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