unto death,” to wean her from the world and quicken her spiritual sense.  The sickness came, and the vision; for they thought her dying, and held the crucifix before her, till the figure on the Cross changed into the semblance of the living Christ.  “All this was showed by three parts—­that is to say, by bodily sight, and by words formed in my understanding, and by ghostly sight.[282]” “But the ghostly sight I cannot nor may not show it as openly nor as fully as I would.”  Her later visions came to her sometimes during sleep, but most often when she was awake.  The most pure and certain were wrought by a “Divine illapse” into the spiritual part of the soul, the mind and understanding, for these the devil cannot counterfeit.  Juliana was certainly perfectly honest and perfectly sane.  The great charm of her little book is the sunny hopefulness and happiness which shines from every page, and the tender affection for her suffering Lord which mingles with her devotion without ever becoming morbid or irreverent.  It is also interesting to see how this untaught maiden (for she shows no traces of book learning) is led by the logic of the heart straight to some of the speculative doctrines which we have found in the philosophical mystics.  The brief extracts which follow will illustrate all these statements.

The crucified Christ is the one object of her devotion.  She refused to listen to “a proffer in my reason,” which said, “Look up to heaven to His Father.”  “Nay, I may not,” she replied, “for Thou art my heaven.  For I would liever have been in that pain till Doomsday than to come to heaven otherwise than by Him.”  “Me liked none other heaven than Jesus, which shall be my bliss when I come there.”  And after describing a vision of the crucifixion, she says, “How might any pain be more than to see Him that is all my life and all my bliss suffer?”

Her estimate of the value of means of grace is very clear and sound.  “In that time the custom of our praying was brought to mind, how we use, for lack of understanding and knowing of love, to make [use of] many means.  Then saw I truly that it is more worship to God and more very delight that we faithfully pray to Himself of His goodness, and cleave thereto by His grace, with true understanding and steadfast by love, than if we made [use of] all the means that heart can think.  For if we made [use of] all these means, it is too little, and not full worship to God; but in His goodness is all the whole, and there faileth right nought.  For this, as I shall say, came into my mind.  In the same time we pray to God for [the sake of] His holy flesh and precious blood, His holy passion, His dearworthy death and wounds:  and all the blessed kinship, the endless life that we have of all this, is His goodness.  And we pray Him for [the sake of] His sweet mother’s love, that Him bare; and all the help that we have of her is of His goodness.”  And yet “God of His goodness hath advanced means