ntemplation 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 unio