thither has been too much, and once arrived there, what is his
object now? merely to remain there, and among the crowd of pushing
selfish figures, that have lost in the fight the very signs of their
humanity, _monstrari digito_, to have the gaze of men, to feel
somebody.

"All this I throw aside, and go straight to God. All around us in
natural things—in the curve of that rose-stem and the passionate
flush of its petals—in those white bells there, looking as if blown
out of veined foam—in the luscious scents that wind and linger
round the garden, He has set, as in a language, the secrets of His
being and ours, of our why and wherefore, if we could but read them.
Like the characters and monuments of a bygone age staring from a
waste of sand or the front of a precipice, these words and phrases
seem to say, not 'There was a king who was mighty, but whose throne
is cut down,' but 'There lives a God who would be all tenderness if
He could, and is more beautiful in His nature than anything you have
ever seen or dreamed of. Win your way to Him, if you can; do not let
Him go till you have His secret. That is a talisman indeed, that
shall shut you in palaces of delight where no torment shall touch
you.'

"And not a selfish paradise. We are but as others, we mystics; it is
only that we take—or rather are led, for it is no will of ours, but
an imperious voice that calls us—the straight and flowery road to
God, pressing through but one hedge of thorns, while you and others
struggle to Him along the dusty road that winds and wanders. But our
paradise would be no paradise if we did not know that our brothers
were coming, coming; the beauty that we behold, sheer ugliness if we
did not believe that you will some day share it too.