words, that I can understand it.
What is it to drink this Living Water?"

"To come to Christ, my daughter," replies the monk.

"But I cannot understand you," she objected, in the same tone. "How can
I come? What mean you by coming? He is not here in this chamber, that
I can rise and go to Him. Can you not use words more intelligible to
me?"

"In the first place, my daughter," softly replied the monk, "you are
under a great mistake. Christ is here in this chamber, and hath heard
every word that we have said. And in the second place, I cannot use
words that shall be plainer to you. How can the dead understand the
living? How shall a man born blind be brought to know the difference of
colour between green and blue. Yet the hardship lieth not in the
inaptness of the teacher, but in the inability of the taught."

"But I am not blind, nor dead!" cried Philippa.

"Both," answered the monk. "So, by nature, be we all."

Philippa made no reply; she was too vexed to make any. The monk laid
his hand gently upon her head.

"Take the best wish that I can make for you:--God show you how blind you
are! God put life within you, that you may awake, and arise from the
dead, and see the light of Christ! May He grant you that thirst which
shall be satisfied with nothing short of the Living Water--which shall
lead you to disregard all the roughnesses of the way, and the storms of
the journey, so that you may win Christ, and be found in Him! God strip
you of your own goodness!--for I fear you are over-well satisfied
therewith. And no goodness shall ever have admittance into Heaven save
the goodness which is of God."

"But surely," exclaimed Philippa, looking up in surprise, "there is
grace of congruity?"

"Grace of congruity! grace of condignity!" [see Note] cried the monk
fervently. "Grace of sin and gracelessness! It is not all worth so
much as one of these rushes upon your floor. If you carry grace of
congruity to the gates of Heaven, I warn you it shall never bear you one
step beyond. Lay down those miserable rush-staffs, wherein is no pith;
and take God's golden staff held out to you, which is the full and
perfected obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. That staff shall not fail
you. All the angels at the gate of Paradise know it; and the doors
shall fly wide open to whoso smiteth on them with that staff of God.
Lord, open her eyes, that she may see!"

The prayer was answered, but not then.

"What shall