with soldiers, and watch every gate, and hold every street and lane of your hearts and of your minds all around your hearts.  And all through the Prince of Peace, the Captain of all Holy War, Jesus Christ Himself.  No wonder, then, that in a strength—in a kind and in a degree of strength—that passeth all understanding, this stately palace of the heart is also here called a well-garrisoned castle.

3.  And then for pleasantness the human heart is a perfect paradise.  For pleasantness the human heart is like those famous royal parks of Nineveh and Babylon that sprang up in after days as if to recover and restore the Garden of Eden that had been lost to those eastern lands.  But even Adam’s own paradise was but a poor outside imitation in earth and water, in flowers and fruits, of the far better paradise God had planted within him.  Take another Mystic at this point upon paradise.  ‘My dear man,’ exclaims Jacob Behmen, ‘the Garden of Eden is not paradise, neither does Moses say so.  Paradise is the divine joy, and that was in their own hearts so long as they stood in the love of God.  Paradise is the divine and angelical joy, pure love, pure joy, pure gladness, in which there is no fear, no misery, and no death.  Which paradise neither death nor the devil can touch.  And yet it has no stone wall around it; only a great gulf which no man or angel can cross but by that new birth of which Christ spoke to Nicodemus.  Reason asks, Where is paradise to be found?  Is it far off or near?  Is it in this world or is it above the stars?  Where is that desirable native country where there is no death?  Beloved, there is nothing nearer you at this moment than paradise, if you incline that way.  God beckons you back into paradise at this moment, and calls you by name to come.  Come, He says, and be one of My paradise children.  In paradise,’ the Teutonic Philosopher goes on, ‘there is nothing but hearty love, a meek and a gentle love; a most friendly and most courteous discourse: a gracious, amiable, and blessed society, where the one is always glad to see the other, and to honour the other.  They know of no malice in paradise, no cunning, no subtlety, and no sly deceit.  But the fruits of the Spirit of God are common among them in paradise, and one may make use of all the good things of paradise without causing disfavour, or hatred, or envy, for there is no contrary affection there, but all hearts there are knit together in love.  In paradise they love one another, and rejoice in the beauty, loveliness, and gladness of one another.  No one esteems or accounts himself more excellent than another in paradise; but every one has great joy in another, and rejoices in another’s fair beauty, whence their love to one another continually increases, so that they lead one another by the hand, and so friendly kiss one another.’  Thus the blessed Behmen saw paradise and had it in his heart as he sat over his hammer and lapstone in his solitary stall.  For of such as Jacob Behmen and John Bunyan is the kingdom of heaven, and all such saintly souls have paradise restored again and improved upon in their own hearts.

4.  And for largeness a place so copious as to contain all the world.  Over against the word ‘copious’ Bunyan hangs for a key, Ecclesiastes third and eleventh; and under it Miss Peacock adds this as a note—‘Copious, spacious.  Old French, copieux; Latin, copiosus, plentiful.’  The human heart, as we have already read to-night, is the highest, greatest, strongest, and noblest part of human nature.  And so it is.  Fearfully and wonderfully made as is the whole of human nature, that fear and that wonder surpass themselves in the spaciousness and the copiousness of the human heart.  For what is it that the human heart has not space for, and to spare?  After the whole world is received home into a human heart, there is room, and, indeed, hunger, for another world, and after that for still another.  The sun is—I forget how many times bigger than our whole world, and yet we can open our heart and take down the sun into it, and shut him out again and restore him to his immeasurable distances in the heavens, and all in the twinkling of an eye.  As for instance.  As I wrote these lines I read a report of a lecture by Sir Robert Ball in which that distinguished astronomer discoursed on recent solar discoveries.  A globe of coal, Sir Robert said, as big as our earth, and all set ablaze at the same moment, would not give out so much heat to the worlds around as the sun gives out in a thousandth part of a second.  Well, as I read that, and ere ever I was aware what was going on, my heart had opened over my newspaper, and the sun had swept down from the sky, and had rushed into my heart, and before I knew where I was the cry had escaped my lips, ‘Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty!  Who shall not fear Thee and glorify thy name?’  And then this reflection as suddenly came to me: How good it is to be at peace with God, and to be able and willing to say, My Father!  That the whole of the surging and flaming sun was actually down in my straitened and hampered heart at that idle moment over my paper is scientifically demonstrable; for only that which is in the heart of a man can kindle the passions that are in the heart of that man; and nothing is more sure to me than that the great passions of fear and love, wonder and rapture were at that moment at a burning point within me.  There is a passage well on in the Holy War, which for terror and for horror, and at the same time for truth and for power, equals anything either in Dante or in Milton.  Lucifer has stood up at the council board to second the scheme of Beelzebub.  ‘Yes,’ he said, amid the plaudits of his fellow-princes—‘Yes, I swear it.  Let us fill Mansoul full with our abundance.  Let us make of this castle, as they vainly call it, a warehouse, as the name is in some of their cities above.  For if we can only get Mansoul to fill herself full with much goods she is henceforth ours.  My peers,’ he said, ‘you all know His parable of how unblessed riches choke the word; and, again, we know what happens when the hearts of men are overcharged with surfeiting and with drunkenness.  Let us give them all that, then, to their heart’s desire.’  This advice of Lucifer, our history tells us, was highly applauded in hell, and ever since it has proved their masterpiece to choke Mansoul with the fulness of this world, and to surfeit the heart with the good things thereof.  But, my brethren, you will outwit hell herself and all her counsellors and all her machinations, if, out of all the riches, pleasures, cares, and possessions, that both heaven and earth and hell can heap into your heart, those riches, pleasures, cares, and possessions but produce corresponding passions and affections towards God and man.  Only let fear, and love, and thankfulness, and helpfulness be kindled and fed to all their fulness in your heart, and all the world and all that it contains will only leave the more room in your boundless heart for God and for your brother.  All that God has made, or could make with all His counsel and all His power laid out, will not fill your boundless and bottomless heart.  He must come down and come into your boundless and bottomless heart Himself.  Himself: your Father, your Redeemer, and your Sanctifier and Comforter also.  Let the whole universe try to fill your heart, O man of God, and after it all we shall hear you singing in famine and in loneliness the doleful ditty:

‘O come to my heart, Lord Jesus,
There is room in my heart for Thee.

5.  ‘Madame,’ said a holy solitary to Madame Guyon in her misery—‘Madame, you are disappointed and perplexed because you seek without what you have within.  Accustom yourself to seek for God in your own heart and you will always find Him there.’  From that hour that gifted woman was a Mystic.  The secret of the interior life flashed upon her in a