ence: she was burned with so terrible an excess
of bliss, that she was in great fear and anguish because of this excess.
Indeed, she was so overcome by this too great realisation of the
strength of God that she was in terror of both God and joy. It was
three days before she recovered any peace, and more than a year
before I dared recall one instant of it to mind.

I am not able to think that even in Heaven the soul could endure
such heights for more than a period. These heights are incomparably,
unutterably beyond vision and union. They are the uttermost
extremity of that which can be endured by the soul, at least until she
has re-risen to great altitudes of holiness in ages to come.

By contact with God we acquire certain wonderful and terrible
realisations of truth and knowledge. For one thing, we learn the
nature and mode of spirit-life, as over against body- or sense-life.
We learn, at first with great fear, something of the awful intensities
of pain, as of joy, which can be endured by the spirit when free of
the body: for when we are in the spirit we do not _see_ fire, but we
feel to _become it_ and yet live! And so equally of pain or joy--we
do not feel these things delicately, as with, and in, the body, but we
pass into the essence of these things themselves, in all their terrible
and marvellous intensity, which is comparatively without limit.

Woe to those who must gather the garland of pain--which is
remorse-after death! It is easier to suffer a whole lifetime in the
body than one day in the spirit. O soul! come to thy contrition here
in this world, where pain has short limit! Repent and return!

* * *

Of the marvellous favours shown to the soul the heart cries out: "O
mighty God! of the magnitude of Thy condescensions I am afraid
even to think; they are too great for me, and I dare to recall them,
but only with all the simplicity of a little child!"

* * *

Those who feel desire and need within themselves to reach the
heights of inward life will do it best, not through diversity of
interests in fellow-creatures, but by unification of all interests in
God.

God once found, and possessed, we return to the interests of
creatures in moderation and with judgment.

* * *

What is pain? It is a mystery of separation, and we are gangrenous
with sin and pain because of separation from the source of life.

Truth now comes to us in such small segments that we no longer see
the pattern of it; but this we a