The progress of our spiritual advance would feel to be that because we become more and more aware of the failure of earthly consolations and amusements, and more and more aware of the suffering, the sin, and the evil that there is about us, so more and more our desires go out towards the good, and more and more we turn to Christ. Then Christ may deliberately make Himself non-sufficient for the soul, and if He so does she must reach out after the Godhead; then by means of more woes the soul and the creature clamour more and more after the Godhead and will not be satisfied with less than the Godhead, and, continuing to clamour, are brought by Christ to the new birth, the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Immediately the soul and creature become rid of Woe; and, living a life altogether apart from the world, in a marvellous crystal joy they taste of the Godhead and of Eternal Pleasures. This for a short time only: we have entered the Kingdom, but are still the smallest of spiritual children: tenderly, wonderfully God cares for us, but we must grow, we must learn heavenly manners. So Jesus Christ calls us again, and where does He lead us? Straight back into the world, the daily life from which we thought we had escaped! Here truly is a Woe, a Woe worse than any Woe we ever had before. Now we enter the Course of spiritual temptations, woes, and endurances, and in the midst of the pots and pans of daily life Christ teaches us heavenly manners. II Since Contemplation is so necessary for Union with God and for the soul's _enjoyment_ of God--is it a capacity common to all persons? Yes, though, like all other capacities, in varying degrees; but few will give themselves up to the difficulties of developing the capacity; and it is easy to know why, for our "natural" state is that we work for that which brings the easiest, most immediate, and most substantially visible reward. Those who could most easily develop their powers of contemplation are those to whom Beauty speaks, or those who are delicately sensitive to some ideal, nameless, elusive, that draws and then retreats, but in retreating still draws. The poet, the artist, the dreamer _that harnesses his mind_--all can contemplate. The Thinker, _thinking straight through,_ the proficient business man with his powers of concentration, the first-rate organiser, the scientist, the inventor--all these men are contemplatives who do not drive to God, but to the world or to ambition. Taking God as their goal, they could ascend to great heights of happiness; though first they must give up ("sacrifice") all that is unsavoury in thought and in living: yet such is the vast, the boundless Attraction of God that having once (if only for a few moments) retouched this lost Attraction of His, we afterwards are possessed with no other desire so powerful as the desire to retouch Him again, and "sacrifice" becomes no sacrifice.