Mark discussed with the
Rector the theological aspects of this intuition.
"The only thing I feel," said Mr. Ogilvie, "is that perhaps you are
leading too sheltered a life here and that the explanation of your
intuition is your soul's perception of this. Indeed, once or twice
lately I have been on the point of warning you that you must not get
into the habit of supposing you will always find the onset of the world
so gentle as here."
"But naturally I don't expect to," said Mark. "I was quite long enough
at Haverton House to appreciate what it means to be here."
"Yes," the Rector went on, "but even at Haverton House it was a passive
ugliness, just as here it is a passive beauty. After our Lord had fasted
forty days in the desert, accumulating reserves of spiritual energy,
just as we in our poor human fashion try to accumulate in Lent reserves
of spiritual energy that will enable us to celebrate Easter worthily, He
was assailed by the Tempter more fiercely than ever during His life on
earth. The history of all the early Egyptian monks, the history indeed
of any life lived without losing sight of the way of spiritual
perfection displays the same phenomena. In the action and reaction of
experience, in the rise and fall of the tides, in the very breathing of
the human lungs, you may perceive analogies of the divine rhythm.
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