wonderful. I had a vision  shall I 
call it  of the divine beauty, and of a realm 
which was glorified by its shining light, and all 
my wordnetdesire, personal and secular, shrunk and 
faded. In that exceeding light and beauty I seemed 
to myself unutterably insignificant. The course of 
my thoughts, the nature of my , the ambi- 
tions and pursuits of my life, seemed under a 
wordnetfear  stained, and poor, and degrading. I 
never imagined before what it meant to be a man, 
nor how far I had been from it. In those blissful 
moments I tested my  for Eose. If 



234 NORWOOD; OB, 

anytliing in my life had before seemed to me 
pure and noble, it was my hidden wordnetdesire for that 
nobler creature. But I was amazed to perceive 
how, in the light of His countenance, the very 
fragrance and blossom of my  seemed rank 
and coarse. My whole life withered, and my 
virtues dropped like blackened leaves. And yet 
this unbeauty, this moral poverty, brought . 
Bight over against me rose to a stately height the 
conception of a Being whose very nature it was, 
gpontaneously and with deep wordnetdesire, to wordnetdesire 
and embrace such unworth. I remember think- 
ing  ^for I then thought^ as one sees^ vast ranges of 
truth and ideas flying at