mystery:[15]--

"Daughter, thou mayst no better please God, than to think
continually in His love."

"If thou wear the habergeon or the hair, fasting bread and water,
and if thou saidest every day a thousand Pater Nosters, thou shalt
not please Me so well as thou dost when thou art in silence, and
suffrest Me to speak in thy soul."

"Daughter, if thou knew how sweet thy love is to Me, thou wouldest
never do other thing but love Me with all thine heart."

"In nothing that thou dost or sayest, daughter, thou mayst no better
please God than believe that He loveth thee. For, if it were
possible that I might weep with thee, I would weep with thee for the
compassion that I have of thee."

And, from the midst of her celestial contemplations, rises up the
simple, poignant cry of human suffering: "Lord, for Thy great pain
have mercy on my little pain."

We are on surer ground with the treatise that follows, the Song of
Angels.16 Walter Hilton--who died on March 24, 1396--holds a
position in the religious life and spiritual literature of England
in the latter part of the fourteenth century somewhat similar to
that occupied by Richard Rolle in its earlier years. Like the Hermit
of Hampole, he was the founder of a school, and the works of his
followers cannot always be distinguished with certainty from his
own. Like his great master in the mystical way, Richard of St.