ely loving. I saw that He is to us everything that is comfortable
to our help; He is our clothing, that for love wrappeth us," &c.--where,
in her own words and imagery, she is describing a divine-given insight
into the relation of God and the soul. Or again, when she is shown our
Blessed Lady, it is no pictorial or bodily presentment, "but the virtues
of her blissful soul, her truth, her wisdom, her charity." "And Jesus
... showed me a _ghostly_ sight of her, right as I had seen her before,
little and simple and pleasing to Him above all creatures."

Just as in the setting forth of these spiritual apprehensions, the words
and imagery are usually her own, so in the description of bodily vision
she uses her own language and comparisons. For example, the following
realism: "The great drops of blood fell down from under the garland like
pellets, seeming as it had come out of the veins; and in coming out they
were brown red, for the Blood was full thick, and in spreading abroad
they were bright red.... The plenteousness is like to drops of water
that fall off the eavings after a great shower of rain.... And for
roundness they were like to the scales of herrings in the spreading of
the forehead," &c. These similes, she tells us, "came to my mind in the
time." In other instances, the comparisons and illustrations of what she
saw with her eyes or with her understanding, were suggested to her; so
that she received the expression, as well as the matter expressed, from
without.

But besides the records of the sights, words, and ideas revealed to her,
we have many things already known to her and understood, yet "brought to
her mind," as it were, preternaturally. Also, various paraphrases and
elaborate exegeses of the words spoken to her; a great abundance of
added commentary upon what she saw inwardly or outwardly. Now and then
it is a little difficult to decide whether she is speaking for herself,
or as the exponent of what she has received; but, on the whole, she
gives us abundant indications. Perhaps the following passage will
illustrate fairly the diverse elements of which the record is woven:

With good cheer our Lord looked into His side and beheld with joy
[_bodily vision_]: and with His sweet looking He led forth the
understanding of His creature, by the same wound, into His side within
[_her imagination is led by gesture from one thought to another_]. [9]
And then He showed a fair and delectable place, and large enough fo