the nails of the Passion--mere dead matter, though with power to wound unto death for a time the blessed Life), sin, which is failure of human love,--leaves, notwithstanding all its horror, an opening for a fuller influx of Divine love and strength.[9] And as to _darkness_, "seeking is as good as beholding, for the time that God will suffer the soul to be in travail" (x.). And as to tribulation of every kind, "the Passion of our Lord is comfort to us against all this, and so is His blessed will" (xxvii.). The parts may seem to come by chance and to be "amiss," but the whole, and in the whole each part, is ordered. "And when we be all brought up above, then shall we see clearly in God the secret things which be now hid to us. Then shall none of us be stirred to say: _Lord, if it had been thus, then it had been full well_: but we shall all say with _one_ voice: _Lord, blessed mayst Thou be, for it is thus: it is well; and now we see verily that all things are done as it was then ordained before that anything was made_" (xi., lxxxv.). "Moreover He that shall be our bliss when we are there, is our Keeper while we are here"; and the Last Word of the Revelation is the same as the First; "_Thou shalt not be overcome._" "He said not: _Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be distressed_; but He said: _Thou shalt not be overcome._" This is God's comfort. And that here, meanwhile, we should take His comfort is Julian's chief desire and instruction. For Julian, who speaking so much of sin as a strange and troubling sight, yet gives as examples of sin only a slothful mistrusting despondency,--speaks indeed of faith and hope and charity, compassion and meekness, but scarcely _exhorts_ except to the cheerful enduring of tribulation. So she gives counsel as to "rejoicing more in His whole love than sorrowing in our often fallings"; as to "living gladly and merrily for love's sake" in our penance of darkness (lxxii.-lxxxi.). And in general, for all experiences of life, "It is God's will that we take His promises and His comfortings as largely and as mightily as we may take them, and also He willeth that we take our abiding and our troubles as lightly as we may take them, and set them at nought" (lxiv., lxv., xv.). "We are all one in comfort," says Julian, "all the gracious comfort was for all mine even-Christians." Sin separates, pain isolates, but salvation and comfort unite.