Page:The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart.pdf/336



godly have not only simple peace within them, but also joy and pleasure, which flow to their hearts from the presence and feeling of God's love. For where God is, there is heaven; where heaven is, there is eternal joy, and where there is eternal joy there men desire nothing further. All the joys of the world are but a shade, jest, derision, compared to this joy; only I know not in what words to describe and portray it. I saw, I saw, I saw and understood that to have within you God, with His celestial treasures, is so glorious a thing that all the glory, splendour, glitter of the world cannot be compared to it. It is a thing so joyful that the whole world could neither take anything from it nor add anything to it, so great and high that the whole world can neither conceive it nor contain it.

2. For how can anything be otherwise than sweet and joyful to a man who possesses this