d mind; and so great is her loathing and her
distress, that for shame's sake these two are constrained to improve
themselves. But their progress is slow, and now comes a long and
painful time of alternation between two states. At one time the soul
will conquer the creature, imposing upon it a sovereign beauty of
holiness; and at another the creature will conquer the soul, imposing
upon her its hideous designs and desires, and causing her many
sicknesses. Hence we have the warring which we feel within
ourselves, for the soul now desires her home and the creature its
appetites.

Until this awakening of the soul takes place, we mistake in thinking
that we either live with our soul, or know our soul, or feel with our
soul. She does but stir within us from time to time, awaking strange
echoes that we do not comprehend; and we live with the mind and
the heart and the body only--which is to say, we live as the creature;
and this is why on the complete awakening of the soul we feel in the
creature an immense and altogether indescribable enhancement of
life and of all our faculties, so that in great amazement we say, "I
have never _lived_ until this day." When first the will of the creature
is wholly submitted to the lovely guidance of the divine part of the
soul, then first we know the ineffable joys of the world of free spirit.
For to live with the mind and the body is to be in a state of existence
in nature. But to live with the soul is to live above nature, in the
immeasurable freedom and intensity of the spirit. And this is the
tremendous task of the soul--that she help to redeem the heart and
mind from their vileness of the creature and so lift the human
upwards with herself to the Divine from whence she came. This,
then, is the transmutation or evolution by divine means of the human
into the divine; and for this we need to seek repentance or change of
heart and mind, which is the will of the creature turning itself
towards the beauties of the spirit, that Christ may awaken in us the
glories of that sleeping soul which is His bride.

When the soul is fully revived we can know it by this, that we are
not able any longer to content ourselves with anything nor anyone
save God. Neither are we able to love any save God, for all human
desires and loves mysteriously ascend and are merged into the
Divine. So, though we love our friend, we love him in God, and in
every man perceive but another lover for the Beloved.

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