In our narratives of conversion we saw how the world might look shining and transfigured to the convert,(154) and, apart from anything acutely religious, we all have moments when the universal life seems to wrap us round with friendliness. In youth and health, in summer, in the woods or on the mountains, there come days when the weather seems all whispering with peace, hours when the goodness and beauty of existence enfold us like a dry warm climate, or chime through us as if our inner ears were subtly ringing with the world’s security. Thoreau writes:— “Once, a few weeks after I came to the woods, for an hour I doubted whether the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was somewhat unpleasant. But, in the midst of a gentle rain, while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sight and sound around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once, like an atmosphere, sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine‐needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.”(155) In the Christian consciousness this sense of the enveloping friendliness becomes most personal and definite. “The compensation,” writes a German author, “for the loss of that sense of personal independence which man so unwillingly gives up, is the disappearance of all _fear_ from one’s life, the quite indescribable and inexplicable feeling of an inner _security_, which one can only experience, but which, once it has been experienced, one can never forget.”(156) I find an excellent description of this state of mind in a sermon by Mr. Voysey:—