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 oursel