That God has his dwelling-place at an incalculably great distance from ourselves is a true knowledge of the soul: but a further knowledge reveals to us that this calamity is mitigated, and for short periods even annulled, by provision of His within the soul to annihilate this distance, and be the means of bringing the soul into such immediate contact with Himself as she is able to endure. But the Joy-Energy of God being insupportable to the very nature of flesh, in His tender love and pity He provides us, through the Person of His Son, with degrees of union of such sweet gentleness that we may continually enjoy them through every hour of life; and through His Son He comes out to meet the prodigal "while yet afar off."
This is strongly observable, that as the process of Christ proceeds and grows in us, though our joys in God are individual, yet they become also clothed in a garment of the universal, so that the soul, when she enters the fires of worship and of blessing and of conversing with God—without any forethought, but by a cause or need now become a part of herself,—enters these states and gives to Him no longer as I, but as We—which is to say, as All Souls.
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Many of us look to death to work a miracle for us, thinking the mere cessation of physical living will give entry to paradise or even heaven, so long as we are baptised and call ourselves Christians. This is a great delusion. In character, personality, cleanliness, goodwill we are, after death, exactly as far advanced as we were before death, and no further. What then is needed, since death will not help us? The Seed of Divine love and life planted and consciously growing in us whilst we are still in this world. And what is this Seed?—the Redeemer.
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What is paradise, what is heaven? The progressive gradations of conditions of a perfect reciprocity of love, and the greater the perfection of this reciprocity the greater the altitudes attained of heaven. Thus we see in Scripture that the angels who stand nearest to God or highest in heaven are the cherubim—that is to say, they are those who have attained a greater reciprocity than all other angels. Now this Divine love is incomprehensible to us until we are initiated into its mystery as a gift, and cannot be understood nor guessed at by comparisons with any human loves however great, noble, or pure; but this burning fiery essence of joy, this radiant glory of delight, this holy and ineffable fulfilment of the uttermost needs, longings, and requirements of the soul must be personally experienced by us to be comprehended.
What madness in us is it that can count as an added cross or burden any means by which we reach such perfection of bliss for ever? The Cross is for us the misery of our own blinding sins and selfishnesses. The burden is the weight of our own distance from God. "Take up thy cross (which is our daily life of ignorance and sin), take up thy cross, and follow Me," says the voice of the Saviour; and as we do it and follow Him the distance between God and ourselves diminishes, and finally the burden and the cross disappear, and behold God! awaiting us with His consolations.
It is the stopping half-way that causes would-be followers of Christ such distress. It is necessary that we follow Him all the way and not merely a part of it—that He may complete His process in us. When we are living altogether in a creaturely, natural, or unregenerated way, absorbed in the ambitions and interests of a worldly life, we are perhaps content. When we live regenerated and in the spirit, we are in great joy; but when we try to live between the two and would serve God and worldly interests at the same time we are in gloomy wretchedness, vacillation, depression.
The Master said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you," which signified that within us was the potentiality to have entrance to, and to know, the mystery of the Divine Secret, and to participate whilst still living here, in the early degrees or manifestations of Divine Love—that Power which glorifies the angels, and is Heaven.
Of the three Stages of God-Consciousness