transformation the soul, which was “at the opposite extreme” to God, “becomes, by participation, God.”  In this beatific state “one might say, in a sense, that the soul gives God to God, for she gives to God all that she receives of God; and He gives Himself to her.  This is the mystical love-gift, wherewith the soul repayeth all her debt.”  This is the infinite reward of the soul who has refused to be content with anything short of infinity (no se llenan menos que con lo Infinito).  With what yearning this blessed hope inspired St. Juan, is shown in the following beautiful prayer, which is a good example of the eloquence, born of intense emotion, which we find here and there in his pages:  “O sweetest love of God, too little known; he who has found Thee is at rest; let everything be changed, O God, that we may rest in Thee.  Everywhere with Thee, O my God, everywhere all things with Thee; as I wish, O my Love, all for Thee, nothing for me—­nothing for me, everything for Thee.  All sweetness and delight for Thee, none for me—­all bitterness and trouble for me, none for Thee.  O my God, how sweet to me Thy presence, who art the supreme Good!  I will draw near to Thee in silence, and will uncover Thy feet,[300] that it may please Thee to unite me to Thyself, making my soul Thy bride; I will rejoice in nothing till I am in Thine arms.  O Lord, I beseech Thee, leave me not for a moment, because I know not the value of mine own soul.”

Such faith, hope, and love were suffered to cast gleams of light upon the saint’s gloomy and thorn-strewn path.  But nevertheless the text of which we are most often reminded in reading his pages is the verse of Amos:  “Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?” It is a terrible view of life and duty—­that we are to denude ourselves of everything that makes us citizens of the world—­that nothing which is natural is capable of entering into relations with God—­that all which is human must die, and have its place taken by supernatural infusion.  St. Juan follows to the end the “negative road” of Dionysius, without troubling himself at all with the transcendental metaphysics of Neoplatonism.  His nihilism or acosmism is not the result of abstracting from the notion of Being or of unity; its basis is psychological.  It is “subjective” religion carried almost to its logical conclusion.  The Neoplatonists were led on by the hope of finding a reconciliation between philosophy and positive religion; but no such problems ever presented themselves to the Spaniards.  We hear nothing of the relation of the creation to God, or why the contemplation of it should only hinder instead of helping us to know its Maker.  The world simply does not exist for St. Juan; nothing exists save God and human souls.  The great human society has no interest for him; he would have us cut ourselves completely adrift from the aims and aspirations of civilised humanity, and,