‘You see,’ our mystic continues—and let us hear him, for he has somewhat more to say, and to the purpose, as it seems—‘you see that we are no enemies to the symbol and the figure in their proper place, any more than we are to the arguments of reason. But there are three considerations which I and my brethren would entreat you to entertain. First of all, that logical distinctions, and all forms of imagery, must of necessity be transcended when we contemplate directly that Being who is above time and space, before and after,—the universal Presence,—the dweller in the everlasting Now. In the highest states of the soul, when she is concentrated on that part of her which links her with the infinite, when she clings most immediately to the Father of spirits, all the slow technicalities, and the processes and the imaginations of the lower powers, must inevitably be forgotten. Have you never known times when, quite apart from any particular religious means, your soul has been filled, past utterance, with a sense of the divine presence,—when emotion has overflowed all reasoning and all words, and a certain serene amazement—a silent gaze of wonder—has taken the place of all conclusions and conceptions? Some interruption came, or some reflex act dissolved the spell of glory and recalled you to yourself, but could not rob you of your blessing. There remained a divine tranquillity, in the strength whereof your heaviest trouble had grown lighter than the grasshopper, and your hardest duty seemed as a cloud before the winds of the morning. In that hour, your soul could find no language; but looking back upon it, you think if that unutterable longing and unutterable rest could have found speech, it would have been in words such as these—“Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee.”