ent. I knew it but once. To know it again would be
the death of my body. For more than two hours (as well as I am able
to judge) before coming to this highest experience, my soul travelled
through what felt to be an ocean, for she rose and fell upon billows
in a state of infinite bliss.

Of other forms of contact we have a swift, unexpected, even
unsought-for attainment, which is entirely of His volition; that
sudden condescension to the soul, in which in unspeakable rapture
she is caught up to her holy lover.

These are the topmost heights which the creature dare recall, though
to the soul they remain in memory as life itself. The variations of
these forms of contact are infinite, for God would seem to will to be
both eternal changelessness and variation in infinitude.

Because of this, and the marvellous depths and heights and breadths
of life revealed to her, the soul is able to conceive of an eternity of
bliss, for monotony ceases to be joy. In Nature we see that no two
trees in a forest are alike, and two fruits gathered from one bough
have not the same flavour.

But to my feeling all degrees of attainment are only to be
distinguished as varying degrees of union, the joy of which is of a
form and a degree of intensity and purity which can enter neither the
heart nor the mind to imagine, but must be experienced to be
understood, and when experienced remains in part incomprehensible.
It is not to be obtained by force of the will, neither can it be obtained
without the will. It is, then, a mystery of two wills in unison, in
which our will is temporarily fused into and consumed by the will of
God and is in transports of felicity over its own annihilation! This is
outside reason and therefore incomprehensible to the creature, but
comprehensible to the soul, and becomes the aim and object of our
life to attain in permanence, and is the uttermost limit of all
conceivable rapture.

When I first knew union and contact upon the hill I had the
impression of a very great light outside of me. I never again had an
outward impression of it.

But when any sense of inward _light_ is felt I consider it to be a
high ecstasy and hard for the body. It is the sweet and gentle
touchings of Christ which are the great and unspeakable comfort of
both soul and body. Inward heat I never felt till many months after
my third conversion and more than four years from my first
conversion. This extraordinary sensation, which to my mind is l