e but by love--that love by which He is at once the
Life of everything and everything is the life of Him.

Absence from God is Pain, and everlastingly will be Pain in varying
degrees. Are there souls who have never left Him? Undoubtedly, but
they know nothing of this world. Are we perhaps distressed at this
multiplicity of worlds and souls? We need not be, for they are a
necessity both of God and of ourselves; for God to Be Himself He
must give Himself, and who can receive Him? Not even the greatest
of all the Angels can alone bear to endure Him? Only into a vast
multiplicity of individuals can God pour and expend Himself to the
fullness of His desire, the One to the many. Each individually
receives from Him, and each individually and collectively--the many
to the One--returns Him those burning favours which are in
Celestial-living.

Is it all joy to find God? How can it be? Can faults and sins be
eradicated without pain? Life here for the lover of God is one long
eradication of offences. How can even the daily requirements of
flesh be fulfilled without pain? How without profound humiliation
and patience can we descend from Contemplation to duties in the
household? How without pain consider with that same mind which
has so recently been rapt in God--the various merits of breads,
pastries, and portions of dead animals, in order that flesh shall eat
and live! What a fall is this!--a fall that must be taken daily and
patiently. Is it all joy to love God? How can it be? For Love carries
in itself a terrible wound of longing which can never be healed till
we come before Him in possession Face to Face.

And many times a day in an unpremeditated natural anguish Love
remembers the sufferings of that meek and holy Saviour; how can it
be a joy to the soul that passionately loves Him to stand before a
tortured Lord, tortured for her? There never was a pain as hard and
sharp as this. There are no tears like the tears we shed to Christ.

XVI

We say of God that He is Love and Light, Wisdom and Truth. He is
also a Gracious Consenting. So we see the Divine Light Consenting
to darkness that it may return to Light, and Divine Love Consenting
to infidelity that it may return to Perfect Love.

But this Gracious Consenting is not because of or since Adam, but
Adam "is" because of this Consenting.

In the flesh of Adam the fallen soul is brought to a stay-point. Any
that have experienced spirit-living even for one hour know that in