by
Infinite Love before ever he was born, probably before the worlds
were framed, and Martin said with all his heart the words breathed
by the Incarnate God, when groaning beneath the olive tree in
mysterious agony:

"Not my will, but thine, be done."

And then he lapsed into delirium.

The next sensation of which he was conscious, and which he
afterwards remembered, for we have not done with our Martin yet,
was one of a singular character. A glorious light, but intensely
painful, seemed before his eyes. It burnt, it dazzled, it
confounded him; yet he admired and adored it, for it seemed to him
the glory of God thus fashioning itself before him. And on that
brilliant orb, glowing like a sun, was a black spot which seemed to
Martin to be himself, a blot on God's glory, and he cried, "Oh, let
me perish, if but Thy glory be unstained," when a voice seemed to
reply, "My glory shall be shown in thy redemption, not in thy
destruction."

Probably this took place at the crisis of the disease, and the
physical and spiritual sensations were in union throughout the
illness. For now Martin was delirious with joy--sweet strains of
music were ever about him. The angels gathered in his cell and sang
carols, songs of love to the Crucified. One stormy night, when
gentle but heavy rain descended, patter, patter, on the roof above
his head, he thought Gabriel and all the angelic choir were there,
singing the Gloria in Excelsis, poising themselves on wings without
the window, and the strain:

Pax in terra hominibus bonoe voluntatis,

Was so ineffably sweet that the tears rolled down his cheeks in
streams.

This was the end of the imaginary music. The next morning he woke
up conscious--himself again. His first return to consciousness was
an impression of a voice:

"Dearest brother, thou art better, art thou not?"

"I am quite free from pain, only a hungered."

"What food dost thou desire to enter thy lips first?"

"The Bread of Life."

"But not as the Viaticum {20}, thank God. Wait awhile, I go to
fetch it from the altar."

And the successor of Adam de Maresco, the new head of the Oxford
House, left the youth and went into their plainly-furnished chapel,
where, in a silver dove, the only silver about the church, the
reserved sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ was always kept
for the sick in case of need. It hung from the beams of the
chancel, before the high altar.

First the prior knelt and thanked God for havi