Part 5

These dogs were especially selected, not for their charm of outward appearance, but for their inward capacities; _not for an especial love of the dog_ (or favouritism), but for that which they were willing to learn how to do. The qualifications for (s)election were willingness, obedience, fidelity, endurance. Once chosen they were set apart. Then commenced the training, and we were shown how man put his will through the dog: he was able to do this _only because of the willingness of the dog._ The purport of the training was to carry a message for his master wherever his master willed. He must go instantly and at full speed; he must leap any obstacle; he must turn away from his own kind if they should entice him to linger on the way; he must subdue all his natural desires and instincts entirely to his master's desires; he must be indifferent to danger. And to secure this he was fired over by numbers of men, difficulties were set for him, and he was distracted from his straight course by a number of tests. Yet we saw the brave and faithful creatures running on their way at their fullest speed until, exhausted and breathless but filled with joy of _love and willingness,_ they reached the journey's end, to be caressed and cared for beyond other dogs until the next occasion should arise. Then we were shown the dog in his fully-trained condition. His master could now always rely upon him. A dog always ready, always faithful and self-forgetful, was then set apart into a still smaller and more (s)elect group and surrounded with most especial care and love. Never would it want for anything. In this there was justice. Forsaking all their natural ways, these dogs had submitted themselves wholly, in loving willingness, to their master's will, and he in return would lavish all his best on them. It was but just. Oh, how my heart leaped over it! At last I understood--for as the dog, so the human creature. We become chosen souls, not for our own sakes (which had always seemed to me such favouritism), but for our willingness to learn our Master's Will. And what is His will and what is His work? Of many, many kinds, and this is shown to the soul in her training. But the hardest to learn is not that of the worker, but of the messenger and lover. As the messenger, to take His messages, in whatever direction, instantly and correctly, and to take back the answer from man to Himself--which is to say, to hold before Him the needs of man on the fire of the soul, known to most persons under the name of prayer. And as the lover, to sing to Him with never-failing joyful love and thanks.

But the learning and work of the soul is not so simple as that of the dog, who carries the message in writing upon his collar. The soul can have no written paper to assist her, and long and painful is her training; and exquisitely sweet it is when, having swiftly and accurately taken the message, she waits before Him for the rapture of those caresses that she knows so well.

How I was spurred! For I said, "Shall dogs outdo us in love and devotion?" Only in a condition of total submission, self-forgetfulness, self-abnegation, can the soul either receive or deliver her message. In this way she is justified of the joys of her election. The dog, faithful in all ways to his master, receives in return all praise and all meats, whatever he desires. The faithful soul also receives all praise and all meats, both spiritual and carnal, for nothing of earthly needs will lack her _if she asks_; and without asking, her needs are mysteriously and completely given her. Her spiritual meats are, in this world, peace, joy, ecstasy, rapture; and of the world to come it is written that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for them that love Him.

It might be supposed that only persons filled with public charities and social improvements, ardent and painstaking church workers, might most surely and easily learn to be messengers. But all these persons pursue and follow their own line of thought, the promptings of their own minds and hearts. They are admirable workers, but not messengers. For the hound of God must have in his heart no plan of his own. It is hard for the heart to say, "I have no wishes of my own; I have no interests, no plans, no ambitions, no schemes, no desires, no loves, no will. Thy will is my will. Thy desire is my desire. Thy love is my all. I am empty of all things, that I may be a channel for the stream of Thy will."

With what patience, what tenderness, what inexpressible endearments He helps the soul, training her by love!--which is not to say that she is trained without much suffering of the creature. So we are trained by two opposite ways--by suffering and by joys; and the whole under an attitude of passionate and devoted attention on our part. The sufferings of the soul baffle all description with their strange intensities.

Our encouragements are great and extraordinary sweetnesses, urgings, and joyful uplifting of the spirit. So that when we would stop, we are pressed forward; when we are exhausted, we are filled with the wine of sweetness; when we are in tears, we are embraced into the Holy Spirit.

* * *

Sin and ill are the false notes struck by man across the harmony of God's will, and to strike upon or even remember such notes is instant banishment from the music of His presence. Where all is joy, there joy is all_;_ and he who has not reached this joy does not know God--he is still a follower, and not a possessor, and he should refuse in his heart to remain satisfied with his condition, but climb on. Why stay behind? Climb on, climb on!

How often I have been mystified and disturbed by the attitude of many religious and pious people, that to follow Christ is a way of gloom, of sadness, of heaviness! How often have I gathered from sermons that we are to give up all bright and enticing things if we would follow Him, and the preacher _goes no further!_ Has the Lord, then, no enticements, no sweetnesses, no brightness to offer us, that we should be asked to forsake all pleasantnesses, all brightness, all attractions if we follow Him? This to me always seemed terrible, and my heart would sink. Indeed, to my poor mind and heart it seemed nothing more hopeful than a going from bad to worse!

All the pictures I have seen, either of the Crucifixion or the Way of the Cross (and especially those of more recent times and painting), portray His Blessed Face all worn with gloom; and I know now that this is far from the truth. For perfect love knows agony, but no gloom. He went through all His agony, lifted high above gloom, in a great ecstasy of love for us.

To speak of _sacrifice_ in connection with following Him is, to my mind, the work of a very foolish person and one in danger of being blasphemous. For how dare we say that it is a sacrifice when, by the putting away of foolish desires, we find God! And to find God, through the following of Jesus Christ, is to _gain so much_ (even in this world, and without waiting for the next) that those who gain it never cease to be amazed at the vastness of it.

We find this to be an absolute truth, that if we have not Him we have, and are, nothing, in comparison with that which we are and that which we have when we have Him.

In my earlier stages I was greatly set back and disturbed by this gloom and sacrifice (which is no sacrifice) of myself so put forward by pulpit teaching. It was a great hindrance to me and blinded me to the truth. I was only a normal, ordinary creature, and they thrust a great burden into my arms.

Little by little, as I was able to learn directly from His own heart, I came to know Him as He is; and I could not reconcile this knowledge of Himself which He gave me, especially of His high willingness and serenity, with pulpit teachings of heavy gloom. The Church too frequently spoke to me of following Him in terms which conveyed a burden: "Pick up thy cross, pick up thy cross!" they cried; and He spoke to me in terms which conveyed a great joy: "Come to Me, come to Me, for I love thee!"

I thought I was very cowardly and sinned by this inability to like the gloomy burden, and one day I came upon this out of Jeremiah: "As for the prophet, or the priest, or the people, that shall say, The burden of the Lord, I will punish that man and his house . . . because ye say, The burden of the Lord, I will utterly forget you and forsake you, and cast you out of My presence."

These words of Jesus, "Take up thy cross and follow Me": whoever will do it will be shown by Jesus that the cross of following Him is no burden, but a deliverance, a finding of life, the way of escape, a great joy, and a garland of love.

The world thinks of joyousness as being laughter, cackling, and much silly noise; and to such I do not speak. But the Christ's joyousness is of a high, still, marvellous, and ineffable completeness--beyond all words; and _wholly satisfying_ to heart and soul and body and mind.

It is written, "They shall love silver, and not be satisfied with it"--for why? Only those are _satisfied_ who know the gold of Christ.

All of which is not to say that by following Him we shall escape from happenings and inconveniences and sorrows and illnesses common to life; but that when these come we are raised out of our distress into His ineffable peace.

When the heart is sad, use this sadness in a comprehension of the deeper pain of Jesus, who was in the self-same exile as we ourselves. The more the soul is truly awakened and touched, the more she feels herself to be in exile; and this is her cross.

But the remedy for her sadness is that she should courageously pass out of her woes of exile and go up to meet her lover with smiles. Now, He cannot resist this smiling courage and love of the soul, and very quickly He must send her His sweetness, and her sadness is gone.

* * *

When I say that if we will take a few steps alone towards Christ--which is to say, if we will make some strenuous efforts to cleanse ourselves and change our minds and ways--He will take us all the rest of the way, I speak from experience. For amongst many things this happened to me: at a certain stage, after my third conversion on the hill, He caused my former thoughts, desires, and follies to go away from me! It was as though He had sent a veil between me and such thoughts of my heart and mind as might not be pleasing to Him, so that they disappeared from my knowledge and my actions!

By this marvellous act He removed my difficulties, and put me into a state of innocence which resembled the innocence I remember to have had up to the age of four or five years. But I find this new innocence far more wonderful than that of childhood, which is but the innocence of ignorance. But this new innocence--which is a gift of God--is innocence with knowledge. I am not able to express the gratitude and amazement and wonder that have never ceased to fill me about this. Such things can only be spoken of by the soul to her lover, and then not in words but in a silence of tears.

What did I ever do that He should show me such kindness? I did nothing except this: I desired with all the force of my heart and soul and mind and body to love Him. I said, "Oh, if I could be the warmest, tenderest lover that ever thou didst have! Teach me to be Thy burning lover." This was my perpetual prayer. And my idea of Heaven was and is this, that without so much as knowing, or being known or perceived by _any save Himself,_ without even a name, yet retaining my full consciousness of individuality, I should be with Him for always.

What is this love for God, and how define it? For myself, I never knew it until I was filled with it upon the hill. Many judge it to be _a following_ of Christ and His wishes, but this is only a part of it and the way we begin it, and often we begin from duty, fear of future punishment, desire for salvation or spiritual pre-eminence, and obedience; and in none of these is there the joy of love.

By such standards I might count myself to have loved Him for twenty years; but know I did not. For ten years past I felt myself to have so great a need of Him, I sought Him so, that for me Heaven contained no re-met former earthly loves, much as I loved them here. I knew that He would be my all. Nevertheless, He was not yet my Love, but my Need.

Love is a fire, for we feel the great heat of it.

Love is a light, for we perceive the white glare of it.

Of things known, to what can we compare it? Most perhaps to electricity, for here we have both light and heat, and the lightning flash strikes that which already contains the most of itself (or electricity). And the lightning of God's love strikes him whose heart contains the most love for Himself. And He strikes when He will, and afterwards visits when He will; and I do not count myself (for all my earthly loves) to have so much as known the outer edge of the meaning of the word love, till He struck me with His own upon that hill.

Truly, fair and holy love is our warranty, our only pass for entering into Heaven.

Brave and wilful, rapturous and insistent, love passes with bold yet humble ecstasy into the very presence of her Lord and God; and alone, out of all creation, is never denied the Right of Way.

* * *

I have seen it quoted, "Turn to the heights, turn to the deeps, turn within, turn without, everywhere thou shalt find the Cross." But I see it so: "Turn to the heights, turn to the deeps, turn within, turn without, everywhere thou shalt find His Love." Love to help on the way. Too much we might suppose, to hear pious people talk, that because of Christ's way we must be miserable and our life an endless Cross! And so life may be a cross, but He carries it for us.

Do sinful men never suffer? Do the sinful escape disease? and live for ever without biting the dust in death or disappointment? Why, disease and suffering are the very twin-children of sin. I am amazed that people can take such a view of the Cross as to think it an unhappy, miserable way. For so marvellous is the beauty of such love that there is no other so desirable a thing upon earth.

"Come, walk the way with Me," says the Beloved; "I am all serenity, all peace, all might, all power, all love. Come, walk with Me, and forget thy tiny cares in the peace of My bosom."

* * *

We do not love God because we do not yet know Him. And we do not know Him because we seek only to know and have our own desires: and having learnt to know these, we would have our unknown God accommodate Himself to us and them.

But let us first seek to know God's desires by heart, and then accommodate our own to His: so shall we learn to be pleasing to Christ, that He may lead us, whilst here, into His Garden. For to the creature that ardently pursues God there comes at last a time when He reveals Himself to the searching soul, saying: "I Am Here. Come!" Then in secrecy we arise,--and go to Him out of the House of Vanity into the music of the great Beyond.

There is small credit or virtue to the soul when, in a state of high grace or nearness, she burns with love for her God: for she is under the spell of the enticement of His Presence--how can she help but burn! It is as though two earthly lovers, in full sight and nearness, are filled each for each with great love, and are content.

But this is a credit to the soul and the creature (as to the earthly lovers), that in separation and farness they should seek no other, but continue to dwell with great intentness upon the absent love. This is fidelity.

At times it is as if her Lord said to the soul: "I have other to do than to stay by thee; and also thou hast had more than enough to thy share of My honey"; and, so saying, He departs.

And this is fidelity of the soul and the creature, and a great virtue, that, without change of face, without complaint or petitioning, they should with all sweetness continue to pour up to Him their unabated love. If any can do this, he is a perfect lover and has no more to learn.

When the love of the soul, as it were, exceeds itself, it passes up and beyond even the song of love; and being unable to express itself by words or by song, or by deep sighings, or by any of those subtle, silent, spiritual means known only between herself and God, when all means fail because of the too great stress of her adoration, then the soul passes into a great pain, which is the anguish of love and a hard thing to bear. This excess is to the fullness of the Godhead.

And now the soul must turn to prayer for help, but not to the Godhead: for the more she turns to the Godhead the greater becomes her anguish. But coming down to His humanity, she must beseech sweet Jesus for His aid, and so regain her equilibrium.

* * *

Many of us are, perhaps unwittingly, impudent to God. In this way we are impudent: We question (even though it be in secret, hidden in the heart and not spoken) the justice of God, the ways of God, the plans of God, the love of God: by which means we argue with God and judge Him. And another manner of impudence we have is this, that we dare to attribute or to blame Him for the results of man's own filth, saying: "This and this is the will of God, for we see that it exists, and His will is omnipotent." Oh, beware of this impudence, drop it out of the heart and mind, and flee from it as from the plague! "How then can these things be, if He is omnipotent?" we say. Because of this, that in the trust of His great love He gave us the royal and Godly gift of free-will, and our souls have proved themselves unworthy to have it; and now the creature is brought before the Beautiful, and the Holy, and the Pure, but turning away, like the sow, prefers the mire and the festering sores proceeding from such wallowings. If there were no choice, there were no virtue, and no progress home. But let no man venture in his heart to attribute to that Holy and Marvellous Being whom we speak of as God, not knowing as yet His Name, any will towards festers and corruptions, for what does He say Himself? "Their sins rise up before Me and stink in My nostrils!"

We surely forget that this world is not yet God's Kingdom, and that His will is not done here, and will not be until the Judgment Day. This world is but a tiny testing-chamber in His mighty workshop; and great and wonderful is the care He has for the workers in it.

O man! whence come thy wretchednesses? Look round and think. Do they not all proceed from self and fellow-men, alive or dead? Then why blame God?

"Why am I here?" we cry, "to suffer all these pains, and my consent not asked? A poor, sad puppet dancing to a tune I know not the rhythm of. Where is my recompense? And where my wages? I will take all I can of what is offered here, and give no thanks! It is but my scant due for all my wretchednesses!"

O foolish man! so timid of all future possibilities of bliss that he must grasp and burn himself with such delights as he finds here! And equally mistaken and small-minded man who thinks that all our Mighty God will have to offer us hereafter are crowns, damp clouds and mists, and endless hymns! Such little hearts are far away indeed from knowing the _magnitudes of Life._

O wretched man! why this distrust? Hast thou created even thine own palate and digestion? Hast thou invented any of those fond delights that so enslave thee now? Hast thou thyself devised the means wherewith to satisfy the longing of thy _creature_ for the sweets of life? They were provided thee; all that thou hast created is misuse! Thou art but a perverted thing!--a crooked tool of self, a fly drowning in the honey that it sought too greedily to own!

O wretched, wretched man! so cloyed with sweets of earth thou canst not raise thy head to see the sunrise out beyond the world, and know true sweets! How many are the tears wept over thee by the great heart of God!

* * *

Since coming into this new way of living, the more I come into contact with music the more I sense a mysterious connection between melody--the soul--and her _origin._ Alone out of all the sciences and arts, music has no foundation upon anything on earth. There is no music in nature until the soul, come to a perfect harmony within herself, brings out the hidden harmony in all creation, and, turning it to melody within herself, returns it to her Lord in song, whether by outward instrument or inward love.

The soul, indeed, would seem to have come out of a life of infinite melody and to have dropped into an existence of mere contrary and vexing time-beat.

Who can by any means account for the variety of passions excited within him by the mere difference of the spacing, time, or rhythm of music? In my new condition of living I notice that the soul throws out with most disdainful impatience music that was formerly beautiful to my mind and heart (or my creature); and certain types of flowing cadences (very rarely to be found), sustained in high, flowing, delicate, and soaring continuity will produce in her conditions akin to a madness of joy. For one brief instant _she remembers! but cannot utter what!_

Of visions I know nothing, but received all my experiences into my soul as amazingly real inward perceptions. That these perceptions are of unprecedented intensity, and more realistic than those which are merely visual, can be understood by bodily comparisons; for to _feel_ or to be one with fire is more than to _see_ it.

To try to compare spiritual life with physical experiences would seem to be useless; for, to my feeling, while we live in the spirit we live at a great speed,--indeed, an incalculably great speed--and as a whole and not in parts. For with physical living we live at one moment by the eyes, at another with the mind, at another through the heart, at another with the body. But the spirit feels to have no parts, for all parts are of so perfect a concordance that in this marvellous harmony all is one and one is all. And this with _incredible intensity,_ so that we live not as now--dully--but at white heat of sensibility.

_Prayer_

Prayer is the golden wedding-ring between ourselves and God. For myself, I divide it into two halves--the one petitioning, the other offering.

Of petitioning I would say that this is the _work_ of the soul; and of offering, that it is the pleasure of the soul.

Of petitioning, that I come to it under His command; and of offering, that I come to it of my own high, passionate desire.

I make upon my knees, three times a day, three short and formal prayers of humble worship, as befits the creature worshipping its Ineffable and Mighty God: and for the rest of my time I sing to Him from my heart and soul, as befits the joyful lover, adoring and conversing with the Ineffable and Exquisite Beloved.

* * *

This is the circle of His way with us. First is prayer; then love; and after love, humility. With humility comes grace; and after grace, temptation; and in temptation we must quickly enter prayer again.

* * *

O wonderful and ineffable God! who, while remaining hidden from His lovers in this life, yet so ravishes their hearts and minds and souls that they are unable to find truly sweet even the greatest of life's former joys--for nothing can now ever satisfy them but the secret and marvellous administrations of His love and grace! On one day feeling to be forsaken, the most desolate and lonely of all creatures in the Universe; and on another exalted to almost unbearable pinnacles of bliss, equal to the angels in felicity, and blest beyond all power of words to say--such and so are the lovers of God.

* * *

The soul has six wings: love, obedience, humility, simplicity, perseverance, and courage. With these she can attain God.