u
first made good your attachments to the universe, that you are
also a true constituent of the greater whole; that since you are
man, you are also spirit, and are living Eternal Life now, in the
midst of time.

The effect of this form of contemplation, in the degree in which
the ordinary man may learn to practise it, is like the sudden
change of atmosphere, the shifting of values, which we experience
when we pass from the busy streets into a quiet church; where
a lamp burns, and a silence reigns, the same yesterday, to-day,
and for ever. Thence is poured forth a stillness which strikes
through the tumult without. Eluding the flicker of the arc-lamps,
thence through an upper window we may glimpse a perpetual star.

The walls of the church, limiting the range of our attention,
shutting out the torrent of life, with its insistent demands and
appeals, make possible our apprehension of this deep eternal
peace. The character of our consciousness, intermediate between
Eternity and Time, and ever ready to swing between them, makes
such a device, such a concrete aid to concentration, essential to
us. But the peace, the presence, is everywhere--for us, not for it,
is the altar and the sanctuary required--and your deliberate,
humble practice of contemplation will teach you at last to find it;
outside the sheltering walls of recollection as well as within. You
will realise then what Julian meant, when she declared the
ultimate property of all that was made to be that "God keepeth
it": will _feel_ the violent consciousness of an enfolding
Presence, utterly transcending the fluid changeful nature-life, and
incomprehensible to the intelligence which that nature-life has
developed and trained. And as you knew the secret of that
nature-life best by surrendering yourself to it, by entering its
currents, and refusing to analyse or arrange: so here, by a
deliberate giving of yourself to the silence, the rich "nothingness,"
the "Cloud," you will draw nearest to the Reality it conceals
from the eye of sense. "Lovers put out the candle and draw the
curtains," says Patmore, "when they wish to see the God and the
Goddess: and in the higher communion, the night of thought is
the light of perception."

Such an experience of Eternity, the attainment of that intuitive
awareness, that meek and simple self-mergence, which the
mystics call sometimes, according to its degree and special
circumstances, the Quiet, the Desert of God, the Divine Dar