revealed in the
little book she has left of _Revelations of Divine Love_, which contains
a careful account of a definite psychological experience through which
she passed on the 8th day of May 1373, when she was thirty years of age.
She adds to this record of fact certain commentaries and explanations
which, she says, have been taught her gradually in the course of the
subsequent twenty years. This experience, which lasted altogether
between five and six hours, was preceded by a seven days' sickness most
vividly described, ending in a semi-rigidity of the body as if it were
already half dead, and it took the form of sixteen "Shewings" or
"Visions." These, she says, reached her in three ways, "by bodily sight,
by word formed in mine understanding" (verbal messages which took form
in her mind), "and by spiritual sight." But of this last, she adds, "I
may never fully tell it."[64] It is impossible here to do justice to
this little book, for it is one of the most important documents in the
history of mysticism. There is no mention in it of any preliminary
"purgative" stage, nor of any ultimate experience of ecstasy; it is
simply--if one may so put it--a narrative of certain intimate talks with
God, once granted, when, during a few hours of the writer's life, He
explained various difficulties and made clear to her certain truths. The
impression left of the nearness of God to the soul was so vivid and
sustaining, that it is not possible to read the record of it, even now,
across six hundred years, without feeling strangely stirred by the
writer's certainty and joy.

Her vision is of Love: Love is its meaning, and it was shown her for
Love; she sees that God is Love and that God and man are one. "God is
nearer to us than our own soul, for man is God, and God is in all." If we
could only know ourselves, our trouble would be cleared away, but it is
easier to come to the knowing of God than to know our own soul.[65] "Our
passing life here that we have in our sense-soul knoweth not what our
Self is," and the cause of our disease is that we rest in little things
which can never satisfy us, for "our Soul may never have rest in things
that are beneath itself." She actually saw God enfolding all things.
"For as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and
the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the whole, so are we, soul and
body, clad in the Goodness of God, and enclosed." She further had sight
of all things that a