of the light of
glory, securing to us powers of contemplation such as the highest
mystical theology can only faintly and feebly imitate; to expatiate in
God, delivered from the monotony of human things; to be securely poised
in the highest flights of our immense capacities, without any sense of
weariness, or any chance of a reaction; who can think out for himself
the realities of a life like this?

Yet what is all this compared with one hour, one of earth's short hours,
of the magnificences of celestial love? Oh to turn our whole souls upon
God, and souls thus expanded and thus glorified; to have our affections
multiplied and magnified a thousandfold, and then girded up and
strengthened by immortality to bear the beauty of God to be unveiled
before us; and even so strengthened, to be rapt by it into a sublime
amazement which has no similitude on earth; to be carried away by the
inebriating torrents of love, and yet be firm in the most steadfast
adoration; to have passionate desire, yet without tumult or disturbance;
to have the most bewildering intensity along with an unearthly calmness;
to lose ourselves in God, and then find ourselves there more our own
than ever; to love rapturously and to be loved again still more
rapturously, and then for our love to grow more rapturous still, and
again the return of our love to be still outstripping what we gave, and
then for us to love even yet more and more and more rapturously, and
again, and again, and again to have it so returned, and still the great
waters of God's love to flow over us and overwhelm us until the
vehemence of our impassioned peace and the daring vigour of our yearning
adoration reach beyond the sight of our most venturous imagining; what
is all this but for our souls to live a life of the most intelligent
entrancing ecstasy, and yet not be shivered by the fiery heat? There
have been times on earth when we have caught our own hearts loving God,
and there was a flash of light, and then a tear, and after that we lay
down to rest. O happy that we were! Worlds could not purchase from us
even the memory of those moments. And yet when we think of heaven, we
may own that we know not yet what manner of thing it is to love the Lord
Our God.

APPENDIX II

_From a Pastoral Letter of His Eminence Cardinal Bourne, Archbishop of
Westminster, written when Bishop of Southwark. Quinquagesima Sunday,_
1901.

...Every age has its own difficulties and dangers. At the