e at
each moment of the day, for so great is Thy glamour that without
Thee my days are like bitter waters and a mouthful of gravel to a
hungry man. How long wilt Thou leave me here--set down upon the
earth in this martyrdom of languishing for love of Thee? And
suddenly, when the pain can be endured no more, He embraces the
soul. Then where do sorrow and waiting fly? and what is pain?
There never were such things!

* * *

We do well never to recall past ecstasies. In this way the soul comes
to each encounter with a lovely freshness and purity, and neither
makes comparisons nor curious comments, but gives herself wholly
to love. But by these contacts the soul gains a secret and personal
knowledge of God: without sight and without reasoning she actually
feels to partake of God, so that she passes by these means far up
beyond belief, into experiences of knowledge which in their
poignant intensity are at once an ineffable violence and a marvellous
white peace.

* * *

I find the lark the most wonderful of all birds. I cannot listen to his
rhapsodies without being inspired (no matter what I may be in the
midst of doing or saying) to throw up my own love to God. In the
soaring insistence of his song and passion I find the only thing in
Nature which so suggests the high-soaring and rapturous flights of
the soul. But I am glad that we surpass the lark in sustaining a far
more lengthy and wonderful flight; and that we sing, not downwards
to an earthly love, but upwards to a heavenly.

To my mind, this is man's only justification for considering himself
above the beasts--that we can love, and communicate with, God. For
where otherwise is his superiority? He builds fine buildings which
crumble and decay. He digs holes in the earth to take out treasures
which he has not made; and if he makes himself the very highest
tower of wealth or fame, he must come down from it and be buried
in the earth like any other carcase.

* * *

It is better not to contend, either with others or against our own body.
If we contend against anything we impress it the more firmly upon
our consciousness. So if we would overcome the lusts of the body,
let us do it not by harming or by contending against the body, which
but emphasises its powers and importance, but let us rather proceed
to ignore and make little of the body by forgetting it and passing out
of it into higher things; and eventually we shall learn to live, not in
the lower state, but