Produced by Ruth Hart
THE PRODIGAL RETURNS
By
Lilian Staveley
The Author of "The Golden Fountain" and "The Romance of the
Soul"
London
John M. Watkins
21 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, W.C. 2
1921
CONTENTS
Part I. 7
Part II. 63
Part III. 81
Part IV. 102
Part V. 151
PART I
Sunshine and a garden path . . . flowers . . . the face and neck and
bosom of the nurse upon whose heart I lay, and her voice telling me
that she must leave me, that we must part, and immediately after
anguish--blotting out the sunshine, the flowers, the face, the voice.
This is my first recollection of Life--the pain of love. I was two
years old.
Nothing more for two years--and then the picture of a pond and my
baby brother floating on it, whilst with agonised hands I seized his
small white coat and held him fast.
And then a meadow full of long, deep grass and summer flowers,
and I--industriously picking buttercups into a tiny petticoat to take to
cook, "to make the butter with," I said.
And then a table spread for tea. Our nurses, my two brothers, and
myself. Angry words and screaming baby voices, a knife thrown by
my little brother. Rage and hate.
And then a wedding, and I a bridesmaid, aged five years--the church,
the altar, and great awe, and afterwards a long white table, white
flowers, and a white Bride. Grown men on either side of
me--smilingly delightful, tempting me with sweets and cakes and wine,
and a new strange interest rising in me like a little flood of
exultation--the joy of the world, and the first faint breath of the
mystery of sex.
Then came winters of travel. Sunshine and mimosa, olive trees
against an azure sky. Climbing winding, stony paths between green
terraces, tulips and anemones and vines; white sunny walls and
lizards; green frogs and deep wells fringed around with maidenhair.
Mountains and a sea of lapis blue, and early in the mornings from
this lapis lake a great red sun would rise upon a sky of molten gold.
In the rooms so near me were my darling brothers, from whom I
often had to part. Beauty and Joy, and Love and Pain--these made
up life.
At ten I twice narrowly escaped death. From Paris we were to take
the second or later half of the train to Marseilles. Late the night
before my father suddenly said, "I have changed my mind; I feel we
must go by the first train." This was with some difficulty arranged.
On reaching an immense bridge across a deep ravine I suddenly
became acutely aware that the bridge was about to give way. In a
terrible state of alarm I called out this fearful fact to my family. I
burst into tears. I suffered agonies. My mother scolded me, and
when we safely reached the other side of the bridge I was severely
taken to task for my behaviour. The bridge broke with the next train
over it--the train in which we should have been. Some four hundred
people perished. It was the most terrible railway disaster that had
ever occurred in France.
A few weeks later, death came nearer still. Having escaped from our
tutor, with a party of other children we ran to two great reservoirs to
fish for frogs. Laughing and talking and full of childish joy, we
fished there for an hour, when all at once I was impelled, under an
extraordinary sense of pressure, to call out, "If anyone falls into the
water, no one must jump in to save them, but must immediately run
to those long sticks" (I had never noticed them until I spoke) "and
draw one out and hold it to whoever has fallen in." I spoke
automatically, and felt as much surprised as my companions that I
should speak of such a thing.
Within five minutes I had fallen in myself. My brother remembered
my words, but before he could reach me with the stick I was under
the water for the third and last time. It was all that they could do to
drag my weight up to the ledge, for the water was a yard below it.
Had my brother jumped in, as he said he most surely would have
done had I not forewarned him, we must both have been drowned,
for they would have had neither the strength nor the time to pull us
both out alive. I was not at all frightened or upset till I heard
someone say that I was dead; then I wept--it was so sad to be dead!
The pressure put upon me to speak as I did had been so great that I
have never forgotten the strange impression of it to this day. On both
these occasions I consider that I was under immediate Divine
protection.
I believed earnestly in God with the complete and peaceful faith of
childhood. I thought of Him, and was afraid: but more afraid of a
great Angel who stood with pen and book in hand and wrote down
all my sins. This terrible Angel was a great reality to me. I prayed
diligently for those I loved. Sometimes I forgot a name: then I would
have to get out of bed and add it to my prayer. As I grew older, if the
weather were cold I did not pray upon the floor but from my bed,
because it was more comfortable. I was not always sure if this were
quite right, but I could not concentrate my mind on God if my body
was cold, because then I could not forget my body.
I saw God very plainly when I shut my eyes! He was a White Figure
in white robes on a white throne, amongst the clouds. He heard my
prayers as easily as I saw His robes. He was by no means very far
away, though sometimes He was further than at others. He took the
trouble to make everything very beautiful: and He could not bear
sinful children. The Angel with the Book read out to Him my faults
in the evenings.
When I was twelve years old my grandmother died, and for three
months I was in real grief. All day I mourned for her, and at night I
looked out at the stars, and the terrible mystery of death and space
and loneliness struck at my childish heart.
After thirteen I could no longer be taken abroad to hotels, for my
parents considered that I received too much attention, too many
presents, too many chocolates from men. I was educated by a
governess, and was often very lonely. My brothers would come back
from school; then I overflowed with happiness and sang all day long
in my heart with joy. The last night of the holidays was a time of
anguish. Upstairs the clothes were packed. Downstairs I helped them
pack the "play-boxes," square deal boxes at sight of which tears
sprang to my eyes and a dreadful pain gripped my heart. Oh, the
pain of love at parting! there never was a pain so terrible as suffering
love. The last meal: the last hour: the last look. There are natures
which feel this anguish more than others. We are not all alike.
I had been passionately fond of dolls. Now I was too old for such
companions, and when my brothers went away I was completely
alone with my governess and my lessons. I fell into the habit of
dreaming. In these dreams I evolved a companion who was at the
same time myself--and yet not an ordinary little girl like myself, but
a marvellous creature of unlimited possibilities and virtues. She
even had wings and flew with such ease from the tops of the highest
buildings, and floated so delightfully over my favourite fields and
brooks that I found it hard to believe that I myself did not actually
fly. What glorious things we did together, what courage we had,
nothing daunted us! I cared very little to read books of adventure,
for our own adventures were more wonderful than anything I ever
read.
Not only had I wings, but when I was my other self I was extremely
good, and the Angel with the Book was then never able to make a
single adverse record of me. And then how easy it was to be good:
how delightful, no difficulties whatever! As we both grew older the
actual wings were folded up and put away. The virtues remained,
but we led an intensely interesting life, and a certain high standard
of life was evolved which was afterwards useful to me.
When, later on, I grew up and my parents allowed me to have as
many friends as I wanted, and when I became exceedingly gay, I
still retained the habit of this double existence; it remained with me
even after my marriage and kept me out of mischief. If I found
myself temporarily dull or in some place I did not care for, clothed
in the body of my double, like the wind, I went where I listed. I
would go to balls and parties, or with equal ease visit the mountains
and watch the sunset or the incomparable beauties of dawn, making
delicate excursions into the strange, the wonderful, and the sublime.
I gathered crystal flowers in invisible worlds, and the scent of those
flowers was Romance.
All this vivid imagination sometimes made my mind over-active: I
could not sleep. "Count sheep jumping over a hurdle," I was advised.
But it did not answer. I found the most effective way was to think
seriously of my worst sins--my mind immediately slowed down,
became a discreet blank--I slept!
I grew tall and healthy. At sixteen I received my first offer of
marriage and with it my first vision of the love and passion of men. I
recoiled from it with great shyness and aversion. Yet I became
deeply interested in men, and remained so for very many years.
From that time on I never was without a lover till my marriage.
II
At seventeen my "lessons" came to an end. I had not learnt much,
but I could speak four languages with great fluency. I learnt perhaps
more from listening to the conversation of my father and his friends.
He had always been a man of leisure and was acquainted with many
of the interesting and celebrated people of the day, both in England
and on the Continent. I was devoted to him, and whenever he guided
my character he did so with the greatest judgment. He taught me
above all things the need of self-control, and never to make a remark
of a fellow-creature unless I had something pleasant or kind to say.
There was no subject upon which he was unread; and when my
brothers, who were both exceedingly clever, returned from college
and the University, wonderful and brilliant were the discussions that
went on. Both my parents were of Huguenot descent, belonging to
the old French noblesse. I think the Latin blood had sharpened their
brains, and certainly gave an extra zest to life.
My father was a great believer in heredity, and the following
personal experience may show him somewhat justified in his belief.
In quite early childhood I commenced to feel a preference for the
_left_ side of my body: I washed, dried, and dressed the left side
first; I preserved it carefully from all harm; I kept it warm. I was,
comparatively speaking, totally indifferent to my right side.
As I grew older I observed that the place of honour was upon the
right-hand side: I understood that God had made the world and ruled
it with His right hand! I was wrong, then, in preferring my left hand.
I determined to change over. It was very difficult to do: so deep was
the instinct that it took me some years to eradicate the love for my
left side and transfer it to my right, and when I had at last
accomplished it I was still liable to go back to my first preference.
No one ever detected my peculiarity.
I was already eighteen or nineteen years old when one day I entered
my father's room, ready dressed to go out. I had on both my gloves.
Suddenly I remembered that I had put on my left glove first.
Immediately I took off both my gloves--then I replaced the right one,
and then the left. My father was watching me and asked me for an
explanation. I gave it him, and he looked very grave, almost alarmed.
After a moment of silence he said, "I want you to give that habit up--I
want you to break yourself of it immediately. I had it myself as a
youth: it took me years to conquer. No one should permit himself to
be the slave of _any_ habit."
I asked him which side he had loved. "The _left_ side," he said. At
five-and-twenty he had conquered the habit, and I was not born till
he was almost sixty-one! yet I had inherited it. We never referred to
it again, and in two years I, also, had conquered it.
We spent the winter of the year in which I was seventeen in Italy, to
which country a near relative was Ambassador, and there I went to
my first ball. That night--and how often afterwards!--I knew the
surging exultation, the intoxication of the joy of life. How often in
social life, in brilliant scenes of light and laughter, music and love, I
seemed to ride on the crest of a wave, in the marvellous glamour of
youth!
This love of the world and of social life was a very strong feeling for
many years: at the same time and running, as it were, in double
harness with it was a necessity for solitude. My mind imperatively
demanded this, and indeed my heart too.
It was during this year that I first commenced a new form of mental
pleasure through looking at the beautiful in Nature. Not only
solitude, but total silence was necessary for this pastime, and, if
possible, beauty and a distant view: failing a view I could
accomplish it by means of the beauties of the sky. This form of
mental pleasure was the exact opposite of my previous dreamings,
for all imagination absolutely ceased, all forms, all pictures, all
activities disappeared--the very scene at which I looked had to
vanish before I could know the pleasure of this occupation in which,
in some mysterious manner, I inhaled the very essence of the
Beautiful.
At first I was only able to remain in this condition for a few
moments at a time, but that satisfied me--or, rather, did not satisfy
me, for through it all ran a strange unaccountable anguish--a pain of
longing--which, like a high, fine, tremulous nerve, ran through the
joy. What induced me to pursue this habit, I never asked myself.
That it was a form of the spirit's struggle towards the Eternal--of the
soul's great quest of God--never occurred to me. I was worshipping
the Beautiful without giving sufficient thought to Him from Whom
all beauty proceeds. Half a lifetime was to go by before I realised to
what this habit was leading me--that it was the first step towards the
acquirement of that most exquisite of all blessings--the gift of the
Contemplation of God. Ah, if anyone knows in his heart the call of
the Beautiful, let him use it towards this glorious end! Love, and the
Beautiful--these are the twin golden paths that lead us all to God.
III
Certainly we were not a religious family. One attendance at church
upon Sunday--if it did not rain!--and occasionally the Communion,
this was the extent of any outward religious feeling. But my father's
daily life and acts were full of Christianity. A man of a naturally
somewhat violent temper, he had so brought himself under control
that towards everyone, high and low, he had become all that was
sweet and patient, sympathetic and gentle.
About this time a devouring curiosity for knowledge commenced to
possess me. What was the truth--what was the truth about every
single thing I saw? Astronomy, Biology, Geology--in these things I
discovered a new and marvellous interest: here at last I found my
natural bent. History had small attraction for me: it spoke of the
doings of people mostly vain or cruel, and untruthful. I wanted
truth--irrefutable facts! No scientific work seemed too difficult for me;
but I never, then or later, read anything upon the subject of religion,
philosophy, or psychology. I had a healthy, wholesome young
intelligence with a voracious appetite: it would carry me a long way,
I thought. It did--it landed me in Atheism.
To a woman Atheism is intolerable pain: her very nature, loving,
tender, sensitive, clinging, demands belief in God. The high moral
standard demanded of her is impossible of fulfilment for mere
reasons of race-welfare. The personal reason, the Personal
God--these are essential to high virtue. Young as I was, I realised this.
Outwardly I was frivolous; inwardly I was no butterfly, the deep
things of my nature were by no means unknown to me. I not only
became profoundly unrestful at heart but I was fearful for myself,
and of where strong forces of which I felt the pull might lead me. I
had great power over the emotions of men: moreover, interests and
instincts within me corresponded to this dangerous capacity. I felt
that the world held many strange fires: some holy and beautiful;
some far otherwise.
Without God I knew myself incapable of overcoming the evil of the
world, or even of my own petty nature and entanglements. I
despaired, for I perceived that God does not reveal Himself because
of an imperious demand of the human mind, and I had yet to learn
that those mysteries which are under lock and key to the intelligence
are open to the heart and soul. But indeed there was no God to
reveal Himself. All was a fantastic make-believe! a pitiful childish
invention and illusion!
My intelligence said, "Resign yourself to what is, after all, the truth:
console yourself with the world and material achievements." The
heart said, "Resignation is impossible, for there is no consolation to
the heart without God." I listened to my heart rather than my
intelligence, and for two terrible years I fought for faith. I was
always reserved, and never admitted anyone into the deep things of
my life--but when I was twenty my father perceived that I was going
through some inward crisis. He knew the books that I read, and
probably guessed what had happened to me. At any rate he called
me into his room one day and asked me, out of love and obedience
to himself, to give up reading all science. This was an overwhelming
blow to me: yet I loved him dearly, and had never disobeyed him in
my life. Again I let my heart speak; and I sacrificed my mind and
my books.
I threw myself now more than ever into social amusements, and in
my solitary hours sought consolation in my "dream-life." I was
afraid to turn to the love of Nature--to my beautiful pastime,--for the
pain in it was unbearable.
Towards the end of two years my struggles for faith commenced to
find a reward. Little by little a faint hope crept into my mind--fragile,
often imperceptible. A questioning remark made by my younger
brother helped me: "If human life is entirely material and a
part of Nature only, then what becomes of human thoughts and
aspirations?" Science had proved to me that nothing is lost--but has
a destiny--in that it evolves into another form or condition of activity.
Evolution! with its many seeming contradictions to Religion--might
it not be merely a strong light, too strong as yet for my weak mind,
blinding me into temporary darkness? What raised Man above the
beasts but his thoughts and aspirations; and if even a grain of dust
were imperishable, were these thoughts and aspirations of Man
alone to end in nothing--to be lost! It was but a reasonable inference
to say No. These invisible thoughts and aspirations have also a
future--a destiny in a, to us, still invisible world--in the Life of the
Spirit. To this my mind was able to agree. It was a step. In the realm
of Ideal Thought I might find again my Faith. I had indeed been
foolish to suppose that a system which provided for the continuation
of a grain of sand should overlook the Spirit of Man. This was
presupposing the existence of a spirit in Man; but who could be
found to truly and reasonably hold that the mysterious high and
soaring thoughts of Man were one and the same thing as mere
animalism? they were too obviously of another nature to the merely
bovine, to the solids of the flesh: for one thing, they were free of the
law of gravity which so entirely overrules the rest of Nature--they
must therefore come to their destiny in another world, another
condition of consciousness.
IV
That winter we again spent in Italy, in continuous gaiety amongst a
brilliant cosmopolitan world of men and women who for the most
part lived in palaces, surrounded with art and luxury. Here in Rome
on every side was to be found the Cult of the Beautiful. Wonderful
temples, gems of classical sculpture, masterpieces of colour in oil
and fresco--the genius and the aspirations of men rendered
permanent for us by Art; but the Temples, those silent emblems of
man's worship of an Unknown God, with their surroundings of
lovely nature, affected me far the most deeply: indeed, I do not
pretend that sculptures and pictures affected me at all. I was
interested, I greatly admired--they were a part of education, but that
was all. But in the vicinity of those Temples what strange echoes
awoke in me, what mysterious sadness and longing, what a mystery
of pain! Something within me sighed and moaned for God. If I could
but find Him--if I could even truly Believe and be at peace! But
already I had commenced to Believe.
During the late winter we went to one of the great ceremonies at the
Vatican: we had seats in the Sistine Chapel. It was an especial
occasion, and the number of persons present was beyond all seating
accommodation. To make way for someone of importance I was
asked to give up my seat and go outside into the body of the great
Cathedral; here I was hurriedly pushed into the second row of a
huge concourse of waiting and standing people. Already in the
distance the Pope was approaching. Lifted high in his chair on the
shoulders of his bearers, he came slowly along in his white robes,
his hand raised in a general blessing upon all this multitude. As he
came nearer I saw the delicate ivory face--the great dark eyes
shining with a fire I had never seen before. For the first time in my
life I saw holiness. I was moved to the depths of my being.
Something in my gaze arrested his attention; he had his chair
stopped immediately above me, and, leaning over me, he blessed me
individually--a very great concession during a large public
ceremony. I ought to have gone down on my knees--but I had no
knees! I no longer had a body! There was no longer anything
anywhere in the world but Holiness--and my enraptured soul.
Holiness, then, was far beyond the Beautiful. I had not known this
till I saw it before me.
Life hurried me on: glowing hours and months succeeded each other.
In the autumn I fell in love. I came to the consciousness of this, not
gradually, but all in one instant. I had no chance of drawing back,
for it was already fully completed before I realised it. I came to the
realisation of it through a dream (sleep-dreams were always
exceedingly rare with me): on this occasion I dreamed a friend
showed me the picture of a girl to whom she said this lover (he had
been my lover for a year) was engaged. I awoke, sobbing with
anguish. I could not disguise from myself the fact that I must be in
love. When the time came to speak of it to my parents, my mother
would not hear of the marriage--there was no money: I must make
another choice. Two brilliant opportunities offered
themselves--money--position; but I could not bring myself to think of
either. Love was everything: a prolonged secret engagement followed. I
went into Society just as before. At this time an aptitude for
"fortune-telling" showed itself: it amused my friends--I told fortunes
both by palmistry, which I studied quite seriously, and by cards.
With both I went largely by inspiration. I found this "inspiration"
varied with the individual. There were many persons to whom I
could give the most extraordinarily accurate details of past, present,
and future; others moderately so; others were a total blank, in which
case I either had to remain silent or "try to make up." I got such a
reputation for this--I was so sought after for it by even total
strangers--that in a couple of years I pushed it all far away from me
as an intolerable nuisance.
V
The Faith that had been growing up in me was of a very different
form from that which I had had before: wider, purer, infinitely more
powerful, and, though I did not like to remember the pain of them, I
felt that those struggling years of doubt and negation had been worth
while--without those struggles I felt I never could have had so
powerful a faith as I now had. God was at an indefinite and infinite
distance, but His Existence was a thing of complete certainty for me.
Of the mode and means of Connection with Him I had no smallest
knowledge or even conception. I addressed Him with words from
the brain and the lips. An insuperable wall perpetually separated me
from Him.
Now my father became ill with heart trouble. Doctors, nurses, all the
dreaded paraphernalia of sickness pervaded the house. During two
terrible years he lingered on. Heart-broken at the sight of his
sufferings, I hardly left his bedside. Finally death released him. But
my health, which had always been good, was now completely
broken down; I became a semi-invalid, always suffering, too
delicate to marry. Under pressure of this continued wretchedness I
sank into a nerveless condition of mere dumb endurance--a passive
acceptance of the miseries of life "as willed by God," I assured
myself.
I entered a stagnant state of _mere_ resignation, whereas
accompanying the resignation there should have been a forward-piercing
endeavour to reach out and attain a higher spiritual level through
Jesus Christ: a persistent effort to light my lamp at the
Spiritual Flame to which each must _bring his own lamp,_ for it is
not lit for him by the mere outward ceremony of Baptism--that
ceremony is but the Invitation to come to the Light: for each one
individually, _in full consciousness of desire,_ that lighting must be
obtained from the Saviour. I had not obtained this light. I did not
comprehend that it was necessary. I understood nothing; I
was a spiritual savage. Vague, miserable thoughts, gloomy
self-introspections, merely fatigue the vitality without assisting the
soul. What is required is a persistent endeavour to establish an inwardly
felt relationship first to the Man Jesus. His Personality, His
Characteristics are to be drawn into the secret places of the heart by
means of the natural sympathy which plays between two hearts that
both know love and suffering, and hope and dejection. Sympathy
established--love will soon follow. Later, an iron energy to
overcome will be required. The supreme necessity of the soul before
being filled with love is to maintain the will of the whole spiritual
being in conformity with the Will of God. In the achievement of this
she is under incessant assistance: in fact everything in the spiritual
life is a gift--as in the physical: for who can produce his own sight
or his own growth? In the physical these are automatic--in the
spiritual they are accomplished only, as it were, "by request," and
this request a deep all-pervading desire.
We cannot of our own will climb the spiritual heights, neither can
we climb them without using our will. It is Will flowing towards
Will which carries us by the power of Jesus Christ to the Goal.
VI
With recovered health, I married, and knew great happiness; but as a
bride of four months I had to part from my husband, who went to the
South African War. Always, always this terrible pain of love that
must part. Always it was love that seemed to me the most beautiful
thing in life, and always it was love that hurt me most. He was away
for fifteen months. I made no spiritual advance whatever. Mystified
by so much pain, I now began to regard God if not as the actual
Author of all pain, at any rate as the Permitter of all pain. More and
more I fell back in alarm at the discovery of the depths of my own
capacities for suffering. A tremendous fear of God now commenced
to grow up in me, which so increased that after a few years I listened
with astonishment when I heard people say they were afraid of
_any_ person, even a burglar! I could no longer understand feeling
fear for anyone or anything save God. All my actions were now
governed solely by this sense of weighty, immediate fear of Him.
This continued for some ten years.
When my husband at last returned from the War we took up again
our happy married life, and we lived together without a cross word,
in a wonderful world of our own, as lovers do. It was remarkable
that we were so happy, for we had no interests in common. My
husband loved all sports and all games, whereas interest in those
things was frankly incomprehensible to me. In the winter, when he
was out in the hunting-field, I spent much time by myself; but I was
never dull, for I could walk out amongst Nature and indulge in my
pastime, if the weather were fine: and if not, I could observe and
admire everything that grew and lived close at hand in the
hedgerows and fields, and I would work for hours with my needle,
for then I could think; I worked hard in the garden.
A dreadful question now often presented itself to me: Had I really a
soul at all, or was I merely a passing shadow, here momentarily for
God's amusement? If I had an eternal soul, where did it live--in my
head with my brain as a higher part of my mind?
Men had souls, I was sure of that; and they asserted the possession
of them very positively--but women? I understood Mahomed
grudgingly granted them a half-soul, and that only conditionally.
Scriptures spoke harshly of women; Paul was bitter against them; all
the sins and troubles of the world were laid upon their delicate and
beautiful shoulders. In Revelation I found no mention whatever of
Woman in the life of the Resurrection.
All this hurt me. What profound injustice--to suffer so much and to
receive no recognition whatever whilst men walked off with all the
joys after leading very questionable lives! Why continue to struggle
to please God when His interest in me would so soon be over? I
went through very real and great spiritual sufferings, and
temptations to throw myself again solely into world-interests, to
console myself with the here and now, for I had the means: it was all
to my hand. I swayed to and fro: at one time I felt very hard towards
God, terribly hurt by this love-betrayal. But when I looked at the
beauties of Nature and the glories of that endless sky, ah, my heart
melted with tenderness and admiration for the marvellous Maker of
it all. Truly, He was worthy of any sacrifice upon my part. If my
poor, tiny, suffering life afforded Him amusement, I was willing to
have it so. After all--for what wretched, ugly, and miserable men
women frequently sacrificed themselves without getting any other
reward for it than neglect and indifference. How much better to
sacrifice oneself to the All-Perfect, All-Beautiful God!
I finally resigned myself entirely and completely to this point of
view, and, having done so, I thus addressed, in all reverence and
earnestness, the Deity:--
"Almighty God, if it is Thy Will to blot out Woman from Paradise I
most humbly assure Thee of this--Man will miss her sorely; and
Thou Thyself, Almighty God, when Thou dost visit Paradise, wilt
miss her also!"
After this I seldom said any private prayers, for I was not of the
Acceptable Sex. But I paid a public respect to God in the church,
where I worshipped Him with profound reverence and great sadness.
But I thought of Him in my heart constantly, with all those tender,
loving, longing thoughts which are the heart's bouquet held out to
God.
Happiness for me, then, must be found entirely in this world, and I
found it in my love for my husband. Happiness was that which the
whole world was looking for; but I could not fail to notice more and
more the ridiculous picture presented by Society in its pretences of
being the means of finding this happiness. None of its ardent
devotees were "happy" people; they were excited, egotistical,
intensely vain and selfish, often bitter and disappointed, filled with a
demon of competition, jealous, and full of empty, insincere smiles. I
perceived the chagrins from which they secretly suffered--the tears
behind the laughter. I was not in the least deceived or impressed by
any of them, but wondered how they managed to hang together and
deceive each other. More and more I looked for purely mental
pleasures. Mind was everything. I now began to despise my body--I
almost hated it as an incubus! Social successes or failures grew to be
a matter of complete indifference to me, and social life resolved
itself into being solely the means of bringing mind into contact with
mind. The question of fashionable environment ceased to exist for
me, but the question of how and where to meet with thinking minds
was what concerned me: it was not an easy one to solve in the usual
conditions of country life, with its sports and its human-animal
interests.
Finally, total mental solitude closed around me. In spite of my doubt
as to the existence of a woman-soul, I still felt the same piercing
desire and need for God--the acquisition of knowledge in no way
lessened this pain. What, after all, is knowledge by itself? The light
of the highest human intelligence seems hardly greater than the wan
lamp of a diminutive glow-worm, surrounded by the vastness of the
night. In sorrow, in trouble, in pain, could knowledge or the mind do
so much more for me than the despised body? No, something more
than the intelligence was needed to give life any sense of adequacy:
even human love was insufficient. God Himself was needed, and the
ever-recurring necessity would force itself upon me of the need for a
personal direct connection with God.
I continued to find it utterly impossible to achieve this. Mere faith
by no means fulfilled my requirements. God, then, remained
inaccessible--the mind fell back from every attempt to reach Him.
He was unknowable, yet not unthinkable--that is to say, He was not
unthinkable as Being, but only in particularisation and in realisation.
I could know Him to Be; but in that alone where was any
consolation?--I found it totally inadequate. It was some form of
personal Contact that was needed; but if my mind failed to reach this,
with what else should I reach it? Ah, I was infinitely too small for
this terrible mystery; but, small as I was, how I could suffer! Why
this suffering? Why would He not show Himself? Harsh, rebellious,
criticising thoughts frequently invaded me: the whole scheme of
Nature and of life at times appeared cruel, unreasonably so. All the
old ever-to-be-repeated cycle of bitter human thoughts had to be
gone all through again in my own individual atom. Here and there
the bitterness might vary: as, for instance, the collapse and
corruption of the body with its hideous finale never caused me
distress. I had become too indifferent to the body; but I found that
most persons clung to it with extraordinary tenacity, indeed
appeared to regard it as their most valuable possession! What I did
resent, and was deeply mystified by, was the capacity for suffering
and pain which had no balance in any corresponding joy. It was idle
to say that the joy of festivities, even of human love, equalled the
anguish of grief over others, or the sufferings of physical ill-health.
They did not counterbalance it; sorrow was more weighty than joy,
and far more durable. Later I became convinced that there did exist a
full equivalent of joy, as against pain, and that I merely had no
knowledge of how to find it.
Years succeeded each other in this way, bringing greater loosening
of earth-ties, more abstraction, certainly no improvement of
character.
My husband's duties as a soldier took us to many parts of the world.
During a visit to Africa I was struck by lightning, and for ten days
my sufferings were almost unendurable; every nerve seemed
electrocuted. It was long before I quite recovered. Whilst this illness
lasted, though it caused him no inconvenience and he led his life
exactly as usual, I yet noticed a change in my husband's love. I was
deeply pained, almost horrified, by this revelation of the natural
imperfection of human love: profoundly saddened, I asked myself
was it nothing but lust which had inspired and dictated all the poems
of the world? I thought more and more of Jesus' love; I began to
know that nothing less than His perfect love could satisfy me. In this
illness I was tremendously alone.
VII
I commenced to meditate upon the life and the character and the
love of Jesus Christ. I was now about thirty-six. Gradually He
became for me a secret Mind-Companion. I began to rely upon this
companionship--though it appeared intensely one-sided, for at first it
seemed always to be I who gave! Nevertheless I found a growing
calm arising from this apparently so one-sided friendship. A subtle
assistance and comfort came to me, it was impossible to say how,
yet it came from this companionship as it came from nothing else.
That Jesus Christ was God I knew to be the faith of the Church, but
that He actually was so I felt no conviction of whatever: indeed, it
was incomprehensible to me. I thought of Him as a Perfect Man,
with divine powers. He was my Jesus. I denied nothing, for I was far
too small and ignorant to venture to do so: I kept a perfectly open
mind and loved Him for Himself, as the Man Jesus.
This went on for some years. In all my spiritual advancement I was
incredibly slow!
What had delayed me in progress was lack of using the right
Procedure and the right Prayer. I sought for God with persistence
and great longing; but I sought Him as the Father, and the Godhead
is inaccessible to the creature. On becoming truly desirous of finding
God it is necessary that with great persistence we pray the Father in
the name of Jesus Christ that He will give us to Jesus Christ and nil
the heart and mind with love for Christ. Only through Jesus Christ
can we find the Godhead, and we cannot be satisfied with less than
the Godhead. With the creature we cannot come into contact with
the Godhead--but with the soul only. The soul is awakened, revived,
reglorified by Grace of Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit effects the
repentance and conversion of the heart and mind, for without this
conversion towards a spiritual life the soul remains in bondage to the
unconverted creature.
VIII
One day I returned from a walk, and hardly had I entered my room
when I commenced thinking with great nearness and intimacy of
Jesus; and suddenly, with the most intense vividness, He presented
Himself before my consciousness so that I inwardly perceived Him,
and at once I was overcome by a great agony of remorse for my
unworthiness: it was as though my heart and mind broke in pieces
and melted in the stress of this fearful pain, which
continued--increased--became unendurable, and lasted altogether an
hour. Too ignorant to know that this was the pain of Repentance, I
did not understand what had happened to me; but now indeed at least I
knew beyond a doubt that I had a soul! My wonderful Lord had
come to pay me a visit, and I was not fit to receive Him--hence my
agony. I would try with all my strength to improve myself for Him.
I was at first at a standstill to know even where to commence in this
improvement, for words fail to describe what I now saw in myself!
Up till now I had publicly confessed myself a sinner, and privately
calmly thought of myself as a sinner, but without being disturbed by
it or perceiving how I was one! I kept the commandments in the
usual degree and way, and was conscientious in my dealings with
others. Now all at once--by this Presentment of Himself before my
soul--which had lasted for no more than one moment of time--I
suddenly, and with terrible clearness, saw the whole insufferable
offensiveness of myself.
For some time, even for some weeks, I remained like a person
half-stunned with astonishment. Then I determined to try to become less
selfish, less irritable and impatient, to show far more consideration
for everyone else, to be rigidly truthful: in fact, try to commence an
alteration.
For one thing--about telling lies--I had always been quite truthful in
large things, but often told some social lies for my own convenience,
and sometimes told them for no reason at all! This spontaneous Evil
filled me with more astonishment than shame; whence did this Evil
come? I could never account for this strange Intruder which seemed
to have a separate life and will of its own, and which, with no
conscious invitation upon my part, would suddenly visit me! and _in
all manner of shapes and ways!_ But whatever my difficulties, I had
always this immense incentive--to please my Jesus, tender and
wonderful, my Perfect Friend.
Two years went by, and on Easter morning, at the close of the
service as I knelt in prayer in the church, He suddenly presented
Himself again before my soul, and again I saw myself, and again I
went down and down into those terrible abysses of spiritual pain;
and I suffered more than I suffered the first time: indeed, I have
never had the courage to quite fully recall the full depths of this
anguish to mind.
After this my soul knew Jesus as Christ the Son of God, and my
heart and mind accepted this without any further wonder or question,
and entirely without knowing how this knowledge had been given,
for it came as a gift.
A great repose now commenced to fill me, and the world and all its
interests and ways seemed softly and gently blown out of my heart
by the wings of a great new love, my love for the Risen Christ.
Though outwardly my friends might see no change, yet inwardly I
was secretly changing month by month. Even the great love I had
for my husband began to fade: this caused me distress; I thought I
was growing heartless, and yet it was rather that my heart had grown
so large that no man could fill it! I felt within me an immense,
incomprehensible capacity for love, and the whole world with all its
contents seemed totally, even absurdly, inadequate to satisfy this
great capacity. I suffered over it without understanding it.
IX
I had a garden full of old-fashioned flowers, surrounded by high
walls with thatch. As I grew in my heart more and more away from
the world, I worked more in the garden, and whilst I worked I
thought mostly about God--God so far away and hidden, and yet so
near my heart.
There were many different song-birds in the garden, and one robin. I
loved the robin best of all. His song was not so beautiful as the
blackbird's or so mellow as the thrush's; but they hid and ran away
from me, whilst the robin sought me out and stayed with me and
sang me, all to myself, a little, tiny, gentle song of which I never
grew tired. If I stayed quite still, he came so close he almost touched
me; but if I moved towards him, he flew away in a great fright.
It seemed to me I was like that robin, and I wanted to come close,
close to the feet of God. But He would not let me find Him. He
would not make me any sign. He would not let me feel I knew Him.
Did He in His wisdom know that if He showed Himself too openly I
should go mad with fear or joy? I could not tell. But every day as the
robin sang to me in the garden I sang to God a little gentle song out
of my heart--a song to the hidden God Who called me, and when I
answered Him would not be found, and, still remaining hidden,
called and called till I was dumb with the pain and wonder of this
mystery.
Then suddenly came the Great War. My husband was amongst the
first to have to go. All my love for him which I had thought to be
fading now rose up again to its full strength: it was no mere weakly
sentiment, but a powerful type of human love which had been able
to carry me through fifteen years of married life without one hour of
quarrelling; its roots were deep into my heart and mind: the very
strength and perfection of it but made of it a greater instrument for
torture. Why should this most beautiful of all human emotions carry
with it so heavy a penalty, for which no remedy appeared to exist? It
had not then been made clear to me that all human loves must first
be offered up and ascend into the love of God: then only are they
freed from this Pain-Tax. God must first be All in All to us before
we can enter amongst the number who are all in all to Him--constantly
consoled by Him. This condition of being all in all is demanded as
a right by all men and women in mutual love, yet we deny this right
to God: we are not even willing to attempt it! this failure to be
willing is the grave error we make. Our attitude to God is not one
of love, but of an expectancy of favours. An identical sacrifice
is demanded of us in marriage--father, mother, brothers, sisters,
friends: all these loves must become subservient to the new love,
and with what willingness and smiles this sacrifice is usually
made! Not so with our sacrifices to God--we make them with bitter
tears, hard hearts, long faces. Is He never hurt by this perpetual
grudgingness of love?
But I had not yet learnt any of this, and I could not accept, I could
not swallow this terrible cup. I thought of Christ in the Garden
of Gethsemane. He understood and knew all pain; I had His
companionship, but He offered me no cessation of this pain. It must
be borne; had He not borne His own up to the bitter end? I shrank,
appalled, from the suffering I was already in and the suffering that
lay before me. Relief from this agony, relief, relief! But there was no
relief. In utter darkness all must be gone through. At least I was not
so foolish as to attribute all this horror that was closing in upon the
world to the direct Will of God: I could perceive that, on the
contrary, it was the spirit of Anti-Christ, it was the will of Man with
his greeds, his cruelty, his self-sufficient pride, together with a host
of other evils, which had brought all this to pass. But could
not--would not--God deliver the innocent; must all alike descend into
the pit?
I tried to obtain relief by casting this burden on to Christ, and was
not able to accomplish it. I tried to draw the succour of God down
into my heart, and I tried to throw myself out and up to Him--I could
do neither: the vast barrier remained; Faith could not take me
through it.
A horrible kind of second sight now possessed me, so that, although
I never heard one word from my husband, I became aware of much
that was happening to him--knew him pressed perpetually
backwards, fighting for his life, knew him at times lying exhausted
out in the open fields at night. At last I began to fear for my reason; I
became afraid of the torture of the nights and sat up reading, forcing
my mind to concentrate itself upon the book--the near-to-hand help
of the book was more effective than the spiritual help in which
something altogether vital was still missing. Relief only came when
after a month a letter reached me from my husband, saying that the
terrible retreat was over and he safe.
Months and years dragged by. Sometimes the pain of it all was
eased; sometimes it increased.
As grass mown down and withered in the fields gives out the
pleasant scent of hay, so in her laceration and her anguish did the
soul, I wondered, give off some Pain-Song pleasing to Almighty
God.
At first I recoiled with terror from this thought; finally love
overcame the terror--I was willing to have it so, if it pleased Him.
My soul reached down into great and fearful depths. I envied the
soldiers dying upon the battlefields; life was become far more
terrible to me than death. Looking back upon my struggles, I see
with profound astonishment how unaware I was of my impudence to
God in attributing to Him qualities of cruelty and callousness, such
as are to be found only amongst the lowest men!
Yet good was permitted to come out of this evil; for where I
attributed to God a callousness and even an enjoyment of my
sufferings, I learnt self-sacrifice, the effacement of all personal gain,
and total submission for love's sake to His Will, cruel though I might
imagine it to be. With what tears does the heart afterwards address
itself in awed repentance to its Beloved and Gentle God!
A painful illness came and lasted for months. Having no home, I
was obliged to endure the misery of it as best I could among
strangers. At this time I touched perhaps the very lowest depths.
How often I longed that I might never wake in the morning! I
loathed my life.
During this illness I came exceedingly near to Christ, so much so
that I am not able to describe the vividness of it. What I learnt out of
this time of suffering I do not know--save complete submission. I
became like wax--wax which was asked to take only one impression,
and that pain. I was too dumb; I should have remembered those
words, that "men ought not to faint, but to pray."
Bewildered, and mystified by my own unhappiness and that of so
many others all around me, I sank in my submission too much into a
state of lethargic resignation, whereas an onward-driving resolution
to win through, a powerful determination to seek and obtain the
immediate protection and assistance of God, a standing before God,
and a claiming of His help--these things are required of the soul: in
fact that importunity is necessary of which Jesus spoke (Luke xi. 7-9):
"And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not . . . I
cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you he will not rise and give
him because he is his friend, yet _because of his importunity_ he
will rise and give him as many as he needeth. And I say unto you,
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it
shall be opened unto you."
Such times of distress are storms, fearful battles of the soul in which
she must not faint but rise up and walk towards God and clamour for
help; and she will receive it. In His own good time He will give her
all that she asks and more even than she dreamed of. She must claim
from God a continual restrengthening, and search with glowing
aspiration for a more joyous love.
X
It was summer-time: a great battle was raging in France. A friend
wrote me that my husband was up in the very foremost part of it. I
heard no word from my husband; weeks passed, and still the same
ominous silence. At last the day came when the shadow of these two
fearful years rose up and overwhelmed me altogether. I went up on
to the wild lonely hill where I so often walked, and there I
contended with God for His help. For the first time in my life there
was nothing between God and myself--this had _continually_
happened with Jesus Christ, but not with God the Father, Who
remained totally inaccessible to me. Now, like a man standing
in a very dark place and seeing nothing but knowing himself
immediately near to another--so I knew myself in very great
nearness to God. I had no need for eyes to see outwardly, because of
the immense magnetism of this inward Awareness. At one moment
my heart and mind ran like water before Him--praying Him,
beseeching Him for His help; at another my soul stood straight up
before Him, contending and claiming because she could bear no
more: and it felt as though the Spirit of God stood over against my
spirit, and my spirit wrestled with God's Spirit for more than an hour.
But He gave me no answer, no sign, no help. He gave me nothing
but that awful silence which seems to hang for ever between God
and Man. And I became exhausted, and turned away in despair from
God, and from supplication, and from striving, and from contending,
and, very quiet and profoundly sad, I stood looking out across the
hills to the distant view--how gentle and lovely this peace of the
evening sky, whilst on earth all the nations of the world were
fighting together in blood and fury and pain!
I had stood there for perhaps ten minutes, mutely and sadly
wondering at the meaning of it all, and was commencing to walk
away when suddenly I was surrounded by a great whiteness which
blotted out from me all my surroundings. It was like a great light or
white cloud which hid all my surroundings from me, though I stood
there with my eyes wide open: and the cloud pricked, so that I said
to myself, "It is an electric cloud," and it pricked me from my head
down to my elbows, but no further. I felt no fear whatever, but a
very great wonder, and stood there all quite simple and placid,
feeling very quiet. Then there began to be poured into me an
indescribably great vitality, so that I said to myself, "I am being
filled with some marvellous Elixir." And it filled me from the feet
up, gently and slowly, so that I could notice every advance of it. As
it rose higher in me, so I grew to feel freed: that is to say, I had
within me the astounding sensation of having the capacity to pass
where or how I would--which is to say I felt freed of the law of
gravity. I was like a free spirit--I felt and knew within myself this
glorious freedom! I tasted for some moments a new form of living!
Words are unable to convey the splendour of it, the boundless joy,
the liberty, the glory of it.
And the incomprehensible Power rose and rose in me until it
reached the very crown of my head, and immediately it had quite
filled me a marvellous thing happened--the Wall, the dreadful
Barrier between God and me, came down entirely, and immediately
I loved Him. I was so filled with love that I had to cry aloud my love,
so great was the force and the wonder and the delight and the might
of it.
And now, slowly, the vivid whiteness melted away so that I saw
everything around me once more just as before; but for a little while
I continued to stand there very still and thoughtful, because I was
filled with wonder and great peace.
Then I turned to walk home, but I walked as a New Creature in a
New World--my heart felt like the heart of an angel, glowing white-hot
with the love for God, and all my sorrows fled away in a vast joy!
This was His answer, this was His help. After years and years of
wrestling and struggling, in one moment of time He had let me find
Him, He had poured His Paradise into my soul! Never was such
inconceivable joy--never was such gladness! My griefs and pains
and woes were wiped away--totally effaced as though they had
never existed!
Oh, the magnificence of such splendid joy! The whole of space
could scarcely now be large enough to hold me! I needed all of it--I
welcomed its immensity as once I was oppressed by it. God and my
Soul, and Love, and Light, and Space!