Is it all joy to find God? How can it be? Can faults and sins be eradicated without pain? Life here for the lover of God is one long eradication of offences. How can even the daily requirements of flesh be fulfilled without pain? How without profound humiliation and patience can we descend from Contemplation to duties in the household? How without pain consider with that same mind which has so recently been rapt in God--the various merits of breads, pastries, and portions of dead animals, in order that flesh shall eat and live! What a fall is this!--a fall that must be taken daily and patiently. Is it all joy to love God? How can it be? For Love carries in itself a terrible wound of longing which can never be healed till we come before Him in possession Face to Face. And many times a day in an unpremeditated natural anguish Love remembers the sufferings of that meek and holy Saviour; how can it be a joy to the soul that passionately loves Him to stand before a tortured Lord, tortured for her? There never was a pain as hard and sharp as this. There are no tears like the tears we shed to Christ. XVI We say of God that He is Love and Light, Wisdom and Truth. He is also a Gracious Consenting. So we see the Divine Light Consenting to darkness that it may return to Light, and Divine Love Consenting to infidelity that it may return to Perfect Love. But this Gracious Consenting is not because of or since Adam, but Adam "is" because of this Consenting. In the flesh of Adam the fallen soul is brought to a stay-point. Any that have experienced spirit-living even for one hour know that in immortal living is no stay-point but infinity of movement, in which movement the wandering soul becomes lost and finally insensitive. By means of the flesh the soul is brought to that stay-point where she more easily receives and understands the impregnation of Consenting Light, which is the Divine Begetting; and she receives the drawing power of Consenting Love: she is directly operated upon by the Divine Pity Who Himself came to show her the Way of Return: first, by the negation or sacrifice of flesh lusts; secondly, by the sacrifice of spiritual lusts (by which the soul originally fell); until finally, by death to all lusts and infidelities she is reunited to the blisses of Immortal Life. This is the kindly purpose of our life in this world. Christ being Eternal Light and Love and Life, we also are eternal _who contain Christ._ So, then, we consent to abandon all lusts of the flesh whilst also consenting to endure any consequences of these lusts in ourselves and others, not in unwillingness to endure, which is resistance, but in submission. From consenting to abandon the delights of the flesh we advance to consenting to the withdrawal of all spiritual delights from us: enduring instead spiritual difficulties, standing firm in the strength of Christ whilst the assaults of self-will and infidelity batter the soul.