through "longing and desire,"—longing that embodies itself in desire towards God, that is, in Prayer.
Nothing is said by Julian as to successive stages of Prayer, though she speaks of different kinds of prayer as the natural action of the soul under different experiences or in different states of feeling or "dryness." Prayer is asking ("beseeching"), with submission and acquiescence; or beholding, with the self forgotten, yet offered-up; it is a thanking and a praising in the heart that sometimes breaks forth into voice or a silent joy in the sight of God as all-sufficient. And in all these ways "Prayer oneth the soul to God."
To Julian's understanding the only Shewing of God that could ever be, the highest and lowest, the first and the last, was the Vision of Him as Love. "Hold thee therin and thou shalt witten and knowen more in the same. But thou shalt never knowen ne witten other thing without end. Thus was I lerid that Love was our Lord's menyng" (lxxxvi.). Alien to the "simple creature" was that desert region where some of the lovers of God have endeavoured to find Him,—desiring an extreme penetration of thought (human thought, after all, since for men there is none beyond it) or an utmost reach of worship (worship from fire and ice) in proclaiming the Absolute One not only as All that is, but as All that is not. Julian's desire was truly for God in Himself, through Christ by the Holy Spirit of Love: for God in "His homeliest home," the soul, for God in
