insufferable offensiveness of myself.

For some time, even for some weeks, I remained like a person half-stunned with astonishment. Then I determined to try to become less selfish, less irritable and impatient, to show far more consideration for everyone else, to be rigidly truthful: in fact, try to commence an alteration.

For one thing—about telling lies—I had always been quite truthful in large things, but often told some social lies for my own convenience, and sometimes told them for no reason at all! This spontaneous Evil filled me with more astonishment than shame; whence did this Evil come? I could never account for this strange Intruder which seemed to have a separate life and will of its own, and which, with no conscious invitation upon my part, would suddenly visit me! and in all manner of shapes and ways! But whatever my difficulties, I had always this immense incentive—to please my Jesus, tender and wonderful, my Perfect Friend.

Two years went by, and on Easter morning, at the close of the service as I knelt in prayer in the church, He suddenly presented Himself again before my soul, and again I saw myself, and again I went down and down into those terrible abysses of spiritual pain; and I suffered more than I suffered the first time: indeed, I have never had the courage to quite fully recall the full depths of this anguish to mind.

After this my soul knew Jesus as Christ the Son of God, and my heart and mind accepted this without any further wonder or question, and entirely without knowing how this knowledge had been given, for it came as a gift.

A great repose now commenced to fill me, and the world and all its interests and ways seemed softly and gently blown out of my heart by the wings of a great new love, my love for the Risen Christ.

Though outwardly my friends might see no change, yet inwardly I was secretly changing month by month. Even the great love I had for my husband began to fade: this caused me distress; I thought I was growing heartless, and yet it was rather that my heart had grown so large that no man could fill it! I felt within me an immense, incomprehensible capacity for love, and the whole world with all its contents seemed totally, even absurdly, inadequate to satisfy this great capacity. I suffered over it without understanding it.

IX

I had a garden full of old-fashioned flowers, surrounded by high walls with thatch. As I grew in my heart more and more away from the world, I worked more in the garden, and whilst I worked I thought mostly about God—God so far away and hidden, and yet so near my heart.

There were many different song-birds in the garden, and one robin. I loved the robin best of all. His song was not so beautiful as the blackbird's or so mellow as the thrush's; but they hid and ran away from me, whilst the robin sought me out and stayed with me and sang me, all to myself, a little, tiny, gentle song of which I never grew tired. If I stayed quite still, he came so close he almost touched me; but if I moved towards him, he flew away in a great fright.

It seemed to me I was like that robin, and I wanted to come close, close to the feet of God. But He would not let me find Him. He would not make me any sign. He would not let me feel I knew Him. Did He in His wisdom know that if He showed Himself too openly I should go mad with fear or joy? I could not tell. But every day as the robin sang to me in the garden I sang to God a little gentle song out of my heart—a song to the hidden God Who called me, and when I answered Him would not be found, and, still remaining hidden, called and called till I was dumb with the pain and wonder of this mystery.

Then suddenly came the Great War. My husband was amongst the first to have to go. All my love for him which I had thought to be fading now rose up again to its full strength: it was no mere weakly sentiment, but a powerful type of human love which had been able to carry me through fifteen years of married life without one hour of quarrelling; its roots were deep into my heart and mind: the very strength and perfection of it but made of it a greater instrument for torture. Why should this most beautiful of all human emotions carry with it so heavy a penalty, for which no remedy appeared to exist? It had not then been made clear to me that all human loves must first be offered up and ascend into the love of God: then only are they freed from this Pain-Tax. God must first be All in All to us before we can enter amongst the number who are all in all to Him—constantly consoled by Him. This condition of being all in all is demanded as a right by all men and women in mutual love, yet we deny this right to God: we are not even willing to attempt it! this failure to be willing is the grave error we make. Our attitude to God is not one of love, but of an expectancy of favours. An identical sacrifice is demanded of us in marriage—father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends: all these loves must become subservient to the new love, and with what willingness and smiles this sacrifice is usually made! Not so with our sacrifices to God—we make them with bitter tears, hard hearts, long faces. Is He never hurt by this perpetual grudingness of love?

But I had not yet learnt any of this, and I could not accept, I could not swallow this terrible cup. I thought of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. He understood and knew all pain; I had His companionship, but He offered me no cessation of this pain. It must be borne; had He not borne His own up to the bitter end? I shrank, appalled, from the suffering I was already in and the suffering that lay before me. Relief from this agony, relief, relief! But there was no relief. In utter darkness all must be gone through. At least I was not so foolish as to attribute all this horror that was closing in upon the world to the direct Will of God: I could perceive that, on the contrary, it was the spirit of Anti-Christ, it was the will of Man with his greeds, his cruelty, his self-sufficient pride, together with a host of other evils, which had brought all this to pass. But could not—would not—God deliver the innocent; must all alike descend into the pit?

I tried to obtain relief by casting this burden on to Christ, and was not able to accomplish it. I tried to draw the succour of God down into my heart, and I tried to throw myself out and up to Him—I could do neither: the vast barrier remained; Faith could not take me through it.

A horrible kind of second sight now possessed me, so that, although I never heard one word from my husband, I became aware of much that was happening to him—knew him pressed perpetually backwards, fighting for his life, knew him at times lying exhausted out in the open fields at night. At last I began to fear for my reason; I became afraid of the torture of the nights and sat up reading, forcing my mind to concentrate itself upon the book—the near-to-hand help of the book was more effective than the spiritual help in which something altogether vital was still missing. Relief only came when after a month a letter reached me from my husband, saying that the terrible retreat was over and he safe.

Months and years dragged by. Sometimes the pain of it all was eased; sometimes it increased.

As grass mown down and withered in the fields gives out the pleasant scent of hay, so in her laceration and her anguish did the soul, I wondered, give off some Pain-Song pleasing to Almighty God.

At first I recoiled with terror from this thought; finally love overcame the terror—I was willing to have it so, if it pleased Him. My soul reached down into great and fearful depths. I envied the soldiers dying upon the battlefields; life was become far more terrible to me than death. Looking back upon my struggles, I see with profound astonishment how unaware I was of my impudence to God in attributing to Him qualities of cruelty and callousness, such as are to be found only amongst the lowest men!

Yet good was permitted to come out of this evil; for where I attributed to God a