mode, for if it worked thus it would be God and not a creature. “By His own image God has made His creatures like unto Himself in their nature, and in those who have turned to Him, He has made the likeness even greater--higher than nature in the light of grace or of glory, each one according to the capacity which he has by the state of his soul or by his merits. Now all those who feel this inward contact, who have an enlightened reason and the eagerness of love, and to whom love’s infinite freedom has been revealed, enter into joyful contemplation in the super-essence of God. Moreover, God is united to His essence in a joyful manner, and contemplates that very essence which He enjoys. According to the mode of the enjoyment, the divine light constantly fails in the infinite essence; but in contemplation and in a fixed and steady gaze the vision cannot be darkened, for we shall forever behold that which we enjoy. Those for whom the light constantly fails are those who rest in enjoyments, in the midst of those wild solitudes where God possesses Himself in perpetual joy; there the light grows dim in rest and in the infinitude of the sublime essence. There God is His own throne, and all those who possess God in grace and in glory in this degree are the thrones and the tabernacles of God, and they have died in God in an eternal rest. “From this death there arises a super-essential life--that is to say, a life of contemplation--and here the gift of intelligence begins. For God, who without ceasing contemplates the very essence which He enjoys, and who grants the impatience of love to those whom He makes like unto Himself, gives also rest and enjoyment to those who are united with Him. But where there is union of being and complete immersion, there is no more giving or receiving. And because He grants an enlightened reason to those whom He makes like unto Himself, He also gives a boundless splendour to those who are united to Him. That boundless splendour is the image of the Father. We are created in this image, and we are capable of being united to it in a grandeur more lofty than thrones, if we only contemplate, above our own human weakness, the glorious face of the Father--in other words, the sublime nature of deity. Now this unfathomed splendour is a common gift to all spirits who rejoice in grace and in glory. It thus streams forth for all like the splendour of the sun, and yet those who receive it are not all equally enlightened. The sun shines more clearly through glass than through stone, more clearly through crystal than through glass, and each precious stone shines and shows its beauty and its power and its colour in the light of the sun. Even so is each man enlightened both in grace and in glory, according as he is capable of receiving so sublime a gift; but he who is most enlightened in grace yet has less than he who is least enlightened in glory. Nevertheless the light of glory is