amed an abnormal but the complete,
full, and only truly normal life: a life in which both soul and creature
have found their centre, and the whole being in all its parts is
brought to evenness, to harmony, to peace and a greatly magnified
intelligence. If all men and women attained this state, this world
would automatically become Paradise. In this true life living and
feeling alter their characteristics and surpass anything that can be
imagined by the uninitiated mind. Now, though to convey some idea
of this condition of consciousness would seem to be impossible, still
there are some types of persons to whom a little something of the
commencement of the larger life of the awakened soul might be
conveyed before they themselves experience it. The lovers of nature,
of music, of the beautiful and romantic, and of poetry: in the highest
moments reached by such they are aware of an indefinable
Something--an expansion, a going out towards, a longing--yearning,
subtly composed of both joy and pain, which goes beyond the earth,
beyond the music, beyond the poetry, beyond the beautiful into a
Nameless Bourne. At these moments they live with the soul: this is
the commencement of spirit-life. When the Nameless Bourne has
become to the soul that which It really is--God--and _He sends His
responses to her,_ then the soul knows the fullness of spiritual life as
we may know it in the flesh.

But she can neither know the Nameless Bourne as God nor receive
His responses till the heart and the mind have come to repentance of
their ways and have been changed at least in part. Without this mode
of living no one can be said to live in a full or whole manner,
because nothing is whole which does not include the consciousness
of God, and this in a lively and acute degree.

One of our great difficulties is that when, as the merely
half-repentant creature, we turn to God and, beginning to ask favours of
Him, get no response, then all our warm feelings and longings
towards Him fall back, we go into a state either of profounder
unbelief (which is further separation) or into total apathy. Apathy is
a deadly thing. The more God loves us the more He will do His part
to keep us from it. All the circumstances of life will be used to this
end. We may lose our nearest and dearest. If it is material prosperity
that causes a too complete content to live without Him, then some or
all of that prosperity will be removed. In whatever spot we are most
tender