how thou bearest thee. Seest thou not how He standeth and abideth thee?"
True, the will alone, however ardent and industrious, cannot of itself set up communion with the supernal world: this is "the work of only God, specially wrought in what soul that Him liketh." But man can and must do his part. First, there are the virtues to be acquired: those "ornaments of the Spiritual Marriage" with which no mystic can dispense. Since we can but behold that which we are, his character must be set in order, his mind and heart made beautiful and pure, before he can look on the triple star of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, which is God. Every great spiritual teacher has spoken in the same sense: of the need for that which Rolle calls the "mending of life"—regeneration, the rebuilding of character—as the preparation of the contemplative act.
For the author of the Cloud all human virtue is comprised in the twin
