and difficult path. And as one goes on, and the whole of the meaning takes form, these significations of something all-prevailing give one a partial understanding such as Julian perhaps may have had: the feeling, the "Mind," of a certain half-caught measure in "all things that are," a proportion, a oneness. We are amongst free nature's mountains, but they do not rise haphazard: they shew a strange, a balanced beauty of line and light and shade, as convincing, if not as clear in its intention as the sunrise-lines and colouring of the euphrasy flower at our feet. We hear as we walk the wandering sound of "the vagrant, casual wind," but there is something in its rise and fall, and rising again, that has kinship with the flow and ebb and onrush of the lingering, punctual waves on the shore. Sursum Corda.
PART III
The Theme of the Book
"THE phase of thought or feeling which we call Mysticism has its origin in . . . that dim consciousness of the beyond which is part of our nature as human beings. . . . Mysticism arises when we try to bring this higher consciousness into relation with the other contents of our minds. Religious Mysticism may be defined as the attempt to realise the presence of the living God in the soul and in nature, or, more generally, as the attempt to
