“And you have found before this, that the sorrow well borne is full of strange joys—joys, whose long lasting perfumes, show that they were grown in heaven and not on earth.”
“This is the last sorrow that can come to me, father.”
“And my dear Annie, you would have been a loser without it. Every grief has its meaning, and the web of life could not be better woven, if only love touched it.”
“I have been praying, father.”
“Nay, but God Himself prayed in you, while your soul waited in deep resignation. God gave you both the resignation and the answer.”
“My heart failed me at the last—then I prayed as well as I could.”
“And then, visited by the NOT YOURSELF in you, your head was lifted up. Do not be frightened at what you want. Strive for it little by little. All that is bitter in outward things, or in interior things, all that befalls you in the course of a day, is YOUR DAILY BREAD if you will take it from His hand.”
Then she was silent and quite still, and he sat and watched the gradual lifting of the spirit’s cloud—watched, until the pallor of her face grew luminous with the inner light, and her wide open eyes saw, as in a vision, things, invisible to mortal sight; but open to the spirit on that dazzling line where mortal and immortal verge.
And as he went home, stepping slowly through the misty world, he himself hardly knew whether he was in the body or out of it. He felt not the dripping rain, he was not conscious of the encompassing earthly vapours, he had passed within the veil and was worshipping
“In dazzling temples opened straight to Him,
Where One who had great lightnings for His crown
Was suddenly made present; vast and dim
Through crowded pinions of the Cherubim.”