So now, in the time of this strange abstraction and poverty, when the cinematograph of my mind is closed down, and with it the delicate mechanism which takes up, uses, and connects all that we take in by the senses, and which makes the world so real and so comprehensible, is become unhitched and disconnected, so that nothing in the world seems any longer real or possesses either value or meaning, and I stand before it all defenceless, seemingly unable to deal with it, utterly indifferent to it; then and now Reason may very well say to me, "You are in very great danger"; but I am not in any danger, because I am guided whenever necessary by some condescending sagacity far more sagacious than my poor Reason, infinitely more penetrative and effectual than any sense of eye or ear. I remain fully convinced that at this time, at any rate, it was an outside sagacity which guided me—truly a guardian angel.
This period of intense abstraction, this strange valley of humiliation, poverty, solitude, seemed a necessary prelude to the great, the supreme, experience of my life. As I came slowly out of this poverty and solitude, the joyousness of my spiritual experience increased: the nights were no longer at all a time of sleep or repose, but of rapturous living.
The sixth week came, and I commenced to fear the nights and this tremendous living, because the happiness and the light and the poignancy and the rapture of it were becoming more than I could bear. I began to wonder secretly if God intended to draw my soul so near to Him that I should die of the splendour of this living, My raptures were not only caused by the sense of the immediate Presence of God—this is a distinctive rapture running through and above all raptures, but there are lesser ecstasies caused by the meeting of the soul with Thoughts or Ideas, with melodies which bear the soul in almost unendurable delight upon a thousand summits of perfection; and with an all-pervading rapturous Beauty in a great light. There is this peculiarity about the manner of these thoughts and melodies and beauties—they are not spoken, heard, or seen, but lived. I could not pass these things to my reason and translate the Ideas into words or the melodies into sounds, or the beauty into objects, for spirit-living is not translatable to earth-living, and I found in it no words, no sounds, no objects, and I comprehended and I lived with that in me which is above Reason and of which I had, previously to these experiences, had no cognisance.
There came a night when I passed beyond Ideas, beyond melody, beyond beauty, into vast lost spaces, depths of untellable bliss, into a Light. And the Light is an ecstasy of delight, and the Light is an ocean of bliss, and the Light is Life and Love, and the Light is the too deep contact with God, and the Light is unbearable Joy; and in unendurable bliss my soul beseeches God that He will cover her from this most terrible rapture, this felicity which exceeds all measure. And she is not covered from it. And she beseeches Him again; and she is not covered; and being in the last extremity from this most terrible joy, she beseeches Him again: and immediately is covered from it.
* * *
My soul, my whole being, is terrified of God, and of joy. I dare not think of Him, I dare not pray; but, like some pitiful and wounded child, I creep to the feet of Jesus.
When on the following evening once more the day closes and I compose myself for the night, I wonder tremblingly to what He will again expose me; but for the first time in six weeks I fall into a natural sleep and know no more until the morning.
Then I understand that the lesson is over. Mighty and Terrible God, it was enough!
In the light of these measureless joys what is any earthly joy? What is the very greatest experience of earthly happiness but so much waste paper?
What are the joys of those vices for which men sell their souls, but soap-bubbles!