THE ROMANCE OF THE SOUL

By

Lilian StaveleyThe Author of "The Golden Fountain"

LondonJohn M. Watkins21 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, W. C. 21920

What am I? In my flesh I am but equal to the beasts of the field. Inmy heart and mind I am corrupt Humanity. In my soul I know notwhat I am or may be, and therein lies my hope. 

O wonderful and mysterious soul, more fragile than gossamer andyet so strong that she may stand in the Presence of God and notperish!

"Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings ofa _dove. "--Psalm lxviii. 13. _

By what means shall the ordinary man and woman, living the usualeveryday life, whether of work or of leisure, find God? And thiswithout withdrawing themselves into a life apart--a "religious" life, and without outward and conspicuous piety always running to publicworship (though often very cross and impatient at home); withoutleaving undone any of the duties necessary to the welfare of thosedependent on them; without making themselves in any waypeculiar;--how shall these same people go up into the secret placesof God, how shall they find the marvellous peace of God, howsatisfy those vague persistent longings for a happiness morecomplete than any they have so far known, yet a happiness which iswhispered of between the heart and the soul as something which isto be possessed if we but knew how to get it? How shall ordinarymortals whilst still in the flesh re-enter Eden even for an hour? forEden is not dead and gone, but we are dead to Eden--Eden, thesecret garden of enchantment where the soul and the mind and theheart live in the presence of God and hear once more "the voice ofGod walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Gen. Iii. ). 

It is possible for these things to come to us or we to them, and inquite a few years if we set our hearts on them. First we must desire;and after the desire, steady and persistent, God will give. And wesay, "But I have desired and I do desire, and God does not give. Why is this?" There are two reasons for it. For one--are thesemarvellous things to be given because of one cry; for one petulantdemand; for a few tears, mostly of self-pity, shed in an hour whenthe world fails to satisfy us, when a friend has disappointed us, whenour plans are spoiled, when we are sick or lonely? These are theoccasions on which we mostly find time to think of what we call abetter world, and of the consolations of God. 

But let anyone have all that he can fancy, be carried high upon theflood-tide of prosperity, ambition, and success, and how much timewill he or she give to Almighty God?--not two moments during theday. Yet the Maker of all things is to bestow His unspeakable richesupon us in return for two moments of our thought or love! Does aman acquire great worldly wealth, or fame, in return for twomoments of endeavour?

"Ah, " some of us may cry, "but it is more than two moments that Igive Him; I give Him hours, and yet I cannot find Him. " If that isreally so, then the second reason is the one which would explainwhy He has not been found. A great wall divides us from theconsciousness of the Presence of God. In this wall there is one Door, and one only, Jesus Christ. We have not found God because we havenot found Him first as Jesus Christ in our own heart. Now whetherwe take our heart to church, whether we take it to our daily work, orwhether we take it to our amusements, we shall not find Jesus in anyone place more than another if He is not already in our hearts tobegin with. How shall I commence to love a Being whom I havenever seen? By thinking about Him; by thinking about Him verypersistently; by comparing the world and its friendships and its lovesand its deceits and its secret enviousnesses with all that we know ofthe lovely ways of gentle Jesus. If we do this consistently, it isimpossible not to find Him more lovable than any other person thatwe know. The more lovable we find Him the more we think aboutHim, by so much the more we find ourselves beginning to love Him, and once we have learnt to hold Him very warmly and tenderly inour heart, then we are well in the way to find the Christ andafterwards that divine garden of the soul in which God seems to slipHis hand under our restless anxious heart and lift it high into a placeof safety and repose. 

When for some time we have learnt to go in and out of this garden, with God's tender help we make ourself a dear place--a nest underGod's wing, and yet mysteriously even nearer than this, it is so nearto God. To this place we learn to fly to and fro in a second of time:so that, sitting weary and harassed in the counting-house, in aninstant a man can be away in his soul's nest; and so very great is therefreshment of it and the strength of it that he comes back to hiswork a new man, and so silently and quickly done that no one else inthe room would ever know he had been there: it is a secret betweenhis Lord and himself. 

But the person who learns to do this does not remain the same rawuncivilised creature that once he or she was: but slowly mustbecome quite changed; all tastes must alter, (all capacities willincrease in an extraordinary manner), and all thoughts of heart andmind must become acceptable and pleasant to God. 

The man who has not yet begun to seek God--that is to say, has noteven commenced to try and learn how to live spiritually, but livesabsorbed entirely in the things of the flesh--is a spiritual savage. Towatch such a man and his ways and his tastes is to the spiritual manthe same thing as when a European watches an African in his nativehaunts, notes his beads, his frightful tastes in decorations, foods, amusements, habits, and habitations, and, comparing them with hisown ways, says instantly that man is a savage. This proud Europeandoes not pause to consider that he himself may be inwardly what thesavage is--quite dark; that to God's eyes his own ways and tastes areas frightful as those of the African are to himself. What raises a manabove a savage is not the size of his dining-room, the cut of his coat, the luxuries of his house, the learned books that adorn hisbookshelves, but that he should have begun to learn how to livespiritually: this is the only true civilising of the human animal. Untilit is commenced, his manners and his ways are nothing but a veneercovering the raw instincts of the natural man--instincts satisfiedmore carefully, more hiddenly, than those of the African, but alwaysthe same. There is little variety in the lusts of the flesh; they are allafter one pattern, each of its kind, follow one another in a circle, andare very limited. 

It is not the clay of our bodies fashioned by God which makes somecommon and some not. It is the independent and un-Godlikethoughts of our hearts and minds which can make of us common, and even savage, persons. The changing of these thoughts, theharmonising of them, and, finally, the total alteration of them, is thework in us of the Holy Spirit. By taking Christ into our hearts andmaking for Him there a living nest, we set that mighty force inmotion which shall eventually make for us a nest in the Living God. For Jesus Christ is able (but only with our own entire _willingness)_to make us not only acceptable to God, but delightful to Him, somuch so that even while we remain in the flesh He would seem notto be willing to endure having us always away from Him, but visitsus and dwells with us after His own marvellous fashion and catchesus up to Himself. 

To begin with, we must have a set purpose and _will_ towards God. In the whole spiritual advance it is first we who must make the effort, which God will then stabilise, and finally on our continuing tomaintain this effort He will bring it to complete fruition. Thus stepby step the spirit rises--first the effort, then the gift. First the willto do--and then the grace to do it with. Without the willing will Godgives no grace: without God's grace no will of Man can reachattainment. God's will and Man's will, God's love and Man's love--theseworking and joining harmoniously together raise Man up into EternalLife. 

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God is desirous of communicating Himself to us in a Personalmanner. In the Scriptures we have the foundation, the basis, thecause and reason of our Faith laid out before us; but He wills that wego beyond this basis, this reasoning of Faith into experience ofHimself. For this end, then, He fills us with the aching desire to findand know Him, to be filled with Him, to be comforted and consoledby Him, to discover His joys. He fills us with these desires in orderthat He may gratify us. 

By being willing to receive and understand as only through themedium of the _written_ word we limit God in His communicationswith us. For by the Holy Ghost He will communicate not by writtenword but by personal touching of love brought about for us by thetaking and enclosing of Jesus Christ within the heart not only as theWritten Word, the Promise and Hope of Scripture, but as the LivingGod. 

For this end inward meditation and pondering are a necessity. 

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How is it that we so often find great virtue, remarkable charity andpatience amongst persons who are yet not conscious of any directcontact with God? They have never known the pains of repentance, neither have they known the sublime joys of God. Are these theninety-and-nine just persons needing no repentance? Instinctively, and almost unconsciously, they hold to, and draw upon, theUniversal Christ--or Spirit of Righteousness; but they have not laidhold of nor taken into themselves that Spirit of the Personal Christ, whom Christians receive and know through Jesus. He is the Doorinto the unspeakable joys of God. What are these joys of God? Theyare varying degrees of the manifestation and experience of_reciprocal_ Divine Love. 

What is the true aim of spiritual endeavour--an attempt at personaland individual salvation? Yes, to commence with, but beyond that, and more fully, it is the attempt to comply with the exquisite Will ofGod; and the general and universal improving and raising of theconsciousness of the whole world. Yet this universal improvementmust take place in each individual spirit in an individual manner. There are those who would deny to individuality its rights, claimingthat the highest spirituality is the total cessation of all individuality;yet this would not appear to be God's view of the matter, for in themost supreme contacts of the soul with Himself He does not wipeout the consciousness of the soul's individual joy, but, on thecontrary, to an untenable extent He _increases_ it. And Jesus teachesus that life here is both the means and the process of the gradualconformation of the will of Man to the will of God, and our true"work" is the individual learning of this process. But this cultivationof our individuality must not be subverted to the purpose of the meregain of personal advantage, but because of the heartfelt wish toconform to the glorious will of God. The failure of the human will torun in conjunction with the Divine will is the cause, as we know, ofall sin. In the friction of these opposing wills, forces baneful to Manare generated. 

From its very earliest commencement in childhood our system ofeducation is based upon wrong ideas. With little or no regard toGod's plans Man lays out his own puny laws and ambitions andteaches them to his young. We are not taught that what we are herefor is above all and before all to arrive at a sense of personalconnection with God, to identify ourselves with the spiritual whilestill in the flesh. On the contrary, we are taught to grow shy, evenashamed, of the spiritual! and to regard the world as a placeprincipally or even solely in which to enjoy ourselves or make a"successful career. "

Children are taught to look eagerly and mainly for holidays and"parties"; grown men and women the same upon a larger and morefoolish scale, and always under the terribly mistaken belief that inspiritual things no great happiness is to be found, but only inmaterialism: yet very often we find the greatest unhappinessamongst the wealthiest people. 

Happiness! happiness! We see the great pursuit of it on every side, and no truer or more needful instinct has been given to Man, but hefails to use it in the way intended. This world is a Touchstone, aFinding-place for God. Whoever will obey the law of finding Godfrom this world instead of waiting to try and do it from the next, he, and he only, will ever grasp and take into himself that fugitivemysterious unseen Something which--not knowing what it is, yetfeeling that it exists--we have named Happiness. 

But how commence this formidable, this seemingly impossible taskof finding God in a world in which He is totally invisible? To the"natural" or animal Man God is as totally hidden and inaccessible asHe is to the beasts of the field; yet encased within his bosom lies thesoul which can be the means of drawing Man and God together in aglorious union. "I have known all this from my childhood, " we cry, "and the knowledge of it has not helped me one step upon my way. "

Then try again, and reverse your method, for hitherto you have beenbeseeching gifts from God, asking for gifts from Jesus, and have_forgotten to give. _ Give your love to Jesus, give _Him_ a home, instead of asking Him to give you one. Give your heart to God, _setit upon Him. _

What is keeping you back? You are afraid of what it will entail; youare afraid of what God will demand of you; those words "Forsake all, and follow Me" fill you with something like terror. I cannot leavemy business, my children, my home, my luxuries, my games, mydresses, my friends! Neither need you but, knowing this initialagony of mind, Christ said it is easier for a camel to go through theeye of a needle (the name of an exceedingly narrow gate intoJerusalem) than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 

What does it mean to "set the heart" upon something? We say, "Ihave set my heart on going to see my son, " "I have set my heart ondoing so-and-so, " but this does not mean that in order to accomplishit we must wander homeless and lonely until the day of achievement. No; but we set our heart and mind upon eventually accomplishingthis wish, we shape all our plans towards it, we give it the first place. This is what God asks us to do; to give Him the first place. We neednot go to Him in rags: David and Solomon were immensely wealthy, Job was a rich man; but we must eventually think more of Him thanwe do of our dress, more of Him than we do of our business, moreof Him than we do of lover, friend, or child. Many well-mindedpeople are under the impression that such love for an Invisible Beingis a total impossibility. Yet the great commandment stands writtenall across the face of the heavens--"Thou shalt love Me with all thyheart and mind and soul and strength. " Are we then to suppose thatGod asks the impossible of His own creatures, that He mocks us?No; for when we desire He sends the capacity, and day by day sendsus the power to reach this love through Jesus Christ. There isincluded in the words "Give us this day our daily bread, " the breadof the soul, which is Love. 

Divine Love commences in us in a very small way, as a very feebleflicker, for we are very feeble and small creatures. But God takes thewill for the deed, and the day comes when suddenly we are filledwith true love, as a gift. This is indeed the second baptism, thebaptism of fire, the baptism of the Holy Ghost; then at last the greatwall which has hitherto divided our consciousness from God goesdown in its entirety, never again to rise up and divide us. This is themighty work of Jesus Christ. 

Though this is not our work, still we have had the earnest will, thelonging desire; we have made continually, perseveringly, our tiny, often futile, efforts to please and place Him first, and though perhapsalmost all were failures, He has counted every one to us forrighteousness. 

We may at all times be asking ourselves, "But how shall I know thewill of God, how shall I please Him, how shall I know what Christwould wish me to do or to think?" There is one test more sure thanany other, which is to ask oneself, "Would Jesus have donejust this?" and the answer will come from the inward of usinstantaneously. But before we can use this test we must have madea careful study of Scripture and also have begun the habit of inwardpersonal intimacy with Jesus Himself. So immense is the bounty ofGod to the creature that truly and persistently wills and endeavoursto please Him, so great are the rewards of that creature for its tinywork that it is as though a child should scratch bare ground with itslittle spade and reap a harvest of sweet flowers as magic gifts. In thisway it is that we find actually fulfilled in ourselves the lovely wordsof the prophet, "the desert shall blossom like the rose. "

The great initial difficulty that surely most of us feel is how to comeinto personal contact with this Jesus Christ, and to know which arethe first steps that we should take to bring about this contact. Theyare just those same steps that we use to come to a nearerunderstanding of and greater intimacy with any persons we aredesirous of making friends with. We commence by thinking aboutthem, by arranging to spend time in their companionship; and themore we think about them and the more time we spend with them ifthey are very attractive people, the more we feel in sympathy withthem. Form, then, the habit of making for brief instants a mentalpicture of the Saviour. Note the exquisite tenderness of His hands, so instantly ready to save and heal; note the calm strength and thegreat love in His countenance, walk beside Him down the street, joinHis daily life, learn to become familiar with Him as Jesus--whatwould He do, how would He look, what would His thoughts be? Tofeel sympathetically towards a person is to take one of the mostimportant steps towards friendship. How many of us stop in the rushof our daily amusements, interests, and work to sympathise withChrist? Most probably, if we think of Christ at all, it is to feel thatHe ought to sympathise with us! Now Christ not only sympathiseswith but ardently loves us, and our failure to receive the comfort andhelp of this love is due to our failure in returning to Him these samefeelings of sympathy and love and friendship. We are not reciprocal, but perpetually ask and never give. 

It is only by returning love to Christ that we are able to receive thebenefits of His love for us. His mighty power and help flows aroundbut not through us until we place ourselves in individual and directcontact with Him, until we make that mysterious inward andspiritual connection with Him which can be achieved only through apersonal love for Him. 

Again and again we may cry out, "But how love the invisible?"Christ is invisible, but for all that, he is not unknown. We all of usknow Him. But we do not give ourselves time or opportunity toknow Him sufficiently well. What hours, months, years, we devoteto making and knowing our friends; yet a few moments a day aremore than enough for most of us to spend in becoming moreintimate with the only Friend whom it is worth our while to make. 

"But life is so busy I have no time, " you say. What of those hoursspent in the train, those moments spent waiting for an appointment, that half-hour taken for a rest, but which is not a rest because of therushing inharmonious turmoil of your thoughts? No one is so restfulto think of as Jesus. Every single quality that we most admire, trust, and love is to be found in Jesus Christ. The only reason of ourfailure to love Him more ardently than any human being we know isthat we do not think enough about Him. 

How much offended we should be if anyone dared to say to us, "You are not a Christian. " We all consider ourselves Christians as amatter of course; but why this certainty, what reason can we give?Many would say, "I keep the Commandments, and I am baptised inChrist's name. " But Christianity is not an act done by hands, it is alife, and the Jews keep the Commandments even more strictly thanwe and are not Christians. The mere fact of believing that Christonce lived and was crucified is not enough. The Jews and also theMahommedans believe that He lived and was crucified. 

What is then necessary? That we believe that He is indeed the Sonof God, the Messiah, the Saviour; for if He was no more than a holyman, by what means has He power to save us more than Moses haspower to save us?

The true inward knowledge that Christ is God comes not by natureto any man, but by gift of God--which gift must be earnestly sought, striven, prayed for, and desired: this faith is the very coming to Godby which we are saved. If we are not yet in this faith that JesusChrist is the Messiah, then we are neither Jew, Mahommedan, norChristian, but wanderers without a fold, and without a Shepherd;longing, and not yet comforted. 

How do we come by this joy of the personal loving of God, thisRomance of the Soul brought to sensible fruition whilst still in theflesh?

Is it a gift? Yes. Is it a gift because of some merit of goodness on ourpart beyond the goodness of other persons who are without it, though striving? No. Is it because of some work for God that we doin this world, charitable or social? No. Is it, then, nothing but anarbitrary favouritism on His part? No. Is it a sagacity or cleverness, a height of learning, a result of close study? No. 

It is simply and solely a certain and particular obedient attitude ofheart and mind towards God of the nature of a longing--giving, agrateful outgoing thinking towards Him, continually maintained, anda heart invitation to, and a receiving of Jesus Christ into ourselves. 

Our part is to maintain this obedient tender-waiting, giving andreceiving attitude under all the circumstances of daily life, andChrist with the Holy Ghost will then work the miracle in us. 

But so difficult is this attitude to maintain that we are totally unableto do it without another gift upon His part--Grace. The wholeprocess from first to last is gift upon gift, and that because first ofour belief and desire, and then of our continually remembering thatto receive these gifts we have a part to play which God will not dispensewith. For an illustration let us turn to the artist and his sitter. The sitter does not produce the work of art, but must maintain hisattitude: if he refuses to do this, the work of the artist is marred andeven altogether foiled. So with Christ and His Divine Art in bringingus to our Father--by not endeavouring to maintain our right attitudewe foil His work. God would seem to give us that which we seekand ask for, and no more. Great ecclesiastics, theologians, philosophers who sought and desired Him with the intelligence, seeking for knowledge, for pre-eminence of spiritual wisdom, werenot given as an addition to their learning this exquisite fire and balmof love. Those who desired of Christ the healing of the bodyreceived that, and we are not told they received anything further. Soalso with the woman at the well: "If thou hadst asked, " Christ said toher, "I would have given thee of the water of Life. " Without we askfor and receive this gift of Love we hang to God by Faith only. 

What is true religion, what is that religion by which we shall feel_wholly satisfied?_ It is to have Christ recognised, known, adored, and living in the soul. This is the New Life within us, this is the NewBirth. The first proofs of the power of this New Life in us is thevictory over all the lower passions, victory over the animal "thatonce was ourself"! A victory so complete that not only do we ceaseto desire those former things or be troubled by them but we nolonger "respond" to that which is base, even though we be broughtinto visual contact with such things as would formerly haveinevitably excited at least a passing response in us. Can any manfree himself in such a manner from his own nature? Common senseforbids us imagine it. It is then a Living Power within us, slowlytransforming us to higher levels, from the fleshly to the spiritual, andshaping us to meet the purity of God. And such is the tenderconsideration of this Power for our weakness that while we arelearning to give up these baser pleasures He teaches us the higherpleasures of the soul--we are not left comfortless. So in our earlierstages we may have many very wonderful ecstasies which later arealtogether dispensed with, and indeed are eventually not desired bythe soul, or even the more greedy heart and mind, which all now askand desire one favour only--to be on earth in continual fellowshipwith Christ Jesus and ever able to enter into the love of God. To bewithout this glorious power of entering Responsive Love of God, tobe cut off from this, is the great and only fear of the soul. This fear itis which holds the soul and the creature towards God both day andnight lest by the least forgetfulness or wrongful attitude they shouldlose Him or displease Him. 

All these changes no man can bring about for himself--they areaccomplished for him by the Holy Spirit; but this he can and _must_do for himself, invite Sweet Jesus into his heart and enthrone Himthere as Ruler. This once accomplished, that mysterious monitorwithin us commonly known as "Conscience" grows until it attains anexcessive sensitiveness which penetrates the minutest acts of lifeand the deepest recesses of heart and mind. It becomes inexorable, itdemands instant and complete obedience. Because of it relationswith other persons undergo a drastic change. Complete, instant, entire forgiveness for every offence is demanded, and at last even amomentary annoyance must be effaced; no matter how great thecause of annoyance, it must be effaced in the same instant as that inwhich it crosses the mind, for a single adverse thought eventuallyproves as injurious to the Spirit as a grain of sand is to the eyes. 

The petty human aims, the smallness of all our former standards, theinstinct for "retaliation" must all be overcome, laid upon one side--aslow task of much humiliation to the creature, revealing to it its ownsmallness and vanity and its own extraordinary ineffectiveness ofself-control, its puny powers over itself: nothing short of an absoluteself-conquest is aimed at and demanded by this inward monitor--theSoul. With what profound veneration for and recognition of thepower of God does the regenerated creature think of thosealterations in its own nature which, after long strivings, areeventually given it by God, and of those alterations not yet stabilisedbecause not yet gifts, but only on the way to perhaps becominggifts--that is to say, still only where the power of the creature itselfhas been able to raise them: for of these last it may invariably be saidthat to-day we may feel serene security and to-morrow fall and fail--andthis in the very meanest way!

We see on every side men and women who try to fill an emptiness, awanting that they feel within themselves, by every sort of meansexcept the only one which can ever be a permanent success. Womendevote themselves to lovers, husbands, children, dress, society, anddogs; men to business, ambition, the racecourse, folly, drink, games, and arts. Are any of these persons truly happy, truly satisfied in alltheir being? No, and they descend to old age surrounded by the dustof disillusionment. Lonely and soon forgotten by the hungrypleasure-seeking crowd, such persons pass from this world, and themost their friends have to say is that they have gone to a better one. But have they? For the mere fact of shedding the flesh does notbring us any nearer to God. On the contrary, the shedding of theflesh increases appallingly the difficulty of the soul in finding God. This world is the very place in which we can most easily andquickly get into communication with God. To think that the mere actof dying improves our character and takes us to heaven is a delusionof the Enemy--it is living here which can fit us and carry us toheaven; and we have no great distance to travel either, for heaven isa state of consciousness, and by entering that state of consciousnesswe become united and connected with such degrees of heaven as theflesh is able to bear, though these degrees fall infinitely short ofthose required by the soul: hence the fearful hungering and longingof the soul to depart from the flesh. If we do not find Christ whilstwe are here, when we cast off the flesh we enter a bewilderingvortex of a life of terrible intensity and great solitude. We are awareof nothing but Self, are tormented by Self with its foreverunsatisfied longings, and by the _impossibility of achieving anyother Self. _ In this intensity of self-tormenting loneliness the soulfeels to gyrate, and all that she knows of that which is outside of thisSelf is the sound of the rushing of invisible things, for she is blind. Without the light of this world and without the light of Christ. Thejoys of space are not open to her, only the dark and lonely horrors ofit: she is in an incalculably greater state of isolation from God thanhere in this world! The remedy for all this lies here; let no one thinkhe can afford to wait to find this remedy until after he leaves thisworld, for then his chance is gone, and who is able to foretell whenit will return? What can be more beautiful, more happy, than to findthis remedy, to find the only Being who loves us as much as we loveourselves! the gentle, tender, gracious, all-sufficing Christ; thatall-mighty ever-giving Christ who yearns over and longs for us--whatmadness is it that prevents us seeking Him?

All of us would seem to have two personalities: we are the repentantand the unrepentant Magdalene and daily change from one to theother. But true repentance cannot come before love: if we think werepent before we love, then it is no more than a repentance of themind, which says to itself, "I must stand well with God because ofmy future well-being. " Where love comes first we get the repentanceof the heart, which works this way in us--we love Jesus a little, welove Him more and more, and because of this love increasing to realwarmth we suddenly perceive the frightful offences we havecommitted against this sweet love, and instantly the heart melts andbreaks and we are shaken to our depths that we have ever grievedour Holy Lover. This is true repentance--no anxious fears for ourown future, but love grieving and agonised for its offences. Suchrepentance as this pierces to the deepest recesses of the heart andmind, and leaves upon them a deep indelible mark, changing all theaims of our life, and is the beginning of all joys in Christ Jesus. Letus aim therefore not first at repentance, but first at love. A little loveto Jesus given many times a day as we walk or wait or work, if onlyat first said by the lips with desire for more warmth, after a while weshall find ourselves giving it from the heart; then the Divine Seedhas begun to grow because we have watered it. 

If the natural man were asked, "What is life? what is it to live?" hewould reply, "It is to eat, drink, laugh, love, and have pleasure orpain: to hear, see, touch, taste and smell, and to be conscious that Ido all these things. " Yet this consciousness is but a tiny speck ofconsciousness, and some mysterious voice within the deeply-thinkingman tells him that this is so. But how uncover a furtherconsciousness? This is the secret of the soul. 

To pass from one form of consciousness to another--this is toincrease life fifty, a hundred, a thousand times according to thedegrees of consciousness we can attain. These degrees would seemto be irrevocably limited because of the mechanical actions of heartand breathing, which automatic actions become suspended orseriously interfered with in very high states of consciousness. Whenfirst these very great expansions of consciousness take place, thecreature is under strong conviction that the soul has left thebody--that it has gone upon some mysterious journey--this because ofseveral reasons. The first is because of a certain persistent sound ofrushing; the second is because of the sense of living at tremendousspeed, in a manner previously altogether unknown and totallyundreamed of, in which the senses of the body have no concernwhatever and are completely closed down; thirdly, on returningfrom this "journey" we are not immediately able to exact obediencefrom the body, which remains inert and stiffly cold and suffersdistress with too slow breathing. But reason demands, "How is itpossible that the soul should leave the body and the body not die?and also we perceive this, that, though the consciousness isprojected to an infinite distance, or includes that infinite distancewithin itself, it yet remains aware of the existence of the body, though very dimly. "

The method employed, then, for administering these experiences tothe soul and the creature is not by means of drawing the soul out ofthe body, but by a withdrawal of the condition of insulation fromDivine Life or great magnetic emanation, in which insulation allcreatures have their normal existence, living in a condition whichmay be termed a state of total Unawareness. By Will of God thiscondition of insulation is removed, the soul enters Connection andbecomes instantly and vividly aware of Spiritual Life and of thatwhich Is, at an infinite distance from herself, so that the soul is atone and the same time in paradise or heaven, and upon the earth:space is eaten up. Without seeing or hearing, the soul partakes in atremendous and unspeakable manner of the joys of God, which, allunfelt by us as "natural" man, pass unceasingly throughout theuniverse. 

These experiences give an immense and unshakable knowledge tothe soul and the creature of the immense reality of the Unseen Life, and are doubtless sent us to effect this knowledge. Why, then, is notevery man given this knowledge? Because the creature must qualifybefore being allowed to receive it, and too many hold back from thetests. By these experiences we learn some little portion of themystery which lies between the pettiness of that which we now areand the great glories that we shall come to; and in this awfulheavenly mystery in which are fires that have no flame, and melodywhich has no sound, the soul is drawn to Everlasting Love. But wecannot endure the bliss of it, and the soul prays to be covered onaccount of the creature. 

But because of the limitations of the flesh we are not to despise itbut regard it not as an aim or end (as that if we satisfy its lusts thatshall be our paradise), but regard it as a means. Christ willed theflesh and the world to be a rapid means of our return to God. Subduethe flesh without despising it, in humility and thankfulness. Sufferits trials and penalties not in dejection, rebellion, or hopelessness, but as a means to an end. "For everyone shall be salted with fire, "says Scripture; and can anything whatever be well forged or madewithout it be first melted and cleaned? So, then, for each hisGethsemane. As for Christ, so for Judas, who, not being able toendure, went out and hanged himself. Let our care, then, be tochoose that Gethsemane which shall open to us the gates of heavenand not hell. 

In our raw state we fear the Will of God, thinking it a path of thorns;but as Christ moulds and teaches us we grow to know the Will ofGod as a great Balm: to long to conform to it, joyfully to join it, tosink into it as into an immense security where we are safe from allills; and at last, no matter what temporary trials we endure, so greatdoes our love and confidence grow by _Grace_ of God upholdingour tiny efforts that, like Job, we cry to Him with absolute sincerityand confidence, "Though Thou slay me, yet will I trust Thee";having learnt it is not His Will to slay but to restore and purify andmake glad. Incessant work is the lot of the awakened and returningsoul, and justly so, for because of what folly and ingratitude did sheever leave God? A multiplicity of choices lie before her, and hergreat concern is which amongst all these possible decisions willprove the shortest path to God. These choices and decisions must bebrought down to the meanest details of everyday life. At first onawakening the soul would like nothing better than to forsake andcast away material things altogether, and is inclined to despise thebody. But Jesus teaches her that this is not pleasing: it is His Willthat she should continually lend assistance to the creature in itsweaknesses and uncertainties, not disdaining it but helping it. It isthe soul which maintains contact with the Divine Guide, and then inturn should guide the creature. As the Divine Guide condescends tothe soul, never despising her, so must the soul condescend to thecreature: acknowledging and understanding that nothing is too smallor humble for the soul to attend to and lead the creature to do in abeautiful and gentle manner. 

By these means the permeation of the natural world by the Divine iscarried out, and no act or fact of life can be considered tooinsignificant for the soul to attend to for the development of this aim. 

The more we become familiar with spiritual life the more weobserve the regularity of certain laws in it, and the more we findanalogies between these new and unmapped laws and the laws andforces already known to us in the visible world. Rightly expoundedby some scientific mind, these could bring the world of humanthought and aspirations straight into the arms of God. 

Science is the friend and not the enemy of religion. Science willlight up and illuminate the dark gaps. This world is a house fullywired for lighting: the wiring is perfect, the bulbs alone areincomplete; they give no light: it is the task of the soul to perfectthese human bulbs. 

The life of conscious connection with God is true living as far as wemay know it in the flesh, an enormous increase over the pettynormal life of the world or, more rightly, the petty and _lacking_ lifeof the world. For in this life of God-consciousness is an immensesanity and poise, a balance between soul and body and heart andmind never achieved in the "normal" or "natural" life. Therefore theGod-conscious life is not to be named an abnormal but the complete, full, and only truly normal life: a life in which both soul and creaturehave found their centre, and the whole being in all its parts isbrought to evenness, to harmony, to peace and a greatly magnifiedintelligence. If all men and women attained this state, this worldwould automatically become Paradise. In this true life living andfeeling alter their characteristics and surpass anything that can beimagined by the uninitiated mind. Now, though to convey some ideaof this condition of consciousness would seem to be impossible, stillthere are some types of persons to whom a little something of thecommencement of the larger life of the awakened soul might beconveyed before they themselves experience it. The lovers of nature, of music, of the beautiful and romantic, and of poetry: in the highestmoments reached by such they are aware of an indefinableSomething--an expansion, a going out towards, a longing--yearning, subtly composed of both joy and pain, which goes beyond the earth, beyond the music, beyond the poetry, beyond the beautiful into aNameless Bourne. At these moments they live with the soul: this isthe commencement of spirit-life. When the Nameless Bourne hasbecome to the soul that which It really is--God--and _He sends Hisresponses to her, _ then the soul knows the fullness of spiritual life aswe may know it in the flesh. 

But she can neither know the Nameless Bourne as God nor receiveHis responses till the heart and the mind have come to repentance oftheir ways and have been changed at least in part. Without this modeof living no one can be said to live in a full or whole manner, because nothing is whole which does not include the consciousnessof God, and this in a lively and acute degree. 

One of our great difficulties is that when, as the merelyhalf-repentant creature, we turn to God and, beginning to ask favours ofHim, get no response, then all our warm feelings and longingstowards Him fall back, we go into a state either of profounderunbelief (which is further separation) or into total apathy. Apathy isa deadly thing. The more God loves us the more He will do His partto keep us from it. All the circumstances of life will be used to thisend. We may lose our nearest and dearest. If it is material prosperitythat causes a too complete content to live without Him, then some orall of that prosperity will be removed. In whatever spot we are mosttender--there He will touch us. "Oh, if it had been anyone else oranything less that we had lost, then it would not have been so hard tobear, " we say. Exactly. For nothing less would have been of any use, and alas! even this may be of no use, for Christ is ever willing andtrying to save us, and we will not be saved. 

If we do not get out of this apathy, we shall miss the whole reason ofour life here. By these living thrusts He brings us to our knees, humbled, humiliated, anguished, in order that, having awakened andpurified us, He may lift us into His Divine consolations. 

We cannot in one step mount up out of our faithless indifferentwrongful condition into the glories of the knowledge of God. Firstwe must learn to know Jesus, intimately, devotedly. Then Jesus theChrist: then the Father. Finally God the Holy Trinity, once foundand known by us, becomes our All, and by some unspeakablecondescension He becomes to us all things in all ways. The soul isfilled with romantic and divine love, and instantly God is her HolyLover: she is sad, weary, or afraid, and immediately she turns toHim He comforts and mothers her: she is filled with adoring filiallove, and at once He is her Father. Oh, the wonders of the fullness ofthe finding and knowing of God!

Let the man who would know happiness here study the works ofGod, and not think he will gain virtue by putting everything that hesees here upon one side, saying it is not real or it is not good. It isvery real of its own kind, and good also if he learns how to use it, and very marvellous. Let him study how things are made--God'sthings, not trivial man-made things--let him observe how all aremade with equal care, the humblest and the proudest, "the tiny violetperfect as the oak. " Let him learn the manner of the ways of lightand the colours of all that he sees, [*] and then stop to consider how, having made all these marvels, God then fashioned his own delicateeyes that he might see and know and enjoy them all. To consider allthese things, accepting them from God with love, makes the heartand the mind and the soul dance and sing together not with noise butlike sunshine upon water. 

[*] _Scientific Ideas of To-day, _ by C. Gibson. 

What is Nature but the demonstration in visible objects of aninvisible Will? This Will we need to trace to its Source; having donethis, we are able to praise and bless God for every single thing ofbeauty He has fashioned here: and this praising and blessing of Godbecomes nothing less than a continual ecstasy for both soul andcreature, and, indeed, because of this and by means of this burningappreciation of God's works, both soul and creature find theirsweetest consolations as they wait to be taken to a holier world. 

When they both bless God with the fire of their love for every tenderthing that He has made, then their days become to them one longdelight. 

This blessing of God and His works is not just a blessing with lips, but feels this way. The words being said by the heart, a burningspark of enthusiasm is immediately kindled there, which spark setslight to a spark in the soul; and this invisible fire joining anotherInvisible Fire, instantly in immense exaltation we enter the joys ofGod. But because of our flesh we cannot stay but only enter andcome back. 

We are made to love and adore God, but the mode of entry into thisis not by beseeching God to come down and love us, but by constantendeavour to enter up into _His_ estate, to offer _Him_ love: thisenthusiasm for God brings about a mysterious accomplishment of allneeds, desires, joys. 

We are made to love and adore God, and because of this withoutHim we are an Emptiness, a Great Want. Such is the lovely andperfect reciprocity of love that as this Great Want we are thepleasure and the joy of the All-Giving God. And He is theAll-Giving that He may rejoice and fill our extremity of Want. So weare each to each that which each most desires. This is Divine Love. 

Do not let us imagine that by making very much of earthly loves weshall by that obtain the heavenly: on the contrary, love of creatures, and too much turning to and thinking of and depending uponcreatures, is a sure manner of hindering us _till_ we have learnt tounite with Divine Love. This love for creatures is often for the heartand soul what treacle is to the wings of a fly! Do not be content withcreatures, but seek beyond the creaturely for the heavenly. 

This is not to say that we are not to love our fellow-creatures, attendto them, wait upon them, bear with them, and work for them; butwhilst doing all these we are not to make them the object of our life:we are not to think that by merely running about amongst creaturesfrenzied with plans for their social improvement and comfort thenearer we are necessarily getting to God, or even truly pleasing Him. All these multiplicities of frenzied interests are best centred upon thefinding and knowing and loving of Jesus Christ within our ownhearts. When this finding, knowing, loving and believing has beenaccomplished, then we shall have accomplished the only work Godasks us to accomplish, and all other works will automatically, peacefully, and smoothly come to their proper fruition in us throughHim. 

Neither imagine we shall do this finding of Jesus in, or because of, another person. We shall not find Him in another person oranywhere till we have first found Him in ourselves: and this byinward pondering, delicate tender thinkings, loving comparisons, sweet enthusiasms, persistent endeavours to imitate His gentle waysand manners as being some proof of our desire to love and find Him. The need which is the most pressing of all our needs is to find thatLight which will light us when we have to go out from the light ofthis world into the awful solitudes of that which we often so lightlyand confidently speak of as "the other world. "

Without Christ we go out into a fearful loneliness: with Christ wewalk the rainbow paths of Paradise. 

* * *

Having tasted the blissful wonders of God, nothing less than GodHimself can satisfy, comfort, or fill either the soul, heart, or mind;and yet we are still in a too small and imperfect condition to endurethe power and strength of God's bliss for more than brief spells, sothat after coming to these high things our portion here is to learn tobe a useful willing servant, carrying with as cheerful a face as we areable the burden of life in the flesh, and endure this waiting to bewith Christ free of the flesh. 

What are these blisses of God? They are contact with animmeasurable Ardour, they are our ardour meeting the Fountain ofall Ardours: and God is communicated to us by a magnetism whichin its higher degrees becomes luminous and unbearable. 

Are these divine joys and comforts of God towards us because weare more loved by God, because our salvation is more sure than thatof those who are without these comforts? Most emphatically no. It isbecause we obey a particular and subtle law of giving to God, anddo not (as is more natural to us) content ourselves with merelybelieving, expecting, and hoping to receive _from_ God. 

Let us pray more frequently than we do: "My Lord, increase myfaith, increase my love, and increase my understanding of how touse this faith and this love when they have been begotten in me. "

* * *

On every side we hear complaints against the Church. It is suggestedthat we are falling away from God because of some lack in theChurch. But this fault of the Church is exactly the same fault whichis to be found in the members of the congregation which compose it--atepid love for a dimly known Lord. When the priest and everymember of the congregation in his own heart worships the belovedChrist, then the Church will be found to have gained just that whichis now lacking, and which we attribute to some priestly failure andnot our own also. 

Of Church ceremonials it is hard to speak, for the lover of God canhave no eyes for them: he is all heart, but sees it this way--that setrules, regulations, and ceremonials in prayers and worship are mostright and proper for the creature publicly worshipping its Creator. That the assembling together in church is the outward and visibleacknowledgment of the creature's worship of God and also a lookingfor the fulfilling of the promise "where two or three are gatheredtogether in My name. " The redeemed creature worships veryardently with all its little heart and mind and all its tiny strength, learning in its own self the words of David: "I was glad when theysaid unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord. " But the soulcannot worship in set words, neither can she have need or use for theceremonials invented by and for the creature, but worships God inanother manner altogether, as she is taught by the Holy Spirit, and inthe greatness of her worship mounts to God, and closes with God. For holy love cannot long be divided. 

Often when the creature is alone, and eating, its Lord will visit it, causing the soul and the mind and the heart of it to cry out: "But ofwhat use to me is this meat and drink which is before me? I have noneed of it, I can do nothing other than sip of the holy beauty of myLord. " And immediately we are so pressed the earthly cup must beset down, and in very great ecstasy we sup in spirit with the Lord. The unnameable Elixir of God is the Wine, and Love is the Bread. 

When holy love grows great in us we wonder that we ever thoughtthat human love was love at all, for no matter how great it may oncehave seemed it now seems so small it is no greater than thehumming of a bee around a flower in summer time. But holylove--who can commence to describe it? It rides upon great wings, itburns like a devouring fire, it makes nothing of Space and comes beforeHim like the lightnings, saying, "Here am I, " and, gathering allthings, all loves into itself, pours them out at the feet of God. 

By baptism we are named and called for election by the Church. Through personal and individual repentance and connection by faithand love with Christ we _enter_ election by baptism of the HolySpirit. By the mere following of rituals, doctrines, dogmas, ceremonies, we are in great danger of introducing the mind of thePharisee with his reliance as means of salvation upon the washing ofhands and cups, and except we exceed this righteousness we do notenter the Kingdom. Or the mind of the lawyer, which type of mindseeks obstinately, forcefully, to mould the secrets of the soul'scommunion with God and fix them upon cold documents where theyquickly cease to have life. 

* * *

Above the fretful and contentious human reason is the intelligenceof the soul, and this soul has in itself a higher part for we becomeacutely aware of it--that part of it with which we come incontact with God, with which we respond to God, receive Hismanifestations, are laid bare to His blisses. Separated from worldlythings by an impalpable veil, it rests above all such things in serenecalm, and, strangest of all, has no comprehension whatever of sin:when we enter this part of the soul and live with it sin and evilbecome not only non-existent but unthinkable, unimaginable: we aretotally removed from any such order of existence. It communicatesits knowledge to the lower part of the soul, the soul to the Reason, the Reason to the rest of the creature. 

We say we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and in saying thiswe think of the body, but far more wonderful is the making of thespiritual of us. O man, climb out of the gross materialism of thyfleshly self, for thou canst do it! As out of the heavy earth come thedelicate flowers of spring, so out of the heavy body, because of _thatdivine_ which is within it, come the marvellous flowers of the soul. 

To think that we can come to God and know Him by means of ourintelligence or reason is as unwise as to suppose we can eat ourdinner with our feet; it is as necessary to use our teeth to eat ourfood as it is to use our heart to find God, and it is nothing but thenatural vanity of the human mind which blinds us to this fact. Thehuman reason is too small to stand the greatness of God, and could itever reach to Him would be withered in the awfulness of Hismagnetic light. Even the soul in her contacts with God whilst still inthe flesh is of necessity totally blind, and yet, blind as she is, ispierced by this terrible intensity of light and energy. How then shallthe reason stand naked before God without madness or frenzy? Toreason out upon paper where God is, why He is, what He is, andhow precisely He is to be discovered, will take us no further up intothe mysteries of the actual knowing of the wonders of His love thanthe ink and paper we employ might do. To know this love in ourown heart is the necessity, for the soul and the heart live hand inhand as it were and together can find and know God. God oncefound by the heart, we can dwell upon Him with our reason, andfeed our reason with the knowledge we have acquired of Himthrough the heart and soul. 

The Holy Ghost aids us in this deep search, quickens us, gives usimpulses. At first in our natural state we are able only in a very dimway to perceive these impulses, but we can become so sensitive toGod that He pierces us, brings us to the ground with a breath, andwe bend and yield before His lightest wish as a reed bends andquivers to the wind. 

When the heart and soul are greatly set upon God and we havebecome true lovers of God, there comes a danger of falling into sodeep a pining for God that the health both of the mind and of thebody is weakened by it. We should aim at cheerful and willingwaiting: anything else is a falling short; if we examine into it, weshall see that pining savours of unwillingness and discontent--thereis in it something of the spirit of the servant who designs to givenotice of leaving. The lover of God is the most blest of all creaturesand should show himself serenely glad, waiting with patience, knowing as he does from his own experiences that who has God fora Lover has no need of any other. 

_Of how to receive from God, and of the Blessed Sacrament_

Nothing is of a deeper mystery or difficulty or disappointment to thesoul and the heart well advanced in the experience and in the love ofGod than to find that in the ceremony of the Blessed Sacrament it ispossible for them to be less sensible of receiving from God than atany time. How and why can this be? is it the Ceremonial causing themind to be too much alert to guide the body now to rise, now tokneel, now to move in some direction? Is it this distraction whichprevents perception--for in all communion with God the mind isclosed down, the heart and soul only being in operation? On theother hand, it is easily possible to be in closest communion with Godin all the noises and distractions of a great railway station amongst acrowd of shifting persons. No, it is some imperfection in the attitudeadopted by the heart and mind in approaching this Sacrament. Inwhat way have we perhaps been approaching it? In an attitude ofawe accompanied by a humble expectancy or hope of receiving. Wehope and believe we shall receive God's grace. Now, theexperienced soul and heart know so well what it is and how it feelsto receive God's grace that they are all the more disappointed at notreceiving it upon this holy occasion. What were our Lord's words?He said, "Do this in remembrance of Me, " or more correctlytranslated, "Do or offer this as a memorial of Me before God. " Thisimplies an act of giving upon our part, whereas we have come toregard this ceremony as an act of receiving. 

Now though the attitude of humble expectancy to receive is of itselfa worthy one it does not fulfil the exact command, which is tocommemorate, offer, and hold up before God the Perfect Love andSacrifice of our Saviour, as a living memorial of Him before God. Itshould be accompanied by an offering of great love and thanks uponour part without regard to anything we may receive. But becausefirst we give we then receive. 

About nothing are we in such a state of ignorance as about the lawswhich govern the give and take between God and Man. On the onehand is God the All-Giving, longing to bestow, and upon the other isMan the all-needing, aching to receive, and between them animpasse. Failure to fulfil God's laws is the cause of this impasse. There is both a law of like to like, and a law of like to opposite. Wecannot know God without in some small degree first being like God, and to be like God we must not only be pure in heart but alsoconform to the God-like condition of giving. First we obey this lawthat the second may come into effect--that of like to opposite, orpositive to negative, the All-Giving immediately meeting and fillingthe all-needing. We have nothing to give to God but our love, thanks, and obedience; but of these it is possible to give endlessly, and themore we give the more God-like do we become, and the moreGod-like the higher and further do we enter into the great riches andblisses of God. Therefore the more we give to God the more wereceive. 

On going to partake of the Blessed Sacrament we do well to banishfrom the heart and mind all thought of what it may please God tostill further give us and to make an offering _to_ God. The only waywe can make an offering to God is upon the wings of love, and uponthis love we hold up before Him the bread and wine as the Body andBlood of our Redeemer, repeating and repeating in our heart, "I eatand drink This as a memorial before Thee of the Perfect Love andSacrifice of Jesus Christ. " When we so do with _great_ love in ourheart we find that we are able sensibly to receive great grace. 

_Of Prayer_

Of the many kinds and degrees of prayer first perhaps we learn theprayer of the lips, then that of the mind, then the prayer of the heart, and finally the prayer of the soul--prayer of a totally different modeand order, prayer of a strange incalculably great magnetic power, prayer which enables us to count on help from God as upon anabsolute and immediate certainty. 

We find this about perfect prayer that it is not done as from acreature beseeching a Creator at an immense distance, but is done asa love-flash which, eating up all distance, is immediately before andwith the Creator and is accompanied by vivid certainty at the heart;this latter is active faith; we have too much perhaps of that kind offaith which may be named waiting or passive faith. 

This combination of love with active faith instantly opens to usGod's help. We may or may not receive this in the form anticipatedby the creature, but later perceive that we have received it in exactlythat form which would most lastingly benefit us. 

After a while we cease almost altogether from petitioning anythingfor ourselves, having this one desire only: that by opening ourselvesto God by means of offering Him great love, we receive Himself. 

_Of Contemplation_

To enter the contemplation of God is not absence of will, norlaziness of will, but great energy of will because of, and for, love: inwhich love-condition the energy of the soul will be laid bare to theenergy of God, the two energies for the time being becoming closelyunited or oned, in which state the soul-will or energy is wholly liftedinto the glorious God-Energy, and a state of unspeakable bliss andan _immensity_ of _living_ is immediately entered and shared bythe soul. Bliss, ecstasy, rapture, all are energy, and according as thesoul is exposed to lesser or greater degrees of this energy, so sheenters lesser or greater degrees of raptures. 

It is misleading in these states of ecstasy to say that the soul hasvision, if by vision is to be understood anything that has to do withconcrete forms or any kind of sight; for the soul is totally blind. Butshe makes no account of this blindness and has her fill of all blissand of the knowledge of another manner of living without any needwhatever of sight. Has the wind eyes or feet? yet it possesses theearth and is not prevented. So the soul, without eyes and withouthands, possesses God. 

Contact with God is then of the nature of the Infusion of Energy. The infusions of this energy may take the form of causing us to havean acute intense perception and consciousness (but not such form ofperception as would permit us to say "I saw, " but a magnetic inwardcognisance, a fire of knowledge which scintillates about the soul andpierces her) of His perfections; of His tenderness, His sweetness, His holiness, His beauty. When either of these last two are madeknown to her, the soul passes into what can only be named as anagony of bliss, insupportable even to the soul for more than a verybrief time, and because of the fearful stress of it the soul draws awayand prays to be covered from the unbearable happiness of it, thisbeing granted her whether automatically (that is to say, because ofspiritual law) or whether by direct and merciful will of God--who isable to tell?

Such experiences are not for the timid, but require steady courageand perfect loving trust in God. 

Contemplation even in its highest forms is not to be confused withspiritual "experiences, " which are totally apart from anything elsethat we may know in life--they are entirely outside of our volition, they are not to be prayed for, they are not to be even secretly desired, but to be accepted how and when and if God so chooses. 

In contemplation the will is used, and we are not able to come to itwithout the will is penetratingly used towards the joining andmeeting with the will and love of God. In the purely spiritual"experience" from first to last there is no will but an absence of will, a total submission and yielding to God, without questioning, withoutfear, without curiosity, and the only will used is to keep ourselves inwillingness to submit to whatever He shall choose to expose us to. God does not open to us such experiences in order to gratifycuriosity--but expecting that we shall learn and profit by them. Firstwe find them an immense and unforgettable assurance of anotherform of living, of great intensity, at white heat, natural to a part of uswith which we have hitherto been unfamiliar (the soul) but inimicalto the body, which suffers grievously whilst the soul glows withmarvellous vitality and joy. 

This assurance of another manner of living, though we see nothingwith the eyes, is the opening of another world to us. The invisiblebecomes real, faith becomes transformed in knowledge. If thehundred wisest men of the world should all prove upon paper thatthe spiritual life as a separate and other life from the physical lifedoes not exist, it would cause nothing but a smile of compassion tothe creature that had experience. God teaches us by these means tobecome balanced, poised, and a complete human being, combiningin one personality or consciousness the Spiritual and the Material. 

But we are not given and shown these mysteries without paying aprice: we must learn to live in extraordinary lowliness and lonelinessof spirit. The interests, enjoyments, pastimes of ordinary life dry upand wither away. It becomes in vain that we seek to satisfy ourselvesin any occupation, in anything, in any persons, for God wills to havethe whole of us. When He wills to be sensibly with us, all Spaceitself feels scarcely able to contain our riches and our happiness. When He wills to disconnect us from this nearness, there is nothingin all the universe so poor, so destitute, so sad, so lonely as ourself. And there is no earthly thing can beguile or console us, because, having tasted of God, it is impossible to be satisfied or consoledsave inwardly by God Himself. But He opens up Nature to us in amarvellous way, unbelievable until experienced. He offers us Natureas a sop to stay our tears. By means of Nature He even in absencecaresses the soul and the creature, speaks to them fondly, encourages and draws them after Him, sending acute and wonderfulperceptions to them, so that, quite consoled, they cry aloud to Himwith happiness. And often when the creature is alone and securefrom being observed by anyone He will open His glamour to thesoul and she passes into union with paradise and even more--highheaven itself. These are angels' delights which He lavishes upon theprodigal. 

Another heavy price to be paid is found by the soul and heart andmind in the return from the blissful and perfect calm whichsurrounds even the lowest degree of the contemplation of God to theturmoil of the world. For to have been lifted into this new conditionof living, this glamour, this crystal joy, to know such heights, suchimmensities, and to descend from God's blisses to live the everydaylife of this world and accept its pettiness is a great pain, in whichpain we are of necessity not understood by fellow-creatures;therefore the more and the more we become pressed into that greatloneliness which is the inevitable portion of the true lover, andexperience the pain of those prolonged spiritual conflicts in whichthe soul learns to bend and submit to the petty sordidness of life in aworld which has forgotten God. It is the lack of courage andendurance to perpetually weather these dreadful storms whichcauses us to turn to seclusion--the cloister. To refrain from doingthis and to remain in the world though not of it is the sacrifice of theloving soul--she has but the one to make--to leave the delights ofGod, and for the sake of being a useful servant to Jesus to pick upthe daily life in the world; which sacrifice is in direct contrariety tothe sacrifice of the creature, which counts its sacrifices as a givingup of the things of the world. So by opposites they may come to onesimilarity--perfection. How to conduct itself in all these difficultways so foreign to its own earthly nature is a hard problem for thecreature, belonging so intimately to this world which it can touchand see: and yet which it is asked by God bravely to climb out ofinto the unknown and the unseen. Bewildered by the enormousdemands of the soul which can never rest in any happiness withoutshe is contemplating God, adoring Him, conversing with Him, blessing and worshipping Him, the poor creature is often bewilderedto know how to conduct the ordinary affairs and duties of life undersuch pressures. Of its emotions, of the tears that it sheds, of the fallsthat it takes, a library of books might be written. In the splendour, the grandeur, the great magnitudes and expanses of spirit life asmade known to it by the soul, the creature feels like some poorbeggar child, ill-mannered, ill-clothed, which by strange fortunefinds itself invited to the house of a mighty king, and, dumb withhumility and admiration, is at a loss to understand the condescensionof this mighty lord. In this sense of very great unworthiness lies aprofound pain, an agony. To cure this pain we must turn the heart togive love, to think love, and immediately we think of this greatcondescension as being for love's sake--as love seeking for love--weare consoled. Then all is well, all is joyful, all is divine. The moresimple, childlike, and unpretentious we can be, the more easily weshall win our way through. Pretentiousness or arrogance in Man cannever be anything but ridiculous, and a sense of humour shouldalone be sufficient to save us from such error. For the same reason itis impossible to regard human ceremonies with any respect orseriousness, for they are not childlike but childish. How often theheart and mind cry out to Him, "O mighty God, I am mean andfoolish--mean in that which I have created by my vain imaginings, my pride, my covetousness; but in that which Thou hast made me Iam wonderful and lovely--a thing that can fly to and fro day or nightto Thy hand!"

The difficulties of the creature should not be raised on someself-glorifying pinnacle merely because the fickle variable heart at lastslearns the exercise of Fidelity. Do we not see a very ordinary dogpractising this same fidelity as he waits, so eager that he trembles, outside his master's door, having put on one side every desire savehis desire to his master whom, not seeing, he continues to await; andthis out of the generosity of his heart! And we? Only by greatdifficulty, long endeavour, bitter schooling, and having at lastaccomplished it we name each other saints or saintly. Let us thinksoberly about these things; are we then so much less than a dog thatwe also cannot accomplish this fidelity--so that though hands andfeet go about daily duties the heart and mind are fixed on the Master?Then the Master becomes the Beloved. 

_Of Blessing God_

At first when the creature is being taught to bless God it shrinksback in a fright, crying, "What am I that I should dare to blessAlmighty God, I am afraid to do it; I am too unworthy; let me waittill I am more righteous, till I have done more works. " Then thedivine soul counsels it so: "Think no more about thyself, moaningand groaning over thine unworthiness and trusting to progress inworks. Cease thinking of thyself, and rise up and think only of God. Thou wilt never be worthy, and all thy works are nothing and thylearning of no count whatever; and as to thy righteousness, is it notwritten that it is as filthy rags? All that God will give thee is not forany merits or works of thine, but for Love's sake. He desires both togive thee love and to receive thy love, therefore rise and worshipHim, give Him all the love that thou hast; keep none back either forthyself, or anything or any creature, but give all that thou hast toHim with tears and songs and gladness. " Timidly the creature obeys, and with all its powers and strength it blesses God, andinstantanteously God blesses the creature, sending His sweetnessand His glamour about it: and the more the soul and the creaturebless God the more does He bless them, and they bless Him fromthe bed of sickness and pain as fully as they bless Him in health. They bless Him in the night-time and in the noonday, they blessHim as they walk, they bless Him as they work, and because of thislittle bit of blessing and love that the two of them offer to God Heoffers them all heaven in Himself. 

It is the duty of the soul to constantly lend counsel, courage, help, advice, and strength to the creature, and we are conscious of thevoice of the soul, which without any sound yet makes itself inwardlyheard, calling to the selfishness, the egoism of the creature, urgingthe higher part of it to come higher and the animal in it to becomepure and to subdue itself, saying to it, "Lie down and be quiet, orthou wilt bring disaster to us both. " "I cannot be quiet, for I couldgroan with my restless distress. " "Cease to think of thyself with thyroarings and groanings. Lay hold of love which thinks nothing ofitself but always of that which it may give to the Beloved. " "I cannotdo this; I am no angel nor even a saint, but a most ordinary creature, forsaken of God and miserable. " "Thou art never forsaken, but thydoor is closed: it opens from thy side, and thou art thyself standingacross it and blocking the opening of it--I will show thee how toopen it, cry and moan no more for favours and gifts, but do thouthyself do the giving. Since thou dost not know at all how to begin--doit with these set words: 'I love and praise Thee, I love and blessand thank Thee, I love and bless and worship Thee'; and see thou doit with all thy heart and mind and strength and with no thought ofthyself and future benefits, but entirely that thou mayest give Himpleasure. " Then the creature tries, but fails lamentably, for most ofits heart and mind is on itself and a fraction only on God. 

"Now try again and again and again, " cries the soul, "O thoumiserable halfhearted shallow worldling!" And the creature triesagain, and, doing better, gets a very slight warmth about the heart;and, doing it again, gets a little comfort, and so, graduallyprogressing in the way of true love which is all giving, at last oneday the creature does it perfectly because it has altogether forgottenitself in the fire of its love and is completely set upon God. Thenautomatically the door opens, and immediately in through it thererushes the breath and the blisses of God. And the creature, weepingwith excess of happiness, cries, "I never asked for such delights, Idid not know such happiness was to be had; and if I did not ask, howis it that I have received?" Then the soul answers, "Because thouhast learnt to give to God, and that is the key which unlocks thegarden of His joys. Thou hast just three things which He desires tohave--thy love and thine obedience, and thy waiting fidelity. Whenthou dost conform to His desire with all thy tiny unadulteratedstrength, immediately heaven becomes open to thee and thou dostreceive more than thou didst ever dream or think to ask for. This isHis lovely Will towards thee. But first always do thy part, and untilthou doest thy part I cannot begin mine, for thou couldst receiveneither blessings nor blisses did I not receive them first from Himand hand them on to thee; so each are dependent the one on theother, and only together can we enter paradise. Think not I do notsuffer as much as thyself and far more. I know thou dost suffer withthy body and with the losses of thine earthly loves, but I suffer farmore with the loss of my Heavenly Love. At first I could notunderstand what had come to me, buried and choked in thy strangehouse of flesh. I despised thee, I hated thee, thy stupid ways, thydreadful greeds, thine unspeakable obstinacy and unwillingness;thou didst give me horrible sicknesses with thine unsavoury wants, thine undignified requirements. I thought thee foolish and now knowmyself to be more foolish than thee, for thou hardly knowest theheavenly love whereas I knew and left Him, seeking other loves. The Fall was not thy fault, poor human thing, but mine. I am theProdigal, and thou the means of my return, for if I can but raise theeto true adoration of our God, then I shall pay my debt of infidelity toHim and together as one glorious radiant spirit we shall enter heavenagain. 

"Only listen and I can guide thee, for the Master speaks to me andtells me what to do. I am partly that which thou dost please to callthy conscience, and thou dost treat me shockingly, buffeting andwounding me when I try to whisper to thee: if thou art not careful, thou wilt so disable me that all our chance of happiness will bespoiled. Do thou listen very tenderly for my voice, for I am ofgossamer and thou of strangely heavy clay. "

_Of Evil and Temptation and of Grace_

The heart and soul are subject to four principal glamours: theglamour of youth, the glamour of romance, the glamour of evil, andthe glamour of God. 

When once the Spirit of Love, which is God, descends into our soulthen a new light becomes created in us by which we see the glamourof evil in its true form and complexion. We see it as disease, misery, imprisonment, and death; and who finds it difficult to turn awayfrom such?

The natural man sees evil as an intense attraction, the spiritual manas a horror of ugliness. See then how the Spirit of Love is at onceand easily our Salvation. 

Amongst all mysteries none seems greater to us than the mystery ofEvil. God--Goodness--Love: these we understand. But evil--whenceand why, since God is Love, Omnipotence, and Holiness?

We cannot but observe that all things have their opposites: summerand winter, heat and cold, light and dark, silence and sound, pleasureand pain, life and death, action and repose, joy and sadness, illnessand health; and how shall we know or have true pleasure in the onewithout we have also knowledge of the opposite? The man who hasnever known sickness has neither true gratitude, understanding, norpleasure in his heart over his good health: he does not know thatwhich he possesses. Neither can we know the great glory that isHoliness till we have known evil and can contrast the two. 

"But what a price to pay for knowledge; what fearful risk and dangerto His creatures for God so to teach them!" we may cry, forgettingthat with God all things are possible, "Who is able and strong tosave. " And does He dare set Himself no difficult thing that He mayovercome it? The strong man's knowledge of his own courageforbids us think it. God wills to save us. We have but to join our willwith His, and we are saved. How shall we mount to God other thanby mounting upon that which offers a foundation of tangibleresistance, overcoming and mounting upon evil. Evil then becomesour stairway--the servant of Good. By using the evil that we meetwith day by day, we mount daily the nearer to God by that exactdegree of evil which we have overcome by good--that is to say, bypractice of forgiveness, compassion, patience, humility, endurance, held out over against the invitation of evil to do the exact opposite. A negligent, thieving, lying servant that we have to deal with callsforth forgiveness, and humility also, for are we a perfect servant toour Lord? The evil of a drunken husband may be used by the wife asa sure ladder to God, for because of this evil she may learn topractise all the virtues of the saints. Truly if we have the will to useit, Evil is friendly. If we misuse Evil--that is to say, if we do not useit by mounting on it but, intoxicated with its glamour, consent toit, --this is Sin, and immediately the stairway is not that of ascentbut of descent and death. 

The Master says "Resist not evil. " How are we to understand this butby assuming that if we try our strength against Evil, Evil is likely toovercome us? but on being confronted with Evil we should instantlyhold on to and join with the forces of Good and so have strengthquietly to continue side by side with Evil without being seduced byit. When Evil cannot seduce--that is to say, make us consent toit, --then for us it is conquered. When we give in or conform to thisseduction we generate Sin. Let us say that we are in temptation, thatEvil of some sort confronts and invites us; if we battle with thispresentment, this picture, this insinuating invitation held out beforeus by Evil, the act of contending with the invitation will fix it all themore firmly in our minds. We need to substitute another picture, another invitation, another presentment, of that which pertains to thegood and the beautiful. He who has learnt so to substitute andpresent before his own heart and mind Jesus and the pure andbeautiful invitations of this Divine Jesus can solve the difficulty. This is not contending, this is substituting; this is transferringallegiance from the glamour of Evil which is present with us, to theglamour of God, which, because we are in temptation, is not present, but is yet hoped and waited for. 

To return again to the lying, dishonest, and negligent servant. If weargue, contend, and battle morally with this evil servant we do notalter him, but by this contention generate antagonism. Then what isour own position? Bad temper, a disturbed heart, an inharmoniousangry mind; but if without contending we bear with and act gentlywith this evil, making careful comparisons with our own service toour own Lord, we learn patience, forgiveness, and humility also, forhave we never lied, have we never been dishonest, have we neverbeen negligent to this sweet Lord? Then immediately His patience, His forgiveness, His love are brought more intimately to ourconsciousness, and our heart nearer to His and His to ours. Is thisloss or gain? Is Evil then an enemy? No, a handmaid. So is Satanmade a servant to his Overlord, and his power crossed. 

Of all false things nothing is more false than the glamour of Evil, forwhen on being drawn into it we sin, instead of the hoped-for delightwe soon find satiety; instead of exhilaration, fatigue; instead ofcontentment, disillusion; instead of satisfaction, dust; instead ofromance, the greedy claws of the harpy; and the further we go inresponse to this glamour the more pitiable our outlook; for thesweets and possibilities of Evil are extraordinarily limited. Can anyman devise a new sin? No, but ever pursues the same old round, thesame pitiful circle. 

If we pursue the glamour of God, we find the exact opposite of allthese things. Spiritual delights know no satiety because of infinitevariety: they know no disease, no disillusionment, and who can set aboundary or limit to the beautiful, to love, and light, and God?

It is characteristic of temptation that while we are exposed to itChrist is absent from perception; for to perceive Christ wouldinstantly free us from all temptation (and often it is by temptationfaithfully borne that we mount). 

When we are in a condition of contact with Christ which is Hisgrace, we are raised above the stem of faith into the flowers ofknowledge; but for the true strengthening of the will it is necessarythat we live also on the harder and more difficult meat of faith. Sowe return again and again to that insulation from things heavenly inwhich we lived before we had been made Aware. When we emergefrom these dark periods we find ourselves to have advanced. Withregard to Grace we can neither truly receive nor benefit by it withoutour heart, mind, and soul are previously adjusted to Response to it. 

The regenerated creature is not exempt from further temptations, butcontrariwise the poignancy of these temptations is greatly increased(though of a quite different order of temptation to that known to usin an unregenerated state); it is increased in proportion to thedegrees of Grace vouchsafed to us. That is to say, temptation keepslevel with our utmost capacity of resistance yet never is allowed toexceed the bounds, for when it would exceed them a way out isfound by the return of Grace; and we are freed. The cause is thegreat root called Self, a hydra-headed growth of selfishness, bothmaterial and spiritual, sprouting in all directions. We would seem tobe here for ever enclosed as in a glass bottle with this most horridgrowth. Through the glass we see all life, but always and ever incompany with this voracious Self. No sooner do we lop off oneshoot of it than another grows--never was such strenuous gardeningas is required to keep this growth in check, and every time we lop ashoot we learn another pain. This is the long road to perfection, forthe Cross is "I" with a stroke through it. 

Who can describe the marvels, the variations, the mystery of Grace?It is a dew and an elixir, a balm and a fire, a destroyer of all fear andsorrow, a delight and an anguish, for we are martyred, pierced withlong arrows by the longing of the love that it calls forth. It is asweetness and a might, a glory and a power in which we are sensiblyaware we could walk through a furnace unscathed if He bade us todo it. And by it we are lifted in a crystal vase and enclosed in thePresence of God. 

* * *

As a man's desire is so is he. If our desire is entirely towards fleshlythings and joys and comforts, we are sensualists. If our desire is alltowards sport and horses, we are not above horses but rather belowthem, for the human animal is full of guile and the horse ofobedience and generosity. Nevertheless he is no goal for the humanto aim at. If we desire the beautiful, we become beautified andrefined. If we desire God, we become godly. 

* * *

It is characteristic of spiritual progress that each step is gainedthrough suffering, through penetrating faithful endeavours, throughgrievous incomprehensible turmoils and discords of the spirit, worked frequently by means of the everyday commonplace happeningsand responsibilities of our daily life; and finally as eachnew step is gained we are by Grace carried to it in a flood of divinehappiness to crown our woes. Grace is God's magnetic power actingdirectly and immediately upon us and is altogether independent ofplace, time, services, sacraments, or ceremonies. We limit God'scommunication with us in this way--that He is communicable to usonly in so far as we ourselves respond and are able, apt, and willingto receive Him. 

Is the condition of blessed nearness to God permanent? No, not as acondition but as a capacity only. We have need to perpetually renewthis condition by a positive active enthusiasm toward God. We canin laziness no more retain and use this condition as a permanencythan we can sleep one night and eat one meal and have these sufficefor our lifetime. But slowly, with work and with pain, we learnperpetually to regain this condition by that form of prayer which isthe spiritual breathing-in of the Spirit of Christ. 

All God's help, all God's comfortings are to be had by us by Grace. This Grace will constantly be withdrawn so that we may learn thatwe arrive at nothing by our own power but by gift of God, who isever willing to give to us provided we whole-heartedly respond. This Response to God is surely amongst the most difficult of ourachievements; unaided by Grace it is an impossibility, but we knowthat every man born into the world is invited by Christ to ask for andto receive this Grace. The effect of Response to God is a unity of ourtiny force to the Might-Presence and company of God as much aswe are able to bear it, producing in us while with us such wealth ofliving; and such happiness as passes all description. As we havecapacity to respond to God so we shall know that of God which isnot known by those as yet unlearned in response. For God, we know, is neither This nor That, but so infinitely more than anyparticularisation that we are able to know Him only and solelyaccording to our own capacity to receive Him. To one He is aPersonal Power that ravishes with might, whose awful magnetismdraws the very heart and soul in longing anguish from the body. Toanother He is the dimly known silent Manipulator of the Universe, the secret Ruler to whose mighty Will creation bows--becauseneeds must. To another He is yet even more remote, being theunresponsive, impersonal, incomprehensible, immovable Instigatorof all law. 

What is it in our religion that we need for a full happiness? Not theGod of our mere faith, nor the God of the theologian veiled behindgreat mysteries of book-learning. It is the Responsive God that welong for, and how shall we reach Him? There is one way only--throughthe taking of Jesus Christ firmly and faithfully into our ownheart and life. 

It is not what we now are, or where we now stand that matters, butwhat He has the power to bring us to. 

How is God-consciousness to be achieved--shall we do it by study, by reading? No--for the study or reading of it will do no more thanwhet the appetite for spiritual things--this is its work, --but can do nomore in giving us the actual possession of this joy than the study ofa menu can satisfy hunger. 

Individual, personal and inward possession is in all things ournecessity. If our friend has slept well it is no rest to us if we haveslept ill. Up to a given point in all things each for himself. It is thelaw. Of where this law ends or is superseded by the law of all for allonly the Holy Spirit can instruct us, and that inwardly and againeach to himself. This state of God-consciousness is a gift, and ourwork is to qualify for this gift by persistent ardent desire towardsGod continued through every adversity, through every lack ofsensible response on His part--a naked will and heart insisting uponGod. This state of God-consciousness once received and in fullvigour of life, there is without doubt about this condition a principleof active contagion, very noticeable, very remarkable. 

That "something" which would appear frequently to be needed bypersons anxious to come to God and unable to discover the mannerof achieving it, would seem to be supplied by this contagion, asthough a human spark were often wanted to ignite the spark inanother, which done, the Divine Fire springs up and rapidly growswithout further human assistance. 

We see this contagion as used in its full perfection by Jesus, for withall His selected followers He had but to come in momentary contactwith them, using a word or a look, and, instantly forsakingeverything, they followed Him. Was this selection of Hisfavouritism? No, they were prepared to receive this contagion, andnot one of them but had been secretly seeking for God; and thisperhaps for long years. 

To find this new life we need then not the reading of profound booksof learning, not the wisdom of the scholar, but an inward persistenceof the heart and will God-wards. This time of insistent waiting is tobe endured with all the more courage in that we do not know at whatblessed moment we may pierce the veil and the gift come in all itsglorious immensity. Ten years, twenty, thirty--what are such incomparison with the blisses that shall afterwards be ours for alleternity?

To look up by day or night into the vastness of the sky with itsendless depths, and as we do it burn with the consciousness of God, this is to truly live. No distance is too great, no space too wide. Allis our home. Without this burning consciousness of God, Space is athing of fear and Eternity not to be thought of. 

Of the many experiences and conditions of the soul returning to Godthere is a condition all too easily entered--that of an enervating, pulseless, seductive inertia. In this condition of inert but marvellouscontentment the soul would love to stay. This is spiritual sensuality, a spiritual back-water. The true life and energy of the soul are lulledto idleness: basking in happiness, the soul ceases to give andbecomes merely receptive. 

This condition is entered from many levels: we can rise to it (for it isvery high) from ordinary levels, branch sideways to it from highcontemplation; drop to it from the greatest contacts with God. Thiscondition seems strangely familiar to the soul. So much so that shequestions herself. Was it from this I started on my wanderings fromGod? The true health of the soul when in the blisses of God is to bein a state of intense living or activity. She is then in perfectconnection with the Divine Energy. She is then in a state of animmense and boundless radiantly joyful Life. 

To find God is to have the scope of all our senses increased, but it iseasily to be understood that our power of suffering increases also, because we are, as it were, flayed and laid bare to everything alike. But it increases our joys to so great a degree that for the first time inlife joy is greater than pain, happiness is greater than sorrow, knowledge is greater than fear, and Good suddenly becomes to us somuch greater than Evil that Evil becomes negligible. This increase, this wonderful addition to our former condition, might be partlyconveyed by comparison to a man who from birth has never beenable to appreciate music: for him it has been meaningless, a noisewithout suggestion, without delight, without wings, and suddenly byno powers of his own the immense charms and pleasures andcapacities of it are laid open to him! These increases of every senseand faculty God will give to His lovers, so that without effort and bywhat has now become to us our own nature we are continually ableto _enter the Sublime. _

_Of the Two Wills_

We have in us two wills. The Will to live, and the Will to love Godand to find Him. The first will we see being used continually andwithout ceasing, not only by every man, woman, and child, but byevery beast of the field and the whole of creation. 

The Will to live is the will by which all alike seek the best forthemselves, here gaining for themselves all that they can of comfortand well-being out of the circumstances and opportunities of life. This is our natural Will. But it is not the will which gains for usEternal Life, nor does it even gain for us peace and happiness duringthis life. It is this Will to live which in Christ's Process we are taughtto break and bruise till it finally dies, and the Will to love, andgladly and joyously to please God is the only Will by which we live. 

Our great difficulty is that we try at one and the same time to hangto God with the soul and to the world with our heart. What isrequired is not that we go and live in rags in a desert place, but thatin the exact circumstances of life in which we find ourselves welearn in _everything to place God first. _ He requires of us a certainsubtle and inward fidelity--a fidelity of the heart, the will, the mind. The natural state of heart and mind in which we all normally findourselves is to have temporary vague longings for something which, though indefinable, we yet know to be better and more satisfyingthan anything we can find in the world. This is the soul, trying tooverrule the frivolity of the heart and mind and to re-find God. Ourdifficulties are not made of great things, but of the infinitely smallour own caprices. Though we can often do great things, acts ofsurprising heroism, we are held in chains--at once elastic and iron--ofsmall capricious vanities, so that in one and the same hour wemay have wonderful, far-reaching aspirations towards the Sublime, and God; and yet there comes a pretty frock, a pleasant companion, and behold God is forgotten! The mighty and marvellous Maker ofthe Universe, Lord of everything, is placed upon one side for a pieceof chiffon, a flattering word from a passing lover. 

So be it. He uses no force. We are still in the Garden of Free-Will. And when the Garden closes down for us, what then? Will chiffonhelp us? Will the smiles of a long-since faithless lover be ourstrength? Now is the time to decide; but our decision is made in theworld, and by means of the world and not apart from it, and in theexact circumstances in which we find ourselves. 

Another difficulty we have, and which forms an insuperable barrierto finding God, is the ever-recurring--we may almost say thecontinual--secret undercurrent of criticism and hardness towardsGod over what we imagine to be His Will. We need to seek Godwith that which is most like Him, with a will which most nearlyresembles His own. To be in a state of hardness or criticism, notonly for God but for any creature, in even the smallest degree is tobe giving allegiance to, and unifying ourselves with, that Will whichis opposite to, furthest away from, and opposed to God. He Himselfis Ineffable Tenderness. 

Having once re-found God, the soul frequently cries to Him in ananguish of pained wonder, "How could I ever have left Thee? Howcould I ever have been faithless to Thine Unutterable Perfections?"This to the soul remains the mystery of mysteries. Was it becauseof some imperfection left in her of design by God in order that Hemight enjoy His power to bring her back to Him? If this were so, then every single soul must be redeemed--and not for love's sake, but for His Honour, His own Holy Name, His Perfection. If the soulleft Him because of a deliberate choice, a preference forimperfection, a poisonous curiosity of foreign loves, then love aloneis the cause and necessity of our redemption, and so it feels to be, for in experience we find that love is the beginning and the middleand the end of all His dealings with us. 

* * *

What is our part and what is our righteousness in all this Process ofthe Saviour? This--that we obey, and that we renounce our own will, accepting and abiding by the Will of God: and this self-lending, self-surrender, this sacrifice of self-will is counted to us for sufficientrighteousness to merit heavenly life. But from first to last we remainconscious that we have no righteousness of our own, that we arevery small and full of weaknesses, and remain unable to think or say, "This is my righteousness, I am righteous, " any more than a manstanding bathed in, or receiving the sunlight can say or think, "I amthe sun. " Is all this, then, as much as to say that we can sit down anddo nothing; but, leaving all to Christ, we merely believe, andbecause of this believing our redemption is accomplished? No, forwe have an active part to play, a part that God never dispenseswith--the active keeping of the will in an active state of practicalobedience, submission, humble uncomplaining endurance throughevery kind of test. What will these perhaps too much dreaded testsbe that He will put us through? He will make use of the difficulties, opportunities, temptations, and events of everyday life in the world(which difficulties we should have to pass through whether webecome regenerated or not) down to the smallest act, the most secretthought, the most hidden intention and desire. But through it all it isthe Great Physician Himself who cures, and we are no more able toperform these changes of regeneration in heart and mind than we areable to perform a critical operation on our own body. So He takesour vanities and, one by one, strews them among the winds, and weraise no protest; takes our prides and breaks them in pieces, and wesubmit; takes our self-gratifications and reduces them to dust, andwe stand stripped but patient; takes the natural lusts of the creatureand transfigures them to Holy Love. And in all this pain of transition, what is the Divine Anaesthetic that He gives us? His Grace. 

Having submitted to all that Christ esteems necessary for ourregeneration, what does He set us to? Service. Glad, happy serviceto all who may need it. He has wonderful ways of making usacquainted with His especial friends, and it pleases Him to make usthe means of answering the prayers of His poor for help, to theirgreat wonder and joy and to the increase of their faith in Him. AlsoHe uses us as a human spark, to ignite the fires of another man'sheart: when He uses us in this way, it will seem to one like theopening of a window--to another a magnetism. One will see it as alight flashed on dark places, another receives it as the finding of atrack where before was no track. But however many times we maybe used in this way, the working remains a mystery to us. 

What is our reward whilst still in this world for our patientobediences and renunciations? This--that all becomes well with usthe moment the process is brought to the stage where the aim of ourlife ceases to be the enjoyment of worldly life and becomes fixedupon the Invisible and upon God: and all this by and because of love, for it is love alone which can make us genuinely glad to give up ourown will and which can keep us from sinning. 

We commence by qualifying through our human love, meagre andfluctuating as it is, for God's gift of holy love--of divine reciprocity, and with the presentation of this divine gift immediately we findourselves in possession of _a new set of desires, _ which for the firsttime in our experience of living prove themselves completelysatisfying in fruition. God does not leave us in an arid waste, because He would have us to be holy, and nowhere are there suchardent desires as in heaven; but He transposes and transfigures thecarnal desires into the spiritual by means of this gift of divinereciprocity which is at once access to and union with Himself. Now, and only now do we find the sting pulled out of every adversehappening and every woe of life, and out of death also. 

And the whole process is to be gone through just where and how andas we find ourselves--in our own home or in the home of another, married or single, rich or poor, --with these three watchwords, Obedience, Patience and Simplicity. 

But it is not sufficient to have once achieved this union with God: torest in happiness the soul must continually achieve it. It follows thenthat our need is not an isolated event but a _life, _ a life lived withGod, and in experience we find that this alone can satisfy us. A lifein which we receive hourly the breath of His tenderness and pity, His infinite solace to a pardoned soul. 

_Of the Interchange of Thought without Sound_

Many persons know what it is to have the experience with anotherperson of a simultaneous exactitude of thought--speaking aloud thesame words in the same instant. Others experience in themselves thepower to exchange thought and to know the mind of anotherwithout the medium of sound, though not without the medium ofword-forms, this last being a capacity possessed only by the soul incommunion with the Divine. We name these experiences thought-waves, mind-reading, mental telepathy, and understand very little about them;but beyond this mind-telepathy there is a telepathy of thesoul about which we understand nothing whatever. This is thedivine telepathy, with words or _without word-forms, _ by whichChrist instructs His followers. The telepathy of the mind is theindicator to the existence of a telepathy of the soul; for the mindindicates to us that which should be sought and known by the soul, and without we come to divine things first in a creaturely way(being creatures) we shall never come to them at all. The minddesires and indicates, the soul achieves. 

This telepathy with Christ is the means by which the soul learns in adirect manner the will and the teaching and the mind of Christ, andit is by this means she gains such wisdom as it is God's will she shallhave. The soul seeks this telepathy during the second stage, vaguely, not knowing or understanding the mode of it, receiving it rarely andwith great difficulty. 

In the third stage she obtains it in abundance, at times briefly, atothers at great length. 

* * *

That God has his dwelling-place at an incalculably great distancefrom ourselves is a true knowledge of the soul: but a furtherknowledge reveals to us that this calamity is mitigated, and for shortperiods even annulled, by provision of His within the soul toannihilate this distance, and be the means of bringing the soul intosuch immediate contact with Himself as she is able to endure. Butthe Joy-Energy of God being insupportable to the very nature offlesh, in His tender love and pity He provides us, through the Personof His Son, with degrees of union of such sweet gentleness that wemay continually enjoy them through every hour of life; and throughHis Son He comes out to meet the prodigal "while yet afar off. "

This is strongly observable, that as the process of Christ proceedsand grows in us, though our joys in God are individual, yet theybecome also clothed in a garment of the universal, so that the soul, when she enters the fires of worship and of blessing and ofconversing with God--without any forethought, but by a cause orneed now become a part of herself, --enters these states and gives toHim no longer as I, but as We--which is to say, as All Souls. 

* * *

Many of us look to death to work a miracle for us, thinking the merecessation of physical living will give entry to paradise or evenheaven, so long as we are baptised and call ourselves Christians. This is a great delusion. In character, personality, cleanliness, goodwill we are, after death, exactly as far advanced as we werebefore death, and no further. What then is needed, since death willnot help us? The Seed of Divine love and life planted andconsciously _growing_ in us whilst we are still in this world. Andwhat is this Seed?--the Redeemer. 

* * *

What is paradise, what is heaven? The progressive gradations ofconditions of a perfect reciprocity of love, and the greater theperfection of this reciprocity the greater the altitudes attained ofheaven. Thus we see in Scripture that the angels who stand nearestto God or highest in heaven are the cherubim--that is to say, they arethose who have attained a greater reciprocity than all other angels. Now this Divine love is incomprehensible to us until we are initiatedinto its mystery as a gift, and cannot be understood nor guessed atby comparisons with any human loves however great, noble, or pure;but this burning fiery essence of joy, this radiant glory of delight, this holy and ineffable fulfilment of the uttermost needs, longings, and requirements of the soul must be personally experienced by usto be comprehended. 

What madness in us is it that can count as an added cross or burdenany means by which we reach such perfection of bliss for ever? TheCross is for us the misery of our own blinding sins and selfishnesses. The burden is the weight of our own distance from God. "Take upthy cross (which is our daily life of ignorance and sin), take up thycross, and follow Me, " says the voice of the Saviour; and as we do itand follow Him the distance between God and ourselves diminishes, and finally the burden and the cross _disappear, _ and behold God!awaiting us with His consolations. 

It is the stopping half-way that causes would-be followers of Christsuch distress. It is necessary that we follow Him all the way and notmerely a part of it--that He may complete His process in us. Whenwe are living altogether in a creaturely, natural, or unregeneratedway, absorbed in the ambitions and interests of a worldly life, weare perhaps content. When we live regenerated and in the spirit, weare in great joy; but when we try to live between the two and wouldserve God and worldly interests at the same time we are in gloomywretchedness, vacillation, depression. 

The Master said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you, " whichsignified that within us was the potentiality to have entrance to, andto know, the mystery of the Divine Secret, and to participate whilststill living here, in the early degrees or manifestations of DivineLove--that Power which glorifies the angels, and is Heaven. 

_Of the three Stages of God-Consciousness_

_(Which more properly expressed is the gift of immediate access ofthe soul of God)_

There are three principal stages on the way of progress--threeseparate degrees of God-Consciousness. The first is theConsciousness of the Presence of Jesus, the Perfect Man. We takeHim into the heart, accept and know Him, love and obey Him. In thesecond stage we receive Jesus as the Christ and recognise Him asthe Messiah (of which the mind was not sure in the first stage). Werejoice in Him, giving Him a more perfect obedience. In the thirdthe soul is given the Consciousness of the Father, and, being filledwith a very great love and joy, worships Him as the Known God. Now life immediately becomes totally changed, fear and sin areswept away, and love rules the Universe. 

It is now that God makes us know His glamour; that He casts overthe soul His golden net of spiritual delights, and by them seems tochallenge her, saying to the soul, "Now that I reveal Myself to thee, canst thou ever return to the joys of the world, canst thou find itspleasures sweet, canst thou be satisfied with any human love; canstthou by any means resist Me now that I show Myself?" And the soulanswers Him, "Nay Lord, in truth I cannot. "

The remembrance of these powers and these spells of God make forthe soul a sure foundation of repose and certainty in the days of thetesting of fidelity that still lie before her: they also further reveal toher His consummate care of her exact requirements, for she cannotpass beyond a certain stage without a direct personal assurance isgiven her. First He demands of us that we have, and activelymaintain, a clean will to turn and cleave to Him, without anyassurance beyond written assurance (Scripture); and having givenHim a thorough proof of fidelity, He then grants us the personalassurance. Having been given these rapturous concessions, whatwould perfection demand of us--a total withdrawal from the world--ahiding away in secret with our soul's treasure of delights? Maybefor some; but a higher perfection calls us back to service in thewretched turmoil of the world, to work and to stand in the House ofRimmon and never bow the knee, to carry with us everywhere theDivine Consciousness and preserve its light undimmed in everysordid petty circumstance of daily life, to endure with perfectpatience the follies and the prides of the unenlightened. Whoevercan achieve those things may find himself at last a saint. 

Very early in this third stage a miracle is performed in us: withoutknowing how it came about or what day it was done, we suddenlyknow that the heart and the mind _have become virgin_--and thiswithout any variation. Every kind of lust, whether of eye, body, heart, or mind, has been removed from us, and never again has anypower over us, for the will has become superior to lust, and there isa finish to all such contending: this moral healing is more impressivethan any physical healing. Before this miracle is performed for us, we have suffered many things, as much as we can bear: subtle andastonishing temptations of mind and body and spirit "call toremembrance the former days in which after ye were illuminated yeendured a great fight of afflictions" (Heb. X. 32). 

This person that writes formerly supposed that no creature wasadmitted to the blessedness of being in any way with God in Spiritwithout they were already become a saint; but this is not so, and Heaccepts the sinner long before he is a saint (if ever we become one inthis world, which is doubtful), provided the will is always held goodtowards God. 

This is the mighty Process of Christ which he desires to perform forall. Of the tears we shed over it the less mention the better; they areprecious tears, necessary tears, cleansing tears, and if we will notlend ourselves to this Process of Christ we may have as many tearsfor our portion and no benefit from them in the way of advancement. Let us weep the tears that God Himself will wipe away. 

So then in the first stage the Soul tastes of the sweet companionshipof Jesus. In the second, of the might and graciousness of Christ; inthe third, of the fullness of God and His unspeakable delights. "Thoushalt give them to drink of Thy pleasures, as out of the river" (Psalmxxxvi. ). 

In the third stage of God-Consciousness a great change takes placein our relationship to God. Besides the magnitude of the alterationsof the inner life--the sweeping spiritual changes--the body alsoshares in a change, for, whilst we formerly prayed to God with abowed head and a hidden face, we now become unable to pray orapproach Him except with a raised head and an uncovered face. Thischange is not from any thought or intention of our own, but we areforced to it by a sweet necessity. In a company of persons praying, all those in the third stage could be immediately known by thisnecessity of the raised and bared face if we were not taught by theHoly Spirit never to reveal to others that we are in the third stageexcept in special instances. For this reason it is not possible to entertrue communion with God in a public place of worship unless wecan conceal ourselves from others. For the face undergoes a changein communion with God, and it is not pleasing to Him that thisshould be seen by any eye but His own. 

If anyone finds great difficulty (and the most of us do) in coming tothe first stage--that of taking Jesus into the heart--he must pray everyday in a few short words _from the heart_ that God will give him toJesus, and in due time he will be heard. 

In the third stage of progress we have the home-coming of the soulas far as we are able to know it in the flesh: "We taste of the powersof God" (Hebrews). 

But the fullness of home-coming is reserved for that day in whichthe greatest of all the mysteries will be revealed to us--the mysteryof the Relation of the Soul to God. 

In that great day we shall know God by His Own Name. 

* * *

We do not find God by denying the existence of things not pleasingto Him. We do not find the Eternal Goodness by saying that Evildoes not exist. We do not find true health of spirit because we denyall sickness, pain, and disease. Such a mode of Christianity may givea sense of comfort, lend a false security to the heart and mind atonce weary of God-searching, and disenchanted with the world; butit is not the Christianity which regenerates. It is a narcotic, not aRedemption. It is the way of a mind unwilling to face truths becausethey pain. If there was anything made plain by Christ it is that theway of Redemption lies through heroism and not cowardice. Letthose of us who too much fear a passing pain of sacrifice of willremember that the deepest of all pains, the last word in the tragedyof life, is to come to old age and descend to the grave withouthaving found the Saviour. For our calamity is that we are lost souls. Our opportunity is that in this world we find the track of Christwhich leads us home. 

* * *

God does not create a new world on purpose for His loversimmediately to live in, yet though we remain our full time in thissame world it is not the same world. We see a person in a severeillness and again in full health. It is the same person, and not thesame person. We see a garden filled with flowers in the rain undergrey clouds, and again the same garden filled with mellow sunlightunder blue skies; it is the same garden, and not the same garden. 

These changes could never be described or conveyed to the manblind from birth; neither can spiritual changes be described orconveyed till we ourselves gain similarity of experience. Godtransposes our pleasures, taking the glamour from the guilty andtransferring it to the blameless; by this transforming our lives. Heincreases the pleasure of unworldly enjoyments so we areindependent of the worldly ones. But we cannot remain in thistransformed world of His unless we are at peace both with ourselfand all persons around us. 

Though from earliest childhood we may have found in the beautiesof Nature a great delight, when we become the lover of God Hepasses His fingers over our hearts and our eyes and opens them tomarvellous new powers for joy. Oh, the ecstasy that may be knownin one short walk alone with God! The overflowing heart cries out toHim, What other lover is there can give such bliss as this, and whatis all Nature but a lovely language between Thee and me! Then thesoul spreads wings into the blue and sings to Him like soaring lark. 

But do not let us seek Him only because of His Delights, for so wemight miss Him altogether. But let it be because it is His wish:because Perfection calls, and mystery calls to mystery, and love tolove, and Light calls to the darkness and the Dawn is born. 

 The glamour of God is come down about my soul, And He who made all loveliness has decked my heart in spring, And garlanded me round about with tender buds Of flowers and scented things, and love and light. I see no rain, no sad grey skies, For the glamour of God has come down about mine eyes, And the Voice of the Maker of all loveliness Calling to my soul, leads me enchanted Up the glittering mysteries of Infinity. 

------

[Transcriber's notes: The name of the author, Lilian Staveley, is notmentioned on the title page of this text, but I have added it here. Also I have made two spelling changes:

"subsitute another picture" to "substitute another picture"

"accepts the sinner long long before he is a saint" to"accepts the sinner long before he is a saint". ]