unspeakably glorious
moments KNOW HIM.

This is life: to be in Him and He in us, _and know it._

* * *

These beautiful flights of the soul cannot be taken through idleness,
though they are taken in what would outwardly appear to be a great
stillness. This stillness is but the necessary abstraction from physical
activity, even from physical consciousness; but inwardly the spirit is
in a great activity, a very ferment of secret work. This, to the writer,
is frequently produced by the beautiful in Nature, the spirit
involuntarily passing at sight of beauty into a passionate admiration
for the Maker of it. This high, pure emotion, which is also an
_intense activity_ of the spirit, would seem so to etherealise the
creature that instantly the delicate soul is able to escape her loosened
bonds and flies towards her home, filled with ineffable,
incomparable delight, praising, singing, and joying in her Lord and
God until the body can endure no more, and swiftly she must return
to bondage in it. But the most wonderful flights of the soul are made
during a high adoring contemplation of God. We are in high
contemplation when the heart, mind, and soul, having dropped
consciousness of all earthly matters, have been brought to a full
concentration upon God--God totally invisible, totally unimaged,
_and yet focussed to a centre-point by the great power of love._ The
soul, whilst she is able to maintain this most difficult height of
contemplation, may be visited by an intensely vivid perception,
inward vision, and knowledge of God's attributes or perfections,
very brief; and this _as a gift,_ for she is not able to will such a
felicity to herself, but being given such she is instantly consumed
with adoration, and _enters ecstasy._

Having achieved these degrees of progress, the heart and mind will
say: "Now I may surely repose, for I have attained!" And so we may
repose, but not in idleness, which is to say, not without abundance of
prayer. For only by prayer is our condition maintained and renewed;
but without prayer, by which I mean an incessant inward
communion, quickly our condition changes and wears away. No
matter to what degree of love we have attained, we need to pray for
more; without persistent but short prayer for faith and love we might
fall back into strange woeful periods of cold obscurity.

To the accomplished lover great and wonderful is prayer; the more
completely the mind and heart are lifted up in it, the slo