Again, there is a young lay-reader, closely in contact with Christ; he
has a wife and young child. The weather is bitterly cold. A picture
suddenly comes before me of this family, and there is a voice saying,
"_He was gathering together the last little pieces of fuel when your
present came._" Immediately I understand that I am required to send
coal to these people, and to do it at once without delay. The
following day the wife comes with tears to thank me, and she tells
me, "We were in despair; my husband's heart is so weak he cannot
bear the cold, he becomes seriously ill. _He was gathering together
the last little pieces of fuel when your present came._"
Or, again, I very badly need a pair of walking shoes, but for weeks I
have been so absorbed in contemplation that the pain of bringing
myself from this holy joy to do shopping is too great, and I delay
and delay; I cannot bring myself to it; but shoes are a necessity of
earthly life. Having exceedingly narrow feet, I am obliged always to
get my shoes from a certain maker, and now, during the war, he
makes so few shoes. To-day a picture of the shop comes before me,
and the words "Go to-day, go to-day," urge themselves upon my
consciousness. Then a picture comes of the assistant; I show her my
foot, and she says, "_There is only one pair left; how fortunate you
came to-day!_" So I understand I must go to my shopping and,
greatly against my will, I go that afternoon. The assistant comes
forward, and I show her my foot, and she says, "_There is only one
pair left; how fortunate you came to-day!_"
Always in this mode of the guiding are the little picture and the
_exact_ words: all of it of the easiest to describe; but of the other
and the greater guiding I do not know how to tell. It is sheer pure
knowledge, received not in parts, pictures, or words, but as a whole
and in a mode so exquisitely mysterious as to be at once too intricate
for description, and yet simplicity itself!
Sure, perfect, and serene mode of knowledge! Royal knowledge
which knows no toil, no sweat of work, no common drudgery, art
thou of the soul herself, or art thou altogether from outside the soul?
This I know, that though the first mode would seem to be very small
and to deal with littleness, and the last mode seems to be entirely
apart from it because of the greatnesses with which it deals that they
are linked and that the power is one power soaring to the highest,
condescending to the smallest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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