l particularisation; it is these occasions
of experience which the Critical Faculty regards as being encounters
with the Supreme Spirit, because they are complete; nothing is
wanting; they afford life at its perfection point--a stupendous
Felicity, and that _Repose_ in bliss for which all souls secretly long.
It is the meeting of the Wisher with the Wished, of Desire with the
Desired: and yet, being that which it is--unthinkable Fulfilment--it is
above all, or any, Wishes, and beyond Desire; it can be known, but
not named.

By these experiences the knowledge of the soul becomes
enlightened two ways: she knows what bliss is; she knows the full
calamity of life away from God--in flesh, in this world: not that flesh
is not a wonderful Idea, not that the world is not greatly to be
admired for its beauties, but the reawakened spirit desires
spirit-living, cannot be pleased with earth-living, cannot be satisfied
with less than God Himself. So, then, the logical consequence is that this
world becomes a place we desire to take leave of as soon as may be.
Life here becomes a punishment: not that Perfect Love desires to
punish, but that the soul now knows that any form of life in which
she is restricted from continual access to Him is a disaster, a
profound grief.

XV

If the soul looks to God to comfort her, asks for His help, and gets
it--and since communication with God is dependent upon some
degree of like to like,--it follows that the soul must maintain a
readiness to "give" to fellow-souls: to fail in this is to fail in any sort
of resemblance to God. Hence we see how carefully Christ enjoined
upon us to "Give to them that ask": and in no niggardly way either,
but wholeheartedly, for "God loveth the cheerful giver."

If we say that we apprehend God by that which is not Mind, what
reason have we for saying that it is not Reason which receives Him?
Because for this living which God's touch causes us to share with
Himself we find that Space, Infinity, and Eternity are required and
Reason stands, and remains, uncomprehending and dumbfounded
before all three. It is Spirit, the flash-point of the soul, which
receives and transmits and which lives this living. As we have an
heredity of flesh so we have also an heredity of Spirit which of its
own nature comprehends the ways of God and the mode of God's
living. In High Contemplation we find that if Reason attempts
activity, nothing is consummated: she must submerge herself and