asserting the benignant intentions of her Creator. So, after great
mental conflicts and agonies must come a reaction, and the Divine
Spirit, co-working with our spirit, seizes the favorable moment, and,
interpenetrating natural laws with a celestial vitality, carries up the
soul to joys beyond the ordinary possibilities of mortality.

It is said that gardeners, sometimes, when they would bring a rose to
richer flowering, deprive it, for a season, of light and moisture.
Silent and dark it stands, dropping one fading leaf after another, and
seeming to go down patiently to death. But when every leaf is dropped,
and the plant stands stripped to the uttermost, a new life is even then
working in the buds, from which shall spring a tender foliage and a
brighter wealth of flowers. So, often in celestial gardening, every leaf
of earthly joy must drop, before a new and divine bloom visits the soul.

Gradually, as months passed away, the floods grew still; the mighty
rushes of the inner tides ceased to dash. There came first a delicious
calmness, and then a celestial inner clearness, in which the soul seemed
to lie quiet as an untroubled ocean, reflecting heaven. Then came the
fulness of mysterious communion given to the pure in heart,--that advent
of the Comforter in the soul, teaching all things and bringing all
things to remembrance; and Mary moved in a world transfigured by a
celestial radiance. Her face, so long mournfully calm, like some
chiselled statue of Patience, now wore a radiance, as when one places a
light behind some alabaster screen sculptured with mysterious and holy
emblems, and words of strange sweetness broke from her, as if one should
hear snatches of music from a door suddenly opened in heaven. Something
wise and strong and sacred gave an involuntary impression of awe in her
looks and words;--it was not the childlike loveliness of early days,
looking with dovelike, ignorant eyes on sin and sorrow; but the