Perhaps I am not yet meant to see the ‘why’ of all that followed.... We seemed so helpful heavenwards to each other. Never seemed our love truer, deeper, purer,—I know though _now_ that mine _could_ be all three. Yet with all this wondering, I do and have felt most solemnly. Surely it is best. ‘We shall see in Heaven why it could not be otherwise.’ At least, Octavia, you have never had (in me at least) so true and deep and leal a friend as now,—and yet quieter and so stronger. And for her—God have her in His holy keeping! I feel some work has been done when I can say as deeply, truly as now that no earthly blessing could seem to me (except relating to my Mother) comparable to her restoration to me (for every feeling of hurt or wound or injury seems merged in deep earnest love ‘beyond words’) yet I am ready, and God helping me able to go through the world— darkened and lightless as it seemed a few weeks ago—and feel it yet my Father’s own world, ‘very good’ yet: ready in it manfully and cheerfully to take up my burden, and again and forever as ‘Christ’s faithful soldier and servant’ to fight manfully till my life’s end—so help me God!” Footnote 23: Miss Miranda Hill. CHAPTER IX FIRST EXPERIENCE OF EDINBURGH It is the great miracle of life—that first glow and uplifting of the soul in touch with the Unseen. “The immediate consciousness of the religious man,” said Hegel, “has in it an infinite worth, because an infinite content.” For the moment it seems as if all the difficulties of life were swept away, as if nothing temporal could matter any more. But if the world at large is to be ennobled and spiritualised by these individual experiences, the inspiration has got to be worked out in “the commonplace clay with which the world provides us.”