He felt very glad he had seen this; he seemed to think of nothing else for a long time.
He forgot then all the detail of that which he had seen and thought, and it seemed to him that he spent a long time just rejoicing in the divine life by which all things were, and by which they changed, growing by transformation into a glory which was still indistinct to him, too far off to be seen in any way except that its light came as the light comes from stars which we say we see and have never really seen at all.
Through this joy and light the details of life began to show again.

The two forces which he had always supposed had moulded his life acted his early scenes over again.

His young mother, before the shadow of despair had come over her, was seen waiting upon all his boyish footsteps with cheerful love and patience, trying to guide and to help, but trying much more to comfort and to please; and his father, with a strong body and the strength of fixed opinion and formed habits, having no desire for his son except to train and form him as he himself was trained and formed, was seen darkening all the boy's happiness with unreasonable severity, which hardened and sharpened with the opposition of years into selfish cruelty.

Toyner had often seen these scenes before; all that was new to him now was that they stood in the vivid light of a new interpretation.

Ah! the father's cruelty, the irritable self-love, the incapacity to recognise any form of life but his own, it was of God,--not a high manifestation: the bat is lower than the bird, and yet it is of God.