With Julian the Christian Faith is not a thing added to the Mystical sight: these are, as again and again she says, seen both as one. It is the _inherent_ Christianity of her system that makes her teaching always, in a large way, practical. For the system came at first to be seen by prayerful searching made out of her practical need of an answer to the problem of sin and sorrow; the Mystical Vision came with "contrition, compassion, and longing after God," those wounds that her contrite, pitiful, longing heart had desired should be made more deep in her life. It is through the work of grace that Julian reaches back to the gift of nature, its ground; and from the depths of this root-ground she rises soon again to the "springing and spreading" grace. So in the First of her Shewings the "higher" truth is seen: "we are all in Him beclosed," but in the Last--the conclusion and confirmation of all--the lower, yet nearer, truth, which _all_ may know: "and He is beclosed in us." And speaking of this dwelling within the soul she speaks of His working us all into Him: "in which working He willeth that we be His helpers, giving to Him all our entending, learning His lores, keeping His laws, desiring that all be done that He doeth; truly trusting In Him" (lvii.). Julian had prayed to feel Christ's dying pains, if it should be God's will, in order that she might feel compassion, and the visionary sight of His pain in the Face of the Crucifix filled her with pain as it grew upon her. "How might any pain be more to me than to see Him that is all my life, all my bliss, and all my joy suffer?" Yet the Shewing of Pain was but the introduction to, and for a time the accompaniment of, the Revelation; the Revelation, itself, as a whole, was of Love--the Goodness or Active Love of God. So the First Shewing, as the Ground of all the rest, was a large view of this Goodness as the Ground of all Being. Although through these earlier Shewings the Saviour's bodily pain is felt by Julian so fully in "mind" that she feels it indeed as if it were bodily anguish she bore, it is in this very experience that the shewing of Joy is made to her spirit. So when in the opening of the Revelation she tells of beholding the Passion of Christ, her first unexpected word is of sudden joy from the inner sight of the Love that God is: the sight of the Trinity:--"And in the same Shewing suddenly the Trinity fulfilled my heart most of joy. (For where JESUS appeareth, the blessed Trinity is understood, as to my sight.)" And even as Julian finds afterwards that the Last Word of the Revelation is the same as the First: "_Thou shalt not be overcome_," so the opening Sight already shews her that which shall be revealed all through, for learning of "more in the same," and uplifts her heart to the fulness of joy that is shewn at the close. For she feels that this shock, as it were, of Revelation--this sudden joy of seeing Love in the midst of