I know I have badly expressed all this, because I find no words wherewith to make clear that which came to me; for in truth thought was lost in consciousness, and language fails to express that consciousness. I only know that I saw order coming out of chaos, light out of darkness, love out of hatred, divinity out of bestiality, life out of death.
For life and love were all.
I did not see God—that is, I was not able to visualize His Presence. I did not talk with God as a man talketh with his friend, and yet my whole being seemed to be filled with His Light and Love and Peace. I felt that I was breathing God, because God was all; that nothing was outside His Care, that nothing was too small for His Love. I wondered at my doubts and at my absence of faith, for God was everywhere, in everything; in all purposes, plans, desires. I was conscious that He was shaping and directing and controlling all the thoughts of men, and that everything was moving towards His Eternal Purposes.
In the light of what I saw, pain and wrong and misery were being overruled by the Eternal Love, so that even they were speeding men towards the greater, fuller life, and that in the march of untold ages Life and Love were everything.
A sense of triumph, of exultation filled me, bore me up as if on the wings of eagles. I saw everything from a new perspective. I realized as I never realized before the meaning of the words of the Apostle:
"Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and Eternal weight of glory."
I saw that all things—all wrong, all pain, all darkness, everything which made life dark and terrible—were only for a moment, and that they were overruled by the Eternal God, so that those who suffered them merged through the ages into Eternal Love and Eternal Light.
How long I was in this state I do not know, for, as I have said, time had no meaning to me. All life's standards seemed to melt away. I only knew that I was, that I felt, that I was filled with an overwhelming joy, because I knew that darkness would end in Eternal Light, that pain would end in Infinite Peace.
Then slowly everything began to fade away; the worlds by which I was surrounded ceased to be. I lost the power, of visualizing; my thoughts became dim and indistinct. Presently all became darkness save for one speck of light. Sometimes that speck of light became very small; sometimes it grew larger, but it was always there, and I was conscious of an unspeakable peace.