he is the brother who once saved my life, he is the being who more
than anyone on earth I have most loved since early childhood. So I
hang on to God. I hang to Him, not by beseeching Him to relieve or
release me from any of these inevitable happenings, but by the way I
have so slowly been learning, in which a creature, by means and
because of love, passes out of itself and is able to hand over to God
everything which it is or has or thinks or does, and in exchange
receives His Peace. So I hand over my brother and my dead and my
anxieties for self into His hands, and I go to my operation with the
same serenity that I should go to meet a friend. I notice that I am
more calm, less nervous, than anyone else.

The anaesthetic fails before the operation is completed:
consciousness returns and becomes aware of atrocious pain and
blood-soaked busy instruments. Yet by Grace of God the mind and
soul are able immediately to raise and maintain themselves in high
consciousness of God, and the operation can be finished without a
cry or movement of the body: no automatic shrinking takes place.
And this Grace is continued for days afterwards, so that in recalling
the torturing incidents, and though the pain of wounds continues
severe enough to interfere with sleep, yet my mind remains quite
calm, like a quiet lake over which, without ruffling its waters, hangs
a mist--a tranquil shroud of pain that has no sting, no fear, no fret.

VII

After coming to Union with God I _never lacked anything,_ and this
during the most difficult times of the war, and under every and all
circumstances. Being careful to try and observe how this was
worked, I saw it was very naturally and simply done by everyone
being given an impulse to help me, always without any request to
them on my part: the porter, besieged by twenty persons, would be
blind to all and, coming straight to me, would offer his service; the
taxi-driver, hailed by a waiting mob, had eyes and ears for no one
but myself, yet I had made him no sign except by looking at him.
The same with the coal merchant and his coal, the same with all
tradesmen, the same with servants. I never lacked anything for one
hour: _but I continually asked Christ to help me._

Since coming to Union with God, I have had innumerable trials,
some of them tortures, but have been brought safely out of every one.
I afterwards found that each trial was exactly what was needed for
the alteration of some objectionable c