ave resisted, and then you would have had to begin again."

I was silent for a little, and then I said: "I remember now more
clearly, but did I really see Him? It seems so absolutely simple.
Nothing happened. I just became one with the heart and life of the
world; I came home at last. Yet how am I here? How is it I was not
merged in light and life?"

"Ah," said Amroth, "it is the new birth. You can never be the same
again. But you are not yet lost in Him. The time for that is not yet.
It is a mystery; but as yet God works outward, radiates energy and force
and love; the time will come when all will draw inward again, and be
merged in Him. But the world is as yet in its dawning. The rising sun
scatters light and heat, and the hot and silent noon is yet to come;
then the shadows move eastward, and after that comes the waning sunset
and the evening light, and last of all the huge and starlit peace of the
night."

"But," I said, "if this is really so, if I have been gathered close to
God's heart, why is it that instead of feeling stronger, I only feel
weak and unstrung? I have indeed an inner sense of peace and happiness,
but I have no will or purpose of my own that I can discern."

"That," said Amroth, "is because you have given up all. The sense of
strength is part of our weakness. Our plans, our schemes, our ambitions,
all the things that make us enjoy and hope and arrange, are but signs
of our incompleteness. Your will is still as molten metal, it has borne
the fierce heat of inner love; and this has taken all that is hard and
stubborn and complacent out of you--for a time. But when you return to
the life of the body, as you will return, there will be this great
difference in you. You will have to toil and suffer, and even sin. But
there will be one thing that you will not do: you will never be
complacent or self-righteous, you will not judge others hardly. You will
be able to forgive and to make allowances; you will concern yourself
with loving others, not with trying to improve them up to your own
standard. You will wish them to be different, but you will not condemn
them for being different; and hereafter the lives you live on earth will
be of the humblest. You will have none of the temptations of authority,
or influence, or ambition again--all that will be far behind you. You
will live among the poor, you will do the most menial and commonplace
drudgery, you will have none of the delights of life. You will be
de