I came to myself very gradually and dimly, with no recollection at first
of what had happened. I was lying on my back on some soft grassy place,
with the air blowing cool over me. I thought I saw Amroth bending over
me with a look of extraordinary happiness, and felt his arm about me;
but again I became unconscious, yet all the time with a blissfulness of
repose and joy, far beyond what I had experienced at my first waking on
the sunlit sea. Again life dawned upon me. I was there, I was myself.
What had happened to me? I could not tell. So I lay for a long time half
dreaming and half swooning; till at last life seemed to come back
suddenly to me, and I sat up. Amroth was holding me in his arms close to
the spot from which I had sprung.
"Have I been dreaming?" I said. "Was it here? and when? I cannot
remember. It seems impossible, but was I told to jump down? What has
happened to me? I am confused."
"You will know presently," said Amroth, in a tone from which all the
fear seemed to have vanished. "It is all over, and I am thankful. Do not
try to recollect; it will come back to you presently. Just rest now; you
have been through strange things."
Suddenly a thought began to shape itself in my mind, a thought of
perfect and irresistible joy.
"Yes," I said, "I remember now. We were afraid, both of us, and you told
me to leap down. But what was it that I saw, and what was it that was
told me? I cannot recall it. Oh," I said at last, "I know now; it comes
back to me. I fell, in hideous cowardice and misery. The wind blew
shrill. I saw the cliffs stream past; then I was unconscious, I think.
I seem to have died; but part of me was not dead. My flight was stayed,
and I floated out somewhere. I was joined to something that was like
both fire and water in one. I was seen and known and understood and
loved, perfectly and unutterably and for ever. But there was pain,
somewhere, Amroth! How was that? I am sure there was pain."
"Of course, dear child," said Amroth, "there was pain, because there was
everything."
"But," I said, "I cannot understand yet; why was that terrible leap
demanded of me? And why did I confront it with such abject cowardice and
dismay? Surely one need not go stumbling and cowed into the presence of
God?"
"There is no other way," said Amroth; "you do not understand how
terrible perfect love is. It is because it is perfect that it is
terrible. Our own imperfect love has some weakness in it. It is mixed
with pleasure, and then it is not a sacrifice; one gives as much of
oneself as one chooses; one is known just so far as one wishes to be
known. But here with God there must be no concealment--though even there
a man can withhold his heart from God--God never uses compulsion; and
the will can prevail even against Him. But the reason of the leap that
must be taken is this: it is the last surrender, and it cannot be made
on our terms and conditions; it must be absolute. And what I feared for
you was not anything that would happen if you did commit yourself to
God, but what would happen if you did not; for, of course, you could
have resisted, and then you would have had to begin again."
I was silent for a little, and then I said: "I remember now more
clearly, but did I really see Him? It seems so absolutely simple.
Nothing happened. I just became one with the heart and life of the
world; I came home at last. Yet how am I here? How is it I was not
merged in light and life?"
"Ah," said Amroth, "it is the new birth. You can never be the same
again. But you are not yet lost in Him. The time for that is not yet.
It is a mystery; but as yet God works outward, radiates energy and force
and love; the time will come when all will draw inward again, and be
merged in Him. But the world is as yet in its dawning. The rising sun
scatters light and heat, and the hot and silent noon is yet to come;
then the shadows move eastward, and after that comes the waning sunset
and the evening light, and last of all the huge and starlit peace of the
night."
"But," I said, "if this is really so, if I have been gathered close to
God's heart, why is it that instead of feeling stronger, I only feel
weak and unstrung? I have indeed an inner sense of peace and happiness,
but I have no will or purpose of my own that I can discern."
"That," said Amroth, "is because you have given up all. The sense of
strength is part of our weakness. Our plans, our schemes, our ambitions,
all the things that make us enjoy and hope and arrange, are but signs
of our incompleteness. Your will is still as molten metal, it has borne
the fierce heat of inner love; and this has taken all that is hard and
stubborn and complacent out of you--for a time. But when you return to
the life of the body, as you will return, there will be this great
difference in you. You will have to toil and suffer, and even sin. But
there will be one thing that you will not do: you will never be
complacent or self-righteous, you will not judge others hardly. You will
be able to forgive and to make allowances; you will concern yourself
with loving others, not with trying to improve them up to your own
standard. You will wish them to be different, but you will not condemn
them for being different; and hereafter the lives you live on earth will
be of the humblest. You will have none of the temptations of authority,
or influence, or ambition again--all that will be far behind you. You
will live among the poor, you will do the most menial and commonplace
drudgery, you will have none of the delights of life. You will be
despised and contemned for being ugly and humble and serviceable and
meek. You will be one of those who will be thought to have no spirit to
rise, no power of making men serve your turn. You will miss what are
called your chances, you will be a failure; but you will be trusted and
loved by children and simple people; they will depend upon you, and you
will make the atmosphere in which you live one of peace and joy. You
will have selfish employers, tyrannical masters, thankless children
perhaps, for whom you will slave lovingly. They will slight you and even
despise you, but their hearts will turn to you again and again, and
yours will be the face that they will remember when they come to die, as
that of the one person who loved them truly and unquestioningly. That
will be your destiny; one of utter obscurity and nothingness upon earth.
Yet each time, when you return hither, your work will be higher and
holier, and nearer to the heart of God. And now I have said enough; for
you have seen God, as I too saw Him long ago; and our hope is
henceforward the same."
"Yes," I said to Amroth, "I am content. I had thought that I should be
exalted and elated by my privileges; but I have no thought or dream of
that. I only desire to go where I am sent, to do what is desired of me.
I have laid my burden down."