Everything
beautiful he saw twice--with his own eyes namely, and as he
imagined it in the eyes of Joan: he was always trying to see things
as he thought she would see them. Not once while recovering did he
care to read a thing he thought she would not enjoy--though
everything he liked, he said to himself, she must enjoy some day.
Soon he made a discovery concerning himself that troubled him
greatly: not once since he was ill had he buried himself in the
story of Jesus! not once had he lost himself in prayer! not once
since finding Joan had he been flooded with a glory as from the
presence of the living One, or had any such vision of truth as used
every now and then to fill him like the wine of the new world which
is the old! Lady Joan saw that he was sad, and questioned him. But
even to her he could not open his mind on such a matter: near as
they were, they had not yet got near enough to each other for that.
In the history, which is the growth, of the individual man, epochs
of truth and moods of being follow in succession, the one for the
moment displacing the other, until the mind shall at length have
gained power to blend the new at once with the preceding whole. But
this can never be until our idea of the Absolute Life is large
enough and intense enough to fill and fit into every necessity of
our nature. A new mood is as a dry well for the water of life to
fill. The man who does not yet understand God as the very power of
his conscious as well as unconscious being, as more in him than
intensest consciousness of bliss or of pain, must have many a
treeless expanse, many a mirage-haunted desert, many an empty
cistern and dried up river, in the world of his being! There was
not much of this kind of waste in Cosmo's world, but God was not
yet inside his growing love to Joan--that is, consciously to
him--and his spirit was therefore of necessity troubled.
Pages:
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364