+with the spirits of men _is not the way._ The soul that has come to
+Union with God is perfectly aware of the existence of spirits--is
+intensely aware,--but refuses to pay any attention if she wise. Some
+of these spirits are very subtle, very knowing; some are full of
+flattery, and very persistent; others present themselves as still in
+human form, and seek to terrify with their terrible faces, some
+diabolical, some appearing to be in a great agony and undergoing
+changes more astonishing and horrible than can be even imagined
+before experienced--and melting only to be re-formed into that
+which is yet more fearful. Have nothing whatever to do with spirits.
+Do not resist them when they come, but drop them behind by fixing
+heart, mind, and soul on Christ. The Spirit of Christ easily
+overcomes every spirit, every evil, every fear, and in order to
+ourselves overcome all such things, we need to unite with the Spirit
+of Jesus Christ by concentrating upon Him with love, and ignoring
+obstructions. Those who have lent themselves to spiritualism,
+hoping to find comfort, a lost friend, or even God Himself, when
+they give it up (as they must do) they may find themselves greatly
+plagued by the fires with which they have been playing; but these
+can soon be overcome by diligently uniting the heart and mind to
+Jesus Christ.
+
+IX
+
+After coming to full Union with God, the mind becomes
+permanently attached to Him, _and this without effort;_ but in order
+that it shall be without effort, the will must be kept in a state of
+loving attention to Him, and this again can only be done without
+effort if the heart is so full of love that it desires nothing else than
+God; and this is dependent again upon the grace which the soul
+receives from Him because of her love and response--so now we see,
+living and working in our own being, the reason and meaning of His
+commandment to love Him with all the heart, mind, soul, and
+strength. It is doing this _after He has Himself given us the power to
+do it_ which makes us able to live in the closest, most delicious and
+precious nearness to God during all our waking hours. But it takes
+time, and it takes much pain to learn how to live this, as it were,
+double life--this inward life of companionship, of wonderful and
+blessed inward intercourse with God, and the outward intercourse of
+the senses with the world, our everyday duties, and our
+fellow-beings. In our early stages we have profound innumerable
+difficulties in understanding either our own capacities or God's
+wishes: we are terrified of losing Him, and yet are often bewildered,
+and pained also, by some of the higher degrees in which He
+communicates Himself. We do not understand how to leave God and
+return to earthly duties. Supposing that we are altogether wrapped
+up in the company of God, and some fellow-being suddenly recalls
+us to the world (the human voice can recall the soul as nothing else
+can), the pain is so great as to be nothing less than anguish; and if
+done often would seriously affect the health of the body.
+
+But in a few years we learn to accomplish it without any shock.
+
+One pain, however, remains, and it grows. I find myself unable to
+carry on a conversation with anyone unless it is about God, or about
+some work which is for God and has to do with His pleasure (and
+this is rare, because people are so glued to worldly affairs), for more
+than an hour, and even less, without the most horrible, the most
+deathly, exhaustion, which is not only spiritual but bodily--the face
+and lips losing all colour, the eyes their vitality: so dreadful is the
+distress of the whole being that one is obliged, upon any kind of
+pretext, to withdraw from all companions, and, if it is only for five
+minutes, be alone with God and, where no eye but His can see, unite
+completely with Him once more, and immediately the whole being
+becomes revivified. There is nothing else in life so wonderful, so
+rapturous as this swift reunion of the soul with God; and the joy is
+not only the joy of the soul, because the heart and mind have their
+fill of it too, for they too have ached and thirsted and hungered and
+longed, and now are satisfied.
+
+If this measureless happiness could only be imagined by us before
+we experience it, how many of us would be spurred to greater efforts
+instead of falling back amongst the dust and cobwebs of Vanity!--but
+it cannot be imagined, and the only way to come to it is by faith
+and obedience; and it is easy to see why this arrangement is
+necessary, for if we could imagine it thoroughly, then we should
+probably try to get to God only on account of greed, and should find
+ourselves drifting away instead of towards Him; it cannot be done
+by greed, greed being one of those things which beguiled the soul
+away from Him to begin with; and He does not send the soul His
+favours till she is free of, and has risen above, the dangers of greed
+and seeks Him for Himself and not for His favours. As soon as it is
+safe for her He will give the soul continual favours, because Perfect
+Love is ever desirous to give, and is only restrained on our account
+to withhold favours. The soul which knows how to make all
+necessary preparations to receive Him becomes a source of joy to
+God, for now He can give and give and no harm be done to that soul;
+but He does not acquaint the soul too suddenly with all the joy that
+she is to Him, because she would not (at least certainly my soul
+would not) be able to bear the knowledge of the privilege that she
+enjoys, without some danger to herself,--and so, all unaware of the
+singularity of the privilege that she enjoys without any analysis of
+her happiness, she concerns herself with sweetly obeying Him, with
+singing to Him, and with giving Him all that she has all the day long,
+and so hovers before Him as delightful simplicity and love.
+
+This Union with God varies so much in degree that it makes an
+effect of endless variety. Yet it is all one same joy, it is the joy of
+angels reduced to such degree as makes it bearable to flesh: the soul
+knows that it is the joy of angels that she is receiving the first time
+that she has it given to her: immediately on receipt of this joy she
+comprehends the _mode_ of heavenly living; she knows it is but the
+outer edge that she touches, but what means so much to her is that
+she has _recaptured the knowledge of this mode of living:_
+henceforth it is a question of progress, she bends all her attention to
+progress so that she may get nearer and nearer to God, so that she
+may do everything to please this suddenly refound, unspeakably
+beloved God.
+
+She desires to get nearer and nearer to God in spite of the pain that
+she often experiences. Perhaps the first pains we experience are
+when we are in contemplation of God and are caught by God into
+High Contemplation. He will at times expose the soul to so much of
+the Divine Power that she cannot sever herself from the too great
+fulness of Union with God, though the body is crying to her to do it
+and the sufferings of the body are all felt by the soul, which is pulled
+two ways: all this is very painful and makes us almost in a _fear_ of
+God again. Why should Perfect Love inflict this pain on us? It may
+be to remind us that He is not only Love, but Power, Might, Majesty,
+and Dominion also. Yet could this ever be forgotten? It seems
+incredible. But it does not do to trust to one's soul, or to count on
+what she will do or not do: we know that the soul has forgotten
+almost everything about God, so much so that we are now thankful
+to arrive even so far as being quite certain that He exists! What
+infinite kindness that He should consent and condescend to Himself
+be her Teacher! But He does so condescend, and the more the soul
+relearns of God, the more she also learns that He is never weary of
+working for us all: this keeps the soul in a state of intense gratitude.
+
+* * *
+
+When the soul arrives at Union with God, does she remain always in
+Union? Yes, but not at the degree of Union which is Contact. What
+is the difference? It can perhaps be most easily explained (though
+extremely imperfectly) by referring to the union of married life. In
+this union, though we live in one house, we are not always both in
+that house at the same time; but this does not dissolve our union, and
+we both know our way to return there, and the right to meet is
+always ours. When we are both in the house, although not in the
+same room, there is a much nearer feeling about it, and we are apt to
+give a momentary call one to the other, just to have the pleasure of
+response: yet, though we are aware the other one is in the house and
+that there is no part of the house where we are forbidden to meet--it
+is not enough; love requires more: it will be necessary for one to go
+and seek the actual presence of the other (the soul does this by a
+quiet prayer with perhaps a few words, but more probably no words).
+The one finds the other one; but the other one is occupied, so the one
+waits patiently (this is passive contemplation), and suddenly the
+occupied one is so constrained by love for the waiting one that he
+must turn to her, open wide his arms, and embrace her--they meet,
+they touch, they are content. In spiritual life this is contact or ecstasy
+or rapture. Here comes in the immensity of the difference between
+joys physical and joys spiritual--physical joys being limited to five
+senses: spiritual joys being above senses and open to limitless
+variations; but in order that these may be known in their fulness, we
+must eventually (after leaving the flesh) rise to immense heights of
+perfection: the joys enjoyed by the Archangel would _destroy_ a
+lesser angel: the degree of joy that invigorates the saint, that sends
+him into rhapsodies of happiness, would _destroy_ the sinner--(becoming
+insupportable agony to the sinner). This celestial joy is,
+fundamentally, a question of the enduring of some un-nameable
+energy. How can energy be a means of this immeasurable Divine
+joy? After years of experience I find I cannot go back upon the
+knowledge that I acquired on the very first occasion of
+experience--that energy _is a fundamental principle of the mystery._
+
+But how, it may very well be asked, do sins interfere with the
+reception of this activity? Sins are all imperfections, thickenings of
+the soul from self-will: pure soul is necessary for the _happy_
+reception of this celestial activity, and because impurities are
+automatically dissipated by this activity, and the dissipation or
+dispersion of them _is the most awful agony conceivable_ when too
+suddenly done, what is bliss to the saint is the extremity of torture to
+the sinner. Now we come very fearfully and dreadfully to
+understand something more of the meanings, the happenings, of the
+Judgment Day. Christ will inflict no direct wilful punishment on any
+soul; but when He presents Himself before all souls and they behold
+His Face, immediately they will receive the terrible might of the
+activity of celestial joy. The regenerated will endure and rejoice; the
+unrepentant sinner will agonise, and he must flee from before the
+Face of Christ, because the agony that he feels is the dispersal of his
+imperfect soul; and where shall the sinner flee, where shall he go to
+find happiness? for saint and sinner alike desire happiness, and there
+is in Spirit-life only one happiness--the Bliss of God. So then let us
+be careful to prepare ourselves to be able to receive and endure this
+happiness, even if it can at first be only in a small degree, so that we
+shall not be condemned _by our own pain_ to leave the Presence of
+God altogether and consequently lose Celestial Pleasures; let us at
+least prepare ourselves to remain near enough to know something of
+this tremendous living.
+
+It was this Divine Activity which on the night of the Too Great
+Happiness so anguished my imperfect soul. But that night, and that
+anguish, taught my soul what she could never have learnt by any
+other means, and what it was I learnt I find myself unable to pass on
+to anyone; but that night was for my soul the turning-point of her
+destiny, that night altered my soul for evermore; that night I knew
+God as deeply as He can be known whilst the soul is in flesh.
+
+* * *
+
+God uses also a peculiar drawing power. All souls feeling desire
+towards God are to a greater or lesser degree conscious of this, and,
+as we know, frequently remain conscious of it as a desire and
+nothing further to the end of life in flesh. By means of it He draws a
+soul towards Himself until, because of it, the whole being is willing
+to make efforts at self-improvement, and this is the essential: it is
+this cleaning up of the character, this purification, which alone can
+bring us to the point where we can receive God's communications of
+Himself (in other words, ecstasies and periods of reunion with
+Celestial-living). Ecstasies inspire and awaken the soul: they
+convince the mind absolutely of the existence of another form of
+living _and of God Himself._
+
+After ecstasy the efforts of the entire being are bent on trying to
+perfect itself, and extraordinary Graces may be freely and almost
+continually given to us in order to make improvement more rapid for
+us. The feeling for God which before ecstasy was a deep (and often
+very painful) longing for God now increases to a burning,
+never-ceasing desire for Him: only three thoughts can be said to truly
+occupy a person from this stage onwards--how to please God, how
+to get nearer to Him, how to show practical gratitude. He may
+increase the flow of His Power to a soul till she is in great distress,
+longing to leap out of the body owing to the immensity of God's
+attraction. This attraction at times has a very real and sensible effect
+upon the body: it feels to counteract gravity, it makes the body feel
+so light it is about to leave the ground; it affects walking, and
+unaccountably changes it to staggering. To receive this attraction
+can be an ecstatic condition, but is by no means ecstasy. So long as
+we have power to move the body by will we are not in true ecstasy.
+In ecstasy the body feels to be disconnected in some unaccountable
+manner from the will; it lies inert, though it knows itself and knows
+that it stills lives--which fundamentally differentiates it from sleep,
+because in sleep we do not know our body, we do not know if we
+are alive or dead, we know nothing. In ecstasy is no such blankness:
+merely the body is perforce inert, it would be entirely forgotten but
+for its periods of distress.
+
+Neither can ecstasy be confused with dreaming, by even the most
+simple person. In dreaming, objects and events of a familiar type
+still surround us; the total inconsequence with which they present
+themselves alone makes dream-living unlike actual living, for it
+remains fundamentally of the same type--physical and full of
+persons, forms, objects, and word-thoughts. We can procure sleep
+by willing it, but we cannot will to procure ecstasy: we find it totally
+independent of will.
+
+The Attraction of God can be a penetrating pain, because the soul,
+terribly drawn to God, exceedingly near Him, yet remains
+unsatisfied even in this close proximity. Why? Because she is being
+subjected to one Force only--she longs, she remains near, and
+receives nothing. God is not bestowing His Activity upon her, which
+is the way that she "knows" Him--she is not living the celestial life.
+
+It is the combination of the two Forces working together
+simultaneously on and in the soul which differentiates ecstasy and
+rapture from all other degrees of God-Consciousness. When these
+two Powers work together, we experience celestial living, full Union,
+the bliss of Contact. It cannot possibly be said that in ecstasy we see
+God: it is a question of "knowing" Him through the higher part of
+the soul, in lesser or in deeper degrees.
+
+X
+
+If the Divine Lover gives such joys to the soul, how does the soul
+give joy to the Divine Lover? Is she beautiful? She becomes so.
+Also the soul is a poet of the first water, though she uses no words;
+and the soul is a weaver of melodies, though she makes no sound;
+but above all, and before all, the soul is a great lover. Now we know
+in this earthly life that a lover desires above everything else the love
+of her whom he loves. Only when she whom he loves returns his
+love, can he truly enjoy her.
+
+So also the Divine Lover. O incomparable Love! Love gives all
+when it gives itself, love receives all when it receives Love.
+
+By love, then, the soul is the Delight of God.
+
+XI
+
+The soul feels to be formless; though we become aware of a
+_spreading_ which causes her to feel of the form of a cup or a disc
+when she receives God, and in contemplation she feels to
+extend--flame-like until she meets God. She can wait for God--spread,
+but cannot maintain this form for long without God rejoices her by His
+touch. How can so formless a thing, still waiting for its Spiritual
+Body, be beautiful? She is beautiful because of the colours she is
+able to assume: she can glow with such colour as no flower on earth
+can even faintly imitate. Celestial colours are beyond all imagination.
+As the soul grows in purity and is able to endure an increase of the
+Divine Radiations and Penetration, so she changes her colours; by
+her colours she delights the eye of her Maker, He touches her, she
+becomes yet more beautiful.
+
+* * *
+
+Very early in the morning God walks in His Garden of Souls, and in
+the evening also, and in the noonday, and in the night.
+
+The soul that knows Him knows His approach, and, preparing and
+adorning herself for Him--waits.
+
+XII
+
+Does God come and go? The soul feels Him there, and not there. Is
+she mistaken in this, and God always to be possessed, but she not
+dressed to receive Him? If this is so, then how grievously frequent is
+our failure!
+
+It is more encouraging to our own state to suppose that God lends
+Himself and withdraws; that He will be possessed; and He will not
+be. But this involves caprice. Can Perfect Love have caprice?
+
+We find that grace can be received without intermission for weeks,
+even months, together. Without coming and departing (although in
+lesser and greater intensity) the Presence of God, Love and Comfort,
+envelop the soul. So then we learn by our own experience that God
+is willing to be present amongst us continually in His Second and
+Third Persons.
+
+Yet, although He is present in His Two Persons, the soul is not filled:
+she is unspeakably blest and happy, but not wholly satisfied till He
+is present to her in His First Person also. She knows immediately
+when He so comes, and then the Three become One, and when They
+become One to her, in that moment the soul enters Bliss. It is true
+that if He so came to her very frequently, the soul could not endure
+Him; but certainly she could endure Him more frequently than she
+receives Him. It is not because she is worthy that she possesses Him:
+the soul never, under any circumstances, feels worthy: it is love
+alone which enables her to possess Him, and this love that she
+knows how to shed to Him is His own gift to her.
+
+So the soul cries to Him, O mystery of love, was ever such sweet
+graciousness as lives in thee: such exquisite felicity of giving and
+receiving, in which the giver and receiver in mysterious rapture of
+generosity are oned! And this mystery of love is not in paucity of
+ways, but in marvellous variety of ways and of degrees--the ways of
+friendship, the brother and the sister, the mother and the child, the
+youth and the maiden, and Thyself and we.
+
+Love makes the soul ponder on His tastes, His will, His nature. Does
+He prefer even in heaven to possess Himself to Himself in His First
+Person? or are there parts of heaven where He is ever willing to be
+possessed in His fulness: where He is eternally beheld in His Three
+Persons by such as can endure Him? The soul believes it, and this is
+the goal she strives for both now and hereafter.
+
+Yet there is That of Him which is for ever Alone, which will never
+be known or shared by the greatest of the Angels. The soul
+comprehends that He will have it so because of that Solitary which
+sits within herself, she who is made after His likeness.
+
+XIII
+
+For many years before coming to Union with God, I found that it
+had become impossible to say more than a little prayer of some five
+or six words, and these were said very slowly: at times I was
+astonished at my inability, and ashamed that these pitiful shreds
+were all that I could offer, and always the same thing too; I tried to
+vary it--I could not. When I tried to say some fine sentence, when I
+tried even to ask for something, I could not; it all disappeared in a
+feeling of such sweet love for God, and I merely said again the same
+old words of every day. I loved. I could do nothing more than say so,
+and then stay there on my knees for a little while, very near Him,
+fascinated, adoring. But God is not vexed with a soul when she
+cannot say much. Is an earthly father vexed when his child, standing
+there before him, forgets the words upon its lips, forgets to ask,
+because it loves him so? Far from it.
+
+This prayer is the commencement, the foretaste, of Contemplation.
+A distinguishing mark between this prayer and Contemplation is that
+in even the lowest degree of Contemplation God (if one may so
+express the inexpressible) is Localised. Hitherto His Presence has
+been near--but we cannot say how near, or where, and _we cannot
+be sure of finding it._ After Union we are certain of finding God's
+Presence everywhere, and at any time. He may at times be far away,
+or pay no attention to us; but we know whereabouts He is, and we
+can go and wait outside that place where He has hidden Himself and
+which is no place (but a figure of speech): He merely disappears
+from our consciousness, but not so entirely but that we can partly
+find Him. All this cannot be explained, but after Union God is as
+present to the soul in Contemplation (and far more so because of the
+great poignancy of it) as is a fellow-creature whom we actually see
+and touch, much more so because between ourself and a fellow-creature,
+however dear, is always a barrier: try as we may there is always
+a dividing line between two persons. We are two: we remain
+two. But when we meet God there is nothing between us and God,
+nothing whatever divides us, and yet we are not lost in God--that is
+to say, we do not disappear as a living individual consciousness, but
+our consciousness is increased to a prodigious degree, and we are
+One with God.
+
+XIV
+
+This Oneness, in a tiny degree, can be experienced by two persons
+who are in close spiritual sympathy when both are simultaneously
+and powerfully animated by very loving thoughts of Christ, or are
+working together, and _giving_ on account of Christ: then a fluid
+interchange of sympathies and interests takes place in which the
+barriers of individuality go down.
+
+This same fluid interchange in a still lesser degree takes place in
+ordinary friendship between two friends of similar tastes; but this
+interchange must always be with the mental and the higher part of us,
+it can never take place because of the merely physical, for in the
+physical, dependent as it is upon senses, barriers always exist: we
+see this in the union of lovers--their union is merely a transitory
+_self_-gratification, although it may include another self in that it is
+mutual; but more frequently it is not even mutual, and what is a
+pleasure to one is at the moment distasteful to the other, though the
+one can easily conceal from the other that it is so, proving
+how complete the duality of consciousness and of feeling
+remains between two individuals who depend upon contiguity of
+_substance_ (or the sense of touch) for their union, and not upon
+spiritual _similarity_: in spiritual similarity alone is _identity_ of
+feeling and personality and perfect union to be found, and in this
+identity _deceit is impossible._
+
+XV
+
+The more we investigate the question of satisfactions the more we
+find that these, in order to be permanent, must take place upon a
+very high level, upon a plane above materialism. However much we
+may with our sense of taste enjoy a dinner to-day, it will be no joy
+whatever even a week hence. The natural everyday facts should (and
+are intended to) prove to us the futility of giving so much time and
+thought to the pleasures of the flesh: these pleasures lead nowhere,
+they end abruptly, they are very limited, being confined to five
+senses, and consequently, owing to a necessity of continual
+repetition, satiety supervenes, and there remains nothing else to turn
+to. Yet when this happens we are really very fortunate, because it
+may be a cause of our searching amongst our higher faculties for our
+gratifications.
+
+XVI
+
+The soul finds it bitterly hard to rid herself of selfishness and
+self-will: she gets rid of one form, only to find herself falling to
+another. When first my soul reknew the Joy of God I said to myself, "I
+will hide it in my own bosom, I will keep it all to myself. I am become
+independent of all creatures, I want none of them, I cannot bear the
+sight or the sound of them, how joyfully I leave them all behind!--I
+want only my God--I want--But what is all this?--I want, I will, I, I,
+I, I!" Later the days come when God hides Himself from me: I can
+go and wait at His threshold (because when she knows the way He
+never denies the soul the threshold, though He denies her Himself). I
+may pour out all the sweetness of my love, but he makes no
+response; I may sing to Him all day: He will not hear; I may give
+Him all that I am or have, and He will not communicate Himself to
+me. Then I remember all the years of my striving, I remember the
+stress, the sweat of all that climb to His footstool--the sweat that at
+times was like drops of blood wrung out of the soul, out of the heart,
+out of the mind; and yet all forgotten in the instant of the rapture of
+Finding. Did He then beckon and draw and delight the soul only to
+madden with the anguish of more hiding and more striving: was He
+to be found only that He might again be lost? My soul sickened with
+fear, and I said, Love is a calamity; who can release me from the
+anguish of it? O God, since I may no more possess Thee, grant that I
+may shortly pass into the dust and for ever be no more, so that I may
+escape this pain of knowing Thy Perfections and my own necessity
+for Thee; and I mourned for Him till my health went.
+
+Weeks passed, and three words came constantly to me: "Visit my
+sick." But I did not listen: I was sick myself with a deadly wound.
+Almost every day the same three words came; but I turned away
+resentfully from them, saying to myself, "What have the sick to do
+with me? I am weary of sick people: I have been so much with them.
+Must I accept the sick in place of the ecstasy of God? I mourn for
+the loss of God. I can cheer no sick."
+
+The words came again, with excessive gentleness, and the
+gentleness was like the gentleness of Christ, and it pierced. So that
+day I go to the village and visit the sick again, and I look at them
+tenderly and lovingly, and tenderly and lovingly they look at me,
+and some say, "It is as if God came into the house with you"; and
+tears come to my eyes, and I say, "It may be so, because He sent
+me," and they gaze at me lovingly, and lovingly I gaze at them; and
+it seems to me that I can no longer tell where "they" cease and where
+"I" begin, and the sweetness, the peculiar sweetness, of Christ
+pierces me through from my head to my feet--that sweetness that I
+have not known for weeks. And so I comprehend that Holy Love is
+not alone just Thee and me, but it is also Thee and me and the others,
+and Thee and the others and me.
+
+* * *
+
+I wanted my own way. The way I wanted was to be free in order to
+worship and bless God in a beautiful place, in some place that _I_
+should choose. I wanted to worship Him, and to sing Him the Song
+of the Soul from some quiet hill among the olive trees by the
+Mediterranean Sea. I wanted this marvellous, this almost terrible,
+joy of meeting God in a beautiful place that _I_ should choose: I
+wanted it so that it became spiritual greed--spiritual self-indulgence.
+
+Duty, heavy-winged duty, prevented my taking the journey; duty to
+an always-contrary relation, now unwell. It was only a little
+thing--just a journey prevented, but it crossed my self-will; and in an
+impatient, detestable way that I have, I wanted to push all duty, even
+all human relationships, anywhere upon one side, or over the edge of
+the world, so they might all fall together out of my sight and I be
+free!
+
+Because I thought these thoughts, I came to the Place of Tribulation.
+And the Messenger came, and he said, "Escape, and the way is
+consenting." But I said, "No, I will not have that way, I will escape
+by some other way." So I tried every other way, but found it guarded
+by something which seemed to be armed with a hammer; but I
+persisted: then for days and nights my soul stood up to the hammers
+and received terrible blows, and still I persisted--I would find a way
+to escape that should please my will. But I could not eat, I could not
+sleep, the flesh visibly lessened on my bones, and at last I loathed
+myself and my own will and my own soul, and I cried to God, "Shall
+I never be through with this terrible struggle with self-will?" and
+groaned aloud in my despair.
+
+Then the words that were sent long ago to a saint, and that he was
+inspired to write down to help us all, now came and did their work
+for me through him: "My grace is sufficient for thee." And so I
+found it, and more than sufficient--when I consented.
+
+Who is it, what is it, that so punishes the soul? Is it God? No.
+Patiently, lovingly He waits. Our pain is the difficulty of consenting
+to perfection: every virtue has a hammer, every perfection a long
+two-edged sword; and the punishment we feel is the breaking and
+wounding of self-will under the hammers of the virtues and the
+sword-thrusts of the vision of perfection.
+
+Put aside these wretched, these sometimes awful and terrible, battles
+and punishments, shrink from them when they come, and we may
+put aside salvation. Accept them--stand up to the hammer and take
+the blows and learn: consent to the sword that pierces up to the hilt,
+and what do we come to?--The Blisses of God.
+
+
+
+PART V
+
+I
+
+After coming to Union with God, our prayers become entirely
+changed, not only in the manner of presenting them, but changed
+also in what is presented. Petitioning is a hard thing. I had found it
+easy to pray for others whether I loved them or not, with the lips and
+with some of the heart; but I found that I could not do it in the new
+way, with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength, so that everything
+else fled away into nothing and was no more, except that for which I
+petitioned God. A perfect concentration for the welfare of a stranger
+or of some cause was a very hard thing; yet I was made aware that I
+must learn to do it.
+
+For two or three years I suffered pain and exhaustion over this
+petitioning; I would be so fatigued by it, found it so great a strain,
+that I said to myself, "I shall lose my health over this petitioning, for
+as I do it, it is as though I gave my life-energy for the cause or
+person for whom I pray." But my Good Angel whispered me not to
+give in, but continue to be willing, continue to be generous, no
+matter the cost. I am not generous, but I went on with it, and secretly
+had the greatest dread of it; my whole nature shrank from the effort,
+from the strange loss of vitality this petitioning brought.
+
+Then at last, after more than two years, because of remaining willing,
+because of trying to remain generous about this, to me, most
+grievously hard prayer, one happy day God lifted away all the strain
+and difficulty, all the pain and fatigue, and turned it into the sweetest
+of prayers: into a new song, a new honey, new music, a new delight,
+in which the soul has, as it were, but to sip at the nectar of His Love
+and Beneficence, to bring it to a fellow-soul.
+
+I found that God causes the soul to pray this joyous, this exquisite,
+prayer for total strangers, passers-by in the street, fellow-travellers
+by road and rail, here and there, this one and that, she knows which
+one it is: how surprised these persons would be if they knew that a
+total stranger, who never saw them before and never will see them
+again, was joyously, lovingly, holding them up before God for His
+help and His blessing! and they receive His blessing. God does not
+prompt such prayers for nothing. Is this favoritism? No; they are
+secretly seeking Him.
+
+II
+
+When the soul is united to God a great change comes over the mind,
+which now thinks continually, lovingly, of God. God not merely
+hoped for, looked for, as in the past, but God found and known, God
+close and near; interruptions come and go, but the mind, like a
+pendulum, swings back to God, nothing stops it; the soul streams to
+Him: she discovers Him everywhere: she knows her way to Him,
+and she has not far to go. Her own door is also His door. There are
+many degrees of intensity about this condition, which can increase
+to such an extent as to entirely interfere with our everyday duties.
+When it is increased to this degree it would appear (certainly at
+times) to be on purpose to teach the soul a self-abnegation which she
+could not otherwise learn, because, together with an intense, almost
+terrible, attraction and desire to be alone with God, will come the
+pressure of a duty which it is obvious God would wish us to attend
+to: this is a severe and a very continual lesson to the soul--the lesson
+of learning patiently to continue some sordid work in this world,
+after finding the joys of the spiritual life.
+
+What are amongst the most noticeable changes in the mind? first, we
+notice it has become very simple in its requirements, and very
+restful; it no longer darts here and there gathering in this and that of
+fancied treasures, as a bird darts at flies; it has dropped outside
+objects, in order to hover around thoughts of God, which at the same
+time are not particularised, but, as it were, quietly, contentedly, float
+in a general and peaceful fragrance of beauty.
+
+Ordinarily the mind would find it difficult to hover in this way with
+such a singleness of intent, but in certain other cases we see the
+same contentment--in the mother beside her babe: though she may
+not talk to it, or touch it, she is happy; she knows it near; she is
+secretly giving to it. We see it in the babe also: it gazes at its mother
+and is quiet; if the mother removes herself, the child may cry; no
+one has hurt it--merely, it has ceased to be happy because the object
+of its desire has gone too far from it, has disappeared. We see it also
+in two lovers; they sit near together, and the more they love the
+fewer words they require to speak: they are happy: they require very
+few words, very few thoughts. Separate them, and they spend their
+time uneasily in sending messages, in thinking numberless yearning
+thoughts which become painful, and, if continued for long, can
+affect the health. Put them together again, and they barely say two
+words: their joy at meeting occupies the whole of their attention. It
+is the same when we love God. The heart, and the mind, and the soul
+are blissfully content, they are in a love-state, they bask in His
+Presence; but that we should be aware of His Presence--this is His
+gift, this is the vast difference between our former and our present
+state.
+
+When we have become experienced in this Presence of God, the
+Reason tries very earnestly to comprehend the manner of it. Christ
+says that when love is established between God and a man, "My
+Father and I will come to him and make our abode with him." How
+can such a tremendous thing as this be carried out without, as it were,
+burning the man up with the greatness of it? Does God, then, when
+experienced feel to be a Fire? Yes, and no, for we feel that we shall
+be consumed, and yet it is not burning but a blissful energy of the
+most inexpressible and unbearable intensity, which has the feeling
+of disintegrating or _dispersing flesh._ The experience is blissful to
+heart and mind only so long as it is given within certain limits:
+beyond this it is bliss-agony, beyond this it would soon be death to
+the body; and the soul feels that in her imperfect state it can soon
+easily be the dispersion of herself also: this is a very terrible feeling:
+this does not bear remembering or thinking about. How, then, can it
+be possible that God can take up His abode with us and we still live?
+
+In all contacts with God we notice one fact pre-eminently--they do
+not take place with the mind, but with that which was previously
+unknown to us, and which communicates the joy and the realities of
+meeting God to the mind. What is this? It does not live in the heart:
+it lives, or feels to live, in the upper cavity of the chest, above the
+heart, and below the throat-base. It can endure God. It is spirit, it
+feels to be a higher part of the soul: we might call it the Intelligence
+and Will of the soul, because it acts for the soul as the mind acts for
+the body, it is above the soul as the mind is above (more important
+than) and rules an arm or leg. The more we experience God, the
+more we are forced to comprehend that we have in us an especial
+organ in this spirit with which we can communicate with God and
+by which we can receive Him without the mind or body being
+destroyed. For when God takes up His abode with a man He will
+communicate Himself to this loving Spirit-Will or Intelligence in
+ecstasies. And through His Son He will communicate Himself in
+another manner, to the heart and mind, so graciously, with such a
+tender care, that without the stress of ecstasy we are kept in a
+delicate and most blessed Awareness of God. In these ways we can
+know, even in flesh, the beginnings of the true love-state, the
+beginnings of the angelic state, which is this same love-state brought
+_to completion by Beholding God._
+
+III
+
+Although this blessed condition of Awareness of God is a gift, and
+at first the mind and soul are maintained in it without effort on their
+part, it being accomplished for them solely by the power of the
+Grace of God, yet later--and somewhat to their dismay after
+receiving such favours--they discover that it must be worked for in
+order to be maintained. The heart must give, the mind must give, the
+soul must give: when they neither work nor give they may find
+themselves receiving nothing: God ceases to be present to them.
+Generosity on our part is required. It works out in experience to be
+always the same thing that is needed for our perfect health and
+happiness--reciprocity. Without we maintain this reciprocity we
+shall experience _extraordinary disappointment._
+
+IV
+
+The soul is now blind: we know this by experience; but do we know
+that she ever had sight? If she did not, but was created imperfect,
+and was so created in order that only by work and merit she should
+arrive at completion and perfection and Behold God (instead of
+merely, as now in this world, being able only to apprehend Him by
+the retrospect of His effect upon her), then she was always below
+angels. If through work and obedience she becomes so raised that
+she merits sight and the actual Beholding of God, then she becomes
+equal to angels because of this Beholding; and so Christ tells us that
+she does as the Child of the Resurrection.
+
+It is the inability of the soul to comprehend, after experiencing the
+bliss of Union with God, how she came to embark upon this
+wandering and separation, which so presses the Reason for an
+explanation of the fall of the soul.
+
+It may be that not all souls are fallen, but that some are merely in
+process of progressing to sight. These are Righteous Souls. But there
+are more souls also created sightless, who are fallen by curiosity, by
+infidelity or plain self-will and forgetfulness--these it is who need
+the Redeemer: "I come not to call the Righteous, but sinners to
+repentance." From this it would seem that there are souls who,
+though they are in this world, are yet fundamentally righteous: not
+fallen, but working to receive sight. It is inconceivable to the soul
+that, had she ever Beheld God, she could have left Him, but not
+inconceivable to her that, having never Beheld Him, she may have
+been unfaithful on her road to Sight. She understands this awful
+possibility after coming to Union with Him from this earth, because
+then she learns the immense difficulties of maintaining this sightless
+Union.
+
+She knows the terrible solitude and testing it entails, and the
+innumerable temptations when low-spirited and lonely to turn to
+interests and consolations apart from God; for God will frequently,
+in the later stages of progress, withhold every consolation and
+comfort from the soul, leaving her solitary. Will she stay? Will she
+go?
+
+V
+
+We hope for much from "education"; but what education is it that
+will be of enduring value to us? Is it the education which teaches us
+the grammars of foreign languages, scientific facts, the dates when
+wars were won, when kings ascended their thrones, princes died,
+artists painted their masterpieces, that will bring us to our finest
+opportunities of success? To the soul there is little greater or less
+chance of success offered by the degree of "polish" in the education
+we have the money to procure: the peasant who cannot read or write
+may achieve the purpose of life before the savant: we know it
+without caring to acknowledge it to ourselves: the education that we
+really require is the education of daily conduct, the education of
+character, the education by which we say to Self-will, to Pride, and
+to Lusts, "Lie down!"--and they do it!
+
+* * *
+
+When a soul knows herself, has repented and become redeemed, she
+knows all other souls, good or bad: there are no longer any secrets
+for her, no one can hide himself from her: she sees all these open
+and living books, reads them, and avoids judging and bitterness in
+spite of the selfishness, stupidity, and frailty revealed on every page:
+she finds the same faults in herself; selfishness, stupidity, and
+weakness are engraven upon herself; the redeemed and enlightened
+soul with tears perpetually corrects these faults: the unenlightened
+soul does not--this is the difference between them.
+
+VI
+
+For some time after coming to Union with God we remain
+convinced that all now being so well with the soul all will be well
+with the body also, and the health does improve and become more
+stable; but the day comes when we learn that God is not concerned
+with saving flesh, and that the body must share the usual fate--we
+shall continue to suffer through it. But we also discover that there
+can be a marvellous amelioration to this suffering. By raising the
+consciousness to its highest--that is to say, by living with the highest
+part of the soul _and waiting upon God_--we can experience such
+very great Grace that the poignancy, the distress, of pain disappears.
+For instance, the following is from my experience. Trouble has
+come, trouble of several kinds: the death of one very dear; severe
+illness to another; for my brother a serious operation; for myself a
+slight one, but a very painful one--in fine, a variety of trials all
+coming together as they have a way of doing. I feel terribly nervous
+and fearful of the pain of my own operation and my brother's also:
+he is the brother who once saved my life, he is the being who more
+than anyone on earth I have most loved since early childhood. So I
+hang on to God. I hang to Him, not by beseeching Him to relieve or
+release me from any of these inevitable happenings, but by the way I
+have so slowly been learning, in which a creature, by means and
+because of love, passes out of itself and is able to hand over to God
+everything which it is or has or thinks or does, and in exchange
+receives His Peace. So I hand over my brother and my dead and my
+anxieties for self into His hands, and I go to my operation with the
+same serenity that I should go to meet a friend. I notice that I am
+more calm, less nervous, than anyone else.
+
+The anaesthetic fails before the operation is completed:
+consciousness returns and becomes aware of atrocious pain and
+blood-soaked busy instruments. Yet by Grace of God the mind and
+soul are able immediately to raise and maintain themselves in high
+consciousness of God, and the operation can be finished without a
+cry or movement of the body: no automatic shrinking takes place.
+And this Grace is continued for days afterwards, so that in recalling
+the torturing incidents, and though the pain of wounds continues
+severe enough to interfere with sleep, yet my mind remains quite
+calm, like a quiet lake over which, without ruffling its waters, hangs
+a mist--a tranquil shroud of pain that has no sting, no fear, no fret.
+
+VII
+
+After coming to Union with God I _never lacked anything,_ and this
+during the most difficult times of the war, and under every and all
+circumstances. Being careful to try and observe how this was
+worked, I saw it was very naturally and simply done by everyone
+being given an impulse to help me, always without any request to
+them on my part: the porter, besieged by twenty persons, would be
+blind to all and, coming straight to me, would offer his service; the
+taxi-driver, hailed by a waiting mob, had eyes and ears for no one
+but myself, yet I had made him no sign except by looking at him.
+The same with the coal merchant and his coal, the same with all
+tradesmen, the same with servants. I never lacked anything for one
+hour: _but I continually asked Christ to help me._
+
+Since coming to Union with God, I have had innumerable trials,
+some of them tortures, but have been brought safely out of every one.
+I afterwards found that each trial was exactly what was needed for
+the alteration of some objectionable characteristic in myself. No trial
+that came was unnecessary. When its work was accomplished, the
+trial disappeared.
+
+* * *
+
+Can it be said that Union with God in this world entails upon us
+increased sufferings here? Yes. But these sufferings are not owing to
+abnormal occurrences: nothing will happen which is not the
+common lot of humanity; merely we are caused to feel that which
+we do experience, very acutely; and after Union with God all earthly
+consolations must be abandoned: until we abandon these we do not
+know how we have depended on them, how they have protected us
+from depression, loneliness, boredom, and discontent. Abandon all
+these earthly consolations and interests, and at the same time _be
+abandoned by God_ (sensible Grace is withdrawn), and immediately
+our sufferings become very severe, though our outward circumstances
+may appear, and may actually remain, of the very best. If
+our house is a fine one, we must live in it completely detached
+from its attractions: the same with regard to our friends, our
+amusements, our wealth, and all our possessions. It is obvious that
+in learning to do this we shall often suffer. The soul has painfully to
+learn that without God's Grace there is no virtue, no righteousness,
+and no sanctity: she learns by going forward upon Grace--perhaps to
+some great height: then Grace is withdrawn, the soul falls back, and
+feels to fall lower than she ever was before, and usually she falls
+over a trifle. Amazed, unspeakably surprised and humiliated, and
+ashamed, the soul learns to know herself--to know herself with God,
+to know herself without God. When she is with God, there seems no
+height to which she cannot rise: this gives great courage: more and
+more she abandons everything distasteful to God in order to unite
+herself more securely to Him.
+
+We have no sufferings that are not useful to us. Looking back on my
+life, I see how many troubles I suffered: how often my health
+suffered (malaria and sun fevers, and lightning and its
+consequences): how I was and still am kept in a somewhat fragile
+state of health, though quite free of all actual disease. I see in this
+frailness, especially during the earlier years of my life, an immense
+protection: given full and vigorous health, combined with my selfish
+and passionate temperament, and I know very well I should have
+fallen in any and all kinds of dangers at all times. I was not to be
+trusted with robust health, and even after all the mercies and
+blessings God has showered upon me I do not trust myself. I still
+remain the sinner, fundamentally and potentially at every step the
+sinner. But Love and Grace surround the sinner. Love and Grace
+save the sinner from himself: Love and Grace can beautify and make
+the sinner shine.
+
+My physical sufferings are not to be compared with the sufferings I
+see others endure, and endure cheerfully: this is a great shame and
+humiliation to me, because I have not learnt to suffer cheerfully: I
+am too easily undone by suffering and by the sight of suffering in
+any living thing; but although one may be a coward--that is to say,
+one may inwardly shrink from every kind of suffering,--one can be,
+and it is necessary to be, quite submissive; and to refrain from the
+slightest rebellion or selfishness--this is what God takes note of.
+What a difference there is between the selfish and the unselfish
+sufferer: how the one makes everyone around him miserable, wears
+them out body and soul; and how the other calls out all that is best in
+others and strengthens all that is best in himself! It is not so
+important whether we are secretly cowards or heroes; what matters
+is how we deal with sufferings when they come, what reaction we
+permit or encourage on their account in heart and mind and soul.
+There is nothing but suffering that can cleanse us, nothing but pain
+and misfortune which can so thoroughly convince us of our own
+nothingness, and break self-pride: joy will not do it; joy can do
+nothing more than refresh us after our sufferings, and in almost all
+lives we see how joy is made to alternate with sorrow: it encourages,
+it stimulates to further endeavours (this is the reason that God, at a
+certain stage of progress, gives extraordinary blisses, ecstasies, and
+so on), but it does not disperse our blemishes: the dispersal of
+spiritual blemishes is, as we know, the main reason of life in the
+flesh; it must be done, and the sooner the better: then we can finish,
+once and for all, with flesh existence. Righteous and very virtuous
+people may be able to dispense with Divine joys and consolations: it
+is doubtful if many sinners can--they require the confidence, the
+certainty, the enthusiasm which is naturally kindled by such
+experiences. So then we find that the vicissitudes of life, the endless
+daily trials, do not go because we find God. But His Grace comes,
+and when His Grace is with us wet or shine is all one, love and
+beauty gently sparkle everywhere; and then the heart cries out to
+him, Every day is like a jewel, every day I see the whole world
+decked and garlanded with all the beauty of Thy mind: each tree,
+each flower, each bee or bird tremulous with the life and wonder of
+Thy creative ingenuity! Each day is a new jewel set upon the
+necklace of my thoughts of Thee.
+
+VIII
+
+One of the trials that we have to endure as beginners is a joyless, flat,
+ungracious condition; a kind of paralysis of the soul, a dreary torpor.
+When we would approach God--pray to Him--He is nowhere to be
+found: He has disappeared, and everything to do with finding Him is
+become hard work, such hard work that it suddenly seems to us
+quite unprofitable: we suddenly remember a number of outside
+things which we would far sooner do: we try to pray, but the prayer
+goes nowhere-in-particular; it has no enthusiasm, no force behind it:
+has prayer then suddenly re-become a duty? This is terrible; what
+shall we do--shall we ask God to help us? When we do, we do it in
+so halfhearted a manner that our prayer feels to merely float around
+our own head like some miserable mist. We feel certain that this
+joyless, withered state will endure to the end of life on earth (the
+conviction that our unhappy condition is permanent is characteristic
+of all severe trials, because if we supposed the condition or
+difficulty only momentary it would not produce a sufficient trial,
+and consequent effort to overcome it on our part). This trial (though
+it may not always be a trial, but an actual blemish of the soul, a
+serious lack of unselfish love which must at once be strenuously
+corrected) is given for several reasons--we have become, perhaps,
+too greedy of _enjoyment_ of prayer: or we have come to take this
+joyousness of prayer for granted: or we have come to think we are
+uncommonly clever at knowing how to love and to pray; that we
+know so well how to do it that we can do it of our own power and
+capacity without God's assistance.
+
+Or the trial may be sent not for any of these reasons, but solely in
+order to increase the strength and perseverance of our love to God,
+and of our Generosity.
+
+This is one trial, and another is that God allows us to become
+convinced that He has nothing more to give us, He withdraws His
+graciousness from our apprehension; He leaves us as a tiny,
+unwanted, meaningless speck, alone in a vast universe. It would be
+idle to say that the soul does not suffer from this change; but these
+sufferings are just what she requires in order to develop courage,
+humility, endurance, love, and generosity. These two trials--the one
+when love is all dried up on our part, and the other when we think
+love must be all dried up on God's part--are the finest possible
+training and exercise for the soul, but they are only such if the soul
+_tries ardently to overcome them:_ it is in the effort to overcome
+that virtue is learnt, progress made.
+
+
+There is one most splendid remedy. Is it asking of God? No, it is
+giving to God. We give Him thanks and we bless Him, and we tell
+Him that we love Him, and we do it with all our heart, mind, soul,
+and strength, and this becomes possible even though a moment ago
+we were so far from Him, so tepid, seemingly so estranged: it
+becomes possible because we remember all the wonderful things
+that God has done for us and given us, and made for us, and suffered
+for us; and in remembering these it is impossible but that love and
+gratitude, like a torch of enthusiasm, will presently flare up in us.
+
+If God never gives us another thing, we will adore Him for His
+kindness in the past, we will adore Him for Himself, for what He is.
+Desolation and tepidity vanish. Joy returns, the trial is over; but it
+will come again perhaps a few hours hence, or to-morrow, or every
+day for weeks: the remedy is ever to be reapplied, and the remedy
+when thoroughly applied never fails in immediate efficacy; but it
+has to be constantly repeated: never let the heart and mind forget
+this.
+
+IX
+
+The heart, mind, soul, and will work together and lead together the
+reasonable earthly existence; but there is another part of the soul, a
+higher part, which has its own intelligence, which leads no earthly
+existence, has no direct recognition of _material being;_ thinks no
+earth-thoughts, judges by no man-made standards, sins no earth-sins.
+Has this part of the soul, then, never sinned? _It feels_ that it has
+sinned, though it cannot say how or when, but it _feels_ that this sin
+was direct as between itself and God, and is the cause of its
+separation from God; and it feels this sin to have been _an
+infidelity._ It is with this part of the soul that we sin the
+unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost, which cannot be sinned by
+mere natural man: (here we touch the mystery of the two orders of
+sinning which, to the initiated, are seen both to be covered by the
+same commandments). This higher part of the soul mourns and
+longs for God with a terrible longing, and can be consoled, satisfied,
+by God only; He communicates Himself to this part of the soul. Sins
+of heart and mind do not injure it, but retard it: it cannot be
+corrupted by material living, because it does not connect itself
+directly with earth-living, it "responds" to God alone; but earthly
+sins delay it, paralyse its powers, postpone indefinitely its return to
+God. Is it this part of the soul which we ordinarily speak of as the
+Will? It cannot be, since it is with our Will that we consent to
+earth-sins. Have we, then, two Wills? It is reasonable and it conforms with
+experience to say that we have two Wills--a Spirit-Will conducting
+Spirit-living, and a Reasoning or Mind Will, conducting the affairs
+of earth-living: the lower part of the soul is the meeting-place and
+the intermediary between these two (often opposing) Wills, it is the
+ground upon which they work and have their fruitions.
+
+The Spirit-Will is the Will by which we finally become united to
+God. Before regeneration we are unaware in any keen degree of its
+existence; but it may exist for us in a vague and confused manner as
+an incomprehensible, undefined yearning: we cannot satisfy this
+yearning, because we do not know what it requires for its
+satisfaction. It is above conscience: conscience has its seat in the
+lower soul, there it deals with the affairs of earthly life. This
+Spirit-Will is so far above conscience (which can be used, cultivated,
+improved, or destroyed, according to our own desire) that it is not
+given into the keeping or cognisance of the "natural" man, but
+remains unknown, inoperative until reawakened and impregnated
+with renewed vigour by direct Act of God in the regenerated man.
+This awakening, this reinvigoration, would seem to be synonymous
+with the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
+
+If it is awakened only by Act of God, in what way can we be held
+responsible about it? Our responsibility, our part, our opportunity is
+to so order the lower or earth-will that God shall see us to be
+prepared for the awakening of the Spirit-Will.
+
+This Spirit-Will, once awakened, is never again shut out from direct
+communication with God. Even when Grace is withdrawn, this
+Will-Spirit can come before God and, no barrier between, know Him
+_there_; although He may deny it all consolation and leave it
+languishing, it yet retains the consolation of its one supreme
+necessity--that of knowing _it has not lost Him._ It waits.
+
+X
+
+Like knows like: it does not "know" its opposite, but is drawn
+towards its opposite before and without "knowing" it: here we have
+the cause of the condescension of the Good towards the imperfect,
+and of the aspiration of the imperfect to the perfect long before it
+can "know" the perfect. Without this attraction of like to opposite
+the imperfect could not become the perfect (we desire, are drawn to
+God, long before we are able to know Him). The imperfect is able to
+become the perfect by continually aspiring to it: it gradually
+becomes "like." There are no barriers in spirit-living, therefore there
+is nothing to prevent the soul becoming perfect, save its own
+will-failure. The barrier existing between material- or physical-living and
+spirit-living can only be overcome in and by a man's own soul: in
+the soul these two forms of living can meet and become known by
+the one individual, who can live alternately in the two modes, but it
+is necessary that the will and preference shall be continually given
+and bent towards spiritual-living, physical-living being accepted
+patiently and as a cross. Then flesh ceases to be a barrier to
+spiritual-living. This is the work of Christ and of the Holy Ghost. Because
+the soul has recaptured the knowledge of this rapturous living we are
+not to suppose that it is possible to continually enjoy it here or
+introduce its glories into social and worldly living: it is between the
+soul and God only; but earth-life can and should by this knowledge
+be entirely readjusted.
+
+XI
+
+Are we correct in saying or supposing that this world with all that
+we see in it (because perishable) is not real, and that the Invisible is
+the only Real? We are using the wrong word: all that we see here is
+real after its own manner: it is intentional, it is designed, it is
+magnificent, it is the evidence in fixed form of the Supreme
+Intelligence; how can we venture to call it unreal, nothing,
+negligible? It is a question not of Reality or Unreality, but of greater
+and of lesser Activity. In this world we see the Divine Energy
+slowed down to its least degree: we see it so much slowed down that
+the Divine Ideas can become crystallised into a form and for their
+decreed period remain fixed. It is exactly this which the soul
+requires in order to recover her lost bearings. She needs the
+Beautiful, the Good, and the Bad made sensible to her in _fixed
+objects,_ and Time in which to consider them and make her choice
+between them. When Spirit-living is experienced, we become aware
+that in spirit-life Activity is of such an order as to preclude the mode
+of it being in fixed forms and objects: so there is no fixed visible
+Beauty, no fixed visible Good or Bad, no fixed _results,_ and the
+soul "sees" and "knows" only _that which she herself is like to._ If
+she is bad, she cannot become better by the privilege of looking at
+that which is good. If she thinks or desires wrong, she remains
+wrong: she must think Right in order to produce or "know" Right.
+She loses God because she can no longer think godly, and nothing is
+fixed by which she can trace Him: it is like to like, and this
+instantaneously without pause (or time). Here in this world Like
+may behold its Opposite: Bad may behold Good and, because of
+being able to behold it, may go over and join its will to Good: it is
+able to do this, because the evidence of Good remains fixed whether
+the beholder or thinker is good or bad.
+
+What is our quest in this world? It is to refind the lost knowledge of
+Celestial-living. Our Goal is God Himself. Our salvation does not
+depend upon our finding Celestial-living, but our finding this living
+depends upon whether we have found the way of Salvation. This
+Celestial-living is here, at our door, but we cannot retouch it without
+Act of God. What is essential to obtaining this Act of God? Is it
+necessary to belong to this or that Denomination, to perform this or
+that ceremony, to stand up, kneel down, or prostrate ourselves a
+hundred and one times, visit shrines, handle relics, endlessly repeat
+fixed words and sentences? No, these will not do it. Christianity _in
+its full meaning,_ a repentant and clean heart and mind--these will
+do it. It is a direct affair between the soul and God. It is Thee and me.
+This is immense condescension on the part of God. Love alone
+makes such a condescension possible.
+
+As in free spirit we think a thought and become it, have a desire
+flash to it and are it, it is easy to see how in thinking thoughts that
+are not godly, desiring that which is ungodly and imperfect, we pass
+far from God by "becoming" imperfection; and, having "become,"
+find no satisfaction, satisfaction resting with God only. Having
+ceased to think godly, the soul loses God, becomes insensitive, and
+falls into darkness, thinks of her own wretchedness and, thinking of
+it, is held fast to it. Being miserable, she thinks to Self; thinking of
+Self, she is bound to the solitude of Self--blank solitude without
+fixed objects to amuse, without fixed Beauty to lead higher, to
+restore, to calm. Is all this tantamount to saying that when separated
+from God Spirit-life is less desirable than earth-life? It is: for then
+we are "dead" to celestial-living, and in Spirit-life all other living is
+miserable living. Hence we see the dire necessity of the soul for a
+Saviour: the necessity of fixed forms, of time, of flesh (which is a
+fixed stay-point for the soul), of the Incarnation of the Saviour _in
+flesh_ in order that He may guide the soul amongst these fixed
+forms, Himself showing her which to choose and which to cast aside:
+we see the necessity of time in order that, though we have an
+ungodly thought, we have _time_ to repent and choose a better
+before, in a horrible rapidity, we are inevitably _become that which
+we had thought._ In this world, this stay-point for the soul, the most
+lost is enabled to enjoy and perceive Beauty and Goodness. How
+much more easy, then, to return to godly thoughts, to the Good, to
+God Himself! But though her Saviour is in this world so near to the
+soul, she does not always seek Him. He belongs to the Invisible.
+Intoxicated at finding herself amused amongst fixed objects which
+she enjoys lazily through fixed mediums of the five senses, she
+devotes herself to these objects, surrounds herself with them, forgets
+everything else. "It is harder for the rich man to enter the kingdom
+of heaven." But she must abandon object-worship: this is not to say
+she is to deny the existence of objects, calling them unreal; she must
+despise no created object, for each is there to form for her an
+object-lesson. She has two choices: she can see the objects, remain
+satisfied with them, and seek no further. Or, she can see the objects,
+admire them, but seek beyond them for their Instigator and Creator. Now
+she is on the track of God. All is well.
+
+But all this is not that Adam may recover his perfection, for when,
+and for how long, was Adam "Perfect"? We behold him sinning at
+the very first opportunity. In the Fall of Adam we see merely the
+continuation in the stay-point of time and of flesh, of the history of
+the fallen soul--sinning the same old sin, Self-will.
+
+The way of return to God is the same way by which we came out
+from Him--reversed. We came away by means of greeds and
+curiosities imagined by Self-will. The return is by casting away
+these greeds, casting away all prides, all selfishness; and what
+self-loving soul is there that could or would, left alone to herself,
+conceive of following such a way of cruel necessities, of such hard
+endurance without an Example before her? For the way is a hard
+way, a toiling way, at times an awful way, and as we pursue it the
+burden grows heavier, the pain sharper: then it grows lighter as the
+soul becomes renewed; and the pain is no longer the pain of
+loneliness, of sin and sorrow, but becomes the pain of Love, waiting
+in certainty for an ultimate Reunion: it becomes pain which is being
+forgotten in the returning happiness of God.
+
+But first must come the abandonment of Self-will, bit by bit, to the
+death. So we see upon the Cross Christ stripped of everything, and
+at the last stripped even of Union with the Father: consenting to bear
+the pains of even Spiritual Death: "My God, my God, why hast
+Thou forsaken Me?" If there could be any greater depth of pain, He
+would have shared that also with the wandering soul. So we are
+indeed one with Him in everything: and He with us.
+
+In Spirit-life we meet the Ideas of God uncrystallised into any form.
+They penetrate the soul--she flashes to them, she becomes them, she
+reaches unimaginable heights of bliss by "becoming." This form of
+joy is incomprehensible until experienced: it is stupendous living, if
+it may be so expressed it is happiness at lightning velocity; but it is a
+lightning happiness which must flash to God. When it ceases to do
+this in a full manner, it ceases to be full happiness. When it becomes
+further perverted, diverted, and, finally, inverted, it ceases to be any
+happiness whatever. It is independent of surroundings: what it
+depends on is a perfect reciprocity with its own Source. That the
+laws which govern this Divine living will not be altered to suit
+wandering souls is not to be wondered at; but a new system may be
+called into being, and we may be able to perceive it in this world,
+evolved from first to last with its substance, forms, creatures, flesh,
+and time, in order to assist such wanderers. God _spends Himself_
+for every wandering soul.
+
+XII
+
+Directly this world ceases to afford us pleasure, we wonder why we
+were born. The soul longs for happiness; feels certain she was
+created for it. So she is. Looking at the masses of drab, ugly, and
+unsuccessful lives around us, we may well ask what purpose and
+what progress is there in the lives of all these hopeless-looking
+people. But there is not one life that does not have brought before it,
+and into it, the opportunity of, and the invitation to, self-sacrifice,
+and in a greater or lesser degree this is accepted and responded to by
+all. There is far more soul-progress made by these grey-looking lives
+than would appear on the surface: they accept self-sacrifice--they
+accept Duty--all is well. Very much progress may not be made
+during the one earth-period of life, but some is made: we drifted
+away slowly from God; our return is slow.
+
+XIII
+
+Love is not the mere pleasant sentiment of the heart we are apt to
+consider it: it is _the animating principle of the soul,_ it is the reason
+and cause of her existence: it is a God-Force. When a soul does not
+love God she has ceased to respond to this Force; she is no longer a
+"sensitive" or _living_ soul: when she becomes insensitive, she has
+become what flesh is when it is "callous."
+
+This insensitiveness is the one great predominating disease of the
+soul: it is the cause of the darkness in which the soul finds herself in
+this world: it is this which causes our unawareness of God and of
+Celestial-living. How can we commence to remedy this disastrous
+state? We can act nobly, we can be generous, doing what we do as
+though it were for love, although it is merely Duty which animates
+us. This will be more or less joyless, because love alone can make
+acts joyful; but though it may be joyless it will advance the soul
+immensely: it will advance her to the highest degrees required by
+God in order that He shall Retouch her. When He Retouches her she
+becomes reanimated, she once again commences to live for and
+because of love: she becomes "sensitive" to God. This Retouching
+may occur only after the soul is free of the body--but the body is the
+house in which our examination must be passed, in which we must
+prepare and qualify for this Retouching. Hence the importance of
+continuing to make every effort _in this life._ The soul which takes
+Christ into herself, loves Him, obeys Him, tries to copy Him,
+qualifies fully for this Retouching.
+
+XIV
+
+In early youth life may be, and often is, a joyous adventure: little by
+little we grow aghast at the amount of suffering which life really
+stands for--our own sufferings and those of others, of which, owing
+to our own pains, we gradually take more and more note. Why all
+this suffering? It appals, it frightens, it makes upon many hearts and
+minds a sinister impression: how is this suffering of innocents to be
+reconciled with the Benign Will of a God Who is Perfect Love? Let
+us cease thinking that indiscriminate suffering to creatures is the
+Will of God. What is it, then? It is the inevitable--the long
+drawn-out sequence to the soul's departure from God--the Source of
+Happiness.
+
+To inhabit flesh is no paradise, but it is a means of regaining heaven.
+There is no misfortune, suffering, sorrow, disappointment, or pain,
+which is not consequent upon this departure of the soul from God.
+Are there here any truly "innocent" persons? To be here at all points
+to a fault of the soul, to infidelity to God--the "Original sin" in
+which we are born.
+
+The beginning of Salvation is to think. Nothing causes us to think so
+much as sorrow, suffering, and pain; and they melt the heart also,
+and they humble pride. The man who has never suffered, and never
+loved, is more to be pitied than the paralytic: his chance of Life is
+remote.
+
+How can we reasonably expect that the road back to our long-since
+forsaken God is to be smooth, pleasant, velvet-covered. What
+divides us from God? Is it happiness, beauty, and light?
+No--self-indulgence, rocks of evil, ugly greeds, places of sin and
+selfishness. Can we climb back through all this, most of it in
+darkness, without tears, without pain, without every kind of anguish?
+
+Over this part of the road is no peace; but continue, and, little by
+little, peace comes.
+
+* * *
+
+We say that we must find Christ; but where, and how, shall we find
+this Mighty Lord, Who comes out from the Father to meet the
+Prodigal? Must we study in ecclesiastical colleges, travel to distant
+lands, visit holy places, kneel on celebrated sacred ground, kiss
+stones, attend ceremonies, look at bones?
+
+No! Stand still! Just where we are is the place where we can meet
+Him. Just where we stand to-day can be as sacred, as blessed, as the
+Holy Land. Some little wood sprinkled with flowers, our own quiet
+room, an unknown, nameless hillside--these can be as holy as Mount
+Carmel, because He meets us there.
+
+* * *
+
+In all these experiences of the soul which has refound God, what is
+it that truly rejoices her? Is it the learning and knowledge that the
+pursuit of Truth may bring her to? She values Truth and knowledge
+because they lift her towards Him Whom she seeks and loves. Does
+the soul rejoice in ecstasies because they are ecstasies? No: what she
+values is the recaptured knowledge and certainty of heavenly
+living--in however small or brief a degree she is able to attain it in
+flesh: and because in the experience of ecstasy _she knows Him to Whom
+she belongs._
+
+All other affairs become nothing whatever. Life on earth is now
+entirely a means of relearning how to please Him Whom she has
+found. Her concern is that she may quickly so prepare herself that
+she may behold Him for ever.
+
+It may well be asked of a soul which claims to have found God,
+How does she know that she has encountered Him?
+
+We have a Critical Faculty. It is above Reason, because it sifts and
+judges the findings of Reason, throwing out or retaining what
+Reason has deduced. This is a Higher-Soul faculty: it concerns itself
+solely with knowing Perfection. Reason is not occupied with
+knowing Perfection, but in analysing and digesting all alike that is
+brought to it.
+
+It is to the Critical Faculty that art, poetry, and music appeal, and
+make their thought-suggestions. We do not enjoy music because of
+the noise, but because of the thoughts suggested by it--we float upon
+these emotion-thoughts (we may float low, we may float high, and
+do not know to where; but it is somewhere where we cannot get
+without the music), so we say we love the music; but it is the
+emotion-thoughts we love. The sound and the thoughts suggested by
+it appeal to the Critical Faculty of the Soul, and, if it is perfect
+enough to be accepted by this faculty, we may pass, for the time
+being, into soul-living, but only very delicately, tentatively, and
+nothing to be compared to the soul-living, produced by the Touch of
+God. When God communicates Himself to the soul, she lives in a
+manner never previously conceived of, reaching an experience of
+living in which every perfection is present to her as Being there in
+such unlimited abundance that the soul is overwhelmed by it and
+must fall back to less, because of insupportable excess of Perfections.
+This perfection of living is given, and is withdrawn, outside of her
+own will. Which is the more sane and reasonable--for the soul to
+think, I have invented and originated a new and _perfectly
+satisfying_ form of living; or for the soul to conclude that she has
+been admitted to the re-encounter of perfect- or Celestial-living? In
+this living are happenings which cannot be communicated, or even
+indicated to others, because they reach beyond words, beyond all or
+any other experience, beyond any possible previous imagination or
+expression of mind, beyond all particularisation; it is these occasions
+of experience which the Critical Faculty regards as being encounters
+with the Supreme Spirit, because they are complete; nothing is
+wanting; they afford life at its perfection point--a stupendous
+Felicity, and that _Repose_ in bliss for which all souls secretly long.
+It is the meeting of the Wisher with the Wished, of Desire with the
+Desired: and yet, being that which it is--unthinkable Fulfilment--it is
+above all, or any, Wishes, and beyond Desire; it can be known, but
+not named.
+
+By these experiences the knowledge of the soul becomes
+enlightened two ways: she knows what bliss is; she knows the full
+calamity of life away from God--in flesh, in this world: not that flesh
+is not a wonderful Idea, not that the world is not greatly to be
+admired for its beauties, but the reawakened spirit desires
+spirit-living, cannot be pleased with earth-living, cannot be satisfied
+with less than God Himself. So, then, the logical consequence is that this
+world becomes a place we desire to take leave of as soon as may be.
+Life here becomes a punishment: not that Perfect Love desires to
+punish, but that the soul now knows that any form of life in which
+she is restricted from continual access to Him is a disaster, a
+profound grief.
+
+XV
+
+If the soul looks to God to comfort her, asks for His help, and gets
+it--and since communication with God is dependent upon some
+degree of like to like,--it follows that the soul must maintain a
+readiness to "give" to fellow-souls: to fail in this is to fail in any sort
+of resemblance to God. Hence we see how carefully Christ enjoined
+upon us to "Give to them that ask": and in no niggardly way either,
+but wholeheartedly, for "God loveth the cheerful giver."
+
+If we say that we apprehend God by that which is not Mind, what
+reason have we for saying that it is not Reason which receives Him?
+Because for this living which God's touch causes us to share with
+Himself we find that Space, Infinity, and Eternity are required and
+Reason stands, and remains, uncomprehending and dumbfounded
+before all three. It is Spirit, the flash-point of the soul, which
+receives and transmits and which lives this living. As we have an
+heredity of flesh so we have also an heredity of Spirit which of its
+own nature comprehends the ways of God and the mode of God's
+living. In High Contemplation we find that if Reason attempts
+activity, nothing is consummated: she must submerge herself and
+wait: soon Reason discovers the wherefore of this--her activity is not
+the activity of That Other. Only by that which is like in activity can
+That Other be received: this "like" is not herself: finally she comes
+to know this "like" as a higher part of the soul--Spirit. When Spirit
+has received and given it to the soul, then it is afterwards the part of
+Reason to attack from every side that which has been received, to
+digest it, absorb it, and share it, in fact though not in act. According
+to the health and strength of Reason so we shall successfully deal
+with and use that with which the Spirit presents us. By comparison
+with the magnificent Spirit-Activity or Spirit-Intelligence the
+Reason is limited and frail as a new-born babe: this is no humiliation
+to Reason, since she should not be expected to accomplish that
+which is not her part.
+
+Why do not all men apprehend God? It is very questionable if all
+men desire to do so, because in the recesses of each man's soul lies
+the consciousness that there will be some great price to pay.
+
+But beyond this there arises the question, Is it desirable, price or no
+price, that all souls should come while still in flesh to immediate
+knowledge of, and contact with, God; and after long and close
+thinking the experienced soul will answer No, and Yes. No, in so far
+as the apprehension of the Godhead is concerned; Yes, and most
+vitally Yes, for Christians, in so far as Communion and Contact with
+Christ is concerned. Why this distinction? Because the apprehension
+of the Godhead is beyond the requirements of salvation and
+redemption, and the world and flesh were created for those purposes.
+Though there is no limit to the heights to which the soul may aspire,
+and all souls are invited eventually to behold the Face of God, if so
+be they shall be able to prepare themselves to endure Him, there are
+to a soul still in flesh the most terrible dangers in knowing the
+Fullness of God even so far as His Fullness may be Known to Flesh:
+never perhaps in all her history is the soul in such danger as she is
+after coming (in flesh) to the apprehension of the Godhead: and this
+danger may extend in an acute degree over a period of many years
+and can never be said to cease altogether. The Soul Knows and feels,
+when in its acute stage, this horrible danger without comprehending
+its exact cause and nature, but it has about it the feeling that
+a man might have standing balanced on a narrow pinnacle.
+Unapproachable, untouchable only so long as he remains upon the
+summit, the eyes of a thousand enemies watch for his smallest
+descent: they watch day and night. What alone can enable the Soul
+to maintain such a position? Hourly, often momently, Communion
+with Jesus Christ. What makes such perseverance likely or even
+possible on the soul's part? Only love can make it so.
+
+If we say Communion with Christ is for the Christian vital to a full
+redemption, and therefore the Apprehension of Him is essential, to
+what degree should we experience this Apprehension of Him? The
+degree at which, perceiving in Him and His ways our Ideal, we
+become willing to modify and change _our manner of thinking and
+doing_ in order to meet the requirements of this Ideal. Having gone
+so far, the soul is likely to become enamoured of Him Personally:
+then all is indeed well for her.
+
+So then we find that we can apprehend God by an ever-ascending
+scale of degrees. We can apprehend Him with the Reason and the
+heart at all hours of the day. We can seek and approach Him with
+the holy white passion of the Mind. Yet this is not the Apprehension
+of Him which alone can be termed Contact, and which alone
+satisfies the soul or gives us the full feeling that we Know God. We
+cannot "Know" God as fully as He can be known by flesh without
+we enter ecstasy; but it is not ecstasy which produces the meeting
+with God, but the meeting with God which produces the ecstasy.
+Though we are able to enjoy a continual apprehension of Him with
+heart and Reason, no man could endure an unremitting ecstasy.
+
+Can ecstasy be prepared for? Yes, if we have courage to aspire to it,
+it can be prepared for by a contemplation of Him in which, to
+commence with, the Will, Mind, and heart, in great activity of love,
+send forth all their powers towards God: then for love's sake being
+glad and willing to become nothing, and becoming, as it were, dead
+to themselves and all interests and desires usual to them, by Act of
+God their normal living is then taken over into a greater living. Then
+He comes.
+
+And when He comes the Reason does not receive Him, but that
+certain small part, little more than a point in the soul receives Him.
+
+Apart from the joy of it, what is the true value of ecstasy to him to
+whom it is granted? It raises him above Faith into Certitude. The
+peace and strength given by Certitude are such that Joy is neither
+here nor there, the soul can wait for it, because, no matter what may
+afterwards happen to such a one, he remembers, and remains once
+and for all aware, that God Is, _and that He can be Known_: he
+learns also a new knowledge, but cares nothing for this because it is
+knowledge or because it is power, but because it brings him nearer
+to his God.
+
+Having once learnt the knowledge that comes by ecstasy alone, truth
+to tell, the soul would be content to receive no further ecstasy in
+flesh; but, intoxicated with love and worship, she best enjoys herself
+doing all the giving, for when He comes and gives He bursts down
+all her doors and, under the awful stress of Him, the soul hardly
+knows how to endure either Himself or herself.
+
+Life in this world is a life for spiritual weaklings. Our eternal Self is
+an Intelligence, a Desire, and a Will, and the life we live with it is no
+idle, torpid, confined living such as we have here, but is a living _in
+Liberty,_ without limit, restriction, fatigue, or satiety; in it word
+thoughts and thinking are superseded; by comparison to it even the
+highest thought-achievements of men, their noblest aspirations,
+appear like the sand-castles of children. Ravished at such further
+revelations of the Genius of God, the soul at last knows satisfaction.
+It requires perfection in order to be permanently operative, because
+only in perfection is Freedom found, and because for the living of it
+nothing can remain but such Essentials of the soul as _cannot be
+dispersed._ It is a measureless Generosity and an ecstasy of
+Receiving and Giving. To say that purity and perfection are required
+for this living is no mere arbitrary dictum, but a scientific fact: the
+impure, imperfect soul finds herself unable in perfect liberty and
+freedom _to expand to interaction_ with the Divine Activity. When
+the process of Return is sufficiently completed and, being still in
+flesh, we enter for a brief time this living, Reason, Pain and Evil,
+Yesterday and To-morrow disappear. Reason is gathered up into,
+and superseded by, the spiritual and wordless Intelligence: Pain and
+Evil, their part and work accomplished, are dispersed and banished
+into the mists of darkness.
+
+So the soul may learn even from this world something of the
+mystery of the Depths of God. She may enter into the happiness of
+Union with the Three in One: the One Whom in a state of glory yet
+to come she may Behold. But beyond This of Him which He will
+allow her to Behold, beyond This of Him in which she may repose
+in bliss, and beyond this Repose which He wills her to know of Him,
+He shows her that yet more of Him Is which He will share--heights
+of Felicity beyond all measure, holding the soul till she must pray
+Him to release her, or she will perish--reeling depths of rapture in a
+mystery of light; bliss beyond bliss for that lover who shall
+venture--all Eternity unfolding in fulfilment.
+
+And yet remains That of Him which wills no reciprocity, but shares
+Himself with Himself. So peace Is. And so, even in not giving, He
+yet does give that which is most precious, for without He Himself in
+His forever hidden depths were Peace, His creatures could neither
+know nor have peace.
+
+Looking into herself, what does the soul perceive? Apart from sins
+and virtues she perceives two things--caprice and free-will. Neither
+are of her own creation, but are essentials of her being. It may be
+that in caprice and free-will she may find an answer to those two
+questions which stir her to her depths: What is she that God should
+so love her? and how comes she to be away from Him? Clothed in
+the body of either man or woman, the soul is predominantly
+feminine--the Feminine Principle beloved of, and returning to, the
+Eternal Masculine of God. Caprice is feminine; Caprice and
+Mystery are two enchanting sisters, and in Woman we see them as
+being irresistible to Man. Angels, though they are a glory of God's
+heaven, cannot alone satisfy all the needs of their Creator: they have
+neither sex nor caprice, nor the mystery which joins hands with it.
+So He creates the soul, and He gives her an heredity of Himself in
+the flash-point of the soul, and He gives her sex and caprice and
+free-will to deny herself to Him if she choose; and in her caprice she
+goes out and away from Him, and when she would return she cannot,
+because in infidelity she has dropped from perfection. Disillusioned
+by her unfaithful wanderings and horribly pained, the soul longs for
+Him, and He longs for her. He Himself must make her the way of
+return, which is the way of redemption, and at a terrible cost to
+Himself He shows her His Righteousness and the mode of her
+Return in the Face and the Ways of Jesus Christ; and in the
+Crucifixion He shows her the measure of His love, and in the Cross
+the necessary abandonment of all self-will--total surrender. And all
+this suffering to Himself He bears in order to make good the wilful
+sinning and the misery of the wayward soul. So He brings home the
+soul, not by force but by love--that love by which He is at once the
+Life of everything and everything is the life of Him.
+
+Absence from God is Pain, and everlastingly will be Pain in varying
+degrees. Are there souls who have never left Him? Undoubtedly, but
+they know nothing of this world. Are we perhaps distressed at this
+multiplicity of worlds and souls? We need not be, for they are a
+necessity both of God and of ourselves; for God to Be Himself He
+must give Himself, and who can receive Him? Not even the greatest
+of all the Angels can alone bear to endure Him? Only into a vast
+multiplicity of individuals can God pour and expend Himself to the
+fullness of His desire, the One to the many. Each individually
+receives from Him, and each individually and collectively--the many
+to the One--returns Him those burning favours which are in
+Celestial-living.
+
+Is it all joy to find God? How can it be? Can faults and sins be
+eradicated without pain? Life here for the lover of God is one long
+eradication of offences. How can even the daily requirements of
+flesh be fulfilled without pain? How without profound humiliation
+and patience can we descend from Contemplation to duties in the
+household? How without pain consider with that same mind which
+has so recently been rapt in God--the various merits of breads,
+pastries, and portions of dead animals, in order that flesh shall eat
+and live! What a fall is this!--a fall that must be taken daily and
+patiently. Is it all joy to love God? How can it be? For Love carries
+in itself a terrible wound of longing which can never be healed till
+we come before Him in possession Face to Face.
+
+And many times a day in an unpremeditated natural anguish Love
+remembers the sufferings of that meek and holy Saviour; how can it
+be a joy to the soul that passionately loves Him to stand before a
+tortured Lord, tortured for her? There never was a pain as hard and
+sharp as this. There are no tears like the tears we shed to Christ.
+
+XVI
+
+We say of God that He is Love and Light, Wisdom and Truth. He is
+also a Gracious Consenting. So we see the Divine Light Consenting
+to darkness that it may return to Light, and Divine Love Consenting
+to infidelity that it may return to Perfect Love.
+
+But this Gracious Consenting is not because of or since Adam, but
+Adam "is" because of this Consenting.
+
+In the flesh of Adam the fallen soul is brought to a stay-point. Any
+that have experienced spirit-living even for one hour know that in
+immortal living is no stay-point but infinity of movement, in which
+movement the wandering soul becomes lost and finally insensitive.
+By means of the flesh the soul is brought to that stay-point where
+she more easily receives and understands the impregnation of
+Consenting Light, which is the Divine Begetting; and she receives
+the drawing power of Consenting Love: she is directly operated
+upon by the Divine Pity Who Himself came to show her the Way of
+Return: first, by the negation or sacrifice of flesh lusts; secondly, by
+the sacrifice of spiritual lusts (by which the soul originally fell);
+until finally, by death to all lusts and infidelities she is reunited to
+the blisses of Immortal Life. This is the kindly purpose of our life in
+this world. Christ being Eternal Light and Love and Life, we also
+are eternal _who contain Christ._
+
+So, then, we consent to abandon all lusts of the flesh whilst also
+consenting to endure any consequences of these lusts in ourselves
+and others, not in unwillingness to endure, which is resistance, but
+in submission. From consenting to abandon the delights of the flesh
+we advance to consenting to the withdrawal of all spiritual delights
+from us: enduring instead spiritual difficulties, standing firm in the
+strength of Christ whilst the assaults of self-will and infidelity batter
+the soul.
+
+We consent to abandon self-absorption in the delights of God, and,
+returning to the world, endeavour to perform all acts of life in the
+world in a manner consonant with perfection; but this is impossible:
+this effort is insupportable without Grace. We cannot do it alone.
+We learn to know it and to know that we are never alone. Even if we
+fall into the deepest sin, we are not abandoned by the Divine
+Graciousness: by consenting to abandon this wickedness we are
+immediately reunited with the Divine Consenting, and so onwards
+and upwards in an ever-ascending improvement to perfection: and
+by consenting the soul daily sinks into the balm of Christ and loses
+her burden.
+
+We see the Perfection of this divine consenting and abandonment of
+Self-Will in the final picture of the Cross. We see unmurmuring
+consent to the death of flesh, consent to the attacks of evil, consent
+to injustice, consent to infidelity (and straightway they all forsook
+Him and fled), and, finally, consent to the death of Divine Union:
+this not without groanings, as being the one supreme and only
+insupportable Agony.
+
+XVII
+
+How is it that Perfect Love can consent to the wandering of the soul
+with its consequent sorrow and sin? Divine Light, being also Perfect
+Freedom, consents to the wandering of the soul; but Divine Love,
+being also Reciprocity, may not consent to such wandering as shall
+for ever preclude Reciprocity. The wandering soul must be, will be,
+Redeemed.
+
+* * *
+
+If Divine Light, being also Perfect Freedom, consents to the
+wandering of the soul, but Divine Love, being also Reciprocity, may
+not consent to a perpetual wandering, how set limits in a life in
+which perfect freedom must continue? A limit can be fixed by Evil,
+Evil the outermost circle from God, the shore on which, continually
+breaking and being broken, the soul turns herself in longing to a
+long-forgotten Lord. Evil is the hedge about the vineyard of the
+Parable. The soul is free to touch it, free to pass through it if she will,
+but touching it she knows Pain. Pain causes the soul to pause and
+consider: now is her opportunity; now she is likely to turn about and
+seek the Good.
+
+Then the purpose of Evil is fulfilled; then Evil becomes the
+handmaid of Good; then we can feel and say with sincerity, Evil has
+smitten me friendly, for it has caused me to turn about and seek
+Good. Good, once found, is found to be stronger than Evil. In a few
+years Good has so drawn us that Evil has become negligible; it lies
+forgotten on a now distant misty shore. The soul is Homeward
+bound.
+
+XVIII
+
+"If the wicked turn from his sins that he hath committed and keep
+my statutes . . . all his transgressions that he hath committed, they
+shall not be mentioned unto him."--Ezekiel xviii. 21, 22.
+
+XIX
+
+Who is so blessed as the Redeemed Sinner? Who can taste the
+sweetness of God as can the repentant sinner? Who can know His
+graciousness, His infinity of tenderness and courtesy, as can the
+sinner? Who knows the heights and depths and lengths and breadths
+of God's forgiving love as does the sinner? Who can share with God
+hereafter such close experiences as will the sinner?
+
+Can Angels share the memories of His human days with Christ?
+And who but the sorely tempted sinner can be bonded to Him by the
+mutual knowledge of those bitter, burning, desert days? Not the
+Righteous, nor even Angels can know quite the full beauty of all the
+bonds that bind the sinner to his Saviour. O marvellous love of God!
+O blessed soul, O blessed Adam, blessed even in thy sins!
+
+He desired lovers and had none: Created Angels, and, desiring to
+prove them as lovers, He made Him a Lure.
+
+A third of them turned to the Lure and fell to It. They serve the Lure
+and take their bread from It, and the offspring of the serving is Evil.
+
+Desiring more lovers, He fashioned souls; yet, when He proved
+them, they also fell to the Lure.
+
+Being lesser than Angels, they served not the Lure, but the offspring
+of it--Evil--and became subject to Evil. They were made for Love,
+and in Evil found no Love, and it was an anguish and it tormented
+them.
+
+And He put them in flesh, that He might limit their suffering and
+show them His Light again; covered them about with Limits like a
+merciful Cloak; hedged them in with Evil as a boundary, so they
+should have no will to fall away further from Him than Evil because
+of the pain of it.
+
+But in flesh they continued to serve Evil, and the offspring of the
+serving was Sin: and they were miserable in their service, because of
+the pain of it; yet no soul could break the bondage of service,
+because no soul could be found that, being subject, did not serve,
+and in serving lose freedom by its own offspring.
+
+Then He sent His Spirit to walk with them in flesh, and being
+proven as a Lover, was not found wanting, and being subject to Evil
+did not serve, and remaining Sinless had no offspring to destroy His
+freedom, and He broke the bondage and showed them a light.
+
+He sent, because He repented Him of the Proving and of the Evil
+that came of it, and His fallen lovers repented and repent of their fall.
+
+His travail and their travail--the travail of severed Love towards
+Reunion--is the anguish of the Ages: but the anguish will have an
+end, because Love is Omnipotence.
+
+------
+
+[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 also made the following editorial changes:
+
+"I am of no value value whatever" to "I am of no value whatever"
+
+"called it it by the same name as I" to "called it by the same name as I"
+
+"God shall see us to to be prepared" to "God shall see us to be prepared"
+
+"the full beauty of all the the bonds" to "the full beauty of all the
+bonds"]
+
+"(though entirely without effort on her part) is immensely increased)" to
+"(though entirely without effort on her part) is immensely increased"]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prodigal Returns, by Lilian Staveley
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