--there He will touch us. "Oh, if it had been anyone else or
anything less that we had lost, then it would not have been so hard to
bear," we say. Exactly. For nothing less would have been of any use,
and alas! even this may be of no use, for Christ is ever willing and
trying to save us, and we will not be saved.

If we do not get out of this apathy, we shall miss the whole reason of
our life here. By these living thrusts He brings us to our knees,
humbled, humiliated, anguished, in order that, having awakened and
purified us, He may lift us into His Divine consolations.

We cannot in one step mount up out of our faithless indifferent
wrongful condition into the glories of the knowledge of God. First
we must learn to know Jesus, intimately, devotedly. Then Jesus the
Christ: then the Father. Finally God the Holy Trinity, once found
and known by us, becomes our All, and by some unspeakable
condescension He becomes to us all things in all ways. The soul is
filled with romantic and divine love, and instantly God is her Holy
Lover: she is sad, weary, or afraid, and immediately she turns to
Him He comforts and mothers her: she is filled with adoring filial
love, and at once He is her Father. Oh, the wonders of the fullness of
the finding and knowing of God!

Let the man who would know happiness here study the works of
God, and not think he will gain virtue by putting everything that he
sees here upon one side, saying it is not real or it is not good. It is
very real of its own kind, and good also if he learns how to use it,
and very marvellous. Let him study how things are made--God's
things, not trivial man-made things--let him observe how all are
made with equal care, the humblest and the proudest, "the tiny violet
perfect as the oak." Let him learn the manner of the ways of light
and the colours of all that he sees,[*] and then stop to consider how,
having made all these marvels, God then fashioned his own delicate
eyes that he might see and know and enjoy them all. To consider all
these things, accepting them from God with love, makes the heart
and the mind and the soul dance and sing together not with noise but
like sunshine upon water.

[*] _Scientific Ideas of To-day,_ by C. Gibson.

What is Nature but the demonstration in visible objects of an
invisible Will? This Will we need to trace to its Source; having done
this, we are able to praise and bless God for every single thing of
beauty He has fashioned here: and