as by a soft general dawning of comfort for faith. "Sin is behoveable (it behoved that sin should be suffered to rise) but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." Yet Julian, unable to take comfort to her heart over that which was still so dark to her intellect, stands "beholding things general, troublously and mourning," saying thus in her thoughts: "Ah good Lord, how might all be well, for the great hurt that is come by sin to the creature?" (xxix.).
The answer to this double question as to sin and pain is the central theme of the Revelation, though much is still hidden and much is but dimly revealed as yet to faith. In brief account, the sight, enough for us now, is this: "Mercy, by love, suffereth us to fail [of love] in measure, and in as much as we fail, in so much we die: for it needs must be that we die in so much as we fail of the sight and feeling of God that is our life. . . . And grace worketh our dreadful failing into plenteous, endless solace, and grace worketh our shameful falling into high, worshipful rising; and grace worketh our sorrowful dying into holy, blissful life" (xlviii.). "By the assay of this falling we shall have an high marvellous knowing of love in God, without end. For strong and marvellous is that love that may not and will not be broken for trespass. And this is one understanding of our profit. Another is the lowness and meekness that we shall get by the sight of our falling" (lxi.). "And by this meek knowing after this manner,
