God is rarely afar off. Exquisite nature is all around. Life
affords vicissitudes enough to try the energies of the human
will. I can pray, I can act, I can learn, I can constantly
immerse myself in the Divine Beauty. But I also need to
love my fellow-men, and to meet the responsive glance of my
spiritual kindred.'
Again, she says:--
'I like to hear you express your sense of my defects. The
word "arrogance" does not, indeed, appear to me to be just;
probably because I do not understand what you mean. But in due
time I doubtless shall; for so repeatedly have you used it,
that it must stand for something real in my large and rich,
yet irregular and unclarified nature. But though I like to
hear you, as I say, and think somehow your reproof does me
good, by myself, I return to my native bias, and feel as if
there was plenty of room in the universe for my faults, and
as if I could not spend time in thinking of them, when so
many things interest me more. I have no defiance or coldness,
however, as to these spiritual facts which I do not know;
but I must follow my own law, and bide my time, even if, like
Oedipus, I should return a criminal, blind and outcast, to
ask aid from the gods.
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