PART II
The Manner of the Book
As an hert desirith to the wellis of watris:
so thou God, my soule desirith to thee. . . .
The Lord sent his merci in the day:
and his song in the nyght.
WITHOUT any special study of the literature of Mysticism for purposes of comparison, in reading Julian's book one is struck by a few characteristics wherein it differs from many other Mystical writings, as well as by qualities that belong to most or all of that general designation.
The silence of this book both as to preliminary ascetic exercises and as to ultimate visions of the Absolute, might be attributed to Julian's being wholly concerned with giving, for comfort to all, that special sight of truth that came to her as the answer to her own need. She sets out not to teach methods of any kind for the gradual drawing near of man to God, but to record and shew forth a Revelation, granted once, of God's actual nearness to the soul, and for this Revelation she herself had been prepared by the "stirring" of her conscience, her love and her understanding, in a word of her faith, even as she was in short time to be left "neither sign nor token," but only the Revelation to hold "in faith." Moreover, the means that in general she looks to for
