The way in which this subjectivity (not wrong at the first) comes to an end is not one that can be exactly determined, either as to the time the end takes place or as to the cause that brings it about. The change usually begins with premonitions which eventually become strong impressions. These are often called forth merely by isolated words which sometimes have been spoken by men, apparently by chance, but are more frequently derived from reading. Books that fall into a man’s hand at just the right time are nowadays most frequently the instrumentality of the summons to a higher life. Many a time, also, the soul suddenly, in moments of elevation, sees itself transported to a quite different plane from that on which it really lives. It espies, as often happens to the mountain-wanderer, a new and beautiful region quite near before it, but which is still separated from its present standing-ground by a vast chasm, over which a bridge leads, but only far below in the depths. In this period isolated experiences also occur which may be classed as strange, as hard to be described, and as by no means essential to development. On this point mystic writers say that there are three kinds of more intimate union with the divine: first, the quite regular kind (thus already understood in the Old Testament), that comes through submission and sincere love, a union that always remains open in its nature, that nothing can interrupt save a man’s own will contending against the will of God, and that is at once reëstablished as soon as the will is again accordant; second, an extraordinary kind, that comes through devout contemplation, which can not, however, be artificially produced, but which is only a yet greater affection of the heart, waiting in patience and humility for the response that God will perhaps give thereto; and lastly, a still more sensitive feeling of nearness to God, coming for the most part quite unexpectedly, but, of all the three, the least necessary and important for the progress of the inner life. The end of the first stage of life is not satisfying--can not and should not be. All subjectivity is a form of thinking that ends in dissatisfaction, and the nobler the soul, the more quickly and deeply it falls into it. Along with this there very often comes a certain failure in the outer life, almost enigmatical; the cause is given in very picturesque language by an Israelitic prophet, Hosea, “I will hedge up the way with thorns, and I will make a fence against her, that she shall not find her paths.” It is the genuine mercy of God when every false way a man wishes to strike into is hedged with thorns; or when he, in another beautiful Israelitic simile, like a lily among thorns, can find his growth only straight upward. Those are the sorrows of youth for which later one is most thankful.