summer noon
It was a little incredible that he could ever have doubted . It was a phase of extreme intellectual clairvoyance . A multitude of things that hitherto had been higgledy-piggledy , contradictory and incongruous in his mind became lucid , serene , full and assured . He seemed to see all things plainly as one sees things plainly through perfectly clear still water in the shadows of a summer noon . His doubts about God , his periods of complete forgetfulness and disregard of God , this conflict of his instincts and the habits and affections of his daily life with the service of God , ceased to be perplexing incompatibilities and were manifest as necessary , understandable aspects of the business of living . It was no longer a riddle that little immediate things should seem of more importance than great and final things . For man is a creature thrusting his way up from the beast to divinity , from the blindness of individuality to the knowledge of a common end .