Five days pass. I am in my room, and the page is really standing at the door, and he says, "You are wanted on the telephone." I go to the telephone, and a voice says, "_Your train accommodation is transferred to Friday the 19th._" That is all, because I am rung off.
Again, there is a young lay-reader, closely in contact with Christ; he has a wife and young child. The weather is bitterly cold. A picture suddenly comes before me of this family, and there is a voice saying, "_He was gathering together the last little pieces of fuel when your present came._" Immediately I understand that I am required to send coal to these people, and to do it at once without delay. The following day the wife comes with tears to thank me, and she tells me, "We were in despair; my husband's heart is so weak he cannot bear the cold, he becomes seriously ill. _He was gathering together the last little pieces of fuel when your present came._"
Or, again, I very badly need a pair of walking shoes, but for weeks I have been so absorbed in contemplation that the pain of bringing myself from this holy joy to do shopping is too great, and I delay and delay; I cannot bring myself to it; but shoes are a necessity of earthly life. Having exceedingly narrow feet, I am obliged always to get my shoes from a certain maker, and now, during the war, he makes so few shoes. To-day a picture of the shop comes before me, and the words "Go to-day, go to-day," urge themselves upon my consciousness. Then a picture comes of the assistant; I show her my foot, and she says, "_There is only one pair left; how fortunate you came to-day!_" So I understand I must go to my shopping and, greatly against my will, I go that afternoon. The assistant comes forward, and I show her my foot, and she says, "_There is only one pair left; how fortunate you came to-day!_"
Always in this mode of the guiding are the little picture and the _exact_ words: all of it of the easiest to describe; but of the other and the greater guiding I do not know how to tell. It is sheer pure knowledge, received not in parts, pictures, or words, but as a whole and in a mode so exquisitely mysterious as to be at once too intricate for description, and yet simplicity itself!