endure to
do such a thing? No effort could be too great or painful to beautify
oneself for Him. In this there is no virtue; it is the driving necessity
of love, a necessity known by every lover worthy of the name on
earth. To please and obey this ineffable and exquisite Being!--the
privilege intoxicated me more and more.

All these changes in my heart and mind continually filled me with
surprise, for I was never pious, though inwardly and secretly I had
so ardently sought Him. I was attentive, humble, and reverent,
nothing more.

But though I had perhaps little or no piety, and never read a single
religious book, I had had a deep thirst for the perfect and the holy
and the pure, as I seemed unable to find them here on the earth. In
the quiet solemnity of church, or under the blue skies, I could detach
myself from my surroundings and reach up and out with wistful
dimness towards the ineffable holiness and purity of God--God who,
for me at least, remained persistently so unattainable.

And yet one blessed day I was to find Him suddenly, all in one
glorious hour, no longer unattainable but immanently, marvellously
near, and willing to remain for me so strangely permanently near
that I must sing silently to Him from my heart all the day long--sing
to Him silently, because even the faintest whisper would feel too
gross and loud between my soul and Him. And in hours when I fall
from this wonderful estate I think I come very near hell, so awful is
my loss.

Our greatest need is to relearn the will of God. For we are so
separated from Him that we now look upon His Will as on a cross,
as an incomprehensible sacrifice, as but self-abnegation, pain, and
gloom. We repudiate it in terror.

If we have the will to relearn His Will, we stand still and think of it,
we walk to seek it, we try to accept it, trembling we bow down to it
with obedience and many tears; and behold! it changes to an
Invitation, a sigh of beauty, a breath of spring, the song of birds, the
faces of flowers, the ever-ascending spiral of the mating of all loves,
the sunshine of the Universe; and at last, intoxicated with happiness,
we say: "My God, my Love, I sip and drink Thy Will as an
ambrosial Wine!"

* * *

To the lover of God all affections go up and become enclosed, as it
were, into one affection, which is Himself; so that we have no love
for anyone or anything _apart_ from Him. In this is included, in a
most deep and mysterious fashion, marriage