_Secondly_, the above conversion is removed to the _inmost_ life of soul, as spiritual mediation by means of repentance, penance, and conversion. _Thirdly_, and finally the manifestation of the Divine is so conceived in the world of Nature's reality that the ordinary course of Nature and the natural mode of occurrences as they otherwise take place is arrested, in order to display the might and presence of the Divine. Wonder or miracle is consequently the form of presentation. (_a_) _The Martyrs_ The earliest mode under which the spirit of the community makes itself actively present in the human consciousness is effected when man forms a mirror in himself of the Divine process and so makes himself a new form of existence for the eternal Life[236] of God. Here we find once more that the expression of that immediate and positive reconciliation disappears, inasmuch as man can only attain to this by abrogating his finite existence. Everything, therefore, that was of central importance in the first stage returns to us again here only in an aggravated degree, because the incompatibility and unworthiness of our humanity is here presupposed, and to remedy this defect is assumed to be man's supreme and unique duty. (_α_) The specific content of this phase is consequently the endurance of torments, and along with such the individual's willing renunciation, sacrifice, and self-imposed renunciation with the express aim of arousing sufferings, tortures, and anguish of every kind in order that Spirit may reveal itself therein, and feel itself in union with the fruition and blessedness of its heaven[237]. The negative aspect of pain is an object in itself for the true martyr, and the greatness of the revelation is such that it can treat with indifference the awful aspect of that which man has thus suffered, and the dreadful nature of that to which he submits himself. The first thing, then, which will be brought beneath the ruthless mace of negation in order that the individual who still experiences this drought of the soul may wean himself from the world and become sanctified, will be his _natural_ existence, his life, the satisfaction of the most essential necessaries of his bodily existence. The main subject-matter therefore of the type we are now dealing with will be torments of the body, sufferings which have been perpetrated on the believer either by his enemies and persecutors out of hatred and persecution, or have been deliberately accepted by himself on principle by way of expiation. In both cases the individual accepts them in the full fanaticism of his readiness to endure, not, that is to say, as an injustice to himself, but as a blessing through which alone he is enabled to break down the walls of what he feels to be his sinful flesh, heart, and soul, and so obtain reconcilement with his God.