together alone, very sweetly, and
were wondering what the life would be of God's saints in heaven. And
when our discourse was come to that point, that the highest delight and
brightest of all the carnal senses seemed not fit to be so much as named
with that life's sweetness, we, lifting ourselves yet more ardently to
the Unchanging One, did by degrees pass through all things
bodily--beyond the heaven even, and the sun and stars. Yea, we soared
higher yet by inward musing. We came to our own minds, and we passed
beyond them, that we might reach that place of plenty, where Thou
feedest Israel for ever with the food of truth, and where life is the
Wisdom by which all these things are made. And whilst we were
discoursing and panting after her, we slightly touched on her with the
whole effort of our heart; and we sighed, and there left bound the first
fruits of the spirit, and came back again to the sounds of our own
mouths--to our own finite language. And what we then said was in this
wise: If to any the tumult of the flesh were hushed, hushed the images
of the earth and air and waters, hushed too the poles of heaven, yea the
very soul be hushed to herself, and by not thinking on self transcend
self, hushed all dreams and imaginary revelations, every tongue and
every sign, and whatever exists only in transition--if these should all
be hushed, having only roused our ears to Him that made them, and He
speak alone, not by them but by Himself, that we might hear His word,
not through any tongue of flesh, nor angel's voice, nor sound of
thunder, nor in the dark riddle of a similitude, but might hear Him,
whom in these things we love--His very self without any aid from these
(even as we two for that brief moment had touched the eternal
Wisdom)--could this be continued on, and other visions, far unlike it,
be withdrawn, and this one ravish and absorb and wrap up its beholders
amid these inward joys, so that life might be for ever like that one
moment of understanding, were not this, Enter thou into the joy of thy
Lord? And when shall that be? Shall it be when we rise again, but shall
not all be changed?_'[22]

In this exceedingly striking passage we have the whole case before us.
The belief on which modern love rests, and which makes it so single and
so sacred is, as it were, drawn for us on an enlarged scale: and we see
that it is a belief to which positivism has no right. The belief,
indeed, is by no means a modern thing. Rudime