t Magdalen whose sin
was loving much. She gives her body to Gods and men--and most sweetly to
the fire, her passing naked and unashamed.

The different love of Nature that the child knows instinctively; that
young men and maidens forget in the heat of themselves--but that comes
again to us if we grow decently older; in rock and thicket, in the
voices of running water, in every recess of woodland and arch of
shore--not the Pipes of Pan, but the mysteries of God, not sensuousness,
but the awakening of a spirit that has slumbered--the illumination,
sudden and splendid, _that all is One_--that Nature is the plane of
manifestation for the infinite and perfect story of God; that Nature is
the table which God has filled to overflowing--this is a suggestion, a
beginning of the lifted love of Nature....

If they beckon to you, the trees on the horizon (and God be with you if
there are none); if they seem to be calling to you, do not fail them, do
not wait too long. For surely that time will come when they will cease
to call to your heart. They will not have changed, but you will have
gone too far back among the spectres and illusions of detached things to
know that they are calling. And be very sure you will never find the
love of God in the eyes of passing men--if you have forgotten our
Mother.

... Yet Nature alone is but the lowliest of the three caskets. I would
not have you miss a breath of her beauty--but upon and within it, I
would build the great dream of the coming of one from the Father's
House. The Coming to you.... Would you hesitate to make ready for that
Guest?... The thousands come in and out and pass to the unprepared
houses. They are mute--suffering is unspoken in their eyes. Even their
faces and hands are unfinished. They leave no gift nor message. Nature
who brought them does not spare them from the infinite causes of death.

... Would you hesitate to go into the wilderness to meet such a
Guest?... But you will not hear the call to the wilderness unless your
heart is listening--unless your limbs are mighty for the Quest--the
little things of life silenced, the passions of the self put away.

There is beauty in the wilderness--the beauty of the Old Mother is there
in the stillness.... Would you not go up into the hills for your great
passion? Would you not lift your arms for the highest; would you not
integrate the fire of martyrdoms in your breast, that you may not be
destroyed by the lustre of that which