There came a night when I passed beyond Ideas, beyond melody, beyond beauty, into vast lost spaces, depths of untellable bliss, into a Light. And the Light is an ecstasy of delight, and the Light is an ocean of bliss, and the Light is Life and Love, and the Light is the too deep contact with God, and the Light is unbearable Joy; and in unendurable bliss my soul beseeches God that He will cover her from this most terrible rapture, this felicity which exceeds all measure. And she is not covered from it. And she beseeches Him again; and she is not covered; and being in the last extremity from this most terrible joy, she beseeches Him again: and immediately is covered from it. * * * My soul, my whole being, is terrified of God, and of joy. I dare not think of Him, I dare not pray; but, like some pitiful and wounded child, I creep to the feet of Jesus. When on the following evening once more the day closes and I compose myself for the night, I wonder tremblingly to what He will again expose me; but for the first time in six weeks I fall into a natural sleep and know no more until the morning. Then I understand that the lesson is over. Mighty and Terrible God, it was enough! In the light of these measureless joys what is any earthly joy? What is the very greatest experience of earthly happiness but so much waste paper? What are the joys of those vices for which men sell their souls, but soap-bubbles! The whole meaning of life, together with all the graduated and accepted values of it, becomes for ever changed in the light of the knowledge of Celestial Happiness. PART III I Wonderful, beautiful weeks went by, filled with divine, indescribable peace. The Presence of God was with me day and night, and the world was not the world as I had once known it--a place where men and women fought and sinned and toiled and anguished and wondered horribly the meaning of this mystery of pain and joy, of life and death. The world was become Paradise, and in my heart I cried to all my fellow-souls, "Why fret and toil, why sweat and anguish for the things of earth when our own God has in His hand such peace and bliss and happiness to give to Every man? O come and receive it, Every man his share." And the glamour of life in Unity with God became past all comprehension and all words. Is life, then, a poem? is it a melody? I cannot say; but it is one long essence of delight--a harmony of flowing out and back again to God. O blessed life! O blessed Man! O blessed God! II