eminent pre-Christian adept, and Enoch.] These adepts, he says, are of
every condition and character, but that which binds them together is the
fact that they all alike deal directly with invisible things, and not,
as others do, through veils and symbols. Since the Incarnation, however,
all baptized persons who frequent the sacraments are in a certain degree
adepts, for in those sacraments they may be truly said to see, handle,
hear and taste the Word of Life. Other powers, however, are still
reserved to those who are the masters of the spiritual life;--for not
all persons, however holy, are contemplatives, ecstatics, or seers.

Now contemplation is an arduous labour; it is not, as some ignorant
persons think, a process of idle absorption; it is rather a state of
strenuous endeavour, aided at any rate in its first stages by acts of
steady detachment from the world of sense. Richard Raynal had passed
through the first rigour of that purgative stage in the short period of
one year, and although he still lived a detached life, and practised
various austerities, he was so far free of danger that he was able, as
has been already remarked, to dig and talk without interrupting the
exercise of his higher faculties. He had then passed to the illuminative
stage, and had remained, again for one year, in the process of being
informed, taught and kindled in preparation for the third and last stage
of union with the Divine--elsewhere named the Way of Perfection. He had
been rewarded by various sensible gifts, particularly by that of
Ecstasy, by which the soul passes, as fully as an embodied soul can
pass, into the state of eternity. Here mysteries are seen plainly,
though they seldom can be declared in words, or at least only haltingly
and under physical images that are not really adequate to that which
they represent. [That which Richard calls Calor, or Warmth, appears
to be one of these.]