We consent to abandon self-absorption in the delights of God, and, returning to the world, endeavour to perform all acts of life in the world in a manner consonant with perfection; but this is impossible: this effort is insupportable without Grace. We cannot do it alone. We learn to know it and to know that we are never alone. Even if we fall into the deepest sin, we are not abandoned by the Divine Graciousness: by consenting to abandon this wickedness we are immediately reunited with the Divine Consenting, and so onwards and upwards in an ever-ascending improvement to perfection: and by consenting the soul daily sinks into the balm of Christ and loses her burden. We see the Perfection of this divine consenting and abandonment of Self-Will in the final picture of the Cross. We see unmurmuring consent to the death of flesh, consent to the attacks of evil, consent to injustice, consent to infidelity (and straightway they all forsook Him and fled), and, finally, consent to the death of Divine Union: this not without groanings, as being the one supreme and only insupportable Agony. XVII How is it that Perfect Love can consent to the wandering of the soul with its consequent sorrow and sin? Divine Light, being also Perfect Freedom, consents to the wandering of the soul; but Divine Love, being also Reciprocity, may not consent to such wandering as shall for ever preclude Reciprocity. The wandering soul must be, will be, Redeemed. * * * If Divine Light, being also Perfect Freedom, consents to the wandering of the soul, but Divine Love, being also Reciprocity, may not consent to a perpetual wandering, how set limits in a life in which perfect freedom must continue? A limit can be fixed by Evil, Evil the outermost circle from God, the shore on which, continually breaking and being broken, the soul turns herself in longing to a long-forgotten Lord. Evil is the hedge about the vineyard of the Parable. The soul is free to touch it, free to pass through it if she will, but touching it she knows Pain. Pain causes the soul to pause and consider: now is her opportunity; now she is likely to turn about and seek the Good. Then the purpose of Evil is fulfilled; then Evil becomes the handmaid of Good; then we can feel and say with sincerity, Evil has smitten me friendly, for it has caused me to turn about and seek Good. Good, once found, is found to be stronger than Evil. In a few years Good has so drawn us that Evil has become negligible; it lies forgotten on a now distant misty shore. The soul is Homeward bound. XVIII "If the wicked turn from his sins that he hath committed and keep my statutes . . . all his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him."--Ezekiel xviii. 21, 22. XIX