or myself, I seemed to be lifted into it, or into a
_capacity_ for it, on that day and in that moment in which I first
loved God. This is not to say that since that moment I have not had
to struggle, suffer, and endure, to keep myself in, and progress in
this condition; but my sufferings, struggles, and endurances, being
for love and in love and because of love, were and are in themselves
beautiful, and leave in the recollection nothing inharmonious. They
are the difficult prelude to a glorious melody.

Another thing--we become by this love for Him so large that we
seem to embrace within our own self the Universe! In some
mysterious manner we become in sympathy with all things in the
bond of His making.

Are these things worth nothing whatever, that the majority of people
should be content to spend their lives looking for five-pound notes
and even shillings--and this not only the poor, but the rich more so?
I am far more at a loss to understand my fellow-men than I am to
understand God. We have need of the shillings, but of other and
more lovely things besides, which cost no money and may be had by
the poorest. It is rapidly becoming the only sorrow of my life that
people do not all come to share this Life in which I live. How that
parable knocks at the heart, "Go out into the highways and the
hedges and compel them to come in!" To know all this _fullness_ of
life and not to be able to bring even my nearest and dearest into it:
what a terrible mystery is this!--it is an agony. Now, in this agony I
share the Agony of Jesus. This is a part of the Cross, and only the
Father can make it straight. I see Heaven held out, and _refused;_
love held out, and _refused;_ perfection shown, and killed upon a
cross. What is the crucifix but that most awful of all things--the
Grief of God made Visible? Perfect Love submitting itself to the vile
freewill of man and dying of wounds! My God! my God! and did
_I_ ever have a hand in such a thing? I did.

* * *

What is it that seems more than any other thing whatever to throw us
at last into the arms of God? Suffering. And this not because it is His
will (for how much rather would He have us turn to Him in our joy
and prosperity), but rather that it is _our_ will, that in our earthly
joys and prosperities we turn away from Him, and only seek His
consolations when we see the failure of our health or happiness. And
having by His mercy and forgiveness found Him, we too often and
too easi