If you, sir, can receive this mystery, and go through the honourable path of life which lies before you, looking upon yourself as an immortal spirit walking among supernatural things—for the natural things of this life would be nothing were they not moved and animated by the efficacy of that which is above nature—I think you may find this doctrine a light which will guide your feet in dark places; and it would seem, unless I am mistaken, that this habit of mind is very likely to lead to the blessedness of the Beatific Vision of God, on the quest of which you have happily entered so young: for surely it should lead to that state to which this vision is promised—the state of those who are Pure in Heart. For if it be true, that the reason we see not God is the grossness of this tabernacle wherein the soul is encased, then the more and the oftener we recognise the supernatural in our ordinary life, and not only expect and find it in those rare and short moments of devotion and prayer, the more, surely, the rays of the Divine Light will shine through the dark glass of this outward form of life, and the more our own spirit will be enlightened and purified by it, until we come to that likeness to the Divine Nature, and that purity of heart to which a share of the Beatific Vision is promised, and which, as some teach, can be attained by being abstract from the body and the bodily life. As we see every day that the supernatural in some men gives a particular brightness of air to the countenance, and makes the face to shine with an inimitable lustre, and if it be true that in the life to come we shall have to see through a body and a glass however transparent, we may well practise our eyes by making this life spiritual, as we shall have also to strive to do in that to which we go. My predecessor in this living, doubtless a very worthy man (for I knew him not), has left it recorded on his tombstone—as I will show you if you will come into the Church—that he was ’full of cares and full of years, of neither weary, but full of hope and of heaven.’ I should desire that it may be faithfully recorded of me that I was the same!"