A woman, a sinner taken in the act, was brought to this terrible Jesus. Instantly He became a lamb. With exquisite gentleness, sweetness, and tact, He spoke words chosen not to wound or shame her, and then sent her away forgiven and blest. This was no isolated event. His kindness to outcasts never failed. He was angry with Pharisees, yet even to them strangely without resentment. There was in Him a marvellously tender compassion, united with a hot hatred of meanness and hypocrisy. All fierce extremes met in Him. Here was what Blake had been seeking all his life--that for which he had been a rebel. Just here, in the old gospel, looming out of the past, he gained his supreme vision of One who satisfied his utmost need. He gazed, and worshipped Him in His immense energy and strength, His lowliness and meekness, Who had deserved all that His chosen people could give Him, yet had borne no resentment when they despised and rejected Him. Slowly Blake saw his life as a mere blot by the side of that resplendent life. Then all resentment died in him. The child spirit returned. He accepted his earthly lot, henceforth content to do his work with all his might, careless whether his generation paid the wages due to him or not. CHAPTER XII DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH Blake, like the Patriarch, wrestled through his dark night till the day dawned. He had wrenched the secret out of the angel messenger. Henceforth he was an Israelite indeed--a guileless Prince with God, with a word of God on his lips for such as had ears to hear. Doubtless if we could arrange the details of human experience we would decree that after such a contact with the Divine a man should for the rest of his days sail on a halcyon sea into a haven of rest. But though the giants are slain, their ghosts return; and Blake, like Jacob, was still haunted by spectres which only did not deter him because he had painfully learnt to discern between the shadow and the substance. The day dawned, but not in the way that most would choose. Worldly success was farther from him than ever. Instead of himself arising like a blaze of light on the England that he loved, it was his spirit that was secretly illumined by the spiritual sun; and while he could live by the memory of his resplendent vision of Christ, yet as he moved among men he was merely observed to halt on his thigh, or in other words to be touched with that frenzy or madness which marks those who have rashly gazed on the sun. For the next ten years--years of rich spiritual maturity--Blake worked incessantly; but his life was so obscure that his biographers have been able to glean but a handful of facts.