ese
sufferings are just what she requires in order to develop courage,
humility, endurance, love, and generosity. These two trials--the one
when love is all dried up on our part, and the other when we think
love must be all dried up on God's part--are the finest possible
training and exercise for the soul, but they are only such if the soul
_tries ardently to overcome them:_ it is in the effort to overcome
that virtue is learnt, progress made.

There is one most splendid remedy. Is it asking of God? No, it is
giving to God. We give Him thanks and we bless Him, and we tell
Him that we love Him, and we do it with all our heart, mind, soul,
and strength, and this becomes possible even though a moment ago
we were so far from Him, so tepid, seemingly so estranged: it
becomes possible because we remember all the wonderful things
that God has done for us and given us, and made for us, and suffered
for us; and in remembering these it is impossible but that love and
gratitude, like a torch of enthusiasm, will presently flare up in us.

If God never gives us another thing, we will adore Him for His
kindness in the past, we will adore Him for Himself, for what He is.
Desolation and tepidity vanish. Joy returns, the trial is over; but it
will come again perhaps a few hours hence, or to-morrow, or every
day for weeks: the remedy is ever to be reapplied, and the remedy
when thoroughly applied never fails in immediate efficacy; but it
has to be constantly repeated: never let the heart and mind forget
this.

IX

The heart, mind, soul, and will work together and lead together the
reasonable earthly existence; but there is another part of the soul, a
higher part, which has its own intelligence, which leads no earthly
existence, has no direct recognition of _material being;_ thinks no
earth-thoughts, judges by no man-made standards, sins no earth-sins.
Has this part of the soul, then, never sinned? _It feels_ that it has
sinned, though it cannot say how or when, but it _feels_ that this sin
was direct as between itself and God, and is the cause of its
separation from God; and it feels this sin to have been _an
infidelity._ It is with this part of the soul that we sin the
unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost, which cannot be sinned by
mere natural man: (here we touch the mystery of the two orders of
sinning which, to the initiated, are seen both to be covered by the
same commandments). This higher part of the soul mourns and
lo