corresponding to something which we know to be true, which throws some
faint glimmer of light upon this impenetrable darkness and seems to
extend Christ's experience upon the Cross so as to touch our own human
life. It is a phrase that describes a condition well known to spiritual
persons: "To leave God for God." (1) The simplest and lowest form of
this state is that condition in which we acquiesce with our will in the
withdrawal of ordinary spiritual consolation. Certainly it is an
inexplicable state, since both the ordinary aids to our will--our
understanding and our emotion--are, by the very nature of the case,
useless to it. Our heart revolts from that dereliction and our
understanding fails to comprehend the reasons for it. Yet we acquiesce,
or at least perceive that we ought to do so; and that by doing so--by
ceasing, that is, to grasp God's Presence any longer--we find it as
never before. We leave God in order to find Him.

(2) The second state is that in which we find ourselves when not only do
all consolations leave us, but the very grip of intelligent faith goes
too; when the very reasons for faithfulness appear to vanish. It is an
incalculably more bitter trial, and soul after soul fails under it and
must be comforted again by God in less august ways or perish altogether.
And yet this is not the extremest pitch even of human desolation.

(3) For there is a third of which the saints tell us in broken words and
images....

III. Our final point, for application to ourselves, is that dereliction
in some form or another is as much a stage in spiritual progress as
autumn and winter are seasons of the year. The beginners have to suffer
one degree, the illuminated another, and those that have approached a
real Union with God a third. But all must suffer it, and each in his