The life of conscious connection with God is true living as far as we may know it in the flesh, an enormous increase over the petty normal life of the world or, more rightly, the petty and lacking life of the world. For in this life of God-consciousness is an immense sanity and poise, a balance between soul and body and heart and mind never achieved in the "normal" or "natural" life. Therefore the God-conscious life is not to be named an abnormal but the complete, full, and only truly normal life: a life in which both soul and creature have found their centre, and the whole being in all its parts is brought to evenness, to harmony, to peace and a greatly magnified intelligence. If all men and women attained this state, this world would automatically become Paradise. In this true life living and feeling alter their characteristics and surpass anything that can be imagined by the uninitiated mind. Now, though to convey some idea of this condition of consciousness would seem to be impossible, still there are some types of persons to whom a little something of the commencement of the larger life of the awakened soul might be conveyed before they themselves experience it. The lovers of nature, of music, of the beautiful and romantic, and of poetry: in the highest moments reached by such they are aware of an indefinable Something—an expansion, a going out towards, a longing—yearning, subtly composed of both joy and pain, which goes beyond the earth, beyond the music, beyond the poetry, beyond the beautiful into a Nameless Bourne. At these moments they live with the soul: this is the commencement of spirit-life. When the Nameless Bourne has become to the soul that which It really is—God—and He sends His responses to her, then the soul knows the fullness of spiritual life as we may know it in the flesh.
But she can neither know the Nameless Bourne as God nor receive His responses till the heart and the mind have come to repentance of their ways and have been changed at least in part. Without this mode of living no one can be said to live in a full or whole manner, because nothing is whole which does not include the consciousness of God, and this in a lively and acute degree.
One of our great difficulties is that when, as the merely half-repentant creature, we turn to God and, beginning to ask favours of Him, get no response, then all our warm feelings and longings towards Him fall back, we go into a state either of profounder unbelief (which is further separation) or into total apathy. Apathy is a deadly thing. The more God loves us the more He will do His part to keep us from it. All the circumstances of life will be used to this end. We may lose our nearest and dearest. If it is material prosperity that causes a too complete content to live without Him, then some or all of that prosperity will be removed. In whatever spot we are most tender—there He will touch us. "Oh, if it had been anyone else or anything less that we had lost, then it would not have been so hard to bear," we say. Exactly. For nothing less would have been of any use, and alas! even this may be of no use, for Christ is ever willing and trying to save us, and we will not be saved.
If we do not get out of this apathy, we shall miss the whole reason of our life here. By these living thrusts He brings us to our knees, humbled, humiliated, anguished, in order that, having awakened and purified us, He may lift us into His Divine consolations.
We cannot in one step mount up out of our faithless indifferent wrongful condition into the glories of the knowledge of God. First we must learn to know Jesus, intimately, devotedly. Then Jesus the Christ: then the Father. Finally God the Holy Trinity, once found and known by us, becomes our All, and by some unspeakable condescension He becomes to us all things in all ways. The soul is filled with romantic and divine love, and instantly God is her Holy Lover: she is sad, weary, or afraid, and immediately she turns to Him He comforts and mothers her: she is filled with adoring filial love, and at once He is her Father. Oh, the wonders of the fullness of the finding and knowing of God!
Let the man who would know happiness here study the works of God, and not think he will gain virtue by putting everything that he sees here upon one side, saying it is not real or it is not good. It is very real of its own kind, and good also if he learns how to use it, and very marvellous. Let him study how things are made—God's things, not trivial man-made things—let him observe how all are made with equal care, the humblest and the proudest, "the tiny violet perfect as the oak." Let him learn the manner of the ways of light and the colours of all that he sees,[*] and then stop to consider how, having made all these marvels, God then fashioned his own delicate eyes that he might see and know and enjoy them all. To consider all these things, accepting them from God with love, makes the heart and the mind and the soul dance and sing together not with noise but like sunshine upon water.
[*] Scientific Ideas of To-day, by C. Gibson.
What is Nature but the demonstration in visible objects of an invisible Will? This Will we need to trace to its Source; having done this, we are able to praise and bless God for every single thing of beauty He has fashioned here: and this praising and blessing of God becomes nothing less than a continual ecstasy for both soul and creature, and, indeed, because of this and by means of this burning appreciation of God's works, both soul and creature find their sweetest consolations as they wait to be taken to a holier world.
When they both bless God with the fire of their love for every tender thing that He has made, then their days become to them one long delight.
This blessing of God and His works is not just a blessing with lips, but feels this way. The words being said by the heart, a burning spark of enthusiasm is immediately kindled there, which spark sets light to a spark in the soul; and this invisible fire joining another Invisible Fire, instantly in immense exaltation we enter the joys of God. But because of our flesh we cannot stay but only enter and come back.