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SERMONS AND COLLATIONS
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Someone compltiinotl to Moistor Eckhart that no ono could understand his sermons. Tie said, To iindorstand my sermons a man requires three things. Ho must have conquered strife and bo in contemplation of his highest good and bo satisfied to do God's bidding and be a beginner with beginners and naught hitnsolf and be so master of hiinsclf as to bo incapable of anger.
Cod. Monac. Qerm.y 3G5, Eol. 1926.
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THIS IS MEISTER ECKIIAllT FROM WHOM GOD NOTPIING HID
Dum medium silentium tenerent omnia et nox in suo cursu medium Her haheret etc. {Sap. 18, 4). For wliilc all things were in
quiet silenee and the night was in the midst of her (bourse, etc.' Here in time we make holiday because the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity is now born in time, in human nature. St Augustine says this birth is always happening. Hut if it happen not in me what does it profit me ? What matters is that it shall happen in me.
^Ve intend therefore to speak of this birth as taking place in us : as [)eing eonsum mated in tht \ irtuous soul : for it is in the ])erfect soul that God speaks his Word. What I shall say is true only of the [)erfceted man, of him who has walked and is still walking in the way of God : not ot the natural undisciplined man who is entirely remote from and unconscious of this birth.
There is a saying of the wise man : When all things Jay in the midst of silence then leapt there down into me from on high, from the royal throne, a secret word.' This sermon is about this word.
Concerning it three things arc to be noted. The first is, where- abouts in the soul God the Father speaks his Word, wliere she is receptive of this act, where this birth befalls. It is bound to be in the purest, loftiest, subtlest part of the soul. Verily, an God tlic Father in liis omnipotence had endowed tlie soul with a still nobler nature, had she receivad from him anything yet more exalted, then must the Fatlier have delayed this birth for the presence of this greater excellence, 'fhe soul in which this birth shall come to pass must be absolutely pure and must live in gentle fashion, quite peaceful and wholly introverted : not running out through the five senses into the manifoldness of creatures, but altogether within and harmonised in her summit. That is its place. Anything inferior is disdained by it.
The second part of this discourse has to do with man's conduct
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in relation to this act, this interior speaking, this birth : whether it is more profitable to co-opcrate in it -perhaps by creating in the mind an imaginary image and disciplining oneself thereon by reflecting that God is wise, omnipotent, eternal, or whatever else one is able to excogitate about God -- so that the birth may come to pass in us through our own exertion and merit ; or whether it is more profitable and conducive to this birth from the Father to shun all thoughts, words and deeds as well as all mental images and empty oneself, maintaining a wholly God-receptive attitude, such that one's own self is idle letting God work. Which conduct subserves this birth best ?
The third point is the profit and how great it is, which accrues from this birth.
Note in the first jilaee that in what I am about to say I intend to avail myself of natural proofs that ye yourselves can grasp, for though I put more faith in the scriptures than myself, nevertheless it is easier and better for you to learn by means of arguments that can be vc^rified.
First we will take the words : In the midst of the silence there was spoken in me a secret word.'
-- 13ut, Sir, where is the silence and where the place in which the word is spoken ?
As I said just now, it is in the purest part of the soul, in the noblest, in her ground, aye in t he very essence of the soul. That is mid-silenee for thereinto no creature did ever get, nor any image, nor has the soul there either activity or understanding, therefore she is not aware of any image cither of herself or any creature. What- ever the soul effects she effects with her powers. When she under- stands she understands with her intellect. When she remembers she does so with her memory. When she loves she does so with her will. She works then with her powers and not with her essence. Now every exterior act is linked with some means. The power of seeing is brought into play only through the eyes ; elsewhere she can neither do nor liestow such a thing as seeing. And so with all the other senses : their operations arc always effected through some means or other, lint there is no activity in the essence of the soul ; the faculties she works with cTuanatc from the ground of the essence but in her actual ground there is mid-stillness ; here alone is rest and a habitation for this birth, this act, wherein God the Father speaks his Word, for it is intrinsically receptive of naught save the divine ess:*nce, without means. Here God enters the soul with his all, not merely with a part. God enters the ground of the soul. None can touch the ground of the soul but God only. No creature is admitted into her ground, it must stop outside in her powers. There it sees the image whereby it has been
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drawn in and found shelter. For when the soul-powers contact a creature they set to to make of the creature an image and likeness which they absorb. By it they know the creature. Creatures cannot go into the soul, nor can the soul know anything about a creature which she has not willingly taken the image of into herself. She approaches creatures through their present images ; an image being a thing that the soul creates with her powers. Be it a stone, a rose, a man, or anything else that she wants to know about, she gets out the image of it which she has already taken in and is thus enabled to unite herself with it. But an image rceeiv^cd in this way must of necessity enter from without through the senses. Consequently there is nothing so unknown to the soul as herself. The soul, says a philosoplier, can neither create nor absorb an image of herself. So she has nothing to know liersclf by. Iniages all enter through the senses, hence she can have no image of herself. She knows other things but not hcrsell'. Of nothing does she know so little as of herself, owing to this arrangement. Now thou must know that inwardly the soul is free from means and images, that is why God can freely unite with her without form or similitude. Thou caiist not but attribute to God without measure whatever power thou dost attribute to a master. The wiser and more powerful the master the more immediately is his work effected and the simpler it is. Man requires many instruments for his external works ; much preparation is needed (re he can bring them forth as he has imagined them. The sun and moon whose work is to give light, in their mastership perform this very swiftly : the instant their radiance is poured forth, all the ends of the world arc full of light. More exalted arc the angels, who need less means for their works and have fewer images. Tlie highest Seraph has but a single image. lie seizes as a unity all that his inferiors regard as manifold. Now God needs no image and has no image : witliout image, likeness or means does God work in the soul, aye, in Iier ground whereinto no image did ever get but only himself with his own essence. This no creature can do.
-- How do(\s God the Father give birth to his Son in the soul ; like creatures, in image and likeness ?
No, by my faith ! Imt just as he gives him birth in eternity and no otherwise.
-- Well, but how docs he give him birth there ?
See. God the Father has perfect insight into himself, profound and thorough knowledge of himself by means of himself, not by means of any image. And thus God the Father gives birth to his Son, in the very oneness of the divine nature. Mark, thus it is and in no other way that God the Father gives birth to his Son in the ground and essence of the soul and thus he unites himself
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with her. Were any image present there would not be real union and in real union lies thy whole beatitude.
Now haply thou wilt say : But there is nothing innate in the soul save images.' No, not so ! If that were true the soul would never be happy, for God cannot make any creature wherein thou canst enjoy perfect happiness, else were God not the highest happiness and final goal, whereas it is his will and nature to be the alpha and omega of alk No creature can be happiness. And here indeed can Just as little be perfection, for perfection (perfect virtue that is to say) results from perfection of life. Therefore verily thou must sojourn and dwell in tliy essence, in thy ground, and there God shall mix thee with his simple essence without the medium of any image. No image represents and signifies itself: it stands for that of which it is the image. Now seeing that thou hast no image save of what is outside thee, therefore it is impossible for thee to be beatified by any image wliatsoevcr.
The second point is, what it does behove a man to do in order to deserv'c and procure this birth to come to pass and be (*on- summated in him : is it better for him to do his part towards it, to imagine and think about (hxl, or should ho keep still in peace and quiet so that God can speak and act in him while he merety waits on God's operation ? At the same time I rep(at that this speaking, this act, is only for the good and perfect, those who have so absorbed and assimilated the essence of virtue that it emanates from them naturally, witliout their seeking ; and above all there must live in them the worthy life and lofty teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. Such are permitted to know that the very best and utmost of attainment in this life is to remain still and let God act and speak in thee. When the powars hav(' all been withdrawn from tJieir bodily forms and functions, then this \\ ord is spoken. Thus he says : ' in the midst of the silence the secret word was spoken to me.' The more completely thou art a})lc to in-draw thy faculties and forget those things and their images which thou has taken in, the more, that is to say, thou forgetlcst the creature, the nearer thou art to this and the more susceptible thou art to it. If only thou couldst suddenly be altogether unaware of things, aye, couldst thou but ])ass into oblivion of thine own existence as St Paul did when he said : Whether in the body I know not, or out of the body I know not, God knoweth ! ' Here the spirit had so entirely absorbed the faculties that it had forgotten the body : memory no longer functioned, nor understanding, nor the senses, nor even those powers whose duty it is to govern and grace the body ; vital warmth and energy w(re arrested so that the body failed not throughout the three days during which he neither ate nor drank. Even so fared Moses when he fasted forty days on the mount and
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was none the worse for it : on the last day he was as strong as on the first. Thus a man must abscond from his senses, invert his faculties and lapse into oblivion of things and of himself. Anent which a philosopher apostrophised the soul : Withdraw from the restlessness of external activities ! ' And again : Flee away and hide thee from the turmoil of outward occupations and inward thoughts for they create nothing but discord ! ' If God is to speak his Word in the soul she must be at rest and at peace ; then he speaks in the soul his Word and himself : not an image but himself. Dionysius says : God has no image nor likeness of himself seeing that he is intrinsically all good, truth and being.' God performs all his works, in himself and outside himself, simul- taneously. Do not fondly imagine that God, when he created the heavens and the earth and all creatures, lYiade one thing one day and another the next. Moses describes it thus it is true, never- theless he knew better : he did so merely on account of those who are incapable of understanding or conceiving otherwise. All God did was : he willed and they were. God works without instrument and without image. And the freer thou art from images the more receptive thou art to his interior operation ; and the more introverted and oblivious thou art the nigher thou art thereto. Dionysius exhorted his disciple Timothy in this sense saying ;
Dear son Timothy, do thou with untroubled mind swing thyself up above thyself and above thy powers, above all modes and all existences, into the secret, still darkness, that thou mayest attain to the knowledge of the unknown super-divine God.' All things must be forsaken. God scorns to work among images.
Now haply thou wilt say : What is it that God docs without images in the ground and essence ? ' That I am incapable of knowing, for my soul-powers can receive only in images ,* they have to recognise and lay hold of each thing in its appropriate image : they cannot recognise a bird in the image of a man. Now since images all enter from without, this is concealed from my soul, which is most salutary for her. Not-knowing makes her wonder and leads her to eager pursuit, for she knows clearly that it is but knows not how nor xvhat it is. No sooner docs a man know the reason of a thing than immediately he tires of it and goes casting about for something new. Always clamouring to know, he is ever inconstant. The soul is constant only to this unknowing knowing which keeps her pursuing.
The wise man said concerning this : " In the middle of the night when all things were in quiet silence there was spoken to me a hidden word.' It came like a thief, by stealth. What does he mean by a word that was hidden ? The nature of a word is to reveal what is hidden. It appeared before me, shining out with
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intent to reveal and giving me knowledge of God. Hence it is called a word. But what it was remained hidden from me. That was its stealthy coming in a whispering stillness to reveal itself.' It is just because it is hidden that one is and must be always after it. It appears and disappears : we are meant to yearn and sigh for it.
St Paul says we ought to pursue this until wc espy it and not stop until we grasp it. When he returned after having been caught up into the third heaven where God was made known to him and where he beheld all things, he had forgotten nothing, but it was so deep down in his ground that his intellect could not reach it : it was veiled from him. He was therefore obliged to pursue it and search for it in himself, not outside himself. It is not outside, it is inside : wholly within. And being convinced of this he said, I am sure that neither death nor any affliction can separate me from what I find within me.'
There is a fine saying of one heathen philosopher to another about this, he says : I am aware of something in me which sparkles in my intelligence ; I clearly perceive that it is somewhat but xsihat I cannot grasp. Yet methinks if I could only seize it I should know all tnith.' To which the other philosopher replied : Follow it boldly ! for if thou eanst seize it thou wilt possess the sum-total of all good and have eternal life ! ' St x\ugustine expresses himself in the same sense : 1 am conscious of something within me that plays before my soul and is as a light dancing in front of it ; were this brought to steadiness and perfection in me it would surely be eternal life ! ' It hides yet it shows. It comes, but after the manner of a thief, with intent to take and to steal all things from the soul. 13y emerging and showing itself somewhat it purposes to decoy the soul and draw it towards itself to rob it and take itself from it. As saith the prophet : ^ Lord take from them their spirit and give them instead thy spirit.' This too the loving soul meant when she said : My soul dissolved and melted away when Love spoke his word ; when he entered I could not but fail.' And Christ signified it by his words : Whoso- ever shall leave aught for my sake shall be repaid an hundredfold, and whosoever will possess me must deny himself and all things and whosoever will serve me must follow me nor go any more after his own.'
Now peradventure thou wilt say : But, Sir, you are wanting to change the natural course of the soul ! It is her nature to take in through the senses, in images. Would you upset this arrangement ? '
No ! But how knowest thou what nobility God has bestowed on human nature, what perfections yet uncatalogued, aye yet
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undiscovered ? Those who have written of the soul's nobility have gone no further than their natural intelligence could carry them : they never entered her ground, so that much remained obscure and unknown to them. I will sit in silence and hearken to what God speaketh within me,' said the prophet. Into this retirement steals the Word in the darkness of the night. St John says, The light shines in the darkness : it ciime unto its own and as many as received it became in authority sons ol God : to them was given power to become God's sons.'
Mark now tlie fruit and use of this mysterious Word and of this darkness. In this gloom which is his own the heavenly Father's Son is not born alone : thou too art born lliere a cliild of the same heavenly Father and no other, and to thee also he gives power. Observe how great the use. No truth harncd by any master by his own intellect and understanding, or ever to be learned this side the day of judgment, has twer been interpreted at all according to this knowh^dge, in this ground, ( all it an tliou wilt an ignorance, an unknowing, yet there is in it more than in all knowing and undc'rstanding without it, for this outward ignorance lures and attracts thee irom all understood things and from tliysclf. This is what Christ meant wlieii he said : ' Whosoever denieth not him- self and Icaveth not father and mother and is not estranged from all these, he is not worthy of me.' As though to say : he who aliandons not creatunly externals can neither be conceived nor born in tiiis divine birth. Ihit divesting thysell'of thyself and of every- thing external thereto does indeed give it thee. And in ver}^ truth I believe, nay 1 am sure, that the man who is established herein can in no wise be at any lime separated from (xod. I hold he can in no wise lapse into mortal sin. lie would rather suffer the most slianicful death, as the saints have done before him, than commit the l(*ast of mortal sins. 1 hold that he cannot willingly commit, nor yet consent to, even a venial sin, whether in himself or in another. So strongly is he drawn and attracted to this way, so much is he habituated to it, that he eoukl ne\ er turn to any other : to this way are directed all his senses, all his powers.
May the (iod who has been born again as man assist us in this birth, continually helping us, weak man, to be born again in him as God. Amen.
II
TIIIS IS ANOTHER SERMON
Ubi est qiii nalus est rex Jud(voruni? (Matt. 2 . 2 ). Where is he who is born King of the Jews ? Now concerning this birth, mark where it befalls. I say again as I have often said before that this
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birth befalls in the soul exactly as it does in eternity, neither more nor less, for it is the same birth : this birth befalls in the ground and essence of the soul.
Certain questions arise. Granting that God is in all things as intelligence (or mind) and is more instinct in things than they are in themselves and more natural ; and granting that God wherever he is is in operation, knowing himself and speaking his Word, then mark in what respects the soul is better fitted for this divine operation than other rational creatures God exists in.
God is in all things as being, as activity, as power. But he is procreative in the soul alone for though every creature is a vestige of God, the soul is the natural image of God. This image is perfected and adorned in this birth. No creature but the soul is susceptible to this birth, this act. Such perfection as enters the soul, whether it be divine light, grace or bliss, must needs enter the soul in this liirth and no otherwise. Do but foster this birth in thee and thou shalt experience all good and all comfort, all happiness, all being and all tnith. \Vhat comes to thee therein brings thee true being and stability and whatsoever thou mayst seek or grasp, without it, perishes, take it Iioav thou wilt. This alone gives life ; all else eorru2)ts. Moreover, in this birth thou dost j)articipate in the divine inllux and its gifts. This is not received by creatures wherein God \s image is not found : the soul- idea belongs to the eternal birth alone and this happens only and solely in the soul, begotten of the Father in the ground and innermost recesses of the soul whercinto never image shone nor soul-power peeped.
Another question is : If this birth befalls in the ground and essence of the soul, then it happens alike in sinner and in saint, so what use or good is it to me ? The ground of nature is the same in both, nay even in hell the nobility of nature persists eternally. -- It is characteristic of this birth that it always comes with fresh light. It always brings great (mlightcnment to the soul because it is the nature of good to diffuse itself. In this birth (iod pours into the soul in such abundance of light, the ground and essence of the soul arc so Hooded with it, that it nins over into her powers and into the outward man as well. Thus it befell Paul when iqion his journey God touched him with his light and spake to him : the reflection of this light showed outwardly so that his companions saw it surrounding Paul like the saints. The sujjerfluitv of light in the ground of the soul wells over into the body which is tilled with radiance. No sinner can receive this light nor is he worthy to, being full of sin and wickedness, or darkness. As he (John) says, The darkness neither receives nor comprehends the light.' Because the
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avenues by which the li^^ht would enter are choked and obstmeted with guile and darkness. Light and darkness are incompatible, like God and creatures. Enter God, exit creatures. Man is quite conscious of this light. Directly he turns to God this light begins to glint and sparkle in him, telling him what to do and what to leave undone, with many a shrewd hint to boot of things he hitherto ignored and knew nothing of. -- IIow dost thou know ? -- Suppose thy heart is vehemently moved to retire from the world. IJow could that be if not by this light ? It is so cEarming, so delightful, it makes other tbings so tiresome which are not God or God's. It attracts thee to God and thou art sensible of many a virtuous impulse all)cit uncertain whence it comes. This interior mood is in no wise due to creatures nor is it any of their bidding, for what creatures effect and direct comes in from without. But thy ground alone is stirred by this force and the freer thou dost keep the more truth and discernment are thine. No man w^as ever lost save for tbc reason that once having left his ground he has let himself become too permanently settled abroad. St Augustine says : Many there be that have sought light and truth but only abroad where they arc not. They linally go out so far that they never get back nor find their way in again. Neither have these found the truth for the truth is within in their ground, not without. So he who means to see this light and find out the whole truth must foster the awarciK^ss of this birth within himself, in his ground, so shall his powers all be lighted up and his outer man as well. I)ire(dly God inwardly stirs his ground with the truth its light darts into his powers, and lo, that man knows more than anyone could teach liim. As the prophet says, I know more than I was ever taught.' It is because this light cannot lighten and shine in sinners that this birth cannot occur in them. This birth is inconsistent with darkness and sin therefore it befalls not in the powers but in the ground and essence of the soul.
Then conu'S the question : If God the Father labours only in the ground and essence of the soul, not in her powers, what have the powers got to do w ith it ? How do they help by being idle and taking holiday ? What is the use, seeing this birth befalls not in the powxrs ? -- It is w(ll asked. But consider. Every creature works towards some end. The end is ever the first in intention and the last in execution. And God too works for a wholly blessed end, to wit, himself : to bring the soul and all her powers into that end, into himself. For this God's w^orks are wrought, for this the Father brings his Son to birth in the soul, that all the powers of the soul may end in this. lie lies in wait for all the soul contains, all arc bidden to his royal feast. Here, the soul is scattered abroad among her powers and dissipated in the act of
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each : the power of seeing in the eye, the power of hearing in the ear, the power of tasting in the tongue, and her powers arc accord- ingly enfeebled for their interior work, scattered forces being imperfect. It follows that for her interior work to be effective, she must call ill all her powers, recollecting them out of extended things to one interior act. St Augustine says, The soul is where she loves rather than where she animates the body.' Once upon a time thci'c was a heathen philosopher who studied mathematics. He was sitting by the embers making (alculations in pursuance of his art when there came along a man brandishing a sword, who, not witting that it was the master, cried out, Quick, thy name, or I shall slay thee ! ' The master was too much absorbed to see or hear his enemy and failed to cat(h the threat. So after hailing him several times the enemy cut off his head. And tliis to acquire a mere natural science ! How much more does it behove us to withdraw from things in order to concentrate our powers on perceiving and knowing the one infinite and immortal truth ! To this end do thou assemble thy entire mind and memory ; turn them into the ground where thy treasure lies hid. Hut for this thou must drop all other activities ; thou must get to unknowing to find it.
The question is, Were it not better for each power to go on with its own work, then none would hinder the otlu rs in their work nor yet God in his V Can there not be ercaturely knowledge in me that is no hindrance, as God knows all things without hindrance and so do the saints ? -- 1 answer : The saints behold God in a simple image and in that im.agc they discca'n all things ; and God himself secs himself thus, perceiving all things in himself. He need not turn, as wc do, from one thing to another. Supposing that in this life w(* were always confronted with a mirror wherein we see and recognise all things at a glance in one single image : neither act nor knowledge would be a hindrance then. At present we must turn from one thing to anotlua' : we can only mind one thing at the expense of all tlic others. And the soul is bound so straitly to her powers that where they How she must flow with them ; the soul must be present at everything they do, and attentive too, or nothing would <?ome of their exertions. The drain of attending to external acts is bound to weaken her interior operation. For this nativity God wants, and he must have, a vacant, free and unencumbered soul wherein is nothing but himself alone, w^hich waits for naught and nobody but him. As Christ says : Whoso lovcth aught but me, whoso eleaveth to father or mother, or many other things, he is not worthy of me. I came not upon earth to bring peace but a sword ; to cut away all things, to part thee from brother, child, mother and friend, which are really thy foes.' For verily thy comforts arc thy foes. Doth
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thine eye see all things and thine ear hear all things and thy heart remember them all, then in these things thy soul is destroyed.
A master says, To achieve the interior act one must assemble all one's powers as it were into one corner of one's soul, where, secreted from images and forms one is able to work. We must sink into oblivion and ignorance. In this silence, this quiet, the Word is heard. There is no better method of approaching this Word than in silence, in quiet : we hear it and know it aright in unknowing. To one who knows naught it is clearly revealed.
Haply thou wilt object : You place our salvation in ignorance. Sir. That seems a mistake. God made man to know : " Lord make them to know," says the prophet. Where there is ignorance there is defect and illusion : he is a brutish man, an ape, a fool, and so remains as long as he is ignorant.' But this is transformed knowledge, not ignorance which comes from lack of knowing ; it is by knowing that we get to this unknowing. Then we know with divine knowing, then our ignorance is ennobled and adorned with supernatural knowledge. Then in our passion we are more perfect than in action. According to one authority, the sense of hearing is much nobler than the sense of sight, for we learn wisdom more by car than eye and live this life more wisely. We read about a heathen philosopher who was lying at death's door while his pupils were discussing in his presence some noble science, that, lifting up his dying head and listening, he ex(;laimed, O teach me even now this art that I may practise it eternally ! ' Hearing draws in more, seeing leads out more, the very act of seeing. In eternal life we are far more ha})py in our ability to hear than in our power to see, because the act of hearing the eternal Word is in me, whereas the act of seeing goes forth from me : hearing, I am receptive ; seeing, I am active. But our bliss docs not consist in being active but in being receptive to God. As God excels creature, so is God's work more excellent than mine. It was out of love that God did set our happiness in suffering, for we undergo far more than we do and receive incomparably more than n return we give ; moreover, each divine gift is the preparation for some new and richer gift, each gift increasing our capacity and our desire to receive a greater still. Some theologians say that the soul is symmetrical with God in this respect. For as God is infinite in giving, so the soul is infinite in receiving or conceiving. And the soul is as profound to suffer as God is omnipotent to act, hence her transformation by God into God. God must act and the soul must suffer ; for him to know and love himself in her, for her to know with his knowledge, love with his love ; and since she is far happier in his than hers it follows that her happiness depends upon his work more than on her own.
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The pupils of St Dionysius asked him why Timothy outstripped them in perfection ? Dionysius said, Timothy is a God-receptive man. He who is expert at this outstrippeth all men.' In this sense thy unknowing is not a defect but thy chief perfection, and suffering thy highest activity. Kill thy activities and still thy faculties if thou wouldst realise this birth in thee. To find the newborn King in thee all else thou mightest find must be passed by and left behind thee. May we outstrip and leave behind such things as are not pleasing to the newborn King. So help us thou who didst become the child of man that we might become the children of God. Amen.
HI
THIS TOO IS MEISTER ECKHART WHO ALWAYS TAUGHT THE TRUTH
In hisy quee patris rnei sunt, oportet me esse (l,nc, 2jy). I must
be about my Father's business.' This text is opportune to what we have to say concerning the eternal birth which took place here in time and is still happening daily in the innermost recesses of the soul, in her ground, remote from all comers. To become aware of this interior birth it is above all necessary to be about our Father's business.
What is pecxiliarly the Father's ? Power is ascribed to him beyond either of the other Persons. And I tell you, no one can experience this birth without a mighty effort. None can attain this birth unless he can withdraw his mind entirely from things. And it requires main force to drive back all the senses and inhibit them. Violence must be offered to them one and all or this cannot be done. As Christ said : The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.'
Regarding this birth there arises the question, Does it happen continuously or only at intervals when one is disposed for it, what time one is exerting oneself to the utmost to forget things altogether and be conscious in this ?
Here let us discriminate. Man possesses an active intellect, a passive intellect and a potential intellect. Active intellect is ever in act, ever doing something, be it in God or in creature, to the honour and glory of God. That is its province and hence its name active. But when God undertakes the work the mind must preserve a state of passivity. Potential intellect again has regard to both these, to the action of God and the passion of the soul, to its acting potentially. In the one case the mind is active, when it is function- ing, to wit ; in the other receptive, when God takes up the work and
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then the mind ought, nay must, remain still and allow God to aet. Now ere this is begun by the mind and linishcd by God, the spirit has prevision of it, potential knowledge of its happening. This is the meaning of potential intellect, which, however, is often neglected and does not bear fruit. When the mind is exerting itself in real earnest, God interests himself in the mind and its work, and then the soul secs and experiences God. But since the un- interrupted vision and passion of God is intolerable to the soul in this body, therefore God withdraws from the soul from time to time, as it is said, A little while ye sec me, and again a little while and ye do not see me.'
When our liord took his three disciples with him up the mountain and showed them the trans figuration of his body by union with the Godhead, which also we shall have in our archetypal body, straightway Peter, beholding it, was fain to remain there always. Verily, where we And good we are loath to leave it, in so far as it is good. Where intuition finds, love follows and memory and all the soul to boot. And our l.ord knowing this hides himself sometimes ; for the soul is the impartible form of the body, so she turns as a whole to whatever she turns. Were she conscious of good, God to wit, immediately, unintermptedly, she would never be able to leave it to infiuence the body.
Thus it befell Paul : had lie remained a hundred years there, where he knew the good, he would never have returned to his body, he would have forgotten it completely. Seeing then that it is wholly foreign to this life, and inconijiatible therewith, the good God veils it when he will and unveils it again when he chooses and when he knows, like a trusty physician, that it is best and most useful for thcc. This withdrawal is not thine, but his whose is also the work ; let him do it or not as he will, he knows what is good for thee. It is in his hands to show or not accordiiig as he knows thee able to endure it. God is not a destroyer of nature, he perfects it, and this God does ever more and more as thou art fitted for it.
Haply thou wilt object : Alas, Sir, if this requires a mind quite free from images and without activity, albeit both are natural to its powers, then how about those outward works we must do sometimes, works of charity, external ones, such as teaching and comforting those in need thereof : are we debarred by these ? things which so occupied our Lord's disciples, notably St Paul, who endured a father's care on account of other people : are we to be deprived of this great good because we arc engaged in charities ?
The answer is this. The one is perfect, the other very profitable. Mary was praised for choosing the best, but Martha's life was very useful, serving Christ and his disciples. 8t Thomas says the
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active life is better tlian the life of contemplation, so far as we actually spend in charity the income we derive from contemplation. It is all the same tiling ; wc have but to root ourselves in this same ground of contemplation to make it fruitful in works, and the object of contemplation is achieved. True, there is motion, but no more than one ; it conics from one end, God, and goes back to the same. As though I went from one end to th«^ other of this house ; that would in sooth be motion, but of one in the same. Even so in this activity wc are in the state of contemplation in God. I'he one is centred in the other and perfects the other. God's puqDose in the union of contemplation is fruitfulness in works ; for in contemplation thou servest thyself alone, but the many in good works.
Hereto Christ admonisheth us by his whole life and the lives of all his saints, every one of whom he drove forth into the world to teach the multitude. St Paul said to Timothy, Beloved, preach the Word.' Did he mean the outward word that beats the air ? Nay, surely ! He meant the in-born, hidden Word that lies secreted in the soul ; it was this that he exhorted them to preach, to the end that it might be made known to and nourish the powers of such as spend themselves wholly in the exterior life. That what time thy fellow-man hath need of thee thou niayst be found ready to serve him to the best of thy ability. It must be within thee, in thought, in intellect and will, and shine forth in thy deeds. As Christ said, Let your light shine before men.' He was thinking of those people who (*are only for the contemplative life and neglect the virtuous uses of it, which, they say, do not concern them, they are passcxl that stage. Not these had Christ in mind when he observed : The seed fell upon good ground and yielded fmit an hundredfold,' but these he meant when he declared : The tree that bcareth not fruit shall be cut down.'
Thou mayst object : Hut, Sir, what of that silence you said so much about ? This means images galore. Every one of these acts has its ayjpropriate image, be the act internal or external ; whether it be teaching one or comforting another or arranging this or that, so what quiet can I get withal ? If the mind sees and formulates and the will wills and memory holds it fast, does not all this necessitate ideas ? '
Let me explain. We were speaking just now of the active intellect and the passive intelle(!t. Active intellect abstracts the images of outward things, stripping them of matter and of accidents, and introduces them to the passive intellect, begetting their mental prototypes therein. And the passive intellect made pregnant by the active in this way, knows and cherishes these things with the help of active intellect. Passive intellect cannot keep on
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knowing things unless the active intellect keeps on enlightening it. Now observe. What the active intellect does for the natural man that and far more does God do for the solitary soul : he turns out active intellect and installing himself in its stead he himself assumes the duties of the active intellect.
When a man is quite idle, when his intellect is at rest within him, then God takes up the work : he himself is the agent who produces himself in the passive intellect. What happens is this. The active intellect cannot give what it has not got : it cannot have two ideas together, but first one and then the other. What though light and air sliow multitudes of forms and colours all at once, thou canst only observe them one after another. And so with thy active intellect, which resembles the eye. But when God acts in lieu of thy active intellect he engenders many images together in one point. Suppose God prompts thee to some one good deed, thy powers are all proffered for all virtuous things, thy mind being straightway set on good in general. All thy possibilities for good take shape and come into thy mind collectively, focussed to one point. Clearly this is not the work of thine own intellect which has in no wise the perfection nor plenitude for it ; rather is it the work and product of him who has all forms at once in himself. As Paul says : I can do all things in him who strengtheneth me ; in him I am undivided.' Know then, the ideas of these acts are not thine own : they belong to the author of thy nature who has planted therein both their energy and form. Lay no claim thereto, for it is his not thine. True, thou rcccivest it temporally, but it is gotten and born of God beyond time', in eternity above images.
Thou wilt say, perhaps : From the moment my intellect is divested of its natural activity and no longer has either form or action of its own, what is preserving it ? It must have a hold somewhere ; the powers, whether memory, intellect or will, are bound to have some lodgment somewhere, some place to work in.
The answer is this. Intellect's object and sustenance is essence, not accident, just pure unadulterated being in itself. On descrying something real the intellect forthwith relics upon it, comes to rest thereon, pronouncing its intellectual word concerning the object attained. As long as intellect fails to find the actual truth of things, does not touch bedrock in them, it stays in a condition of quest and expectation, it never settles down to rest, but labours incessantly to trace things to their cause, that is, it is seeking and waiting. It spends perhaps a year or more in research on some natural fact, finding out what it is, only to work as long again stripping off what it is not. All this time it has nothing to go by, it makes no pronouncement at all in the absence of experimental knowledge of the ground of truth. Intellect never rests in this
2
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life. However much God shows himself in this life it is nothing to what he really is. Truth lies in the ground, but veiled and concealed from the intellect. And meanwhile the mind has no support to rest on as on something permanent. It gets no rest at all, but goes on expecting and preparing for something still to come but so far hidden. There is no knowing what God is. Something we do know, namely, what God is not. This the dis- cerning soul rejects. Intellect, meantime, finding no satisfaction in any mortal thing, is waiting, as matter awaits form. As matter is insatiable for form, so is intellect unsatisfied except with the essential, all-embracing truth. Only the truth will do, and this God keeps withdrawing from it step by step, purposing to arouse its zeal and lure it on to seek and grasp the actual causeless good : that, not content with any mortal thing, she may clamour more and more for the highest good of all.
But thou wilt say ; Alas, Sir, you laid so much stress on our quieting our faculties and now this calm resolves itself into yearn- ing and lamenting : to a muckle moan and clamour for something not possessed, which puts an end to peace and quiet. This may be desire or purpose or praise or thanksgiving or any of their brood, but it is not perfect peace and absolute stillness.'
I answer that, when thou hast emptied thyself entirely of thine own self and all things and of every sort of selfishness and hast transferred, united and abandoned thyself to God in perfect faith and complete amity, then everything that is born in thee or that enters into thee, external or internal, joyful or sorrowful, sour or sweet, is no longer thine own at all, but is altogether thy God's to whom thou hast abandoned thyself. Tell me, whose is the spoken word ? His who speaks it or his who hears it ? Though it fall to the hearer it really belongs to the speaker, to him who gives it birth. The sun, for example, throws out light into the air and the air receives the light and transmits it to the earth. Now, although the light seems in the air, it is really in the sun : the light is actually from the sun, originating in the sun, not in the air : the air entertains it and passes it on to anything that can be lighted up. And so with the soul. God begets in the soul his ehild, his Word, and the soul conceiving it passes it on to her powers in varied guise, now as desire, now as good intent, now as eharit}^ now as gratitude, or as it may take thee : It is his, not thine at all. What is thus wrought by God take thou as his and not thine own, as it is written, The Holy Ghost asketh in us with unutterable yearnings.' He prays in us, not we ourselves. St Paul says, No one is able to say. Lord Jesus Christ, except in the Holy Ghost.*
Above all, lay no claim to anything. Let go thyself and let
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God act for thee and in thee as he pleases. This work is his, this Word is his, this birth is his and all thou art to boot. For thou hast abandoned thyself and art gone out of thy faculties and thy personal nature. God installs himself in thy nature and powers when, self-bereft of all belongings, thou dost take to the desert, as it is written, A voice crying in the wilderness.' Let this eternal voice cry on in thee at its sweet will and do thou be a desert in resj^ect of self and creatures.
Maybe thou wilt say : But, Sir, what must one do to become this desert, void of self and creatures ? Should one stay waiting for God all the time and do nothing oneself or should one do some- thing between whiles, such as praying or reading or some good occupation like going to church or studying the Bible ? Not, of course, taking things in from without, but everything from within, from one's God. Besides, is there not something we miss by neglecting these things ? '
My answer is this : Outward works were instituted and appointed for the purpose of directing the outer man to God and training him to ghostly life and virtues lest haply he should stray out of himself into ineptitudes : to act as a curb upon his inclination to run aw''ay from self to things abroad ; so that when God shall choose to work in him he shall find him close at hand and not first have to fetch him back from things gross and alien. The greater is the ]3leasurc in external things the harder work it is to leave them ; the stronger the love the sharper the pain when it comes to parting.
All pious practices - ])raying, reading, singing, watching, fasting, penance, or whatever discipline it be were contrived to catch and keep us from things alien and ungodly. Suppose one feels God's s]3irit is not working in one, but rather that one's inner man is God- forsaken, that is the proper moment for the outward man to exer- cise the practical virtues, and particularly such as arc most feasible and useful to him ; not for his o\vn selfish ends, but that, respect for truth preserving him from being led away by what is gross, he may stick straitly to God who will not need to seek him far afield, but will find liini there at hand when he chooses to return and carry on his own work in liis soul. But given that a man has genuine experience of the interior life, then let him boldly drop all outward disciplines, even those practices which thou art vowed to and from which neither p(3pe nor prelate can release thee. From vows made to God no man (Nan excuse thee : such vows are a bond between thyself and God. But supposing one has taken solemn vows of fasting, say, or prayer or pilgrimage, then on entering some order, one is released from them forthwith : in the order, obligation is to goodness as a whole, to God himself.
Ami so I say here. Whatever one's vows to manifold things,
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initiation into the real interior life releases from them. While the interior expei'ieiicc lasts, maybe a week, a month, a year, no hours arc neglected by the monk or nun, for God who occupies them will also answer for them. On returning to himself the religious shall perform his vows for the time present, but the time elapsed and lost, as thou dost think, 'tis no business of thine to make good. God makes good any time he takes up. I'hink not to make it good by any act of creature, for the smallest act of God outweighs all the work of creatures put together. I am speak- ing here of clerks and those enlightened souls who are illumined by God and by the scriptures. But what about the poor profane who, ignorant of corporal discipline, has assumed some vow or other, praying or the like ? My view is this. Tf he finds it hampering and that he draws much nighcr God and much more easily without it, let him boldly give it up, for whatever brings nearest to God is the best. Paul implied this when he said : ' But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.' Vows taken before priests, vows of marriage, for example, arc very different from these other obligations which amount to solemn promises of oneself to God. Vows taken with the laudable intention of binding oneself to God are for t he moment the best way. But supposing that we find a better way, a way we feel and know to be much better, then the first may be deemed null and void.
IV
THE ETERNAL BIRTH
Et cum facUis esset Jesus annorum duodecim etc, {Luc, 2j,). We read in the gospel that when our Lord was twelve years old he went with Joseph and Mary to Jerusalem into the temple ; and when they went out, Jesus remained behind in the temple without their knowing it. And when they reached home and missed him, they sought him among aequaintan(es and among strangers, among their kindred, and among the multitude, and found him not ; they had lost him in the crowd. So there was nothing for it but to return whence they were come ; and when they got back to their starting-point, into the temple, there they found him.
If thou wilt find this noble birth, verily thou must quit the multitude and return to the starting-point, into the ground out of which thou art come. The powers of the soul and their works, these are the multitude : memory, understanding and will, these all diversify thee, therefore thou must leave them all : sensible perception, imagination and everything wherein thou findcst
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thyself and hast thyself in view. Thereafter thou mayest find this birth, but, believe me, not otherwise. He has never been found among friends, nor among kindred nor acquaintances, there rather docs one lose him altogether.
Now the question arises, whether this birth is to be found in anything which, albeit relating to God, is nevertheless taken in from without through the senses, in any presentment of God as good, wise, or compassionate, or whatever intellect can conceive of divinity : whether tJiis birth is to be found in any such-like things ? In truth, no ! for, although good and godlike, they are neverthe- less introduced from without through the senses ; all must well up from within, out of God, if this birth is to shine with a really clear light, and thy own work must lie over, every faculty serving his ends not thine own. If this work is to be tlone, God alone must do it, and thou must undergo it. Where from tliy willing and knowing thou truly goest out, God with his knowing surely and willingly goes in and shines there clearly. Where (xod thus knows himself thy knowledge is of no avail and cannot stand. Do not fondly imagine that thy reason can grow to the knowledge of God ; that God shall shine in thee divinely no natural light can help to bring about ; it must be utterly extinguished and go out of itself altogether, then God can shine in with his light bringing back with him everything thou wentest out of and a thousandfold more, besides the new form containing it all.
Of this we have an allegory in the gospel. When our Lord had talked so friendly with the Gentile woman at the well, she left her pitcher there, and running to the town announced to her people that the true Messiah was come. The people, not believing her report, went out with her to see him for themselves. Then said they unto her, Now we believe, not because of thy words, but because wc have seen him in person.' Verily, neither by any crcaturcly science nor by thine own wisdom canst thou be brought to know God divinely. To know God God-fashion, thy knowledge must change into downright unknowing, to a forgetting of thyself and every creature.
Now haply thou wilt say : Prithee, Sir, what is the use of my intellect if it has to be inert and altogether idle ? Is it my best plan to raise my mind to the unknowing knowing which obviously cannot be anything ? For if I knew anything it would not be ignorance, nor should I be idle and destitute. Must I remain in total darkness ? '
-- Aye, surely ! Thou canst do no better than take up thy abode in total darkness and ignorance.
-- Alas, Sir ! must everything go then, and is there no return ? '
-- No, truly ! By rights th^c is no return.
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-- But what is this darkness ? What does it mean, what is its name ? '
-- It can only be called a potential receptivity, which, however, is not altogether wanting in nor indigent of (real) being : the merely potential conception wherein thou shalt be perfected. Hence there is no return from it. An thou rctiirnest it is not because of any truth ; it is cither the senses, the world or the devil. And pei\sisting in this turning back, thou dost inevitably lapse into sin and art liable to backslide so far as to have the eternal fall. Wherefore there is no turning back, only a pressing forward and following up this possibility to its fulfilment. It never rests until fulfilled with all being. As matter never rests until fulfilled with every possible form, so intellect never rests till it is filled to the full of its capacity.
Concerning this a heathen master says : Nature has nothing swifter than the heavens which surpass all else in swiftness.' But surely the mind of man outstrips them. Given that it retains its vigour and stays undemeaned and undisinembered by what is base and gross, it can outstrip high heaven nor slacken till the summit, where it is fed and cherished by the Arch-Good, by God himself.
How' profitable then to (.iisiie this possibility, for by keeping thyself empty and bare, merely tracking and following and giving up thyself to this darkness and ignorance without turning back, thou mayest well win that which is all things. And the more thou art barren of thyself and ignorant of things the nearer thou art thereto. Of this barrenness it is written in Ilosea : I will lead my friend into the desert and wall speak to her in her heart.' The genuine \Vord of eternily is vSpoken only in eternity, where man is a desert and alien to himself and multiplicity. For this desolate self-estrangement the prophet longed, saying : Who w^ill give me the wings of a dove that I may fly away and be at rest ! ' Where shall I find peace and rest ? Verily in rejection, in desola- tion and estrangement from all creatures. Wherefore David says : I had rather be an abject in the house of my God than have honour and riches in the tabernacles of sinners.'
Now haply thou wilt say : Alas, Sir, after all, is it necessary to be barren and estranged from everything, outward and inward : the powers and their works, must all go ? It is a grievous matter for a man thus to be left by God without support ; for God to thus augment his misery, neither enlightening nor encouraging nor working in him, for that is what your teaching means. For a person in such downright nothingness would it not be better to be doing something to beguile the gloom and desolation ; to pray or read or go to church or else make shift by working at some useful occupation ? '
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No, be sure of this : absolute stillness, absolute idleness is best of all. Know that thou canst not without harm exchange this state for any other whatsoever. Fain wouldst thou partly fit thyself and let God partly fit thee, but that cannot be. Art never so quick to think of this fitness and desire it, God forestalls thee always. But granting, what is impossible, that it is shared : that the preparation for this working or infusion is jointly his and thine, know then, that God is bound to act, to pour himself out (into thee) as soon as ever he shall find thee ready. Think not it is with God as with a human carpenter, who works or works not as he chooses, who can do or leave undone at his good pleasure. It is not thus with God ; but finding thee ready he is obliged to act, to overflow into thee ; just as the sun must needs burst forth when the air is bright and clear, and is unable to contain itself. Forsooth, it were a very grave defect in God if, finding thee so empty and so bare, he wrought no excellent work in thee nor primed thee with glorious gifts.
In the same sense philosophers declare that the instant the child-stuff is ready in the mother's womb, God pours into the body its living spirit, that is, the soul the form of the body. It is one flash, the being-ready and the pouring-in. Nature reaching her summit, God dispenses his grace : the instant the spirit is ready God enters without hesitation or delay. In the book of Mystery it is written that our Lord offers himself to men ; Behold I stand at the door and knock, waiting for someone to let me in, with him will I sup.' Thou needst not seek him here or there, he is no further off than at the door of thy heart ; there he stands lingering, awaiting whoever is ready to open and let him in. Thou needst not call to him afar, he waits much more impatiently than thou for thee to open to him. He longs for thee a thousandfold more urgently than thou for him : one point the opening and the entering.
Thou wilt say, perhaps : How can that be ? I have no inkling of him.' -- Know, that to find him is not in thy power but in his. He discovers himself when he chooses and he hides himself too when he will. This is what Christ meant when he said to Nicodemus, The spirit breatheth where he will ; thou hearest his voice, but knowest not whence he corneth nor whither he goeth.' This is a contradiction : Thou hearest but knowest not.' By hearing we know. Christ meant that through hearing it is imbibed or absorbed ; as though to say : thou rcceivest it but unawares. For know, God cannot leave anything void and unfilled ; that aught should be empty or void is not to be endured by nature's God. An thou seemest, therefore, not to find him and to be wholly empty of him, yet that is not the case. For were there any
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emptiness under heaven, whatever it might be, or great or small, the heavens must either draw it up to them or, bending down- wards, fill it with themselves. God, nature's lord, on no aeeount permits of anything remaining empty. Wherefore stand still and waver not, lest turning away from God now for the moment thou never turn baek to him again.
Perad venture thou wilt say : Well, Sir, since you are always assuming that some day this birth wdll happen in me, that the Son will be born in me, can I have any sign whereby to recognise that it has taken place ? '
Yes, surely ! There would be three signs. 1 will tell you one of them. I am often asked whether it is possible to reach the point of not being hindered by anything in time, cither by multiplicity or matter ? Indeed it is ! If this birth really happens no creature can hinder thee, all point thee to God and this birth. We find in lightning an analogy for this. Whatever it strikes, whether tree, beast or man, it turns towards itself with the shock. A man with his back to it instantly fiings round to face it ; all the thousand leaves of the tree turn over to front the stroke. So with all whom this birth befalls, they arc promptly turned towards this birth with everything present, be it never so earthly. Nay, even what was formerly a hindrance is now nothing but a help. Thy face is turned so full towards this birth, no matter what thou dost see and hear, thou rceeivest nothing save this birth in anything. All things are simply God to thee who seest only God in all things. Like one who looks long at the sun, he encounters the sun in whatever he afterwards looks at. If this is lacking, this looking for and seeing God in all and sundry, then thou lackest this birth.
Thou mayest question : Ought anyone so placed to practise penance ? Does he lose anything by dropping penitential exercises ? '
Penitential practices, among other things, were instituted for a special object. Fasting, watching, praying, kneeling, scourging, wearing of hair shirts, hard lying or whatever it may be, were all invented because body and flesh stand ever opposed to spirit. The body being far too strong for it, there is always battle joined between them, a never-ending conflict. Here the body is bold and strong for here it is at home ; the world helps it, the earth is its fatherland, it is helped by all its kindred : food, drink, ease -- all are opposed to spirit. The spirit is an alien here, in heaven are its kindred, its whole race ; there dwell its loved ones. To succour the spirit in its distress and to impede the flesh somewhat in this strife lest it conquer the spirit, we put upon it the bridle of penitential practices to curb it, so that the spirit can control it. This is done to bring it to subjection ; but to conquer and curb it
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a thousand times better, put thou upon it the bridle of love. With love thou overcomest it most surely, with love thou loadest it most heavily. God lies in wait for us therefore with nothing so much as with love. For love is like the fisherman's hook. To the fisher- man falls no fish that is not caught on his hook. Once it takes the hook the fish is forfeit to the fisherman ; in vain it twists hither and thither, the fisherman is certain of his catch. And so I say of love : he who is caught thereby has the strongest of all bonds and yet a pleasant burden. He who bears this sweet burden fares further, gel s nearer therewith than by using any harshness j)ossiblc to man. Moreover, he can cheerfully put up with whatever befalls, cheerfully suffer what God inflicts. Naught makes tlice so much God nor God so much thine own as this sweet bond. He who has found this way will seek no other. He who hangs on this hook is so fast caught that foot and hand, mouth, eyes and heart and all that is man's is bound to be God's.
So then thou caiist not, better than by love, prevail over thy foe and stop him doing thee a mischief. Wherefore it is written : Love is strong as death and hard as hell.' Death separates soul from body, but love separates all things from the soul ; she will not tolerate at any cost what is not God nor God's. Who is caught in this net, who walks in this way, whatsoever he works is wrought by love, whose alone the work is : busy or idle it matters nothing. Such an one's most trivial action is more profitable, his meanest occupation is more fruitful to himself and other people and to God is better pleasing than the cumulative works of other men, who, though free from mortal sin, arc yet inferior to him in love. H(^ rests more usefully than others labour.
Await thou therefore this liook, so thou be happily caught, and the more surely caught so much the more surely freed.
That we may be tlius caught and freed, help us () thou who art love itself. Amen.
V
DEUS CHARITAS EST
Deus charitas est et qui manet in charitate in deo manet et deus in eo (J Joh, 4jq). God is love, and he who dwells in love dwells in
God and God in him.' This is the epistle we read at Mass, and it is St John speaking.
Take the opening words : GocL is love.' That is so, inasmuch as all that can love, all that does love, he compels by his love to love him. God is love, secondly, inasmuch as every God-created and loving thing compels him by its love to love it, willy-nilly.
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God is love, thirdly, inasmuch as his love drives all his lovers out of multiplicity. The love of God in multijDlicity pursues the love which is himself right out of multiplicity into his very unity. God is love, fourthly, who by his love provides all creatures with their life and being, preserving them in his love. The colour of the cloth is preserved in the cloth : even so creatures are preserved in existence by love, that is, God. Take the colour from cloth, its subsistence is gone : so do creatures all lose their subsistence if taken from love, to wit, God. God is love, and so lovely is he that lovers all love him, willy-nilly. No creature is so vile as to love what is bad. What we love must be good or must seem to be good. But creaturely good, all told, is rank evil as compared with God. St Augustine says, Love, that in meditating love thou mayst provide the wherewithal to satisfy thy soul.' God is love.
My children, mark me, I pray you. Know ! God loves my soul so much that his very life and being depend upon his loving me, whether he would or no. To stop God loving me would be to rob him of his Godhood ; for God is love no less than he is truth ; as he is good, so is he love as well. It is the absolute truth, as God lives. There were certain theologians who maintained that the love which is within us is the Holy Ghost, but this is false. For the bodily food we take is changed into us, but the spiritual food we receive changes us into itself, hence love divine is not preserved in us, otherwise there would be two. Divine love preserves us in itself as one in the same.
God is love, and he who dwells in love dwells in (iod and God in him.' There is a difference between ghostly things and bodily things. One ghostly thing dwells in another ; but nothing bodily dwells in another. There may be water in a tub, with the tub round it. But where the wood is the water is not. In this sense no material thing dwells in another. But spiritual things dwell in each other : each several angel with all his joy and happiness is in every other angel as well as in himself, and every angel with all his joy and happiness dwells in me, and God to boot with his entire beatitude, though I discern it not.
If anyone should ask me what God is, I should answer : God is love, and so altogether lovely that creatures all with one accord essay to love his loveliness, whether they do so knowingly or unbeknownst, in joy or sorrow. Instance the lowest angel in his pure nature : the smallest spark or love-light that ever fell from him would light up the whole world with love and joy. See his innate perfection ! Moreover, as I have explained at various times, the angels are numerous beyond number. -- But to leave love and come to knowledge. If only we knew God it would be easy to forsake the world. All that God ever made or shall yet make.
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all this (I say), if God should give it to my soul without himself, he staying, so to speak, a hair's-breadth off, would not content my soul nor make me happy. I am happy when all things are in me and God, and where I am God is, and where God is I am.
He who dwells in love dwells in God and God in him.' Suppose I am in God, then where he is I am ; and if God is in me, then, unless the scriptures lie, where I am God is. It is the absolute truth, as God is God.
Faithful servant, I will set thee over all my goods,' ix. the manifold goodness of God in creatures will I set thee over. Secondly, I will set thee over all my goods ' means : at the source of creature happiness, in the pure unity of God himself wherein he has his own felicity. In other words : God being the good, in that sense will he set us above his manifold goodness. Thirdly, he will set us over all his goods, means : above all name- ables, all effables, all so-called good things and all intelligibles. Thus he sets us over all his goods.
Father, I pray thee, make them one as I and thou arc one.' Where two grow one, one loses its nature. Ergo, for God and the soul to be one the soul has to lose her own liic and nature. They arc one as regards what is left. Hut for them to be one, one must lose its identity and the other must keep its identity. Then they arc the same. Now, the Holy Ghost says : I pray thee, let them be one as we are one. I pray thee, make them the same in us.'
When I pray for aught my prayer goes for naught ; when I pray for naught I pray as I ought. When I am one with that wherein are all things, past, present and to come, all the same distance and all just the same, then they are all in God and all in me. There is no lliought of Henry or of Conrad. Praying for aught save God alone is idolatry and unrighteousness. They pray aright who pray in spirit and in truth. When praying for someone, for Henry or Conrad, I pray at my weakest. When praying for no one I pray at my strongest, and when I want nothing and make no request I am praying my best, for in God is no Henry nor no Conrad. To pray to God for aught save God is wrong and faithless, and, as it were, an imperfection.. For to set up something beside God is, as I lately said, but to make naught of God and God of naught. Whoso is far and foreign to himself as the chief angel of the Seraphim is far from him, that man owns that same angel just as God docs and is God, and that's the naked truth, as God is God. God is love, and he that is in love is in God and God in him.'
May all of us attain this love whereof I speak. So help us our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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VI
JESUS WENT INTO THE TEMPLE
Intravit Jesus in templum dei et ejiciehat omnes vendentes et emeyites etc. (Matt. 21 We read in the gospel that our Lord went into the temple and cast out all them that sold and bought and said to them that sold doves : Take these things hence ! ' It was his p\irpose to have the temple cleared, as though he said : This temple is by rights mine own and I want it to myself to be lord therein. This temple that God means to rule in is man's soul which he has made exactly like himself, as saith the Lord, We will make man in our image and likeness.' Which he did. So like himself God made man's soul that nothing else in earth or heaven resembles God so closely as the human soul. God wants this temple cleared of everything but himself. This is because this temple is so agreeable to him and he is so comfortable in this temple when he is there alone.
Now consider who they were that sold and bought therein and who they are still. Mark me well : 1 name none but the virtuous. Yet, even so, I can point out who the merchants were, and still arc to this day, that thus buy and sell : those whom our Lord drove forth and cast out. He still does so to those that buy and sell in this temple : he would not leave a single one therein. Lo, they arc merchants all who, while avoiding niorhd sin and wishing to be virtuous, do good works to the glory of God, fasts, for example, vigils, prayers, etc., all of them excellent, but do them with a view to God's giving tliem somewhat, doing to thein somewhat, they wish for in return. All such arc merchants. This is plain to see, for they reckon on giving one thing for another and so to barter with our Lord, though they are mistook as to the bargain. For all they have and have the power to do, they have from God and do effect by means of God alone. God has no call to do to them or give to them anything unless he choose to. For what they arc they are from God and what they have they get from God, not from themselves. God is in no wise boimden to requite their acts or gifts, except he care to do so of his own free will, apart from what they do or give ; for they give not of their own nor do they act of their own selves, as God says, Without me ye can do nothing.' They be sorry fools who bargain with our Lord like this ; they know little or nothing of the truth. God cast them out of the temple and drove them forth. For light and darkness cannot dwell together. God is the truth, he is the light itself. When God enters the temple he drives out ignorance and darkness, revealing himself in the light of truth. Merchants go when the
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truth appears, for the truth needs no tnerchanting. God seeks not his own, he is perfectly free in all his acts, which he does in true love. So does the man who is at one with God : he is perfectly free in all his deeds ; he docs them out of love and without why, just to glorify God, not seeking his own therein, God energising in him.
Moreover I maintain : as long as we work at all for gain, while we desire aught God may have given or may give, we rank with these merchants. Woiildst thou be free from any taint of trade ? then do what good thou canst and do it solely to God's glory, as exempt from it th 3 ^self as though thou wert not. Ask nothing whatever in return. So done 1 hy works are ghostly and godly ; the merchants are driven from the tem])le and God is there alone when one has no intention but God. Behold thy temple cleared of merchants. The man who is intent on God alone and on God's glory, verily he is free from any taint of commerce in his deeds, nor is he in any wise self-seeking.
T have related further how Jesus said to them that sold doves :
Take these things hen(*e ! ' These peoj3lc he did not drive forth nor rebuked them harshly : he said quite mildly : Take these things away ! ' As though to say, it is not wrong albeit a hindrance to the pure and simple truth. These are virtuous folk, working for God impersonally though subject to personal limitations, to time and numljer, to before and after. Their activities keep them from the highest truth, from being absolutely free like our Lord Jesus Christ who is receiving himself afresh incessantly and a-temporally from his heavenly Father and in that same now is borne back again unceasingly with praise and thanksgiving into the Father, perfect, vicing with him in his majesty. Even so, to be receptive to the sovran truth, a man must be without before and after, without the hindrance of any acts or images that are wiihin his ken, but freely receiving the divine gift in the perennial now and bearing it back unhindered in th( liglit of the same with praise and thanksgiving in our Lord Jesus Christ. Then the doves arc gone, to wit, the obstacle of ownership in actions, good in themselves, wdicrcin one has any self-interest at all. Tak( these things hence ! ' said our Lord, as though to say, they are blameless but tliey ar( in the way.
When the tem])le is free from obstructions (possessions and strangers to wit), it looks right beautiful, shilling out bright and clear above cver^dJiing God has created and through everything (iod has created, so that none (*an compare with it but the uncreated God alone. In very truth, there is none like this tein]Jc but the uncreated God himself. Nothing below the angels is the least like this temple. The very highest angels arc the same as this
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temple of the human soul in many ways, but not entirely. This partial likeness with the soul they have in love and knowledge. But there is a limit set them which they cannot pass. The soul goes on beyond. Suppose the soul to be identical with the highest human being here in time, natheless that man has the potential freedom to soar to untold heights above the angels in the now of each, new without number, that is, without mode : above the angelic mode and every created intelligence. God who alone is uncreated is her sole peer in freedom, though not in uncrcated- ness, for the soul is created. Emerging into the unclouded light she in her naught leaps so far into his naught that she is helpless to regain the state of her created aught. God with his uncreatedness supports her nothing-at-all, preserving the soul in his all-in-all. The soul has dared to come to naught and, failing by herself to reach herself, she swoons away ere God comes to her rescue. It must needs be so. ^
Jesus, as 1 said, went into the temple and east out them that bought and sold and he began to command the rest, Take these things hence ! ' The words I have here read, ^ Jesus went in and began to say, " Take these things hence ! " ' Observe, there was no one there but Jesus when he began to speak in the tenij^lc of the soul. Be sure of this : while anyone else is speaking ii^ the temple {i,e, the soul) but Jesus, Jesus is silent, as thougli he were away, nor is he at home in the soul while she has strange guests to talk to. For Jesus to s])eak in the soul slic must be all alone, and she has to be quiet to hear what he says. VV(*11 then, he comes in and starts speaking. What is it he says ? He says what he is. What is he, then ? lie is the Word of the Father. In this same Word the Father speaks himself, all his divine nature, all that God is, just as he knows it, and he knows it as it is, for he is perfect in knowledge and j)ower. It follows that he is ])crfcet in s])eeeh too. In pronouncing the Word he utters himself and all things in another Person to whom he gives the nature that he has himself, and speaks all intelligences in echo of the actual Word, accord- ing to the indwelling image ; like the sun-rays shining forth, so each (intelligence) is a word in itself, not the same in all respects as the Word, but : they have the power to receive by grace the same nature as the actual Word, and this Word as it is in itself the Father sj)oke entire by the Word and everything in that Word.
If this is what the Father said, then what is Jesus saying in the soul ? As I have told : the Father speaks his Word ; he speaks in this Word and no otherwhere, and Jesus speaks in the soul. His manner of speaking is to reveal himself and what the Father said in him, so far as the soul is able to receive it. He reveals the
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Father in the soul in infinite power. Experiencing this power in the Son the soul waxes powerful in like emanation till she is the same in might and virtue and every perfection, so that neither joy nor sorrow nor aught that God has made in time avails to destroy that soul, she standing staunch as it were in this divine power against which all else is insignificant and futile.
Secondly : Jesus reveals himself in the soul in infinite wisdom, himself to wit, the wisdom wherein the Father knows himself in full paternal power. The very Word, whieh is wisdom itself, and all that is therein, is, at the same time, one alone. When wisdom is in union with the soul, doubt, error and illusion arc entirely removed, she is set in the bright pure light of God himself, as saith the prophet, Lord in thy light shall we see light.' Then God is known by God in the soul ; she discerns with his wisdom both herself and all things. She knows not this same wisdom with herself, but with this widsom she discerns the Father fruitful in travail and his real being in impartible oneness void of all distinctions.
Jesus manifests himself further in infinite suavity and fullness in all receptive hearts. When Jesus reveals himself in this plenitude of sweetness, uniting with the soul, then on this amiable tide the soul floats into herself and out of herself and beyond the things of grace, back in unmitigated power into her first source. Thus the outward man is obedient, even unto death, to the inner man now established in peace in the service of God for ever.
May Jesus enter into us and clear out and east away all hindrances of soul and body to the end that we arc one with him here upon earth and there in heaven. So help us God. Amen.
VII
THE SONS OF GOD
Videte, qualem charilaiem dedit nobis pater, ut Jilii dei nominemur et simus (/ Joh. It must be understood that this is all the
same thing : knowing God and being known by God, and seeing God and being seen by God. We know God and see him because he makes us know and sec. Even as the luminous air is not distinguishable from its luminant, for it is luminous with what illumines it, so do we know by being known, by his making us conscious. Christ said, Again ye shall see me.' That is to say : by making you see I make you see me, whereat your heart shall rejoice,' rejoice in the vision and knowledge of God, and your joy no man taketh from you.'
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St John says : Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called and should be the sons of God.' lie says not only should be called ' but should be.' Now I maintain that we can no more be wise without wisdom than Son without the filial nature of God's Son : without having the very same nature as the Son of God himself. Wouldst thou be the Son of God ? Thou canst not, without having the same nature as the Son of God. But this is hidden from us hero, as it is written, Beloved, now we are God's sons (and it doth not yet appear what we shall he), but we know that he is our exemplar and we shall be like him.' That is, the same as he is : same life and enjoyment and understanding : exactly the same as he is, when wc see him as God. I say, God cannot make me the Son of God without I have the nature of God's Son, any more than God can make me wise without my havdng wisdom, "riiough we are God's sons, wc do not realize it yet : it doth not yet a]3pear ' to us, but this much wc do know, he says, we shall be like him.' Sundry things in our souls overlay this knowledge and conceal it from us.
The soul has something in her, a spark of intellect, that never dies ; and in this spark, as at the apex of the mind, we place the paradigm of the soul ; and there is also in our souls knowledge of externals, sensible and rational ])erecption, present there as images and words which obscure it from us. ITow are we God's sons ? By having one nature with him. But any realization of this, of being God's sons, is subjective not objective knowledge. The inner consciousness strikes down to the very essence of the soul. Not that it is the soul itself, but it is rooted there and is in a measure the life of the soul, her intellectual life, the life, that is, wherein a man is born God's Son, born into tlu' eternal life, for this know- ledge is a- temporal, unex tended, without here and without now. In this life all things arc the same thing and all things common ; all things arc all in all and all atoned.
I will give you an illustration. In the body the members are united so that eye belongs to foot and foot to eye. Could the foot speak, it would declare that the eye seems rather in the foot than in the head, and the eye would say the same the other way about. Accordingly, I trow that the grace which is in Maiy is really more an angel's and is more in him (yet being in Mary) than if it were in him or in the saints. For everything that Mary has belongs to every saint, so the grace in Mary is his own and he enjoys it more than if it really wore in him.
But such a simile is too gross and carnal, depending as it does on bodily imagery. I will give you another, therefore, more subtle, less material. I assert that in heaven all is in all and all one
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and all ours. The grace our Lady has exists in me (when I am yonder), not as welling up in and flowing out of Mary, but as in me as my own and not of foreign origin. I contend that there what one has another has, not as from another nor as in another, but in its own self, so that the grace in one is simultaneously in another as his own grace. Thus spirit is in spirit. And that is why I say I cannot be the son of God unless I have the very nature the Son of God has there ; and that having this same nature makes us the same as he is, we seeing him as God. Hut it doth not yet appear what we shall be.' Meaning, I take it, that there is then no like nor different, but : wholly without distinction we are the same in essence and in substance and in nature as he is himself. This is not apparent now : it will be obvious when we see him as God.
God makes us to know him, and his knowing is his being, and his making me know is the same as my knowing, so his knowing is mine : just as, in the master, what he teaehes is the same as, in the pupil, the thing that he is taught. And be(*ausc his knowing is mine, and his knowing is his substance and his nature and his essence, it follows that his substance and his nature and his essence are mine. And his substance, his nature and his essence being mine, therefore I am tjie Son of God. Behold, brethren, what manner of love God hath bestowed upon us that we should be called and should be the Son of God !
Mark whereby we arc sons of God : by having the same nature as the Son of God.- -How can one be the Son of God, or know it, seeing that God is not like anybody? -- True, Isaias says, To whom will ye liken God or what likeness will ye compare unto him ?' Sitice it is God's nature to be not like anyone, we must needs not be so to be the same as he is. AVhen I contrive to see myself in naught and to scc naught in me ; when I succeed in rooting up and (tasting out everything in me, then 1 am free to pass into the naked being of the soul. Likes must be ousted ere I can be trans- planted into God and be the same as he is : same substance, same essence, same nature and the Son of God. Onc;c this happens, there is nothing hid in God that is not revealed, that is not mine. I am wise and mighty just as he is, and one and the same with him. Then Sion is a true beholder, true Israel, a seer : God, since nothing in the Godhead is (concealed from him. IMan is turned into God. Lilt that nothing may be concealed from me, everything revealed, there must appear in me no like, no image, for no image can show 'is God's nature nor his essence. While there abideth in thee any image or like thou art never the same as God. To be the same as ^od there must be nothing in thee, latent or defined, nothing Covered in thee that is not discovered and cast out.
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Mark wliat sin is. It is born of negation. Negation's brood must be exterminated in the soul ; while there is not in thee thou art not the Son of God. VVe weep and lament for want of some- thing. The minus quantity must go, be cancelled out, if man is to become tlie Son of God and \veep and wail no more. Man is not wood nor stone : impcrfeetioii and naught. We shall not be like him until this minus is made good and we are all in all as God is all in all.
There are two births of man : one in the world, the other one out of the world and ghostly, in God. VVouldst know if thy child is born and if he is naked ? Whether, that is to say, thou hast been made God's Son ? If thy heart is heavy, except for sin, thy child is not born. In thine anguish thou art not yet mother ; thou art in labour and thine hour is nigh. Doubt not, if thou art travailing for thyself or for thy friend no birth has taken place though birth be close at hand, 'fhe birth is not over till thy heart is free from earc : then man has the essenee and nature and substance and wisdom and joy and all that God has. Then the very being of the Son of God is ours and in us and we attain to actual Deity.
Christ says : If any will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.' That is : east away care and let perpetual joy reign in your heart. Thus the (^hild is born. And when the child is born in me, the sight of friends, of father, dead there before my eyes will leave my heart untouched. Were my heart moved thereby the child would not be born in me, though peradventurc its nativity is nigh. I maintain that God and his angels lake such keen delight in every act a good man docs, that there is no joy like it. And accordingly, I say, the birth of this child in thee brings thee most keen delight in all good deeds done in this world, thy joy being so continuous as to be never- ending. Hence the words : ^'our joy no man taketh from you.' When I am transported into God, then God is mine and all he has.
I am the Lord thy God,' he says. Then I have real delight which neither pain nor sorrow can take from me, for then I am installed in Ciod where sorrow^ has no place. We shall sec that in God is no anger nor sadness, but only love and joy. Though he seem sometimes to be wrathful with sinners it is not really wrath, it is his kindness, the effect of his great love : Whom he loveth he chasteneth,' for he is love, the Holy Ghost. God's anger springs from love ; he chides us with dispassion. When nothing is grievous or hard, when all is pure joy, then verily thy child is born. Strive that this child shall be not nascent merely but be born in thee, even as in God his Son is ever being born and is ever born. May this betide, So help us God. Amen.
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VIII
THE CASTLE OF THE SOUL
Intravit Jesus in quoddam castellum et mulier qiuedam excepit ilium etc, {Luc, 10.^^). I quote first in Latin this text from the gospel. The translation reads : " Our I^ord Jesus Christ went up into a certain fastness and was receivTd by a oerlain virgin who was a wife.'
Mark the term. Needs must it be a virgin by whom Jesus is received. Virgin is, in other words, a person void of alien images, free us he was when he existed not. It may be questioned ; Man born and launched on rational life, how can he be as free from images as he was when he was not, he knowing a variety of things, iinagt'S all of them : how can he possibly be void thereof ?
I answer tliat, were I sulfieiently intelligent to have within me intellectually the sum of all the forms eoueeived by man aiid which subsist in C«od himself, I having no projxTty in them and no idea of ownership, positive or tiegative, past or to eome, but standing in the present fioro ])erfectly free in the will of (h.)d and doing it perpetually : then verily I were a virgin, unlumdleapped by forms, just as 1 was when J was not.
Further, T hold that the fact of being virgin does not deprive a man at all of works that he has done : he is untrammelled, virgin- free of them in the sovran truths even as Jesus is absolutely free and virgin in himself. According to the masters, likeness, likeness only, is the cause of union, so man must be maiden, virgin, to rcceiv^e the virgin Jesus.
Now lay this fact to heart : the ever virgin is never fruitful. To be fruitful the soul must be wife. Sj)ouse is the noblest title of the soul, nobler than virgin. For a man to rec(iv'e God within him is good and in receiving he is virgin. Ihit for God to be fruitful in him is still better : the fruits of his gift being gratitude therefor, and in this newborn thankfulness the spirit is the spouse bearing Jesus back into his Prather's heart.
Many good gifts received in maidenhood are not brought forth in wifely fruitfulness, reborn in praise and thanks to God. Such gifts corrupt and come to naught, man being no better and no happier for them. In this case his virginity is useless because to his virginity he docs not add the perfe(*t fruitfulness of wife. That is the mischief. Hence my text, Jesus ascended to a certain fastness and was re(?eived by a certain maid who was a wife.' It must be so, as I have said.
Wedded folks yield little more than one fruit yearly. But it is other wedded ones that I have now in mind : those whose hearts
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are wedded to praying, fasting, vigils or other outward discipline and mortilications of the i'esh. A predilection for this sort of thing, involving loss of freedom to wait instantly on God in the here and now, and follow him alone in the light wherein he would fain show thee what to do and what to leave undone, moment by moment, fresh and clearly, as though thou hadst naught else, nor would nor could not : any such proclivity or preoccupation which constantly deprives thee of this freedom I call here a year, and thy soul yields no fruit till she is done with this work of thy affection nor hast thou any trust in God or in thyself till thou hast finished with thy predilection ,* in other words, thou hast no peace. There is no fruit till thy own work is done. 1 reckon this a year and one whose yield is poor ; the proceeds of affection not of freedom. And these folks I call wedded, yolked to their affections. Their crop is small and undersized at that, so I say, in God's sight.
The virgin wife, free and unbound in her affections is ever as near God as to herself. She abounds in fruit and big withal, no more nor less than God is himself. This fruit, his birth, does that virgin bear who is a wife ; daily she yields her hundred and her thousandfold, nay, numberless her labours and her fruits in that most noble ground, the very ground, to speak more plainly, wherein the Father is begetting his eternal Word : there she is big with fruit. For Jesus, light and shine of the paternal heart (according to St Paul he is the light and splendour ' of the Father's heart), this Jesus is atoned with her and she with him, she is radiant with him and shining as the one alone, as one pure brilliant light in the paternal heart.
Elsewhere I have declared, there is a power in the soul untouched by time and flesh, flowing from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, altogether spiritual. In this power is God, ever verdant, flowering in all the joy and glory of his actual self. Such dear delight, such incon- ceivable deep joy as none can fully tell, for in this power the eternal Father is procreating his eternal Son without a pause, the power being big with child, the Father's Son and its own self this self- same Son withal, in the unique power of the Father. Suppose a man absolute monarch, the sole ])osscssor of all earthly goods ; suppose he gave up all for God and was the poorest of the poor ; and that God laid on him to boot a burden big as ever he did lay on mortal man, all which he bare down to his death and then God granted him one fleeting vision of his being in this power : so vehement would be his joy that poverty and suffering would be wiped out. Aye, though God gave him never any taste of heaven but this, yet would he have the guerdon of his passion, for God himself is in this power as in the eternal now. If a man's spirit were always joined to God in this same power, he could not age
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For the now wherein God made the first man and the now wherein the last man disappears and the now I speak in, all arc the same in God where there is hut the now. Behold this man in ,thc same light as God having in hirii ho past nor yet to come, only one level of eternity. This man in truth has motion taken from him and all things stand intrinsic in liim. Nothing new conu'S to him from future things nor yet by accident for he dwells in the now, ever new and unceasingly renewed. So dominant is God in this same power.
There is another power, immortal too : proceeding from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, altogether spiritual. In tliis power God is fiery, aglow with all his riches, with all his sweetness and with all his bliss. Aye, in tliis power is such poignant joy, such vehement, immoderate delight as none can tell nor yet in truth reveal. I say, moreover, if once a man in intellectual vision did really glimpse the bliss and joy therein, then all his sufferings, all God intends tliat he should suffer, would be a trille, a mere nolhing to him; nay, I say more, it would be pure joy and pleasure.
Wouldst thou know for certain whether tliy sufferings are thine owp or God's? Tell by these tokens. Suffering for thyself, in whatever way, the suffering hurts thee and is hard to bear. But suffering for God and God alone thy suffering Inirts thee not nor docs it burden thee, for God bears the load. Believe me, if there were a man willing to suffer on account of God and of God alone, then though he fell a sudden prey to the collective sufferings of all the world it would not trouble liim nor bow him dowji, for God would be the bearer of his burden. If the burden they put upon my neck is forthwith shouldered by another I would as lief a hundred pounds as one, for not to me is it heavy and distressful. In brief : man's sufferings for God and God alone he makes both light and pleasant.
I prefaced this sermon with the words : Jesus went up into a fastness and was received by a virgin who was wife.' Why ? She must needs be virgin and wife too. How Jesus was received I have explained. 1 have not told the meaning of this fastness and that I will now proceed to do.
From time to time I tell of the one power in the soul which alone is free. Sometimes I have called it the tabernacle of the soul ; sometimes a spiritual light, anon I say it is a spark. But now I say : it is neither this nor that. Yet it is somewhat : somewhat more exalted over this and that than the heavens are above the earth. So now I name it in a nobler fashion than before as regard- ing rank and mode which it transcends. It is of all names free, of all forms void : exempt and free as God is in himself. It is one and simple as God is one and simple, and no man can in any wise
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behold it. This same power I am speaking of, herein God blooms and thrives in all his Godhood and the spirit in God ; in this very power the Father bears his only Son no less than in himself, for verily he liveth in this power, the spirit with the Father giving bii th therein to his very Son, itself this selfsame Son, for in this light wliich is the light of truth, it is the Son himself. Could ye see with iny heart yc would understand my words, but it is true, for truth itself has said it.
So om' and simple is this fastness, frowning above all ways, of whieh 1 mind me and am telling you, within tlic soul, that this high faculty I speak of is not Avorthy even of a fleeting glam^e therein; nor is tliat other power God glows and burns in, it durst not peer in either ; so one and indivisible this refuge is, so way- and powcr-transeeiiding tliis solitaiy one that never mode nor faculty has any insight there, not even (h)d himself. Never for an instant, as God lives, docs God see into this, nor did he ever look in his conditioned nature, in his gnis(. of Person. Note well, this ()7ie (done is lacking in every mode and quality. It follows that for God to see therein would cost him all Ins divine names and personal properties : all tliese he must forgo to look therein : only as one and indivisible, having no jot of mode or (piality, not Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost as sm^h, can he do this ; as some- what, yes, but not as tliis or that.
As one and impartible behold him entering this one that here I call the fastness of the soul, but in no different guise can he get in : thus only does he enter and subsist in it. In part the soul is the same as God but not altogether. -- This that I tell you is true : truth is my witness and my soul the pledge. May we be as this fastness whereinto on ascending Jesus is received to abide eternally as I have said. So help us God. Amen.
IX
THE ETERNAL BIRTHS
To return to the subject of the eternal birth. There is the ques- tion whether the soul brings forth the eternal Word in images or imagcless ? Remember this. When tlic soul resigns herself to God and is atoned with him and God undertakes her work, she is receptive merely and leaves God to act. Here the soul is pregnant without form or image, for anything conceived in form or image trenches upon time and place and is akin to creatures ; whence it follows that the more the work is of the soul the less it is of God.
^ Soe Pfeiffer, Deut, Myst., vol. i, p. 2G.
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The soul conceives more truly without images than in them, for this birth is more by way of Godhood than of selfhood. But we may still enquire, in which image does the soul best succeed in giving birth to the eternal Word ? There are three kinds of images. The llrst the soul takes in from without through the senses. The second the soul conjures up from within by thinking on the childhood of our Lord or on his martyrdom ; but all images so gotten arc called divine births in the soul. The third kind of images is given to tlie soul by God direct. It is in these last that the soul conceives the best. According to another gloss : this happens when the mind engenders, feels and knows the eternal Word in its proper image as gotten by the Father in himself, supposing the soul able to attain thereto ; or, intellect failing her for this, when, faring forth in biith and love, he reaches out to this same image : for in this final image the eternal Word is born most perfectly of all.
Another (juestion is, whether the birth of the eternal Word is fleeting or essential ? Now you must understand that it is this birth which unifies tlie soul, and in this respect it is intrinsic and passes not away unless a man should fall into mortal sin. But as happening in the sensible pen^eptions and in the discursive mind this birth is fugitive.
Further, it is asked, in what particular place does the soul bring forth or seek the eternal Word ? Mark. It is in the Father as the intellectual image of his divine essence and is the reflection of his divine nature, so that it embodies both his essence and his nature. It is with the Father as the filial Person. It is in the Holy Ghost as the exuberance of their eternal satisfaction. It is in the soul as the likeness of God's equal forms (or Persons). It is in all creatures as the preserver of their being. It is here the soul must seek the eternal Word, here in these places, and Christ says : Seek and ye shall find.' May we so seek as to find eternally. So help us almighty God. I will say no more at this collation. Pray God to fit me for this blessed moment. Amen.
X
MAN HAS TO SEEK GOD IN ERROR AND FORGETFULNESS i
Man has to seek God in error and forgetfulness and foolishness. For deity has in it the power of all things and no thing has the like. The sovran light of the impartible essence illumines all things.
^ Josios, No- 3.
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St Dionysius says that beauty is good order with pre-eminent lucidity. Thus God is an arrangement of three Persons. And the soul's lower powers should be ordered to her higher and her higher ones to God ; her outward senses to her inward and her inward ones to reason ; thought to intuition and intuition to the will and all to unity, so that the soul may be alone with nothing flowing into her but sheer divinity, flowing here into itself. As St Dionysius says, By purity she has discovered her capacity and only her superior powers are in operation.
It has been said by one philosopher that as soon as the chief power takes cominand the others all run into it, leaving their own work. Then the soul is in order and in her pure nature, in her supernal light-nature wherein all things are potential. A heathen doctor says, If the soul knew herself she would know all things. Deity flowed into the Father and into the Son and into the Holy Ghost: in eternity into itself and in time into creatures, to each as much as it can hold : to the stone its being, to the tree its growth, to beasts sensation, to the angels reason and to mankind all these four natures. When God was made man he took upon himself by grace, in time, the nature of all things, which in eternity was his by nature. As St Paul says, To me C'hrist is all things.' Here it was a matter of the light and reflection of his own nature. God's being is fontal : flowing and fixed, final as well as the first. From being power flows out into work. In this sense the three Persons are the storehouse of divinity and the three Persons are poured forth into the essence of the soul as grace, God's being in the essence of the soul is the imitation of the Persons and one being permeates the other. Her chief power flows from the essence of the soul just as the three Persons issue from the Godhead. And when God pours his grace into the soul it is into her essence that he pours it. For into the soul's essence no speck can ever fall, do her powers what they may. The chief power of the soul draws its virtue from the grace existing in the essence of the soul and this highest power goes out into the lower ones, into their essence. The crescent soul, the spirit receptive of God's nature, is the imitation of Christ's Person and man's nature. The soul when she reaches divine nature is deprived of all deficiency and imperfection ; she suffers death in divine nature, getting God's nature in herself as the Father does in him. She takes it not from her own nature, she receives it from God's nature into her nature ; she receives perfection and power according to the words of St Paul, I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.' The wisdom thence arising in her mind begins in under- standing and is perfected in will and it has neither heart nor thought. St Dionysius says. As the soul takes the outgoing tide
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to journey in eternity and time and in her own intelligence, so on the ebb does she return ; as God the soul Hows back again, without exertion. God returns to himself as little mindful of his own as though they wore not. And the soul shall do the same. She shall grasp with her manhood the Person of the Son, and with the Person of the Son she shall apprehend the Father and the Holy Ghost in both, and them both in the Holy (ihost ; and with the Person of tlie Father she shall apprehend his simple essence, and with the essence the abyss, and shall sink into the void without matter and without form. Matter and form, being and knowledge, she loses ill this unity, for she herself has come to naught. God does all her work, he preserves her in his being and leads her in his power into his very (Godhead where she Hows with deity itself into all God Hows into. She is all things' place and has herself no place. This is the most eternal wisdom, which has neither heart nor thought. So nigh soul Ho\vs to God that many are deceived ; but wdiat she is she is by grace, and where she is she is by another's power. Yet she approaches near enough to (xod to be, in the power of the Father, invested with divinity by grace the same as the Father is by nature. St Paul says : In the same image we shall go from one glory to another,' meaning, we shall receive divinity in its perfection and all that is consequent thereon. Therein she shall conceive divinity as it conceives itself and her will and God's will shall be one : whatever God may be wc shall be with God. No one can attain it in this body, but when (Jod gives the soul his final gift, the vision of his Godhead, the soul is raised up in the Trinity. May wc attain to this, So help us God. Amen.
XI
THE HOUR COMETH AND NOW IS
Mulier^ venit horn ci nunc e.st, quando veri adoratores adorabunt pafrem in spiritii et veritaie (Job, This comes from St
John's Gospel. I take one sentence from a long discourse. Our Lord said : Woman, the hour eometh and now is, when true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth and the Father seeketh such.'
Taking the opening words : The hour eometh and now is.' He who would worship the Father must betake himself into eternity in his desires and hopes. There is one, the loftiest, part of the soul which stands above time and knows nothing of time or of body. The happenings of a thousand years ago, days spent millenniums since, are in eternity no further off than is this moment 1 am passing now ; the day to come a thousand years ahead or in
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as many years as you can count, is no more distant in eternity than this very instant I am in.
He says, true worshippers worship tlie Father in spirit and in truth.' What is trutJi ? The truth is a most noble thing. Tf (iod were able to backslide from truth T would fain cling to truth and let God go. Hut (iod is truth, and things in time, the things that (xod created, are not truth.
He says, they worship the Father.' Alas, how many worship crealurcs and saddle tlKanselv^es with them, fools that they arc. As sure as thou dost pray to God for creatures thou prayest for thine own undoing, for no sooner is creature creature than hey for trouble and bitterness, Avrong and distress. They get tlieir deserts, do these lolk, with their wrongs and their bitterness. For why ? They prayed for it.
I have sonudimes said, whoso gO('s seching God and seekiiig aught with God docs not iind (md ; but he who seeks God by himself in truth docs not lind God alone ; all God affords he finds as well as God. Art tliou looking for God, sc'eking God with a view to thy jiersoual good, thy personal prolit ? Then in truth thou art not sething God. ' True Avorshippers Avorship the Father,' he saA^s, and he says right well. If a A irtuous man is asked, Why dost thou seek (xod V ' he ansAvers : Because he is God.'- AVhy dost thou s(ek truth? ' - ^ Beeause it is truth.' -- Why dost thou seek right ? ' Jh'cause it is right,' and Avith
such all is aa'cII. Things here in tinui have each tlieir cause. Ask a man why he eats ? For strength,' he says. Why he sleeps ?
For tile very same reason.' And so Avith everything in time. But ask a good man, " hy dost thou lo\^e God ? ' -He says :
I knoAv not ; for God's sake.' Why dost thou love the truth V -- For the truth's sake.'-- Why dost thou lo\c right?' -- For righteousness' sake.' Why dost thou loA^e good?' -- For good's sake.'- Why dost thou live ? ' -- I' faith, I knoAV not ! 1 like living.'
A philosopher says : He aa Iio has once been touched by truth, by right, by good, though it entailed the pangs of hell, that man could ncA^er turn therefrom, not for an instant.' The man, whoe'er he be, nioAxd by these three -- truth, righteousness and goodness -- can no more quit these three than God can quit his Godhood.
A philosopher says that goodness has three branches. The first is use, the second is enjoyment and the third is secmlincss. Con- cerning his AA^ords, they AA^orsliip the Father.' Why does he say the Father ' ? Seek God alone and thou shalt find with God all that he gives. It is the positiA^e truth, true of necessity, a Avritteii axiom though no less true uiiAvritten, that if God had more
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he could not keep it from thee, he would have to sliow it thee, to give it thee, and, as I soinctinu^s say, he gives it to thee as a birth.
Philosophers say the soul is double-faeed, her upper face gazes at God all the time and her lower fac'e looks somewhat down, informing the senses ; and the upper face, whieli is the summit of the soul, is in eternity and has nothing to do with time : it kno\vs nothing of time or of body. Kls(wherc T have (xplaiiu'd how in this li(S hid llu* fount as it were of all good, as a shining light that is always shining, a burning brand that is always hairning, which brand is none other than the Jloiy Ghost.
Philosophers say that out of the summit of the soul there tlow twin powers. The one is will, the oilier intiHeet, and her ])owers' jierfeetion lies in the sovran })ower of intellect. TJiis ne\'cr rests. It wants (xod not as Holy Ghost nor 3'et as Son ; it (lees the Son. It wants God not. as (iod. And why ? Heeanse thus he has name ; \vere th(*re a thousand (»ods ye t would it penudrate them all in the desire to get to where he has no name at ail : it wants a nobler, better thing than (iod as having nanux Wiiat Avonld it, tlien ? It do('S not know : it would havc Jiiin Kiithca*. Lord, show" us the Patiier,' Pliilij) erics, and \V(' shall be content.' It wants him as the quick of kindness ; it wants liini as the miirrow dripping fatness ; it w^ants him as the root, the main of goodness : thus he is simply Father.
Our Lord says : No man know^eih the Father but the Son, nor tlic Son but tlic Father.' In truth, to know tlie father we must be the Son. I have laid dowm tliese three' maxims wdiich take like three bad gra])es and drink tb(reafter. First, if wci arc Son, we must have the Fatlier : none f'an say lie is ii son unless lie has a father, nor father unless he has a son. His father dead, he says, he w'as my father.' II is son being deael, he says.
he was my son.' The son's life hangs upon tlu father, and the father's on the son, and thendbre none can say : 1 am the Son ' unless he have the Fatlier and he is in truth Son whose every work is wrought for love therein. Secondly, that which most makes man Son is equaliility. lleing sick lie would as soon be sick as sane, as sane as sick. His frit nd dit s, In God's name ! ' He has an eye out, In God's name ! Fhirdly, it beseems the Son to bow the head to no one save the Father. Truly, a royal power this, transcending time and w"ithoiit place ! And by the facd of its transcending time it both contains all time and is tlu? w")iolc of time, and the least jot of that which transcends time makes a man rich indeed, for things at the antipoilcs an^ no more distant to this power than those present here. It is of these he says, the Father seeketh such.'
Look you, God loves us so, God importunes us so, because God
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cannot work till the soul is shelled and trimmed of creatures, and the plain truth is that of necessity God is bound to cherish us just as though his Godhood were at stake, as in fact it is. God can no more do without us than we can without him, nay, even if we turned from (lod it would be imj^ossible for God to turn his back on us. I vow 1 will not pray to God for gifts nor worship him because of gifts bestowed, but I will entreat him to make me worthy to receive and worship him for being of the essence and of the nature that must give. lie who would spoil God of this would spoil him of Ins veiy life, of his very being. That we may thus in truth be Son, help us the truth of which I speak. Amen.
XII
CONTEMPLATION, HINTS AND PROMISES'
When a man delights to read or h(ar tell about, Ciod, that comes of divine grace and is lordly entertainment for the soul. To entertain God in one's thoughts is sweet(r than Jioney, but to be sensible of God is teeming consolation to the nol)le soul, and union with God in love is everlasting joy which we relish here as we arc fitted for it.
They arc all too few who are fully ripe for gazing in God's magic mirror. Precious few sin^eced in living tlie contemplative life at all here upon earth. Many begin, but fail to consummate it. Because they have not rightly lived the life of Martha. As the eagle spurns its young that (cannot gaze at the sun, even so fares it with the spiritual child.
lie who would build high must lay firm and strong foundations. The true foundation is the very way and pattern of our Lord Jesus Christ, who liimsclf declared : I am the way, the truth and the life.'
Dionysius says, The soul shall follow God into the desert of his Godhead, so far as here the body follows Christ in outward willing poverty.' -- But that soul is idle.' To which St Bernard answers : Waiting upon God is not idleness but work which beats all other work to one unskilled in it.' In order to find God, we must seek him in his Godhead. Christ says, ' If father and mother or anything else be a hindrance, quit them for good and serve God unhindered.' The philosopher says, The soul which is mov^ed by the power of the Prime Cause need seek no counsel from any human wisdom ; he is obeying what transcends wisdom, for lie is niovx*d by the latent primitive truth.'
Though we meditate upon the blessed works of our Lord's poverty and his humility, yet coveting them not ourselves, the ^ See Preger, Zeitschr. f. hist. Theol., Bd. 36. 1866. (Two versions.)
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thoughts are useless. And to cov'-et them is useless too, unless wc diligently seek how we may acquire them.
We would fain be humble ; but not despised. To be despised and rejected is the heritage of virtue. Wc would be poor too, but without privatioti. And doubtless we are patient, except with hardslups and with disagreeables. And so with all the virtues.
The willing poor, imsolaccd by corru[)tiblcs, descend into the valley of humility. They arc pursued by insult and adversity, the best school of self-knoAvledge. And self-knowledge gets God- kn owl edge.
My children, ye who suffer insult, if the world reject you, do ye therewith likewise assail yourselves, helping to reject yourselves. Our Lord Jesus Christ said, The servant is not greater than his lord. If the world hate you, know ye it hated me before it hated you.'
We ought to recompense our Lord for all that he has done. There are plenty to follow our Lord half-way, but not the other half. They will give up possessions, friends and honours, but it touches them too closely to disown themselves.
Some there be, neither wanting nor looking for honours, yet, chancing to come their way, honours affect them.
St Lernard says : When a soul comes to wanting what few desire : to be nam<*lcss, outcast and disgraced, and makes all welcome equally, then she attains to peace and the true freedom needed for real vision in the mirror of divinity.'
Perfect rest is absolute freedom from motion. Our Lord says, Continue in my word and the trutli shall make you free.* Freedom of soul consists in this : in finding in hcrs(*lf no sin ; in tolerating in herself no spiritual imperfection. She is more free lacking all hold on what possesses name and it on her. Freest of all when she transcends her selfhood and Hows with all she is into the bottoml(*ss abyss of her primordial mould, into God liimsclf.
Our liord Jesus Christ exhorts us to renounce all things that we may be less hindered. St Bernard declares : All the time thou oceupiest not with God is accounted unto thee for lost.' And again, The most subtle temptalion that can beset us is to occupy ourselves too much in outward works.' Further he says, The best preparation 1 know for heaven is having no home among externals.'
Our least interior act is higher and nobler than our grandest outward one, and yet our loftiest interior act halts in God's unveiled presence in the soul.
The very best work that wc can do is to prepare for union with the present God and wait for this with fixed intention.
St Paul says, Optimum esse unire deo : Best of all is to be one
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with God. In this union the soul is dead, not only to all outward but also to all inward ghostly acts. God operates unhindered, and the soul bears his godly operation to which she yields obediently enough for God to bring to birth his only Son in her no less than in himself. This is the atonement wherein, in the twinkling of an eye, the soul is made more one with God than by her doing any act, bodily or ghostly. The oftencr this birth happens in the soul the closer grows her union with God.
God is born in the empty soul by discovering himself to her in a new guise without guise, without light in divine light.
St Augustine says, The soul being aflame with divine love, God is born in the soul, the Holy Ghost being the enkindler of love.'
God has vouchsafed divine light to the soul that he may blithely work in his own image.
Now no creature can do what is not in its power. Hence the soul cannot act above herself, not even with the bridal gift that God has given her in tlie shape of her most exalted faculty. This light, albeit divine, is still created. The creator is one and the light another. So God comes to the soul in love, purposing that love shall raise her to a higher power, to a function superior to her own. But love fails to tell unless she meets or makes her match. As far as God finds his likeness in the soul, so far is God in operation. If her love is boundless, God acts as boundless love.
A man might live a thousand years and go on growing all the time in love, just as fire will burn so long as there is wood. The bigger the fire and the stronger the wind, the more fiercely it ^ burns. Now put love for the fire and the Holy Ghost for the I wind : the greater the love and the stronger the inspiration of the I Holy Ghost in grace, the quicker the work of perfection is achieved. Yet not suddenly, but by the gradual growth of the soul. It would not be well for the whole man to be consumed at once.
The soul becomes so one with God that grace confines her ; she is not satisfied with grace, for grace is creaturcly. The soul is so curiously glamoured, she does not realise that she exists : she fancies herself God, so utterly she has escaped from self. But be she never so far gone from self, she goes on being creature. Pouring a drop of water into a vat of wine does not destroy it. Seeing herself the soul sees spirit ; seeing the angels she again sees spirit ; but God is such pure spirit that soul and angel are nigh bodily compared with him. A portrait of the highest seraph limned in black would be a better likeness far than God portrayed as highest seraph : that were a pre-eminent unlikeness.
Now in the contemplative state we are consumed by fiery love in the Holy Ghost. Sooner than knowingly commit a sin, venial or mortal, we shall prefer to suffer every imaginable martyrdom.
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If by one venial sin we were enabled to release from hell souls without number, we would not ransom them. Such love to God must a man have to be familiar with him in contemplation. Moreover, he must have a mind at ease ; and in preparing for it, an undisturbed retired spot is necessary. The body should be rested from bodily labour, not only of the hands but of the tongue as well and all five senses. The soul keeps clear best in the quiet, but in jaded body is often overpowered by inertia. Then by strenuous effort we travail in divine love for intellectual vision till, clearing a way through recollected senses, we rise past our own mind to the wonderful wisdom of God, though this is quite beyond the grasp of any creature. We rise to divine heights. David says : Accedat homo ad cor altum et exaltahitur deus, that is, Man rising to the summit of his mind is exalted God. From this divine eminence we see the lowness and insignificance of creatures. We feel an inkling of the perfection and stability of eternity, for there is neither time nor space, neither before nor after, but evcrytliihg present in one new, fresh-springing noiv where millenniums last no longer than the twinkling of an eye. And we win participation in the manifold delights of tlie heavenly host. So great the joy of Mary Queen in heaven, that having but a thousandth part of it, each member of the heavenly company would taste far more than ever they have earned. There every spirit rejoices in the joy of every other, relishing it each in his degree. Every celestial habitant is, knows and loves in God, in his own self and in every other spirit whether soul or angel. And the distinctive conscious-, ness of one Gpd in three Persons and the Three one God gives such ineffable, amazing satisfaction that all their passionate longing is fulfilled. And just what they are full of they crave unceasingly, and what they crave is all their own in new, fresh-springing joyful ecstasy, theirs to enjoy in all security from everlasting unto everlasting.
Thereafter we press on into the truth, into the simplicity God is himself, not seeking what is his. So we fall into peculiar wonder. In this wonder let us remain, for human wit is powerless to fathom it. Plumbing the deeps of divine wonder but stirs facile doubt.
XIII 1
IN THIS WAS MANIFESTED THE LOVE OF GOD
In hoc ajpparuit charitas dei in nobis etc. In this was mani- fested the love of God toward us that he sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we might live with the Son, ' that is, 1 See also Wackeraagel, No. Ixv, p. 172.
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in and through the Son.' Those that live not through the Son, verily they err.
If a mighty king had a beautiful daughter and gave her to a poor man's son, every member of his family would rise in rank and become ennobled. Thus one learned doctor says : By God becoming man the whole human race has been ennobled and exalted ; wherefore it behoves us to rejoice greatly that Christ our brother has with peculiar power ascended up above the choir of angels and sitteth on the right hand of the Father.' This is well said, though I set but little store by it. What profit to me that my brother is rich if I am poor, or wise and I a fool ?
I say something more and more significant : God not only became man, he assumed human nature. Doctors agree that all men are of equal rank by nature. But I make bold to say that every good thing possessed by the saints and by Mary, God's mother, and Christ in his human nature, is also mine in this same nature. Haply thou wilt ask me : If already I possess in this nature all that Christ does in his humanity, how come we to set Christ so high and honour him as our Lord and God ? ' -- Because he was a messenger from God to us, bringing us our happiness. The happiness he brought us was our own. When the Father begets his Son in the innermost ground, what moves there has this nature. This same nature is one and indivisible. Anything distinct in it or connected with it is not this one.
Another thing I say, still harder. To subsist immediately in this pure nature a man must be so wholly dead to person that he wills as well to one across the seas whom his eyes have never seen as to his own present and familiar friend. While thou still wishest better to thine own person than to that man whom thou hast never seen thou art beside the mark, nor hast thou even for an instant seen into this simple ground. Haply in some far-fetched symbol thou hast beheld the truth as in an image, but it was not the best. -- Secondly, thou must be pure in heart ; and only that heart is pure which has exterminated creaturehood. And thirdly, thou must be free from not.
It is a question, what burns in hell ? Doctors reply with one accord : self-will.' But I maintain : not burns in hell. A simile 1 Suppose I take a burning coal and put it on my hand ; then if I say the coal is burning me, I do it great injustice. To define precisely what it is that bums me : not docs ; because the coal has in it something my hand has not. Observe, it is this very not that bums me. Did my hand contain what the coal is and can afford, it would possess the fire-nature altogether. In which case all the fire that ever burned might be taken and heaped upon my hand without its burning me. Likewise, I aver that
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because God and those who are in sight of God, have in them something pertaining to real happiness which those who are apart from God have not, therefore this not alone torments the souls in hell more than the personal will or any fire soever. In sooth I hold : as far as not inheres in thee, so far thou art imperfect. To be perfect, then, thou must be free from not.
Further, my text says : God sent his only-begotten Son into the world,' by which ye are to understand not the external world : it must be taken of the inner world. As surely as the Father by his simple nature begets the Son innately, so surely he begets him in the innermost recesses of the mind, which is the inner world. Here God's ground is my ground and my ground God's ground. Here I live in my own as God lives in his own. To one who even for an instant has seen into this ground, a thousand ducats of red beaten gold are worth no more than a false farthing. Out of this innermost ground thy works should be wrought without why. Indeed, I hold that as long as thou doest thy works because of the kingdom of heaven, or God, or thine own eternal happiness, from without (that is to say), all is not well with thee. It may be tolerable but it is not the best. He who fondly imagines to get more of God in thoughts, prayers, pious offices and so forth, than by the fireside or in the stall : in sooth he does but take God, as it were, and swaddle his head in a cloak and hide him under the table. For he who seeks God under settled forms lays hold of the form while missing the God concealed in it. But he who seeks God in no speeial guise lays hold of him as he is in himself, and such an one lives with the Son ' and is the life itself. We might question life for a thousand years : Why dost thou live ! * It would only say, if it replied at all, I live because I live.' For life lives in a ground of its own, wells up out of its own. It lives without a cause for it lives itself. And if anyone asked a proper man, one who works his own ground, Why dost thou work ? ' he too would say, if he told the truth : I work because I work.'
Where creature stops, there God begins. All God wants of thee is for thee to go out of thyself in respect of thy creatureliness and let God be God in thee. The smallest of creaturely images that ever takes shape in thee is as big as God. -- How so ? '
-- It shuts out the whole of God. As soon as this image appears God disappears with all his Godhood. As this image fades out God comes in. [No temporal image is so godly but thrice harms the soul. First, it vexes spirituality ; next, it tarnishes her purity ; and thirdly, it disturbs detachment.
-- What does God do to my mind ? '
-- Transcend thyself and repress creatures : God does that to thy mind.]
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God longs as urgently for thee to go out of thyself in respect of thy creaturely nature as though his whole felicity depended on it. Why, man, what is the harm of letting God be God in thee ? Go clean out of thyself for God's sake, and God will go clean out of his for thy sake. Both being gone out, what remains is simply the one. In this one the Father gives birth to his Son, in his inner- most source. Thence blossoms forth the Holy Ghost and thence originates in God the will belonging to the soul. The while this will remains unmoved by creatures and by creaturehood, the will is free. Christ says : None goes to heaven but he who came from heaven.' Things are all made from nothing ; hence their true source is nothing. This noble Avill, as far as it inclines to creatures, with them elapses into nothing.
The question is, Docs the will lapse so far that it is never able to return ? Doctors reply with one accord that it docs not return so far as it has lapsed with time. But I maintain that if this will turns back, even for an instant, from its oAvri self and things created and rallies to its source, there in its own free origin the will is free and in this instant time lost is all recovered.
People often say to me : Pray for me.' And I think to my- self : Why ever do ye go out ? Why not stop at home and mine your own treasure ? For indeed the whole truth is native in you.
May we be apt to stay thus in ourselves and to possess the entire truth immediately, impartibly, in real happiness. So help us God ! Amen.
XIV
LIKE A VASE OF GOLD
Quasi vas auri soliduni ornatuin omni lapide pretioso {EccL SO^q), My quotation will apply to St Augustine or to any virtuous soul, such being likened to a golden vessel, massive and lirm, adorned with every precious stone.' Because of the perfection of the saints we have no likeness to express them, and we therefore symbolise them by the trees, the sun, or moon. So here St Augustine is compared with a chalice of gold, solid and firm, all set with precious stones. Indeed I he same thing may be said of any saintly virtuous soul who, leaving all things here, enjoys them yonder where they are eternal. Whoso renounces things in their contingent sense possesses them as absolute and eternal.
Every cup has two things : it receives and holds. The spiritual vessel differs from the physical. The wine is in the cup, not the cup in the wine, though the wine is not in the cup as it is in the body ; if it were in the cup as it is in the body we should not be able to drink it. It is different with the spiritual vessel. Every-
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thing received in this is in the eup and the cup in it and is the cup itself. All this ghostly cup receives is its own nature. It is God's nature to give himself to every virtuous soul, and it is the soul's nature to receive God, and this we say referring to the soul in her loftiest capacity. There the soul bears the image of God and is godlike. No image can be without likeness, but likeness can be without image. Two eggs may be both alike white, but one is not the image of the other : for one to be the image of the other it must proceed out of its nature and be born of it and be like it.
An image has two properties. First, it rccciv es its being from the thing whose image it is, immediately and above will, for it is a natural product, sprouting out of its nature as a branch does out of a tree. Any face thrown on a mirror is, willy-nilly, imaged therein. But its nature does not appear in its looking-glass image : only the mouth, nose and eyes, just the features, are seen in the mirror. God reserves it to himself to display in his reflec- tions, at once his nature, all In^ is and all he can, and tliis above his will. His image is prior to his will, will following the image, for out of his nature there leaps first his image, focussing into itself the whole promise of his nature and liis essence, all his nature pouring out into his image the wliih' it abides intact within itself. Now the masters locate tliis iiiiage not in flir Holy Ghost but in the middle Person, for the Son, being the earliest issue of his nature, is therefore called his Father's express image, and not the Holy Ghost ; he is simply the flowering of the Father and the Son, and has one nature with them both. Will is not a mean between the nature and the image, nor, for that matter, can knowledge or per- ception, nay, nor wisdom, come betw'^een, for this image of God is the immediate product of his fecund nature. If there is means of wisdom here it is the image itself. Thus the Son in the Godhead is called the Wisdom of the Father.
Know, this impartible image of God which is stamped in the soul is sealed direct in her innermost nature ; this most funda- mental, most noble part of her nature, is really what takes this soul-pattern, and that not by means cither of will or of wisdom. As I remarked just now, if wisdom comes in here at all it is (as) the pattern itself. God exists in this image without any means and the image subsists without means in God. But (iod is much more noble in the image than the image is in God. The image receives God not as being the creator ; it conceives him in the guise of understanding, the summit of her nature actually taking on his form. This is the innate divine image which God has stamped in every soul by nature. I durst not give more to this image ; to give it more would make it God himself, which it is not, or God would not be God.
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The second characteristic of an image we note in its likeness to its object. And here observe especially two things. First : an image is not itself, neither is it its own. So an image received into the eye is not the eye itself nor has it any real existence in the eye but is merely suspended from and tethered to the thing it is the image of, whereto it entirely belongs and wherefrom it gets its being and is being that same being. Note well my definition of an image. There are four points to bear in mind, and haply others will occur to you. An image is not itself, neither is it its own : it is solely that thing's whose reflection it is, and it is due to this alone that it exists at all. Things apart from the thing whose image it is, it is not and does not belong to. The image takes its being direct from the thing whose image it is, having one nature therewith and being the very same being. This is not a subject for discussion in the schools, though one may well propound it from the professorial chair.
Ye are always asking how ye ought to live. Lay then to heart this answer: Just as the image is here said to do, even so it behoves thee to live. Be his and belonging to him, not thine own and belonging to thyself nor withal to anyone. Whoever has a well-beloved friend holds his belongings dear and anything against his friend he will object to. Take, for example, the dog, an irrational beast. So faithful is he to his master that he resents the things his master hates, while to his master's friends he is most friendly. No count takes he of poverty or wealth ; were some blind beggar his master's bosom friend, he would be more affectionate to him than to the king or emperor who was his master's enemy. I trow if it were possible the dog should be half faithless to his master, its other half were bound to hate itself. But then some folks complain of having no interior life, no devotion, no sweetness nor any suchlike godly consolation. Marry, these folk are all unrighteous still, and though they suffer it is not the best. Verily I say, as long as any image forms in thee which is not the eternal Word nor any shadowing forth of the eternal Word, be it never so good, in sooth it is wrong. That man alone is righteous who, having naughted all created things, stands facing straight along the unswerving line into the eternal Word, where, in the right, he is idealised and transformed. That man is gotten where the Son is gotten and is the Son himself. .
According to the scriptures, No man knoweth the Father but the Son,' and hence, if ye desire to know God, ye have to be not merely like the Son, ye have to be the very Son himself. Some people think to see God with their eyes as they would see a cow, and they expect to love him as they would love a cow. This thou lovest for its milk and for its cheese : for its profit to thyself.
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Even so do they who love God with an eye to outward riches or interior consolation, not rightly loving God but their own i)ersonal advantage. I trow that any object thou shalt set before thy mind, except God in himself, how good soever it may be, is nothing but a barrier to the absolute truth. As I said just now that St Augustine is compared to a golden cup, closed on the underside and open to the sky, even so it behoves thee to be : if thou wouldst stand with St Augustine and in the communion of saints, then close thy heart to everything created and be open to God as he is in himself.
Men are compared with the higher faculties because they always go bareheaded, and women with the lower because the head is always veiled. The superior powers transcend time and space, springing straight out of the essence of the soul, and they resemble men in always going uncovered. Accordingly, their working is eternal. The philosopher says that all the powers of the soul, inasmuch as time and space affect them, have lost their virgin purity and can never be so thoroughly abstracted nor so finely sifted as to pass into the higher faculties. Albeit they arc stamped with the same image.
Do thou be firm and steady,' the same, that is to say, in weal and woe, in fortune and misfortune ; and set with all the precious stones,' a treasury, to wit, of all the virtues which come naturally pouring out of thee. Traverse all the virtues and, transcending them, tap virtue only at its source, where it is one with the divine nature. And in so far as thou art more atoned than are the angels with God's nature, to that extent they must receive through thee. May we be one, So help us God. Amen.
XV
THE DIVINE .BEING 1
No man can tell of (iod exactly what he is. According to St Dionysius, God is not anything we can say or think. St Augustine cries : 1 who have ever been in God and ever more shall be, would sooner I had never been and never more should be than that we found a single word that we could say of God. Were we compelled to si)cak of God, in that case I should say : Verily, in no sense is God comprehensible nor yet attainable. God is what thought cannot better.' Nay, I declare God beggars human thought ; he transcends all human conception. No man knows what God is. Aught that a man could or would think of God, God is not aj^ll. It is the nature of the soul not to be satisfied except ' Soe Spamer's Texte, B. 1.
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with God. But all that heart can desire is small, is insignificant compared with God. Yet man's thought may be never so rich or so rare but his desire outstrips it. So he transcends man's desire as well as transcending human thought.
St Dionysius says, God i§^ naught. Meaning that God is as incomprehensible as naught. St Bernard says, I know not what ; God is ; but what I know not that he is that same is he. A heathen ^philosopher maintains that what we know of the First Cause is rather what we are ourselves than what the First Cause is. For that passes understanding. And in this strain the heathen doctor argues in his book, IVie Light of Lights, that God is super-essential, super-rational, super-intelligible, i,e. beyond the natural under- standing. I speak not of gracious understanding. By grace man may be carried to the length of understanding as St Paul understood who was caught up into the third heaven and saw unspeakable things. He saw, but was not able to express them. For what a man knows he knows in its cause or in its mode or in its effect. But in these respects God remains unknown, for he is the first. Further, he is modeless, i.e. undetermined. And he is without effect, tliat is, in his mysterious stillness. Here he abides apart from the names that are given him. Moses asked his name. God answered. He- who- is hath sent thee. Otherwise he could not tell it. God as simply being, in that sense he could never give himself to be known to creatures. Not that he could not do it, but creature could not understand it. -- I have often laid it down that God's lordship does not lie merely in his lordship over creature ; his lordship consists in his power to create a thousand W'orlds and dominate them all in his abstract essence. Therein lies his lord- ship. Dionysius and Gregory both teach that the divine being is not comprehensible in any sense : not to any wit nor any under- standing, pot even to angelic understanding. Its simplicity and triplicity is a thing not to be grasped by the human mind even at its best, nor by the angelic mind even at its clearest. It was said by a philosopher that w'^hoso knows of God that he is unknown, that man knows God. For it is the height of gnosis and perception to know and understand in agnosia and a-perception. To know him really is to know him as unknowable. As the master puts it : If I must speak of God, then I will say, God is something which is in no sense to be reached or grasped ; and I know nothing else about him. According to St Augustine, what we say about God is not true ; what we say that God is he is not ; what we say he is not that he is rather than what we say that he is. Nothing we can say of God is true. God's worth and God's perfection cannot be put into words. When I say inan, I have in my mind human nature. When I say grey^ I have in my mind
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the greyness of grey. When I say Gody I have in my mind neither God's majesty nor his perfection. Dionysius insists that the more we can abstract from God the better we shall sec him. God is such that we apprehend him better by negation than by affirma- tion. Hence the dictum of one master that to argue about God from likeness is to argue falsely about him, but to argue by denials is to argue about him correctly. Dionysius says, writing about God, He is super-essential, lie is super-luminous ; he attributes to him neither this nor that. For whatever he conceives, God far transcends it. There is no knowing him by likeness. Rather by attributing unlikeness may we make some approach to under- ; standing him. Take an illustration. Supposing I describe a ship \ to someone who has never seen one, then on looking at a stone he will plainly see that it is not a ship. And the plainer he sees that it is not ship-like, the more he will know about a ship. It is the j same with (iod. The more we can impute to him not-likeness, > the nearer do we get to understanding him. Holy Scripture yields j us merely privatives. That we should credit God with matter, | form and work is due to our gross senses. We fail to find God one ' because we try to come at him by likeness. Dionysius cries,
Friend Timothy, if thou wouldst catch the spirit of truth pursue it not with the human senses. It is so swift, it comes rushing.' God is to be sought in opposites ; in unknowing knowing shall we know God ; in forgetfulness of ourselves and all things even to the naked essence of the Godhead. Dionysius was exhorting one of his disciples. Friend,' quoth he, cease from all activity and empty thyself of self that thou mayst commune with the Sovran Good, God namely.' Pray God wc may seek him so that wc shall find him nevermore to lose him. Amen.
XVI
THE SIXTH BEATITUDE
Beati qui esuriunt et sitiunt justitiaiii (Matt. 5g). Jesus went up a mountain to a valley, into a field, and power went out of him preaching to the multitude : Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.'
Methinks this text is apt to my discourse. Blessed are they that hunger for righteousness and endure work and poverty here, for this is but a moment and will surely pass. They are blessed though not most blessed. Blessed are they that hunger not to be deprived of God, albeit the wonder is that man can be without him without whom he cannot be. St Augustine says it is amazing that anyone should live apart from him apart from whom he cannot
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live at all. They are blessed and yet not most blessed. More blessed those who so hunger that they cannot live without God ; that is a fiery affection which transforms their nature. The while a man yet finds in his desire or in his hope or his affection anything impermanent, he is not most blessed. He is blessed but not most blessed. Blessed, supremely blessed, are they who arc installed in the eternal now, transcending time and place and form and matter, unmoved by weal or woe or wealth or want, for in so far as things arc motionless they are like eternity.
[The heaven adjoining the eternal now, wherein the angels are, is motionless, immoveable. But the heaven next to that which touches the eternal now, wherein the angels are, and betwixt (that and) the heaven where the sun is, is set in motion by angelic force, revolving once in every hundred years. The heaven the sun is in, moved by angelic force, goes round once a year. The heaven the moon is in, again, is driven by angelic force and goes round once a month. The nearer the eternal now the more immoveable they are, and the further off and more unlike to the eternal now the easier to move. The heaven of the sun and moon and stars is moved by the impulse of their angel, so that they arc spinning in this temporal now ; and the eternal now imparts their motion, that being so energetic that from the motion the eternal now imparts, all things derive their life and being. Now the lowest powers of the soul arc nobler than the highest part of heaven, where it adjoins the angels and the eternal now. Moreover, all things get their life and being from the motion there imparted by the eternal now ; and if that is so noble, then what would ye expect where the soul in her superior powers contacts the ground of God ? How exalted, think ye, that must be ? -- Follow then after this now, and reach this now and possess this eternal now. May we stand next the eternal now and so be in possession of it. So help us O divine power.]
[One master says : Grace springs from the heart of the Father and flows into his Son and in the oneness of them twain it proceeds from the Wisdom of the Son into the Gift of the Holy Ghost and in the Holy Ghost is sent into the soul. Grace is the face of God which is clearly stamped in the soul without any means by the Spirit of God, giving the soul the form of God. St Dionysius says : The angels are the divine mind. Moreover St Paul declares concerning those who live the angelic life here in the flesh, that into them there flows the mind of God as it does into the angels. He also says the intellectual light, God namely, has given likeness to the rational soul. Quoth St Paul : He who cleaves unto God with his whole being becomes one spirit with (iod. So help us God. Amen.]
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XVII
IN PRINCIPIO ERAT VERBUM
In 'principio erat verbum {Joh> Ij). Theologians talk of the eternal Word. God never spoke but one word, and that is still unspoken. The explanation is this. The eternal Word is the logos of the Father which is his only begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ. In him he pronounces all creatures without beginning and without end. This accounts for the Word remaining unborn, for it never came out of the Father. This Word is to be known in fourfold guise.
First, on the altar in the priest's hands. There it is ours to know and love the eternal Word as we, in his eternal Word, appear to the heavenly Father. Secondly, we know the eternal Word as expounded by doctors from the chair. We receive it in their person ; like water flowing in a channel, so does the eternal Word flow through its teachers. We should pay no heed to any shortcomings in the doctor : we must fix our gaze on the eternal Word in him, as it comes pouring eternally out of the ground of itself. Thirdly, we can recognise the eternal Word in our Lord's friends who, having followed this eternal Word, have gotten proof of it in life eternal, and also those that follow it in time, such, namely, as arc quick in our Lord Jesus Christ. Fourthly, we have the eternal Word as spoken in the virgin soul by God himself ; wordlessly, to wit, since the soul is not able to express him.
I would have you know that the eternal Word is being born within the soul, its very self, no less, unceasingly. I tell you, the soul knows the eternal Word better than all the doctors can ex- pound it. What we can express is all too little, so for the nonce she is bearing the eternal Word in mind. According to the masters we ought by rights to go to school where the Holy Ghost is teacher ; and know, where he is teacher and is bound to be, there he finds students properly equipped to profit by his lofty teaching which issues from out the Father's heart. So the soul has, if she will, the Father and the Son and Holy Ghost : she goes flowing into the one where naked in naked is revealed to her. Our masters say that no one can attain to this so long as he retains of nether things as much as a needle-point can carry. Into the naked Godhead none may get except he be as naked as he was when he was spilt from God.
The masters say, giving us wise counsel, that leaving God his glory we ought to get all things direct from him and not from creatures. We shall leave God his glory by leaving him to work just how he will and when he will, we staying idle and free. For
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we must see that God does all for the best. And so I trow it lies with us, so far as it is in us, to help God to preserve his glory.
A master says. Little recks the king of those of his retainers who perform the drudgery. lie notices the ones about his privy chambers and gratifies their every want. God does the same with his chosen friends, the intimates of his mysterious privacy : he never turns a deaf ear to their prayer. Withal the masters do affirm that numbers go to heaven who know no more of God on earth than, as it were, of sun in forest gloom. Desiring this supremely it rests with us to compass it by practice and by strength of will. Amen.
XVIII
I KNOW A MAN IN CHRIST
Scio homwem in Christo ante annos quatuordecim etc. (2 Cor.
St Paul declares : I know a man who fourteen years ago was caught up into the third heaven ; whether in the body or no I cannot tell : God knoweth.' Now granting Paul was there at any time, then either body and soul both turned to spirit or else his soul took wing out of his body. It is certain that his soul left not his body, for she was giving life unto his body; she must then have seen God in her and herself in him.
The soul has three powers : mind, will and rage. These three powers are in league with deity. Will cleaving unto God can do all things. God seized of his divinity bestows upon her power and fecundity. Mind cleaving to the Son knows with the Son ; it knows with the Son when it is void of knowledge. The third power is the power of attack, which is connected with the Holy Ghost. This power is ever making for the source whence it ) proceeded forth and the Holy Ghost is its initiator into the eternal nature : it floods the secret chamber of the soul, and lo ! she loses time and place in the eternal, in time transcending time. But for the soul this is not enough : had she enough she would have time in lieu of her eternity. Let us not flag. Not ours the blame if, being ready and atoned in will, God hides himself so that we cannot do all things with him although he plays his part just as the sun gives out its light and fire gives out its heat. Woodapples cannot check the letting of their gall, but God contrives from time to time to reach out to the longing soul if he is very near to her. So let her, never doubting, with hearty longing, hail God frequently : O Friend of me, how long am I to wait for thee ? '
He says, to Christ w^as given a new name : one by the angel, another by St Paul, a third by his heavenly Father. The angel gave him the name Jesus Christ. Joseph and Mary called him by
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this name which signifies Weal of the World. The name is given to the wounded soul. Alas, we are too frail ! We should be well of our infirmities being raised up and gotten in ; we should be raised if we were destitute and unattached. For tlie exalted spark wherein we see the light divine, that never parts from God nor is there anything between. What matter then if good and ill and pain betide, they do but touch the lower faculties.
St Paul gave him three names and called him the rclieetion of the Father. He says, the wounded soul is given the mystic
heavenly bread. Whence comes her wound ? From longing.
What is longing? -It is love. What is nobler than longing? What wc pray God for humbly and with longing he durst not refuse : desire ablush with modesty he leads into the triple chamber of the Holy Trinity.
Paul called him also the fecundity of the Father and the image in the Father, working with the Father to brijig forth his Person. Verily I say, the soul will bring forth Person if God laughs into her and she laughs back to him. To speak in parable, the Father laughs into the Son and the Son laughs back to tlic Father ; and this laughter breeds liking, and liking breeds joy, and joy begets love, and love begets Person, and Person begets the Holy Ghost. In this wise docs he travail with his Father.
The third name he gave was. The Majesty of the Substance of God. Majesty is the essence of his divine substance, this substance being the elemental matter of the three Persons. The soul is called majesty when she gives u]) mode : then she knows the Father and paternity, the Son and filiation, and the Persons of them twain she comprehends in unity. The Father gave him five names, ineffable. God keep us every whit in him. So help us God. Amen.
XIX
PAUL ROSE FROM THE GROUND
Surrexit autem S aulas de terra apertisque occults nihil videbat {Act, 93). This statement which I quote in Latin is made in St Luke's narrative about St Paul. It records that Paul rose from the ground with open eyes and seeing nothing.' The words are open to four inter|>retations. One is, that wdien he rose up from the ground he was gazing wide-eyed at naught, that naught being God, for the vision of God he would describe as the naught. Another explanation is that when he got up he saw nothing but God. The third, he saw naught but God in all things. I'hc fourth, that in the divine vision he beheld all things as a naught. He previously tells how light came suddenly from heaven and felled
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him to the ground. Mark you, he says that the light came from heaven. According to our doctors, though heaven is fraught with light it does not shine. The sun is full of light and shines withal. Our doctors teach that fire docs not give any light in the simple, natural perfection of its highest state. Its nature is too pure for eye in any wise to see. So subtle is it, so unlike the eye, that were it here below within our view it could not stimulate our eyes to sight. And yet, forsooth, we see it is absorbed by different things, such as a lump of coal, a piece of wood.
By the light of heaven we see the light that is God whereto no mind of man is able to attain. As St Paul hath it : God dwells in a light that no man can approach unto.' He says, God is light inaccessible.' There is no admittance to God. No man still on the ascent, still on the increase in grace and in light, has ever yet got into God. God is no crescent light : we get to him by growing. In the growing procicss God is unseen. When God is seen it is in the light that is God himself. A master says, In God there is no more nor less nor this nor that. Whiles we are on the way we arc not there.
He says, A light from heaven shone round about him.' Implying the capture of his entire soul. A master says that in this light all the soul-powers are exalted and raised to a higher power, the outward senses we see and hear with as well as the inner senses we call thoughts : the reach of these and their pro- fundity are most amazing. I can think as easily about things overseas as close at hand. Above thought comes the intellect, as seeker. She goes about looking, casting her net here and there, gaining and losing. Above intellect the seeker there is another intellect which does not seek but rests in its pure and simple essence in the realm of light. And I say it is in this light that all the soul -powers are exalted. Senses rise to thoughts. How high, how fathomless these are, that no one knows except God and the soul.
Our theologians teach, and it is a knotty question, that angels know nothing about thoughts unless the thoughts take wing and rise up into intellect -- intellect the seeker ; and this intellect, the seeker, soars up into the intellect which does not seek, which is the pure light in itself. This light embraces all the powers of the soul. Accordingly he says, The heavenly light encircled him.'
One master lays it down that anything which has an emanation is exempt from these lower things. God emanates into all creatures without being affected by any. He does not need them. God energises nature and her first work is the heart. Wherefore some doctors would pretend the soul is altogether in the heart and flows thereout as life into the other members. Not so. The
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soul is in each member, whole. True, her chief work is in the heart.. The heart being in the middle gets protection on all sides, just as heaven is protected from outside influence and intrusion. It contains all things. It moves all things and itself remains unmoved. Not even fire, exalted though it be in its most high estate, can lick the heavens.
In the encircling light he fell to earth, and his eyes being unsealed he, open-eyed, beheld all things as naught.' And beholding all things as naught he was beholding God. Mark here what the soul says in the Book of Love : By night in my bed I sought him my soul loveth : I sought him and I found him not.' She sought him in her bed : meaning to convey that any- one cleaving to aught below God has too narrow a lie. God's entire creation is all too confined. Quoth she, I sought him all night through.' There is no night without the light : only, it is veiled. The sun is shining in the night albeit screened from view. By day it shines, eclipsing all the other lights. So does the light of God ; it blinds and puts out any light. Our creaturely expecta- tions, all these are night. What I mean to say is, that nothing we find in a creature is more than a shadow and dark. Even the highest angel's light, exalted though it be, illumines not the soul. All but the first light is darkness, is night. By it she cannot find God. I rose and sought him all about, I scoured the broadways and the alleys. The watchmen (angels) found me, and I questioned them, " Saw ye not him whom my soul loveth ? " ' But they answered not ; peradventure they could not apprehend him. It was but a little that I passed and I found him my soul loveth.' The little, the trifle, that she missed him by has often been the burden of my teaching. He to whom mortal things are not all trivial and as naught withal, that man shall not find God.
Having passed by a little,' she says, I found him whom I sought.' When God pours into and informs the soul and thou takes t him as a light or a state or a boon, whatsoever thou knowest about him, that God is not. We have to transcend the little, discard the adventitious and perceive God one. She says, When I had passed by a little I found him my soul loveth.'
We are very fond of saying, him my soul loveth.' But he is far away above the soul, nor does she name her love. There are five reasons why she names him not. One is that God is nameless. Any name she gave him would have to be well chosen. God is beyond all name, none can express him. A second reason is that on swooning away into God for love, the soul is conscious of nothing but love. She fondly imagines that everyone knows him like that. She is amazed that any wight should find him aught but love alone. Thirdly, she has no time to name him. Love
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does not leave her any time to use another word. Fourthly, perchance she weens he has no other name than love. In love she pronounces all names. Quoth she, I rose up, I went through the broad streets and the alleys. And when I had passed a little I found him rny soul loveth.'
Paul rose from the ground wide-eyed, beholding nothing.' I cannot see what is one. He saw nothing, to wit, God. God is naught and God is one. What aught is is naught as well. What God is is he altogether. As Dionysius says about the light : speaking of God he says. He is supernatural, supervital, super- luminous ; he will allow him neither this nor that, but makes him out to be I know not what that far transcends them. Aught seen, aught that may come within thy ken, that God is not ; for why, God is not this nor that. AVhocver says that God is here or there, credit him not. The light which God is shines in darkness. God is the true light : to sec it one has to be blind and strip God naked of things. A master says. To argue about God from any sort of likeness is to argue falsely about him. But to argue about God from naught is to argue soundly withal. \Vhen the soul is reduced to one and is gotten therein by discarding herself altogether, there she finds God, as it were, in a naught. It appeared to one soul as in a dream (it was a waking dream), to be big with naught like a woman with child, and in this naught God was born, the fruits of the naught. God was born in the naught. Therefore he says, He arose from the earth wide-eyed, gazing at naught.' He had a vision of God where there are no creatures. He beheld all creatures as naught for he had the whole essence of creatures in him. He is the all -containing essence.
Another thing he means by saying, he saw naught.' Accord- ing to our masters, any perception of externals entails some inroad by them, an impression at the least. To get some idea of a thing, a stone, for instance, I do (not) take into my mind the grossest part of it ; that I leave outside. As it exists in the ground of my soul where it is at its noblest and best, it is merely a type (or idea). Things perceived by my soul from without contain an outside element : my ])creeplion of creature in God contains nothing but God alone, for in God there is nothing but God. When I sec all creatures T see not. He saw God where creatures are not.
In the third place, why he saw naught. Naught was God. A master says. Creatures in God are as naught for he has in him the whole essence of creatures. He is the being that contains all beings. The master says. Nothing inferior to God, however nigh it might be to him, but has some alien taint. The master says an angel knows himself and God without means. Into other things he knows there comes an outside element, some interference still,
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however slights If we are to know God it must be without means, nothing foreign can come in between. When we do see God in his light it happens in private, safe from the slightest intrusion of creaturely things. Then we have immediate knowledge of eternal life.
Seeing nothing, he saw God.' The light which is God is flowing and darkening every light. Concerning it Job says, He coiU' manded the sun not to shine and sealeih up the stars as it were with a seal.' Enveloped in this light he could see naught beside ; his whole soul was distraught, intent upon the light that is God to the exclusion of all else ; and this is a lesson to us, for what time we are busy with God we mind little what goes on without.
Fourthly, he saw naught since the light which is God is un- mingled, free from admixture. It shows it ^vas the true light he beheld for there was nothing there. By light he simply means that he saw nothing with his open eyes. In that he saw not, he saw the divine naught. St Augustine says. When he saw nothing, he saw God. According to St Paul, Whoso only seeth being blind, he seeth God.' As St Augustine hath it, God is the true light, preserver of the soul, more nigh to her than she is to herself, and by the same token, when the soul turns her hac^k on things becoming, then God must needs shine into her. This soul knows neither love nor care, she is unmindful of th(*m. The soul that fares not forth to outside things comes home to stay in her im- partible pure light. She does not love nor does she fear nor care withal. Knowledge is the basis, the foundation of all being. Love has no hold except in knowledge. When the soul is blind and can see naught beside, then she sees God, it is inevitable. A master says, the eye at its clearest, without any colour, sees every colour ; not just as a colourless thing in itself, but in place in the body it has to be void of all colour for us to see colours. In colourless things all colours arc seen, aye, though it be down in one's feet. God is something all-embracing. For God to be seen by the soul she has to be blind. Accordingly he says, ^ lie saw the naught whose light all lights are, whose being all beings are.' The bride says in the Book of Love : When I had passed by a little I found him my soul loveth.' The little she had passed all creatures were. Whoso putteth not these behind him shall not find God. And eke she would imply that however small, however pure a thing I know God by, yet it must go. Even the light that verily is God, if I take it where it plays upon my soul is foreign to him. I must take it at the source. I cannot really see the light that shines upon the wall unless I turn my gaze to w^here it comes from. But if I take it in its cause I am robbed of its effect. I ought to take it neither where it falls nor in its eruption nor yet
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as brooding in itself; these are all mere modes. We must take God in modeless mode and unconditioned essence, for he is free from mode. St Bernard says : He who would know thee, God, must mete thee with no measure. Please God we may attain that understanding which is wholly without mode and without measure. So help us God. Amen.
XX
AND BEHOLD THERE WAS A MAN . . . SIMEON
Et ecce, homo erat in Jerusalem^ cui nomen Simeon etc, {Luc, 235). St Luke relates in his gospel that when the days were accom- plished Christ was brought to the temple. And behold there was a man in Jerusalem, Simeon by name, who was just and God- fearing, waiting for the consolation of the people of Israel and the Holy Ghost was in him.'
* And behold.' This particle et in Latin signifies joining, binding or locking together. Things fast bound or locked together are described as in union. Here I refer to the soul being bound, knit, united to God. According to our doctors, union postulates likeness. There is no union without likeness. Binding or knitting together, that is the meaning of union. Nearness to me does not constitute likeness : my sitting by someone or in the same place, for example. As St Augustine says. Lord, when I found myself afar from thee it was not from the remoteness of the place, it came of thy unlikeness wherein I found myself. One master says, people living and working wholly in time never agree, they never come together. According to our doctors, a thing whose life and work is in eternity and a thing whose life and work is here in time require a go-between. Where there is knitting and binding together there must be some likeness. The union of God and the soul is a matter of likeness. Where no difference exists there must be identity ; not merely union in mutual embrace, but one ; not merely likeness, but the same. Wherefore we say that the Son is not like the Father but he is his image, he is one with the Father.
One of our best doctors says that an image in stone or on the wall, with no foundation to it, taken simply as a form, is the same form as his whose form it is. For the soul passing into her exemplar wherein is no alien thing, only her form wherewith it is one, this doctrine holds good. Having gotten the form that is divine we behold God, we find God. In separation God is not found. On passing into her exemplar and finding herself in that image alone, in that same image the soul finds God and the finding of herself and God, which is all the same act and is timeless, is the finding of God. So far as she is therein so far she is one with God, He means :
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as far as a man is at the stage where his soul is the divine image. Then so far as he is he is divine. So far therein so far in God, not annexed, not united but one and the same.
One master says, likeness means birth. Further he states that like is not met with in nature unless it is born. Doctors declare that fire, however fierce, would never burn had it no hope of propagation. However dry the wood supplied it would never catch (if fire) lacked power to generate its kind. What fire wants is to be born in wood, for all to be one fire, living and lasting. Extinguished and dead it were fire no more, so it wants to keep in. The nature of the soul would never have gotten its kind were it not for her wanting to have God begotten in her ; she would not have proceeded into her nature, would never have wanted to enter therein, except in the hope of this birth ; nor would God ever have brought it to pass had he not meant the soul to be born into him. God docs and the soul desires. God has the energy and the soul has the will and the power to have God born into her and her- self into God. This God contrives with intent that the soul shall be like him. She must needs wait for God to be gotten in her and for her treasure to grow into God, desiring union and the safe- keeping of God. God's nature pours into the light of the soul and therein she is preserved. God purposes thus to be born into her, united with her, contained in her.- -How can that be ? Do we not say that God contains himself ? -- When he draws in the soul she finds that God is self-contained and there she stays abiding nowhere else. Augustine says : As thou lovest so thou art : loving earth thou art earthly, loving God thou shalt be divine.' If I love God then, shall I be God ? It is not I who say so ; search the scriptures. In the Prophets God says : Ye are gods and the children of the Most High.' I say that it is in his likes that God gives this birth. Had she no expectation of this the soul would not want to attain it. She wants to be preserved in him, he is her life. God has a preserve, a safe place in himself, which man can know nothing about until he pares off and is rid of all that belongs to the soul -- her life, her powers, her nature, all must go. And that means standing in that perfect light where she and God are one form, where she finds herself God. It is characteristic of God to have nothing alien in him, nor on him nor added to him. And likewise it behoves the soul to have no outside impressions, nothing put on, nothing annexed. So much for the first (word).
And behold ' : ecce. This word ecce has all the meaning of logos (or word) and it could be given no greater. Word, i.e, God. God is a word, God's Son is a word. It conveys the idea of our life nnd all our desire being centred in and dependent upon and odented to God. As St Paul says, By the grace of God I am
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that I am.' And again, I live, yet not I but God liveth in me.' What more ?
Homo erat. He says, Behold, a man.' We use the word homo for women as well as for men, but the Latins refused it to woman because of her weakness. Homo denotes something whole, nothing lacking. Homo, a man, a mortal, means one pertaining to earth, implying humility. Earth is the basest of the elements and placed in the midst with the heavens all round, it lies open to every celestial emanation. All the work and waste of heaven is caught midway in the sink of earth. Homo in yet another sense means moisture ; as much as to say, one who is watered with grace ; referring to those humble souls who receive the immediate influx of grace. In this inflowing grace there forthwith arises that light of the mind into which God is sending a ray of his unclouded splendour. In this powerful light a mortal is as far above his fellows as a live man is above his shadow on the wall. This light is vastly potent, not merely being in itself exempt from time and place, but anything it falls upon it robs of time and place and bodily semblance and everything extraneous thereto. As I have often said before, were there no time nor place nor aught beside it would be all one being. The man who is in this sense one and casts himself into the ground of humility, there will be watered with grace.
Concerning the third point : this light deprives of time and place. There was a man.' Who gave him this light ? The light did. This word erat belongs expressly to God. In the Latin tongue there is no word so proper to God as erat John in his gospel comes to using erat as a synonym for pure being. Things are all extras : but addition is possible only in thought ; not by mental addition but by mental abstraction. Goodness and truth are additions, in theory at least, but the abstract essence without anything to it is what is meant by erat Again, erat implies birth, an end of becoming. I was coming to-day, now I have come ; and if we eliminate time from my coming and having arrived, then coming and come close up into one. Where coming and come coincide, there we are born and re-made and re-formed into his primitive form. I have often said that all the while a thing's aught is a matter of concrete existence it never will be re-created ; refurbished it may be and coloured afresh, even as a seal that is old : that is restamped and renewed. A heathen doctor says, Things yonder no time can stale ; there is the blessed life in the evermore : faultless, care-free, unalloyed being. Solomon says : There is nothing new under the sun,' though this is seldom taken in its proper sense. Everything under the sun grows old and dies, but yonder is nothing but new. Time brings two things : age and
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decay. What the sun shines on is present in time. Creatures are here and are from God, but yonder where they are in God they are not at all the same as they arc here ; they are as different as the sun is from the moon, far more so. Erat in eOy he says : " the Holy Ghost was in him,' wherein is being and becoming. There was a man.' Where was he ? In Jerusalem. Jerusalem meaning vision of peace ; it stands, in short, for man's peace and prosperity. It possibly signifies more. Paul says, The peace that passeth all understanding keep your hearts and minds.' Pray God we may be such as to enter into this peace, which is himself. So help us God. Amen.
XXII
HE THAT HATETH HIS SOUL
Qui odit animam suam in hoc mundo in vitam ceternum custodial earn (Joh» 1235). I quote in Latin the gospel saying of our Lord, He that hateth his soul in this world shall keep it in eternal life.' Now mark what it is our Lord means when he speaks of a man hating his soul. He that loveth his soul in this mortal life and as she exists in this world shall lose her in eternal life ; but he that hateth her mortal guise shall keep her unto life eternal.
There are two reasons for his using here the word soul. Accord- ing to one authority soul is a name for the ground (or soil) and has nothing to do with the nature (or ground) of the soul. As a master has said, Whoso discourses of moveable things trenches not on the nature or ground of the soul. Try to name the soul as she is in herself, in her pure and abstract nature, and not a name can wc find. They call her soul as they call a carpenter, neither a human being nor after any being at all but after his work. What our Lord means is this : he that loveth his soul in her nakedness, her impartible soul-nature, to wit, will hate and despise her in this dress. She hates and detests and rues being so far from the pure light she is in herself.
Our doctors say the soul is called fire because of the force and because of the heat and because of the light that is in her. Others declare she is a spark of the celestial nature. A third school calls her a light. A fourth calls her a breath. A fifth dubs her a number. They are trying to describe the soul by something pure and luminous. Number exists in the angels and in light there is number as well, but to name her after the highest and after fhe brightest is still to fall short of the ground of the soul. God is nameless is ineffable and in her ground the soul too is
^ See also Spamer's Texte, etc., A. 5. One Latin and two German versions.
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ineffable as he is ineffable. There is another reason for his saying that she hates. This term we apply to the soul is the name of the soul as she is in the prison of the body, so he means the soul in her individual state, still at the stage of taking thought, still in her prison-house. By taking thought for these nether things, by taking them in by her senses at all, she is confined : words cannot name any higher nature within her.
There are three reasons why my soul should hate herself. The first, that in so far as she is mine she is not God's. The second, because my soul is not wholly imbedded and set and re-cast into God. Augustine says, To have God for one's own one must needs first be God's. The third reason is : the soul's enjoying herself as the soul while enjoying God with the soul, which is wrong. She should be enjoying God in herself since he is entirely hers. As Christ says, he that loveth his soul shall lose it.' What the soul is in this world or beholds in this world : things comprehended, apparent at all, she shall hate. A master declares that the soul at her highest and purest transcends the whole world, nothing attach- ing the soul to the world but affection. Sometimes she has a natural love of the body. Sometimes she has a will inclined towards creatures. Another says the soul has no natural concern with the things of this world any more than the ear has with colour or the eye has with song. Our natural philosophers teach that the body is much rather in the soul than the soul is in the body. Even as the cask contains the wine and not the wine the cask, so does the soul keep the body in her rather than the body the soul. What the soul loves in this world she is pure from by nature. According to one philosopher, it is the soul's nature and her natural end to achieve within herself a feat of understanding, God informing her with the general idea. He that can say he has attained his nature finds all things within himself, fashioned in light as they are in God ; not as they are in nature but as they are in God. Neither spirit nor angel touches the ground or nature of the soul. In it she comes into the first, into the beginning, whence God breaks out in goodness into all creatures. There she loves all things in God, not pure as they are in her uncompounded nature, but merely impartible as they are in God. God has made this whole world as it were out of coal. Its pattern in gold is more lasting than this one in coal. Likewise the things in the soul are purer and nobler than they are in this world. The material which God made things out of is (to its exemplar in God) baser than coal is to gold. For the purpose of making a crock a man takes a handful of clay ; that^is the medium he works in. He gives it a form he has in him, nobler than^^his material. And the moral of this is that the things in the intelligible world, the soul, to wit, ffxe in.fi;>itely nobler
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than they are in this ; even as the image hewn and graven in gold so the types of all things are onefold in the soul. A master says, The soul has a natural gift for being impressed with the forms of all things. Another one says. Never did soul get to her virgin nature without finding all things imaged therein in the intelligible world which is incompreljensiblc, unthinkable. Gregory says : All reasoning in words about divine things is but a stammering.
One word more about the soul and I have done. O ye daughters of Jerusalem, look not upon me because I am brown I The sun hath coloured me and the children of my mother have striven against me ' {Cant, I5). She refers to the children of this world, to them the soul speaks. The sun is the lust of this world : the visible, tangible things thereof do turn me swarthy and brown. Brown is not a pure colour : it is part light and part darkness. When the soul thinks or acts with her powers how enlightened soever these be, still, there is confusion. And therefore she says,
' My mother's children have striven against me.' These children being the lower powers of the soul, all clashing and at strife with her. The heavenly Father is our father and Christendom is our mother. What though she be fair and well-favoured and good at her work, yet this is not perfect. Wherefore he cries, O thou fairest among women go forth and depart.' This world is like a woman, weak. But why does he address her, O fairest among women ? ' The angels are fair and arc far above the soul. He says, fairest ' : in her light-nature. Go forth and depart ' ; go forth from this world and depart from such things as thy soul is still prone to. And anything grasped let her hate.
XXII
THE LORD PUT FORTH HIS HAND
Misit dominus manum suam et teligit os meum et dixit rnihi etc, {Jer, I9). The Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth
and said unto me.'
When I preach it is my wont to speak about detachment, of the duty of ridding ourselves of self and of things. Or again, of return to the impartible good, God to wit. And thirdly, on the duty of remembering the high and noble nature God has put into the soul so that mortals may wonder about God. Fourthly, about the pure nature of God, the ineffable splendour of God. God is a ^ord, an unspoken word. Augustine says : All scripture is vain.' Wo say that God is unspoken, but he is unspeakable. Grant he is somewhat : who can pronounce this word ? None but the Word, ^od is the Word which pronounces itself. Where God exists he
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is saying this Word ; where he does not exist he says nothing. God is spoken and unspoken. The Father is the speaking energy and the Sun is the speech energising. What is in me goes forth of me ; I have but to think and my word goes forth, at the same time abiding within. Even so does the Father speak forth his Son who meanwhile remains in him unspoken. I have repeatedly said, God's exit is his entrance. In proportion to my nearness to God does he speak himself into me. In the case of rational creatures the more they go out of themselves in their works the more they get into themselves. Not so with corporal things : the more active these are the further they get from themselves. All creatures desire to speak God in their works : they all of them speak him as well as they can but they cannot really pronounce him. Willy-nilly, in weal or in woe they are all trying to utter God who yet remains unspoken.
David said, The Lord is his name.' Lord means one set in authority ; knox)e means an underling. Some names are proper to God and forbidden to aught beside God. God is the name peculiar to God just as 7nan is the name for mankind. A man is a man be he foolish or wise. Seneca says, 'Tis a vile man that excels not humanity.' Anotlier name we associate with God is paternity. When wc call a man father y we take for granted a son. No father can be without having a son. True, they merge, beyond time, into eternal nature. The third name in its higher sense relates to God and in its lower one to time. God is called by many names in scripture. Now I say, anything wc can think of in God or put any name to, that God is not. God transcends name, transcends nature. Wc hear of one good man who in prayers besought God for his name. Then, Peace ! ' quoth a brother,
thou art abasing God.' Wc can lind no name to give to God ; but we arc permitted to use the names his saints have called him by, those whose hearts inspired by God were Hooded with his divine light. Hence we learn, first, how to pray to God. Wc ought to say. Lord, in those very names which thou didst instil into the hearts of saints, suffusing them with thy light, wc praise thee and adore thee. And secondly we learn that in giving God no name at all we praise and honour him suflicicntly since God is above name and ineffable.
Out of the fullness of his power the Father speaks the Son and in iiim all things. All creatures arc the utterance of God. Like as my lips proclaim and tell forth God so does a stone's existence, and we can glean more from the fact than from the telling of it. Work wrought by highest nature in its sovran power a lower nature cannot comprehend. If it did the selfsame work then would it not be lower, but the same. Creatures all want to copy
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God in all they do. But it is precious little they are able to reveal. Even the highest angels, inasmuch as they ascend and come in touch with God, are no more like than black and white to that which is in God. It is altogether different, what creatures have received, yet they all desire to speak as nearly as possible the same. The prophet says : Lord, thou sayest one and I understand two.' When God speaks into the soul, as it falls it divides. The higher we soar in our understanding the more we arc in him. In eternity, the Father is speaking his Son all the time and i^ouring forth all creatures in him. They all have a call to return whence they came forth. Their whole life and nature is a vocation, a flight back to what they came out of.
The prophet says : The TiOrd sent forth his hand,' meaning the Holy Ghost. He says, he touched my mouth,' and straightway there follow the words, he spake unto me.' The mouth of the soul is the highest part of the soul and she has this in mind when she says, he hath put lus Word into my mouth,' this being the kiss of the soul ; mouth to mouth the Father conveys his Son into the soul, then he speaks to hi*r, saying, Lo, this day I have chosen thee to set thee over nations and over kingdoms.' God says he will choose us to-day. Yonder in eternity, where time is not, there is ever to-day. And 1 have set thee over nations,' i,e, above this world which thou must be rid of ; and over kingdoms,' meaning, that more than one thing is too much ; it behoves thee to die to all things and get back to the height where we dwell in the Holy Ghost. Amen.
XXIII
THE SFIHIT OF THE LOHD
Spiritus dotnini replcvit orhem terrarum etc, {Saj). I 7 ). The
spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world.'
A philosopher says, All creatures bear witness to the divine ?iature whence they proceeded forth, in their will to emulate the Deity they came from.
Creatures proceed forth in two ways. The first is a radical process, like I'oots coming out of a tree. The second emanation is by mode of will. Behold the twofold emanation of divinity. One the descent of the Son from the Father, this after tlie manner of a birth. The other, the outpouring of the love of Father and Son, the Holy Ghost, to wit, for in him they love one another. All creatures proclaim their origin, their divine descent betrays itself in their works. According to a Greek philosopher, God
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keeps all creatures in leash, as it were, and they must follow where he leads. Hence nature is aye making for the highest.
The second emanation is the Holy Ghost, by mode of will. Nature would fain make nothing but the Son ; were she allowed she would do father's work, so nature would be ever giving sons did she not suffer accidental lapses. When nature is working in time and space then father and son are different. One master explains that a carpenter building a house will erect it first in his mind and, were the house subject enough to his will, then, materials apart, the only difference between them would be that of begetter and suddenly begotten. Lo, thus it is in God, for since there is no time nor place in him, therefore they are one God, there being no distinction save outpouring and outpoured.
According to the scriptures, The spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world.' Why is he called Lord ? Because he fills us. Why is he called spirit ? Because he unites us with himself. A lord is known by three signs. First, he is rich. Rich means possessing all things without stint. Hence none is really rich but God in whom all things are harboured indivisibly. So he can give all things and this is the second sign of riches. A philosopher says, God hawks himself to all creatures and each takes as much as it wants. I trow God offers himself to me as he docs to the highest angel and were I as apt as he is I should receive as he does. As I have often observed, God always behaves as though he was trying to please the soul. The third sign of riches is, giving for love ; whoso giveth for aught is not really rich. God's richness is shown by his giving all his gifts gratis. As saith the prophet,
Thou art my God, thou needest not my possessions.' He alone is the Lord and the spirit. I say, he is spirit ; our happiness lies in union with him.
The most excellent work of God in creature is being. My father gives me my nature but he does not give me my being : God does that, none beside. That is why everything that exists takes such a shrewd delight in being. The being of the soul receives the influx of God's light ; not pure and limpid as God sends it forth but in ambient undulations. We can see the sunlight where it falls upon a tree or any other object, but we fail to appre- hend the sun itself. And so with any gift of God : these arc all meted out according to the taker not according to the giver.
A philosopher says, God is the standard of measure,' and so far as one mortal contains more God than another, to that extent he is wiser and nobler and better than the other. To have more of God simply means being more like him : the more God's likeness exists in us the more spiritual we are. A philosopher says, Where the lowest spirit ends the highest bodily thing begins.' All of
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which goes to prove that God being spirit, the least of spiritual things excels the best of corporal things. Soul is more excellent than anything bodily. Soul is contained in a place, as it were, betwixt time and eternity, touching them both. With her higher powers she is in touch with eternity ; in her inferior powers she is in contact with time. Thus, mark you, in time she does not function according to time but in her eternal nature which she has in common with the angels. Spirit is a subtle thing, bringing life to all the limbs in virtue of the close accord of soul with body. Albeit spirit is rational, and does the entire work, yet we do not say, my soul docs so and so, for both of them together are a man. This fact I may make bold to state : because of the intimate union of the body and the soul the soul is in the smallest member as much as in the body as a whole. St Augustine says, The union of body and soul may be close, but closer still is the union that spirit has with spirit.' Lo, he is Lord and spirit, may he beatify us by uniting us with him.
It is a puzzling question how the soul survives when God imprints himself in her. Consider. Were God to give her any outward being she would scorn it ; but when he gives her himself in himself she receives and suffers in his and not in her own, his being hers : he has fetched her out of her own so his is now hers and hers really is his. So she suffers in union with God. This is the spirit of the Lord which has filled the whole world. Amen.
XXIV
ST JOHN SAW IN A VISION
St John saw in a vision a lamb standing on Mount Sion and with l^m stood forty and four who were not of this world nor had they wifely names. These were all virgins who stood next the lamb, and when the lamb inclined they inclined with him, singing with the lamb a new song and having their names and the name of their Father written in their foreheads.
John says, I looked and lo, a lamb stood on the mountain.' I say, John himself was that mountain whereon he saw the lamb, and whoso sees the Lamb of God must himself be the mountain, ascending to his highest, purest part.
Again. He says he saw a lamb standing upon a mountain : when one thing stands upon another its lowest point touches the other's highest. God touches all things and remains untouched. God is above all things standing in himself and his instance sus- tains all creatures. Creatures have an uppermost and undermost, ^od has not. God is over everything and is not touched by
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anything. All creatures seek outside themselves, in one another, what they lack. God does not. God does not look outside him- self : everything that creatures have God has entire in him ; he is the floor, the roof of ereatures. True, one is prior to another down to the very last, one being born before another : though ereature gives not of her being to him, yet she keeps some of his. God is a simple presence, a stay-at-home in himself. With any creature, as regards her noble nature, the more she sits at home the more of herself she gives out. A common stone, like limestone, for example, gives itself out a stone and nothing more. But a precious stone, this has great power because of something in it, some interior fastness wherein it rears its head and, so to speak, peers out. According to the masters, no creature is so stay-at- home as body and soul, nor goes so far afield as the soul's highest part.
He says, I saw a lamb standing.' From which we learn four things. First, the lamb is fed and clothed and that in goodly fashion, which to our mind looks as though we, having gotten so much from God and that so goodly, arc bound to seek in all we do only his honour and his glory. Again, the lamb stood. It is good for friend to stand by friend. God stands by us, is standing by us, steady and unmoved. He says : There stood with him a multi- tude, each having written in his forehead his name and the name of his Father.' liCt at least God's name be written in us. We must bear God's image in us and liis light must lighten us, if we would be John.
XXV
THE LORD HATH SENT HIS ANGEL
Nunc scio vere, quia misii doininus angelum swum {Act Freed from his prison bonds by the power of the supreme God, Peter exclaims, Now I know of a surety that the Lord hath sent his angel and hath delivered me out of the power of Herod, out of the hand of the enemy.'
We will reverse the words and say, The Lord hath sent his angel, therefore I know of a surety.' Peter symbolises intuition. As I have often said, intuition and intellect do not unify the soul in God. Intellect is a matter of pure being. Intuition, its fore- runner, goes ahead and penetrates to what is born there : God's onc-begotten Son. Our Lord declares, in Matthew, that no one knows the Father but the Son. Now, philosophers say under- standing lies in likeness. Some of them say the soul is made of all things since she is capable of understanding all things. That sounds ridiculous, but it is true. They say that anything I know must
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be wholly present to me in the likeness of my understanding. But according to the saints, power is in the Father, likeness in the Son and union in the Holy Ghost. Hence, if the Father is all present to the Son and the Son is all-to like him, therefore no one knows the Father but the Son.
Peter says, Now I know of a surety.' Why does he know of a surety ? Because it is divine light which does not deceive. And because we see in it quite clearly without anything to hide the view. Paul says concerning it : God dwells in light inacces- sible.' Doctors declare that the wisdom we learn here stays with us yonder. St Paul says it will go. A philosopher once said, Real knowledge, even in this body, is intrinsically so delightful that the sum-total of created things is nothing to the joys of pure perception.' Yet noble though it be, it is but contingent ; as one small word to all the world even thus insignificant is all the wisdom we learn here compared with the whole and perfect truth. Look you. Paul says it goes. And even if it stayed it would turn to foolishness and be as nothing to the actual truth we see. Thirdly, we surely know, for things seen here as changing we see as changeless there where we get them as a whole and indivisible, approximately one, things widely sundered here being close together there where all things are at hand : both the first day and the last arc happening at the present instant yonder.
Now I know of a surety that the Lord hath sent his angel.' When the Lord sends his angel to the soul she becomes sure- knowing. Not unjustly God ordained Peter should keep the key. For Peter stands for intuition, and it is intuition with the key that unlocks and goes in and finds God face to face, whereupon she notifies her find to her partner, will, she having had the will before, for what I will I seek. Perception leads the way. It is the princess seeking the prince upon the mountain- top, in virgin realms ; she proclaims him to the soul and soul to nature and nature to the passions of the body. So noble is the soul at her highest and her best, the doctors cannot find her any name. They call her anima because she animates the body.
Theologians say that next to the first emanation of the Godhead, when the Son breaks out of the Father, his angel is most like to God. True, soul is like to God in her highest part, but this angel is even more like God. All that belongs to this angel is godlike. The angel was sent to the soul to bring her back to the very same form wherein he is formed, for knowledge comes by likeness. The soul is capable of knowing all things and she never rests till she attains her original form wherein all things are one ; it is there she rests, in God. In God one creature is no better than another. According to the masters, being and knowing are the same, for
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things that are not are not known and things that are most are most known. God has transcendent being, so he transcends all knowing, as I said in my first sermon two days back. The soul, informed with primitive light, sealed with the seal of pure being, smacking of God prior to truth and gnosis, with every named nature sloughed away : the soul (I say) at this stage of all-perfect know- ledge has gotten being to match. As St Paul says, God dwells in light inaccessible.' He hangs suspended in his own pure being whereto naught is attached. He is merely a presence in himself, where neither this nor that exists, for what is in God is God.
A heathen says. They that hang under God arc hanging in God, and while having real subsistence in themselves do yet impend in him who has neither end nor beginning, for in God nothing alien betides. Heaven affords us an example. It never takes in aliens as aliens. And by the same token, what gets to God is changed : however vile it be, on bringing it to God it sheds its self. For in- stance, I may have wisdom but not be it. I can gain wisdom and can also lose it. But what is God's is God ,* it cannot leave him. It is implanted in God's nature ; God's nature being so stable that anything to do with it is settled in it once for all or always stops outside. Now reflect and marvel I If God converts vile things into himself, how ween ye he will treat the soul, which he has dignified with his own image ?
XXVI
THE FEAST OF THE VIRGIN
JEmulor enim vos dei cemulatione etc, {2 Cor. llg). In the name of our Lord. We read on the Feast of the Virgin the words of St Paul, I have espoused you to one husband, Christ, rejuvenant.' The masters ask, Has the Son been born ? ' We say, no ! The masters ask, Is the Son going to be born ? ' We say, no I The masters are answered : the Son is fully born, he is being born anew unceasingly. St Paul says, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.' His power is his wisdom and his wisdom is his power. Christ is the man whose youth is perennially renewed.
Now St Paul says, To this man I have espoused you.' For as marriage between man and wife is binding, so there is eternal marriage between your souls and God. A maid is given to a man hoping to bear his child. And God did make the soul intending her to bear in her his one-begotten Son. The happening of this birth in Mafy ghostly was to God better pleasing than his being bom of her in flesh. And this same birth to-day in the God-loving soul delights God more than his creation of the heavens and earth.
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The philosophers say the soul is bigger than the heavens. St John says : He who sat upon the throne declared, " Behold, I make all things new." ' Now, according to St Augustine, God's speaking is his child-bearing and his child-birth is his Word.' God spake never a word but one and that he holds so dear that he will never say another. If God stopped saying his Word, but for an instant even, heaven and earth would disappear. Augustine says : As the marriage of man and woman is for good and all, so is the marriage of the soul.' The highest power of the soul, the one for ever straining up to God, is called the man. The lower power, the one that is condemned to wander among mortals, is the maid. The higher power, the man, goes all uncovered. But the lower power, the maid, is closely veiled and this lower power is taken to the higher. To this nature it belongs to be always active. It tries all the time, father-like, to beget ; and were it not prevented, a son would be always being born as with the heavenly Father. But what God does of his free gift (man's) nature hinders and a girl is born ; but were there neither time nor place nor matter, man would rejuvenate himself as the Son does the Father, always.
God said : Behold I make all things fruitful.' Then why am I myself not fruitful ? God first bears his image in the God-loving soul and afterwards himself. If God gave himself to the soul here in time she would be vexed. So he gives her himself in eternity, in the perennial now, up-springing freshly without ceasing. She is too curious to rest until she finds her source. This is quite plain from Philip's words : Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied.' As the eternal Son of God comes welling up in his paternal heart, so he wells up in the God-loving soul. Mortal things work outwardly, ghostly things work inwardly. The soul this birth once happens in, that soul is nigh let into God ; if it happens twice she gets still more into God. The more frequent this birth the deeper in God and the closer knit into the Father's heart. This birth transcends here and now. Here^ that is, place ; noWy that is, time. It befalls in eternity. May we, being born in him, enable him to bear himself in us. So help us Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
XXVII
REJOICE IN THE LORD
Gaudete in dominie iterum gaudete etc, {Philip, 44). St Paul says : Rejoice in the Lord and have no more care : the Lord is present with your thoughts which are known unto God in prayer and thanks- giving.' Rejoice in the Lord alway,' he says. Jerome declares that none receives knowledge nor wisdom nor honour from God
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except he be a virtuous man. No virtuous man is he who, changing not his ways, docs not receive from God knowledge and wisdom and joy. He says again : Rejoice in the Lord.' Not in our Lord but in the I^ord. I have repeatedly explained that God's lordship consists not alone in his being lord of all creatures : his lordship consists in having the power to create a thousand worlds and to transcend them every one in his pure essence : therein lies his lordship.
Rejoice in the Lord (alway),' he says. And here we note two precepts. First, that we must remain all within in the Lord, not looking for him outside whether in knowledge or in love : simply rejoice within in the Lord. The other precept is : rejoice in his innermost in his first, whence all things get their joy and take their being. That is the meaning of Rejoice alway.' As St Augustine hath it, He rejoices all the time who is rejoicing above time and timelcssly.' Then he goes on to say: Have no more care. The Lord is present, is at hand.' The soul must needs cast off all care what time she is rejoicing in the Lord, leastwise on her union with God. And hence his words, Have no more care : the Lord is present, he is nigh.' In other words, God is with us in our inmost soul, provided he find us within and not gone out on business with our five senses. The soul must stop at home in her innermost, purest self ; be ever within and not flying out : there God is present, God is nigh.
Another meaning of the particle by which he employs. He is in himself, not going far out but remaining all by himself. Quoth David ; Rejoice, my soul, O Lord, for unto thee have I lifted her up.' The soul must put forth all her strength to lift herself above herself and be translated beyond time and place into the void where God is in and by himself, not going out nor eke in touch with any outside thing. Jerome remarks that God can no more have recourse to time and temporal things than stones can have angelic wisdom.' He says: The Lord is nigh.' Quoth David: God is nigh unto all them that call upon him, that call upon him in truth and invoke him.' How to call upon him, to call upon him in truth, to invoke him, that I leave aside. But he uses the words in truth.' The Son alone is the truth and not the Father, save in the sense that they are one truth in their essence. That is truth which reveals what I have in my heart without likeness. This revelation is truth. The Son alone is the truth. The whole content of the Father's love he speaks at once in his Son. This utterance, this act, is the truth.
He goes on to say : Your thoughts arc known unto him in the Lord,' i.e. in this truth with the Father. Faith inheres in in- tellectual light and sight in the combative faculty which is always
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aspiring to the highest and the purest : to the truth, where God is in himself. I have sometimes said, watch me these souls : their power is too free, too passionate to bear restraint of any kind.
XXVIII
THE ANGEL GABRIEL WAS SENT^
Missus est Gabriel angelus etc. {Luc. Ige). St Luke says in his gospel, the angel was sent from God into a land called Galilee, into a town called Nazareth, to a virgin called Mary, who was of the house of David.' According to Bede, the theologian, this was the beginning of our salvation. I have said before and say again that everything our Lord has ever done he did simply to the end that God miglit be with us and that we might be one with him, and that is the reason why God was made man. The masters say that God was ever being born in our Lady ghostly ere ever he was born of her in flesh, and from the overflow of that begetting wherein the heavenly Father begat his one-begotten Son within her soul the eternal Word received its human nature in her and she became with carnal child.
He says, the angel was sent from God.' The soul would scorn to have the angelic light were it not sent to her from God ; if there were not concealed in it the light of God to make the angel's light detectable, she would have none of it.
He says, the angel.' What is an angel ? Three doctors give three different definitions of what an angel is. Dionysius says, An angel is a mirror without flaw and passing clear containing the reflection of God's light. Augustine says, An angel is nigh unto God and matter is nigh unto him. John Damascene says. An angel is a reflection of God and through all that is his there is shining the image of God. The soul has this image in her summit whereon the light of God for ever shines. This is his first definition of an angel. Later on he calls him a dividing sword, aflame with divine desire, and, he adds, angels are free and inimical to matter.'
He says, the angel was sent from God.' What for ? Accord- ing to Dionysius, an angel has three functions. First, he purifies, next he enlightens, and lastly he perfects. He purifies the soul from stain, i.e. he purges her from matter and gathers her together to herself, cleansing her from foulness as one angel does another. Then he enlightens her in twofold fashion. Divine light is so overwhelming that the soul is unable to bear it unless it is tempered in the angel's light and so conveyed into the soul. He enlightens
^ See also Sievera' No. 2.
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her therefore by reflection. The angel conveys his own knowledge to the soul and strengthens her in this way to bear the light of God.
If I were in a wilderness alone and was afraid, the presence of a child would dissipate my dread and give me courage, so noble, so blithe a thing is life. Failing a child, a beast would comfort me. Hence necromancers use an animal, a dog (for instance), the animal's vitality invigorating them. Knowledge is power. The angel conveyed it to the soul in preparation for the light of God.
He says, the angel was sent from God.' The soul must be like an angel in the ways that I have named if the Son is to be sent to her and born in her. But there remains the question of how the angel perfects her. May God send his angel to us. So help us God. Amen.
XXIX
THE ANGEL GABRIEL WAS SENT
Missus est Gabriel angelus (Luc. Ige). In time the angel Gabriel was sent from God.' In what time ? In the sixth month, John being then quick within his mother's womb. When anyone asks me, Why do we pray or why do we fast or do our work withal, I say, So that God may be born in our souls. What were the scriptures written for and why did God create the world and the angelic nature ? Simply that God might be born in the soul. All cereal nature means wheat, all treasure nature means gold, all generation means man. As the philosopher says. No animal exists but has somewhat in common with mankind in time. First of all when a word is conceived in my mind it is a subtle, intangible thing ; it is true word when it takes shape in my thought. Later, as spoken aloud by my mouth, it is but an outward expression of the interior word. Even so the eternal Word is spoken in the inner- most and purest recesses of the soul, in the summit of her rational nature, and there befalls this birth. Whoso has nothing more than a firm belief in and lively conviction of this will be glad to know how this birth comes to pass and what conduces to it.
St Paul says : In the fullness of time God sent his Son.' St Augustine was asked what it meant, this fullness of time. It is the fullness (or end) of the day when the day is done : then the day is over. Certain it is that there is no time where this birth befalls, for nothing hinders this birth so much as time and creature. It is an obvious fact that time affects neither God nor the soul. Did time touch the soul she would not be soul. If God were affected by time he would not be God. Further, if time could touch the soul, then God could not be bom in her. The soul wherein God is born must have escaped from time, and time must
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have dropped away from her ; she must be absolutely one in will and desire.
Another fullness of time. If someone had the knowledge and the power to gather up the time and all the happenings of these six thousand years and all that is to come ere the world ends to boot, all this, summed up into one present now, would be the fullness of time. This is the now of eternity, when the soul knows all things in God, as new and fresh and lovely as I find them now at present. The narrowest of the powers of my soul is more than heaven wide. To say nothing of the intellect wherein there is measureless space, wherein I am as near a place a thousand miles away as the spot I am standing on this moment. Theologians teach that the angel hosts are countless, the number of them cannot be conceived. But to one who sees distinctions apart from multiplicity and number, to him, I say, a hundred is as one. Were there a hundred Persons in the Godhead he would still perceive them as one God.
As regards the angels. The angels, of whatever rank, abet and assist at God's birth in the soul ; that is to say, they have satisfac- tion, they delight and rejoice in this birth. Nothing is wrought by the angels : the birth is due to God alone and anything that ministers thereto is work of service. May God be born in us, So help us God. Amen.
XXX
VISION IS THE WHOLE REWARD'
Beatus es, Simon Bariona, quia caro et sanguis non revelavit tibi^ sed pater meus, qui in coelis est {Matt, I617). Blessed art thou,
Simon Peter,' says our Lord, for flesh and blood have not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in heaven.' St Peter has four names : Peter and Barjona and Simon and Cephas. Our Lord says, Blessed (or happy) art thou.' Everyone desires happiness. As the philosopher hath it. All men desire to be. Hence St Augustine's dictum, The good man wants no praise, he wants to be praiseworthy. And our own doctors teach withal that virtue is so pure, so wholly abstract and detached from corporal things in the ground and summit of its nature that nothing what- ever can occur therein without defiling virtue and introducing vice. The least thought or suggestion of self-seeking and it is not virtue : it is turned to vice. Such is virtue by nature.
A heathen philosopher says, Virtue, except for virtue's sake, is in uo wise a virtue.^ If its object is 'praise or aught else, that is.
a
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bartering virtue. Genuine virtuJ^s not to be sold for anything on earth. Wherefore the good man seeks no praise : he seeks to be praiseworthy. It is not the chiding that we ought to mind but the fact of deserving to be chidden.
^ Blessed art thou,' quoth our Lord. Beatitude lies in four things. To have all that has being and is lustily to be desired and brings delight ; to have it all at once and whole in the undivided soul and that in God, revealed in its perfection, in its flower, where it first burgeons forth in the ground of its existence, and all con- ceived where God is conceiving himself-- that is happiness. The name Peter means seer of God. Now, theologians question whether the kernel of external life lies more in intellect or will. Will has two operations : desire and love. Intellect, with its simple function, is therefore better ; its work is understanding, and it never stops till it gets a naked hold on what it sees. Withal it nins ahead of will and tells it what to love. We desire a thing while as yet we do not possess it. When we have it we love it : desire then falling away.
What must a man be to see God ? He must be dead. No man can see me and live,' said our Lord. Now St Gregory says, That man is dead who is dead to the world.' Ye can judge for yourselves how dead one may be and how little can touch us the things of this world. By dying to this world we do not die to God. St Augustine prayed a variety of prayers. Grant me, Lord,' he said, to know both thee and me.' O Lord, have mercy upon me and show me thy face and grant me that I die not until I eternally behold thee.' This is the first point ; one must be dead to see God. So much for the first name, Peter.
One philosopher says, were there no means we should sec the beloved in heaven. But another one says, were there no means we should see nothing. Both of them are right. The colour on the wall which is carried to my eye is filtered and refined in the air and in the light and transmitted in a pure state to my eye. Even so the soul must be strained by light and grace before it can see God. So rather is that master right who said that without means we should not see at all. But the other one is also right who said that without means we should see the beloved in heaven. For the soul would see God naked if there were nothing between.
The second name, Barjona, signifies a son of grace, in whom the soul, clarified and sublimed, is meet for the vision of God.
The third name is Simon. That is to say, one who listens, one who obeys. To hear God one must be divorced from the world. David says, I will be still and listen to what God is saying in me.' He pronounces peace in his Word, on his saints, on his people, on all such as commune with their heart. Happy the man who is
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busy attending to what God is saying in him. He is directly subject to the divine light-ray. The soul that stands with all her powers under the light of God is fired and inflamed with divine love. The divine light shines straight in from above, and a perpendicular sun on one's head is a thing that few can survive. Yet the highest power of the soul, her head, is held erect beneath this shaft of godly light so that there can shine in this light divine which I have oft described as being so bright, so overwhelming, so transcendent, that all lights are but darkness in comparison with this light. All creatures, as so being, are as naught ; dowsed in the light wherein they get their being they are aught. IIow noble soever the natural mind yet to reach, to grasp God without means the soul must possess these six qTialifications I speak of.
First, she is dead to changing things. Next, she is well clarified in light and grace. Thirdly, she is without means. Fourthly, she hears God's Word in her heart. Fifth, she is under the divine light. The sixth is the heathen philosopher's definition of happiness : one perpetual ascension and vision of beatitude in God. Where the Son himself is understanding, in his first leaping forth, there in God's highest we too shall understand. Wherefore it behoves us to keep our head turned steadfastly that way.
Cephas means a head. Understanding is the head of the soul. The superficial notion is that love stands first. Rut the soundest arguments expressly state (what is the truth) that the kernel of eternal life lies rather in knowledge than in love. This mark, for our best masters say, will no special thing, and lo ! intellect, under- standing, this flics straight up to God. Love turns to the loved : she finds there what is good. Intellect seizes the cause of the good. Honey is sweeter in itself than anything we make from it. Love takes God as being sweet, but intellect goes deeper and conceives God as being. Blessed art thou, Simon Peter,' quoth our Lord. To the righteous man God gives divine being, and calls him by the name which is appropriate to that being. Thus he goes on to speak of my Father which is in heaven.' Among names none is more appropriate than He-who-is. That one should recognise a thing and simply say, it is, would seem absurd ; call it a stone, a bit of wood, and we know what that means. But suppose every- thing detached, abstracted, pared away, and nothing left except the is ; that is the characteristic nature of his name. Our Lord promised his disciples, My followers shall sit at my table in my Father's kingdom, and shall eat my meat and drink my drink which my Father hath prepared for me.' Happy is the wight who has attained to receiving with the Son just where the Son receives. Right there we too shall find our happiness, and there in
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his felicity, there where he has his being, in that same ground his friends shall all behold and thence shall draw their happiness. That is the table in God's kingdom. May We approach that table. So help us God. Amen.
XXXI
THE MAN IN THE SOUL
Vir mens serous tuus mortuus est {4 Reg. 4j_7). The woman said to the prophet, My husband thy servant is dead and the creditors are come to take my two sons as bondsmen for the debt, for I have nothing but a drop of oil.' Then said the prophet, Go borrow empty vessels and pour a little in : it will increase and multiply and will pay thy debt and release thy sons. Thou and thy children can live on the rest.'
The spark {i.e. the intellect, the head of the soul), the so-called husband of the soul, is none other than a spark of the divine nature, a divine light, a ray, an imprint of divinity. A woman begged our Lord for the water which he gives. Whoso drinks of this shall never thirst. Theologians say, the best gift of God is the Holy Ghost wherein God bestows all his grace and favour, his living water, namely. Whom I give this to shall never thirst.' This water is grace and light upspringing in the soul to everlasting life.
The woman said, Sir, give me of this water.' And our Lord replied, Bring me thine husband.' She said, I have no husband.' Quoth our Lord, Tliou hast well said ; thou hast not one, thou hast had five, and he whom now thou hast is not thine husband.' St Augustine asks : Why docs our Lord reply, " Thou hast well said " ? ' What he means is this : thy five senses, these are the five husbands thou hadst in thy youth, after thine own heart ; now in thine age thou hast one, not thine own : intellect, namely, and this thou dost not obey. When the man in the soul, the intellect, is dead, unchecked evil prevails. To separate soul and body is bad enough, but for the soul to be divorced from God, that is a far worse matter. As the soul is the life of the body so God is the life of the soul. As the soul suffuses our members so God suffuses the powers of the soul and is passed on by them in goodness and love to everything round that they may be aware of him as flowing all the time, i.e. above time, in eternity and in the life they live.
The woman said, Sir, my husband thy servant is dead.' Serous means one who receives, receiving another's ; one who keeps and keeps for another. To keep for himself would make
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him a thief. Intellect is a servant, more so than will is or love. Will and love fall on God as being good : were he not good they would ignore him. But intellect pierces right through into essence, reckless of goodness, of power, of wisdom, of things accidental whatever they be and added to God. Not looking for these she gets them in him when, merged into his essence, she knows God simply as existence. What though he be not good nor just, yet she enjoys him as pure being. Here intellect is like the highest rank of angels of which there are three choirs. The Thrones receive God into them and preserve God in themselves. In the Cherubim God rests; they sec God continually. The Seraphim are ardent (burning) : like to these is the God-bearing intellect. With these angels the intellect spies God, in his vestibule, naked, as one without difference.
Quoth the woman, Sir, my husband thy servant is dead, and the creditors have come for my two sons.' What arc the two sons of the soul ? St Augustine, and with him a heathen doctor, speaks of the two faces of the soul. One is turned towards this world and towards the body, in this she works virtue and wisdom. The other face gazes straight into God ; the divine light is always in it, and this tells upon it unless, through being from home, she has it unawares. When the spark of the intellect carries right into God, then the man is alive. The birth lakes place. Not once a year it happens nor yet once a month nor once a day but all the time, beyond time, in the open, where there is neither here nor now nor thought nor nature. That is why we speak of sons, not daughters.
Now, to speak of the two sons in another sense. As under- standing and will. Understanding leaps out of the intellect first and is afterwards followed by will, from them both. But no more of this. -- These two sons of intellect may be taken in yet another way. One as power, the other as actuality. One heatlicn doctor says that it is in this power the soul becomes all things, ideally. In her actuality she is, like the Father, making all things new. It pleased God to seal her in the nature of all creatures : before the world when she existed not. God wrought this whole world ghostly in every single angel before he made the world itself. An angel has two understandings. The one is morning light, the other is the evening light. In the morning light he sees everything in God. In the evening light he sees things in the light of his own nature. When he goes out into things it grows night. So long as he remains within he has the evening light. We say that the angels rejoice when a man becomes good. But, our best doctors ask, do the angels also repine when a man commits sin ? We say : No ; they see into the justice of God and enjoy all things therein
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as they are in God. Therefore they do not repine. Intellect in its potential power is like the angel's natural light, i,e. the evening light. With her actual power she raises all things up into God, where all things are bathed in the morning light.
Quoth the woman, The creditors are come to seize my two sons for their slaves.' Then said the prophet, Go borrow empty vessels from thy neighbours.' These neighbours mean all creatures and the five senses and the powers of the soul with her interior faculties which work in secret and are angels. From all these neighbours borrow empty vessels. Let us borrow empty vessels ; these filled with heavenly wisdom will give us means to pay our debt and, on the rest, to live eternally. So help us God. Amen.
XXXII 1
THE SOUL SPARK
Homo quidam fecit coenam magnum {Luc, St Luke relates
in his gospel how a certain man gave a great supper or evening entertainment.' Who makes it ? A certain man. What does he mean by calling it a supper ? One master says this betokens great affection, seeing none arc bidden save the intimates of God. * When we give a morning party all and sundry are invited but to an evening meal wc invite important people, the people that we like and our own familiar friends.* Secondly, he has in mind how perfect are those souls who enjoy this evening meal. The evening never comes without a whole day having gone before. Were there no sun there were no day. Sunrise, that is morning light which goes on getting brighter up to middle-day. Just as the divine light rising in the soul gradually eclipses the powers of the soul until the advent of the noon. No day, no spiritual day, at all can dawn within the soul except she receive divine light. * Divine light breaks into the soul and makes her morning, and the soul mounts up in this light into space, to the zenith at high noon.* Thirdly, he implies that to take this supper worthily we have to come at evening. When the light of this world fails it is the evening. As King David sings, He riseth in the evening and His name it is the Lord I ' So Jacob at eventide did lay him down to sleep. This betokens peace of mind. Fourthly, he remembers, as St Gregory points out, that after supper there comes no other meal. * When the spark in the soul takes in divine light it needs no other sustenance but keeps ever to this divine light.*
^ See also Jostes, Nos. 1 and ; and Spainer's Texte, A. 4 (3 versions), from which the starred passages are added.
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To whom God grants this provender, so fragrant, so delicious, that soul shall never relish any other fare.
St Augustine says, God is of such a nature that once embracing him we can never rest elsewhere.' St Augustine says, Lord, so thou take from us thyself, grant us then another thee or we shall have no rest ; we have no mind for aught but thee.' One holy man says of the God-loving soul, that she gets out of God whatsoever she will, befooling him so thoroughly he can deny her not a thing there is. He took himself in one way and gave himself another way: he took himself God-and-man and gave himself God-and- Man, another self in a mystic vessel. Very precious hallows arc not wantonly exposed to public gaze and touch. So he clad him- self in the frock of the appearance of bread, even as my bodily food is altered in my soul, which is not in my nature for an instant without combining with it. For there is a power in nature which separates the base and throws it out, and the high invades the low to the last needle-point and is embodied in it. The things I ate a fortnight since are every bit as much united with my soul as what I did receive within my mother's womb. Whoso takes this food fasting becomes as truly one therewith as flesh and blood arc with my soul.
There was a certain man ; the man had not a name because this man is God.
The philosopher affirms concerning the first cause that it transcends speech. All words fail. Because of the surpassing pureness of its nature. We have but three ways of speaking about things : first, in terms of things above them ; second, of their likes ; and thirdly, of the works of the things. To give you an example. The power of the sun draws up the precious sap out of the roots into the shoots and brings it out in flower, here the solar power being above it. * As wc say of the tree, so we say of the things above the tree ; of the sun, for example, which is working in the tree.* Likewise I say the divine light is working in the soul. * The spark in the soul being drawn up in this light and in the Holy Ghost and borne aloft to its first source. But nothing true can be spoken of God, because there is nothing above him.* That the soul expresses God does not in anywise affect his real intrinsic being : no one can express what he actually is. Some- times we say one thing is like another. * We can say nothing of God because nothing is like him.* Creatures enclose a mere nothing of God wherefore they cannot disclose him. The painter who has painted a good portrait therein shows his art : it is not himself that it reveals to us. Creatures can no more give out God than they can take in exactly what he is.
The God-and-Man has prepared this supper, the ineffable man
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who is wordless. According to St Augustine, what we say about God is not true and the things that we say not are true. Things we say that God is he is not ; what we say he is not that he is rather than what we say that he is.
Who has prepared this repast ? A man, the man who is God. King David says, O Lord, how great and manifold is thy enter- tainment, the sweets that are laid up for them that love thee ! ' (Not them that fear thee.') St Augustine meditating on this food, regarded it with loathing and distaste, when lo! he heard a voice from within, I am the food of the great, wax and grow great * eating me ; nor ween not that I shall be turned into thee : thou shalt be turned into me.* When God works in the fiery heat the diverse things within the soul sublime and burn away. By the absolute truth ! soul enters more into God than any food into us ; nay, the soul is changed into God. There is a power in the soul which splits off what is base and is absorbed into God. To wit, the spark of the soul. My soul becomes more one with God than food does with my soul.
Who has prepared this evening meal ? A man. Dost know his name ? * Not
I. His name is not spoken. He is more silence than speech. He is above name. What food has he prepared for this feast ? Himself, no less than himself.* (What does the servant mean ?) According to St Gregory the servant means preachers. And in another sense the servant means the angels, *thc angels ever calling us with interior voice.* Thirdly, methinks this servant is the spark of the soul, which is sent there by God and is his light striking down from above, the reflection (or image) of his divine nature and ever opposed to anything ungodly : not a power of the soul, as some theologians make it, but a permanent tendency to good ; aye, even in hell it is inclined to good. According to the masters, this light is of the nature of unceasing effort ; it is called syndcresis, that is to say, a joining to and turning from. It has two works. One is remorse for imperfection. The other work consists in ever more invoking good and bringing it direct into the soul, even though she be in hell. It is a great supper. He said to the servant, Go out and compel them to come in, those that are bidden, for all things are now ready.' All that he is the soul receives. What the soul desires is now prepared. The things God gives have always been. Behold them new and fresh and all at once in the eternal now.
A gr^at philosopher declares that anything I see comes into my eyes purified and ghostly, and the light that comes into my eyes would never get into my soul but for a power above it. * There is a power in sight which is superior to the eyes set in the head
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and more far-reaching than the heavens and earth. This power seizes all the things that come into the eye^ and bears them up into the soul.* St Augustine says the spark comes nigher to the truth than any human knowledge, flight burns. They say that one is lighted from another. If so, the light is higher than the thing that burns. For instance, take a taper, extinguished but still glimmering and smoking, and hold it to the light ; this will glance down and light the other. They say one fire burns another. But I traverse that. Fire, I ween, does burn itself. For one thing to burn another it must needs be above it, like heaven, for example, which burns not and is cold ; natheless it sets on fire and that by dint of contact with the angels. For this the soul prepares by practice. Then she is fired from above. By the angelic light. He says to the servant, Go out and say to them that were bidden, Come, for all things arc now ready.* Then one said,
I have bought a piece of ground, I cannot come.' These arc they who still have worldly cares ; they never taste this supper. A second said, I have bought five yoke of oxen.' These five yoke, I fancy, stand for the five senses, for each sense is self and other and the very tongue is double. So in my story yesterday, when God said to the woman, Bring me thy husband,' she replied,
I have none.' Whereupon quoth he, Thou sayest truly : thou hast had five, and him whom now thou hast is not thine husband.' The moral is that those who live the life of the five senses never taste this food. The third one said, I have married a wife, therefore 1 cannot come.' The soul is all-to single when she turns to God. As glancing down in this direction she is woman ; but as seeing God in himself and visiting God at home she is the man. Of old it was forbidden to men to dress in woman's clothes or women man's. She is man when she penetrates into God, impartibly and without means. But when she peers forth at all she is woman. * As I have repeatedly said, the man in the soul is the intellect. When the soul looks straight up to God with her mind then the soul is the man, she is one and not two. But thinking and glancing down she dons female dress.* Quoth our liOrd, Verily, these shall not taste of my supper ' ; and he commanded the servant, Go out into the streets and the lanes, into the highways and hedges -- the narrower the wider and hedged about.' * For the more recollected the soul the less scattered she is and the more concentrated the wider her ken.* And some of her powers arc hedged into one sense. The power I see with I do not hear with, nor with my power of hearing can I see. So with the rest (of the five senses). But on the other hand, the soul exists entire in every member; there is some power, therefore, not confined to place at all.
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What is the servant ? Angels and preachers (so says St Gregory). But, as it seems to irie, the servant is a symbol of the spark. He says to the servant, Go out into the hedges and drive in thither these four kinds of folk : the poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind : Verily, none other shall taste of my supper.' Let us throw off those three and rise up man, So help us God. Amen.
APPENDIX 1 Synderesis
Oxford MS.
The meat and drink I took a fortnight since has turned into my blood, my flesh, my nature. That is due to the power of the soul which brings it into my nature ; it is as truly one with me as what was born with me.
So does the power of the Holy Ghost take the purest and lightest and highest and the spark of the soul and carry it up in the fire of love. Just like the sun's power ; this lays hold in the roots of the tree of what is most pure and essential, drawing it up into the branches where it flowers. Even so is the spark of the soul being always drawn up in the light and in the Holy Ghost and conveyed into its source, becoming all-to one with God and searching him so throughly that it is more the same as God than food is with my life.
I say it is the light up in the soul where the soul nature
Mark first in St Andrew his singleness of life and spiritual attainments whereby his soul was enabled, in her intellect, to ascend in the grace of God above all creatures into God.
For the power of the Holy Ghost seizes the very highest and purest, the spark of the soul, and carries it up in the flame of love. Just as the power of the sun takes what is purest and subtlest out of the roots of the tree and draws it into the branches where it is in flower. Likewise the soul-spark is conveyed aloft into its source and is absorbed into God and is identified with God and is the spiritual light of God.
There are two lights in the soul, one is a light up in the
^ See Zuchhold, No. 26. Turallel passages from an Oxford MS. of Eckhart's Sermons (Sievers' copy), and a sorinon on St Andrew, evidently by the same hand, but boaring tlie name of Nikolaus von Landau. See also Jostes, Nos. 1 and 69.
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touches angelic nature and passes into the angelic nature ; it is from God and is pouring into the soul above nature.
Some say it is a power. It is not. A servant is mentioned, that is the intellect. There soul attains angelic nature and is the image of God.
In this light the soul has intercourse with angels and ckc with those angels that are fallen into hell. There the spark subsists without any kind of suffering, turning straight up into God.
And withal she is like the good angels in this power, who work unceasingly in God, be- holding God in God and return- ing all work into God.
This light the soul carries within her. The masters call it a power in the soul, this synderesis. It is not. It means something hanging to God and is ever averse from evil.
In hell it tends to God. It is
soul at the point where the soul is by nature in contact with the angels' nature. The other light is what I speak of. This light pours into the soul from on high, above nature.
Some call it a power of the soul. But it is not. It is called synderesis. To wit, the intellect which is a spark (or ray) of God the Father given by God out of his Godhead's God- nature, and is the form of God without any difference at all. In it she is in touch with the angelic nature.
In this light the soul has community with angels also those cast into hell. There the spark is free from all suffering and faces straight up into God and has precisely his nature.
And withal she has a some- what, mind, in common with good angels who are constantly working in God and emanat- ing from God and bearing back all their work into God and receiving God from God in God.
The intellect is like to these good angels, drinking God in his eternal savour, his living sweetness and in his own ground. She is sent away from God and is ' a light that (re)turns : the reflection of the divine nature which the soul has cast into her. The masters call it synderesis which is as much as to say something suspended from God all the time and which never docs wrong.
In hell, says St Augustine, it
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ever at war in the soul with the impure and the ungodly.
is turned to God. In the soul it wages constant war with things that are not pure and are not godly.
It looks neither to God's glory nor possessions. It presses up into the goal of divine essence and is the true God's messenger which leads and draws mankind to the celestial feast : ct misit servum suum hora ccne.
XXXIII
IF YE THEN BE RISEN WITH CHRIST
lS'^ consurrexistis cum Christo, qum sursum sunt, qucerite, ubi Christus est in dexter a dei sedens etc. (Col. 3|). St Paul says : If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above and set not your affections on the things on earth.' Then he goes on to say, ye are dead, and your life is hid in Christ with God in heaven.' Thirdly, there are the women seeking our Lord at the sepulchre. There they found an angel whose countenance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow,' and he asked the women, Whom seek ye ? If ye seek Jesus who was crucified, he is not here.' For God is not in any place. Of God's lowest all creatures are full and his highest is nowhere. They answered him not, for they were disappointed at finding the angel and not God. God is not here or there, not in time or place.
St Paul says : If ye be risen w^ith Christ, seek those things that are above.' His first word expresses doubt. Some people rise by practising one virtue not another. Some, ignoble by nature, covet riches. Others, of a noble kind, care nothing for possessions but are bent on honour. One master says the virtues all hang upon each other. Though a person lean to the uses of one virtue rather than another they stand and fall together. Some people rise up all at once and yet rise not with Christ. That which is his rises once for all. On the other hand, we do find some who rise with Christ for good and all, but it will need a man of many parts to know in Christ the true resurrection. The masters say that with true resurrection there is no more death. Now there was never virtue so outstanding but someone might be found to have acquired it, and that by natural means, for natural powers work many signs and wonders, all the outward works found in the saints being found
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too in the heathen. And that is why he speaks of being risen with Christ,' because he is on high, above the reach of any creature. What we have to do is to make the whole ascent.
There are three signs of our having risen altogether. The first : we seek those things that are above. The second : our affections are set on the things above. The third : we set not our affections on the things that are on earth. St Paul says : Seek those things that are above.' But where and in what way ? King David tells us to seek the face of God.' What is common to a number must needs come from above. Above the lire itself there are the fire-givers like the heavens and the sun. Our best doctors teach that heaven is the locus of all things, and though it has itself no place, no natural place, yet it makes room for all things. My soul is undivided ; also, it is entire in each member. Where my eye sees my ear does not hear ; where my ear hears my eye sees not. My bodily hearing and sight are engineered in the mind. Light gives my eye a sense of colour which is lacking to the soul by reason of its being a defect. All the outward senses are alive to, if the spirit is to take it in, must be raised up by the angel : he imprints it in the upper portion of the soul.
The above designs and produces the below, so our doctors say. Even so St James asserts that Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above.' One who is risen to the full with Christ is known by his seeking for God above time. He seeks God above time who seeks him timeless. Seek those things that are above,' he says. Where shall we look ? Where Christ is sitting
on the right hand of his Father.' Where is Christ sitting ? He is sitting nowhere ; he is nowhere. If ye seek him anywhere ye shall not find him. A master has said that he who sees anything does not see God. Now Christ means anointed ; the anointed of the Holy Ghost. Sitting, theologians say, symbolises rest and implies timelessness. Turning and changing lead nowhere : stop- ping we progress.
I am God, I change not,' saith the Lord. Christ sitteth on the right hand of his Father.' The best gift of God, that is his right hand. With natural man, he starts his work with his right hand. Christ says, I am the door.' The first outburst and the first effusion God runs out in is his fusion into his Son, a process which in turn reduces him to Father. I said on one occasion that the door was the Holy Ghost : there he is poured out in blessings into all creatures. According to one master, the heavens receive from God direct. Another one says. No ; God is spirit, pure light, and anything receiving straight from God must itself be spirit and pure light. The master denies that it is possible, in the first eruption, the first escape of God, that any corporal thing should
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take it in : it must be either light or abstract mind. The heavens transcend time and are the cause of time. One philosopher maintains that the heavens are too lofty in their nature to stoop to be the cause of time. It is not in their nature that they are the cause of time : it is in their revolution that, timeless, they give rise to time, i.e. in the defection of the heavens. My looks are not my nature, they are accidents of nature ; our soul is far above them, out of sight in God. And hence I say, not only above time but hid in God. That is what heaven means. Everything mortal spells deficiency : rise and fall, growth and decay. King David sings, A thousand years in God's sight are as a day that is past ' : for all the future and the })ast yonder are in the now. May we find this now. So help us God. Amen.
XXXIV 1
ST DIONYSIUS SPEAKS OF THREE KINDS OF LIGHT
St Dionysius speaks of three kinds of light the soul has who attains to pure knowledge of God. The first is natural, the second ghostly and the third divine.
Now consider what this natural light is and how far it helps her to know God. The soul innately knows that existing things are not of themselves. But there must be one thing that is of itself and from none but itself : whatever that is it created all things.
Further, the soul innately understands that the good which is scattered among things is as a whole in the one cause of things. Also, it is natural to the soul to love each thing so far as it is good. And when her natural intellect stumbles on the cause of things, whose good, broadcast in things, is as a whole in their common cause, then this natural perception provokes in her a natural love towards this cause of all things.
All creatures are infirm and changeful, not in reality (which is exempt) but in the first stages of perfection. St Augustine says, The soul cannot dwell for long upon one thought but lapses from it into others. Neither can she entertain several thoughts at once ; she must leave one and die to it to quicken in another. But God has no community with creatures, wherefore it is evident that there is no deficiency in him. He has no community with creatures ; but this applies alone to God, and in so far as the soul is like him she is without defect. By nature the soul knows and loves God above all things.
The second light is ghostly ; it originates in faith. But the ' Jostes, No. 69.
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whole content of faith is beyond the scope of the nature of the soul. The faith is, that three Persons are in the same nature and the same nature in three Persons. No natural light or intellect is adequate for this, for no natural light affords a likeness of it. What the three Persons do, or are capable of doing, is the product of their unity ; for though there are three Persons they do not act as three but they function as one God. That is a ghostly light whereby the soul in faith can actually see that this is so, (a light) such as her natural mind could never give her.
The third light is the light of glory, divine light. This the soul receives into the chief power of the soul. In this light we see God with nothing between. So far as this light sinks into her chief power so far is God immediately perceived. In this light the soul divines the noble nature of all things in God, for all that ever issued forth or is issuing forth or ever shall, has in God eternal life and being ; not defective as it is in creatures but as his very being for it is his nature. God has his own being not from naught, he has it of his proper nature which in itself is truly aught though naught to the intelligence of creature.
This nature is causeless, therefore it is unfathomable except to causeless understanding. Creaturely intelligence is finite, so it has a cause ; hence it cannot fathom causeless mind, not Christ nor his humanity. Where God is beholding his own nature, which is groundless, it is incomprehensible except to groundless understanding. This understanding is none other than his nature is itself : only God in his own nature can conceive himself. This conception is the understanding wherein, self- revealed, God manifests in light that no man can attain to. As St Paul says, God dwells in light unapproachable.'
XXXV
STAND IN THE GATE
Dominus (licit : sta in porta domus dornini et prcedica verhum istud (Jer. Tg). The Lord says, Stand in the gate of God's house and proclaim his word, extol his word.' The heavenly Eather speaks one Word and that he speaks eternally and in this Word expends he all his might : his entire God-nature he utters in this Word and the whole of creatures. This Word lies hidden in the soul unnoticed and beyond our ken, and were it not for rumours in the ground of hearing we should never heed it ; but all sounds and voices have to cease and silence, perfect stillness, reign. This is a meaning I will not pursue.
Stand in the gate. Who stands there, his limbs are orderly
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disposed. lie is about to speak ; the head of the soul is held stiffly up. The ordered is subject to an order which is higher than itself. Creatures are not of the order of God till the soul's natural light, wherein they get their being, overshadows them, and the angelic light overshadows the light of the soul preparing and adapting it for divine light to work in ; for God works not in corporal things, he works in the eternal. That is why the soul must be recollected and integrated to the spirit. It is there God works and there all works are agreeable to God. Never a thing is to God's liking unless it is wrought there.
Stand in the gate in the house of God, that is, his unity of essence. One is best kept by itself. So the unity stands by God and keeps God together, adding nothing. There he sits in his own presence, in his is -ness, all in himself, nowhere out of himself. But as he melts he runs out. He melts and runs out in his good- ness which, as I have explained, consists of knowledge and love. Knowledge is the flux, for knowledge is hotter than love. But two are better than one. And this knowledge is laden with love. Love is fooled and caught by kindness ; in love I hang about the gate turning a blind eye to the authentic vision. Even stones have love, a love that seeks the ground. If I insist on goodness in the first effusion and seize this at the point where it is good, then I shall seize the gate, not God himself. Knowledge is the better, as being the head and front of love. Love is the will to, the intention. No single thought attaches to this know- ledge : wholly detached and self-forsaken it runs all bare into the arms of God and grasps him in himself.
Lord it is meet that thy house be holy and a house of prayer. What is prayer ? It is the practice of pure being and glorying therein. What is the glory ? The arraying of man in the likeness of God in him. But while any image exists in the soul there is no glorifying God therein, as in a prayer-house, in the length of days. I do not mean days here : when I say length without length that means the length ; breadth without breadth means the breadth. When I speak of all time I mean above time and above it, as I have explained, there is no here or now.
The woman asked our Lord when we ought to pray. Our Lord replied, The hour cometh but not yet, when true worshippers shall worship in spirit and in truth.' For God is a spirit and they must worship in spirit and in truth that which is truth itself. Which we are not ; true we may be, but there is false mixed with it. For ye do not exist in God in that first eruption where truth comes spouting from its source. In the gate of God's house the soul has to stand and trumpet forth his Word- Everything which is in the soul has to utter praise, standing,
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deaf to all the world, in silence and in peace, as I described the angels as sitting there with God. In that choir of wisdom and of burning God on a sudden declares himself to the soul plighting her his troth for good and all. It is the Father begetting his Son and in his Word he takes such huge delight, so fond he is of it, that he never stops but goes on pledging his Word the whole time : timelessly, that is to say. And here we must observe that the house God plights his troth in is deserted : bare spirit, above time. Meet for thine house are holiness and praise, there must be nothing there that does not praise thee.
Our theologians ask, what praises God ? Likeness does. Any likeness to God that lives in the soul redounds to the glory of God. Things at all different from God do not glorify God. A portrait, for example, reflects credit on the painter who embodies in it his dearest conception of his art and makes it the image of himself. The likeness of the portrait praises the author without words. Of little worth is spoken praise or praying with the lips. Our Lord said on one occasion, Ye pray, not knowing what prayer is. There shall come again true prayers, praying to my Father not in words but in spirit and in tnith.* What is prayer ? Dionysius says, The mind's ascent to God, that is what prayer means.' It is a heathen who observes that where spirit is and unity and eternity there God will be at work. Where flesh is warring against spirit ; where disruption is warring against union ; where time is warring with eternity, there God works not : he can do nothing with it. Further, any pleasure we may have, or contentment or comfort, has to go. To worship God she must be holy, summed up to a whole, one spirit naught beside : all wrought up at once into the eternal eternity on high, transcending all. Not all creatures which have been created, it is not them I mean, but all he could do an he would. This soul must transcend. While there is anything above the soul ; while there is anything in front of and in God, she can never enter his ground in the length of days.
Now, according to St Augustine, when the light of the soul eclipses creatures, it is dawn ; when the angelic light eclipses the light of the soul and devours it, then it is broad day. David says, The righteous man mounts up and up to the perfect day.' His path is fair and smooth and pleasant and familiar. And when the psychic and angelic lights are swallowed up in the light divine, he calls that high noon. Now day is at its longest, in its prime, when the sun at its zenith pours its light into the stars and the stars pour it into the moon. These are members of the solar system. And even so the light of God embraces the angelic light and that of the soul, an orderly array, an ascending scale steadily rising in the day, all praising God in chorus. There
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is nothing over that is not praising God : they are all alike, the liker the fuller of God, all lauding God together. The Lord said, I will abide with thee in thine house.' Dear God, we do beseech thee abide thou with us here, to the end that we abide with thee eternally. Amen.
XXXVI
YOUNG MAN, ARISE!
Adolescens, tibi dico : surge {Luc, 7^^), Our Lord went to a city called Naim, and many of his disciples went with him and much people. And when they came under the gate there was a dead man carried out, a youth, the only son of a widow. And our Lord came and touched the bier whereon the body lay, and said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise ! ' The life spake life into the dead. The youth arose and straightway took up his parable : his resurrection by the eternal Word.
He went to a city. I say, that means the soul which is well ordered and fortified in the Holy Ghost and, having set a watch for sin and shut out multiplicity, is safe and sound in Jesus : en- compassed and walled round by the light of God. As the prophet hath it, God is the wall round Zion.' The eternal wisdom says, In the holy and in the sanctified city I shall have like repose.' Nothing is so restful, so unifying, as like ; hence same and in and near and by. That soul is holy in whom is God alone and wherein no creature finds rest. He says, I shall have like repose in the holy and in the sanctified city.' All sanctity is of the Holy Ghost. This nature nothing transcends : beginning with the lowest it works it up into the highest. Philosophers say air only turns to fire when it is rarefied and hot. The Holy Ghost seizes the soul and clarifying her in its light and grace draws her up to the supreme. He says, In the sanctified city I shall alike repose.' As the soul rests in God so God reposes fn her. If she rests partly in him then he rests partly in her ; if she rests wholly in him he rests wholly in her. That is why the eternal wisdom says, I shall repose alike (or equally).'
According to philosophers, the green and yellow colours of the rainbow merge into one another too gradually for any eye to follow, however keen its sight. And nature works so gradually when it resolves itself into the first effusion, this is so homogeneous with the angels, that Moses durst not write thereof for fear of the faint- hearted, lest they should worship them : so much the same they are with the first emanation. One high authority definitely states that the topmost angel is so nigh the first eruption, he has in him so much of God's likeness and God's might, that he it is who cares
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for and looks, after this whole world as well as all the angels who are under him. The moral of which is, that God the high, the pure, and the impartible is operative in his highest creature who exerts his power, as a viceroy rules the land in the name of the king. He says, In the holy and in the sanctified city alike do I repose.'
As I was saying lately, the gate or door that, melting, God flows out by, is goodness. Essence is self-absorbed : not an effusion but an inner fusion. And unity is one and self-contained : aloof from everything and free from outside intercourse. But goodness is the melting and running out of God : his diffusion to the whole of creatures. Essence is the Father, unity the Son, and goodness is the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost seizes the soul (the sanctified city) at its purest, at its highest, and hales it up into its first source, which is the Son, and the Son bears it on into his source, his Father namely, into the ground, into the first, where the Son has his being ; where the eternal wisdom is in like repose in the holy and in the sanctified city, in the innermost.
He says our Lord went to a city called Naim.' Naim means son of a dove, which suggests simplicity. The soul shall never rest in her potential power (or nature) till she is simplified to God. It also signifies a flow of water and implies passivity of soul towards sin and imperfection. The disciples symbolise the divine light which shall flow in and flood the soul. The much people ' are the virtues whereof I lately spoke. The soul shall ascend in fiery aspiration and pass above the manifold merit of the angels to the greater virtues. So she comes under the gate ' and enters into love and unity : the gate whence they bore out the youth, the widow's son. Our Lord came and touched the bier whereon the body lay.' How he came and how he touched I will not dwell upon but upon the words, Young man. Arise ! '
He was the son of a widow : her man was dead. Ilcncc dead too was her son, the only son of the soul, the will and all the powers of the soul, for all these are one in the innermost mind, and mind {ix, intellect) is the man in the soul. Her husband was dead, therefore her son was dead also. Young man, I say unto thee. Arise ! ' When the Word addresses the soul and the soul replies in the living Word, then the Son is alive in the soul.
Philosophers ask which is the better, the power of plants or the power of words or the power of stones ? Let us consider. Words derive their power from the original Word. But the abuse and multiplication of words impairs their force. Plants possess great power. I have heard that a serpent was fighting with a weasel when the weasel ran off and fetched a little plant which, wrapping in another plant, it launched upon the serpent and, breaking asunder, the serpent lay dead. What endowed the
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weasel with this wisdom ? The virtue of plant-lore. Therein lies much wisdom. Words, too, have prodigious power: with words we can do wonders. And stones again are very potent in virtue of the likeness wrought in them by the starry and celestial force. Like works in like most mightily, and that is why the soul, by raising herself up in the natural light, can get into angelic light and in the angelic light enter the light divine and so stand in the three lights, at the cross-ways, at the vertex, where the lights run into one. There the eternal Word is saying life in her, and there the soul is living and gainsaying in the Word. So may we be gainsay ers in the eternal Word, God helping us. Amen.
XXXVII
YOUNG MAN, ARISE!
AdolescenSj tibi dico : surge (Luc, 7^^), We read in the gospel that a woman came to our Lord Jesus Christ. She said, Sir, I am a widow, and had an only son who is dead.' Our Lord said, Young man, Arise ! '
The widow, this woman whose husband was dead, and her only son. By this woman is meant the understanding, her husband is the man of the soul, and the youth the highest intelleet, for that is the young man. When the soul is dead in imperfection, the higher mind awakening into understanding cries to God for grace. Then God gives it divine light and it becomes self-knowing. Therein it sees God. I said, intellect alone can receive divine light. The other powers of the soul are instruments and agents for raising the intellect to its maximum lucidity.
It is a question with the theologians, which ranks higher, under- standing or love ? One school says understanding, the other school, love. It is a lively subject of debate. Understanding says : How canst thou love a thing thou dost not know ? Love says : What avails thee thy knowledge without love ? Loveless, thou shalt never find eternal happiness. Understanding says : I am born in the clear light of self-knowledge. Love says : Great knowledge without love is vain. Understanding says : Give place, thou are only my slave : thou dost help me to rise and remainest. Love says : I am the good that God is himself. Knowledge says ; High is thy claim : without me thou dost fall to the ground. Love says : It would be well for thee to bear me more in mind. Understanding says : I can rise higher not fettered to thee ; my vision is clearer, nay, I want none of thee. I have what I will the while I know what hitherto I have descried and into which I now have flowed to abide for aye in perfect
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unity. Here, I am above love and transcend all activity. Here I have intuition ; and my real knowledge of all things, all I believed, is now come true. Faith and hope and all the powers of the soul remain, they can go no further. True love says : I must abide with thee, for I am eternal. Our sisters stay behind, that is but meet : they are our servants who have brought thee to the actual enjoyment of thy eternal happiness. -- Now comes the highest intellect, that which receives all things direct from God, and says : I have conceived the sovran good wherein is naught save unity. Intuition says ; I shall cleave to thee, iny place is at thy side. Intellect says : Knowledge and love must remain behind. Intui- tion says : It is meet I should enjoy what I have divined. Highest intellect replies : What you have brought me to and which I hitherto have known, now knows itself in me. Wherefore I find I need none else. All created things must remain behind with all I ever was. I stand before my cause.
To go back to the widow and our Lord's command, Young man, Arise ! ' we must bear in mind that anything not far from birth is young. Thus it is with intellect as standing in the presence of its cause ; oblivious of the aids to its ascent it fondly weens it has been there for aye and there shall eternally remain. That may not be.
Then take the words : by the widow is meant the understand- by her son the intellect, and by her husband the man of the soul.' Now you must know, when the man of the soul begins to rise, the masters say it is another man. By which you must not understand it is another soul : it is another being of the soul ; the old mode is done, it is dead. The soul assuming her real mode stands in her virgin innocence. The man of the soul, transcending his angelic mode and guided by the intellect, pierces to the source whence flowed the soul. Intellect itself is left outside with all named things. So the soul is merged into pure unity. This we call the man of the soul, and, having reached this consummation, he has no need of any help. What he did here- tofore God now does in him. God knows him as he knew him, God loves him as he loved him. God is doing all the work and the man of the soul is absolutely idle.
When a man has reached this point we may well say, this man is God and man. All Christ has by nature he has won by grace. His body is filled with the noble nature of the soul, which she receives from God, with divine light, wherefore we may truly ery, Behold, a man divine ! Pity them, my children, they are from home and no one knows them. Let those in quest of God be careful lest appearances deceive them in these people who are peculiar and hard to place ; no one rightly knows them but those in whom the
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same light shines. Namely, the light of truth. Yet it may well be that wayfarers to that same good, but who have not yet reached it, will come across these perfect of whom we have been speaking. Believe me, did I know one such, and had a convent-full of gold and precious stones, I would give the whole of it for a single fowl for him to eat. Further I declare, if all the things God ever made were mine, I would for with give them all for the enjoyment of that man, and rightly, for they are all his. Nay, more I say : his, too, is God in the fullness of his power, and if there stood before me all who in imperfection arc anhungered, I would not withhold from that man's need a single feather of the fowl, though I might feed that multitude. For, you must remember, with one in imperfec- tion, anything he eats or drinks will drag him down and make him prone to sin. But not the virtuous man : what he eats and drinks he raises up in Christ to the Father. So look well to yourselves.
You are familiar with Christ's words, Where two arc gathered together in my name I will be with them.' Here Christ is referring to the harmonious union of the body and the soul, where body wants nothing except what the soul wills. God is with these : they are the people we have been speaking of. Here the man of the soul is in actual possession of his eternal happiness, and, being docked of all her powers, the soul encounters no sort of opposition. I warn you, you must keep a sharp look out, for they arc difficult to tell ; thus if they should need it, while other people fast they will be eating, while other people watch they will be sleeping, while other folks are pra> ing they will hold their peace. In short, the things they say and do seem imaeeountable, for what God makes obvious to persons on the way to their eternal happiness is foreign to those that have arrived there. These have no wants whatever : they arc rich in the possession of a city of their own. I call that my own which is mine eternally and no one can take from me. These people, you must know, do most valuable work. They work within, you understand, in the man of the soul. Blessed is the kingdom wherein dwells one of them ; in an instant they will do more lasting good than all the outward actions ever done. See ye withhold not aught of theirs. May we recognise these people and loving God in them, with them possess the city they have won. So help us God. Amen.
XXXVIII
PEACE
Steiit Jesus in medio discipulorum et dixit: pax etc. {Luc. 2435, Joh, 20^3). St John tells us in his gospel that on the first day of
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the week, at evening, when the doors were shut, came our Lord and stood in the midst of the disciples and said : Peace be unto you ! ' and again, Peace be unto you ! ' and a third time,
Receive ye the Holy Ghost ! ' Now the evening never comes unless morning and midday have gone before. We say that the middle of the day is warmer than the evening. But in so far as evening takes in middle-day and stores up its heat, it is the warmer, when, too, before the evening there goes a whole bright day. Late in the year, again, after the summer solstice, when the sun is drawing nigh to earth, the evenings will grow warm. But midday never comes till morning goes nor evening until noon has passed away. The moral of which is, that when the divine light breaks forth in the soul, getting brighter and brighter unto the perfect day, then morning does not vanish before noon nor noon ere eventide : they close up to one. So the evening is warm. There is perfect day in the soul when all the soul is full of light divine. But it is evening in the soul, as I have said before, when the light of this world fades and the soul goes in to rest.
God said, Peace ! ' and Peace 1 ' again, and Receive ye the Holy Ghost ! ' Jacob the patriarch came to a place, in the evening, and putting underneath his head some stones which lay about, he sank to rest. In his sleep he saw a ladder reaching up to heaven with angels ascending and descending and God leaning down over the top of the ladder. This place Jacob slept in had no name. Which is as much as to say : the God- head alone is the place of the soul, and is nameless. Concerning this our doctors say : a thing which is another's place must be above it ; as heaven is the place of all things and fire is the place of air and air the place of water and water, partially, the place of earth and earth is not a place. An angel is a heavenly place, and any angel who has got the least drop more of God than any other is the place, the habitation, of that other, the most exalted angel being the place, the room, the measure of the rest while he himself is without measure. But although he is without measure, natheless God is his measure.
Jacob rested in the place which is nameless. By not naming it it is named. On getting to this nameless place the soul will rest : where all things are being God in God, there shall she rest. The abode of the soul, which God is, is unnamed. I say, God is unspoken. But St Augustine says that God is not unspoken ; were he unspoken, that even would be speech and he is more silence than speech. One of our most ancient philosophers who found the truth long, long before God's birth, ere ever there was Christian faith at all as it is now, to him (I say) it seemed that what he could manage to utter of things only conjured up within him
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something monstrous and unreal and therefore he refused to speak at all. Not even would he say, give me meat or give me drink. He declined to mention things because he could not say them as perfect as they sprang from their first cause : he chose rather to be dumb and to make known his wants by pointing with his finger. How much more does it beseem us, if he knew not the way to talk of things, to be absolutely mute concerning him who is the origin of all things.
We say that God is a spirit. Not so. If God were really a spirit he would be spoken. According to St Gregory, we cannot rightly speak of God at all. Anything we say of him is bound to be a stammering. This place which is not named, wherein all creatures thrive and bloom in orderly array, this habitat of all creatures, is gotten suddenly out of the ground of this orderly place, the seat of the soul proceeding out of this ground.
Jacob wanted to rest : mark you, he wanted to rest. Whoso resteth in God his rest is will-free. We say that will is without habit. Will is free, it takes nothing from matter. In this sense it is freer than intellect, and some rash people pouncing upon this would put it above knowledge. That is not so. Intellect also is free despite that intellect does take from matter and from corporal things in the locality of soul, for, as 1 pointed out on Easter Eve, various of the soul-powers are in link with the five senses, for in- stance, sight and hearing, which convey to them the things we know. A master says : God would never choose that eye or ear should sense what crowns the summit of the soul : none other than the nameless place, which is the place of all things.' It gives a fair reflection, and is useful in that way, but is marred by colour and by sound and corporal things. It is only by the senses that the soul is roused and the idea of wisdom naturally imprinted in her. Plato says, and with him St Augustine : The soul has all know- ledge within, and all wc can do from without is but an awakening of knowledge. -- Jacob rested in the evening. Let us pray ever for the now ; 'tis but a little thing wc ask, just for one evening. May it be granted us, So help us God. Amen.
XXXIX
EVERY GOOD GIFT
Omne datum optimum et omne donum perfectum descendit a patre luminum {Jac. Ij^). My Latin quotation is from the Epistle of St James. He says, Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above from the Father of lights. With him is no variableness nor shadow of time (or, temporal
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reflection).' These two terms he uses, good gift and perfect gift, refer to different things, so our masters say. Datum befalls in time ; donum has no thought of time. Datum is a matter of self-seeking, but donum is free and unconditioned and wholly without why. A perfect gift is one betokening nothing but good- will. The perfect gift is therefore free and unconditional. The perfect gift is a friendly offering, essentially a giving albeit not bestowed. According to our masters, gifts are perfect in so far as they are love-bearers ; but good gifts are like hucksters and have ever their price. In the words of one of the saints, Blood of the Holy Ghost and its glow is in one sense eternal and in another temporal.' If my face were eternal and were held before a mirror it would be received in the mirror as a temporal thing albeit eternal in itself. The Holy Ghost has its glow. The eternal glow of his eternal blood is the perfect gift ; when the soul is worthy and receives the same it turns to the good gift. Meaning to say that this gift which is temporal in us is in itself eternal. God would give us not only his good gift ; he is ready to bestow on us his perfect gift as well, to wit, the Holy Ghost itself. Hence his words, Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above from the Father of lights.'
From another point of view he means, so it appears to me, that the Holy Ghost is the perfect gift only as working in the intellect. As proceeding forth in the practice of good works, albeit godly, or withal in thought, it becomes good gift. It is the perfect gift so far as the soul is living in God, immanent in the light and savour of God, hanging motionless in his perfect light-nature. As St Paul says, Ye shall taste the things that are above.' The Holy Ghost is the Gift wherein ye abide in the perfection of light. The soul suspended in pure intellectual light is enjoying the things that are above. Our masters teach that corporeal things arc called matter. We say, the light of intellect shuns matter, but albeit in itself wholly devoid of things it still has potentiality and that for matter. He says, Taste the things that are above,' not, that arc above the earth. We have a saying. So far from matter so far pure intelligence. When in the light the grey tint of the cloth assails my eye, I see it. If it were intellect I should see nothing. We recognise another power as being far removed from matter. How so? Suppose I saw a man twenty years ago, he may now be dead, but still I have a likeness of his form as though he stood before my eyes. This power needs no matter, but it has the imperfection of receiving from matter~in forms, that is to say. On the other hand, the light, intelligence, transcends what is already matter or is so potentially. While the soul abides in God, suspended in his
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intellectual light she has no material objectivity nor likeness nor potentiality. He says, Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above from the Father of lights.'
What docs he mean by calling it good gift ? ' Betwixt those things whose being-and-doing is in eternity and the things whose being and doing are in time there needs must be some middle term. He means that it is God, this thing whose being-and-doing is the perfect gift ; so the being-and-doing of the perfect gift is in eternity. But the being-and-doing of the good gift are in time ; which of course must mean that the soul is on the way to eternal life. Why does he promise both good and perfect gifts ? When God bestows the Holy Ghost itself, whose being-and-activity is in eternity, that is his perfect gift which, peering forth in thought, is his good gift.
St Augustine says, and the masters too, the soul has some capacity which is open towards God and into which he alone can speak, whereas creature speaks into another. Into this highest power, which is addressed by God alone, he utters wisdom, which is his perfect gift. But the other one that creature speaks to is satisfied with reason. The same gift is perfect, being timeless, and good as perfecting the things of time. What is temporal in us is eternal in God. Datum in us is donum in God. What is mixed and temporal and good in us becomes, if we follow it up, perfect in God. What we are able to receive of him is infinitely small compared to what he is. Whatever else one may know one docs not know God.
He says, he comes down from on high from the Father of lights.' What docs he mean ? The Son and the Holy Ghost have one source in the Father, and the Holy Ghost and the Son arc one light and they arc both of them lights. God is the Father of lights. St Augustine tells what the soul is tasting in God. He explains that in that food the tongue is savouring the invisible light ; he says the soul is not a thing of sensible appetites and pleasures ; she has a hidden energy and luminosity.
According to the masters, the angels are a light : God is the entire light, with whom is no change nor time nor turning. The nobler the creature the more akin to God. All creaturely being- and-doing is in time. But the angels, who are higher, are in essence timeless and without alteration in themselves. Their wonted activities in God are free from time, but in that they look down they have an aspect (or shadow) of time. But in none of his works has God any shadow of time nor of change. So far as there is no changing, no shadow in man, so far he compares with divinity. Creature has ever this and that, one thing and another ; but in God exists neither this nor that, neither one nor tother;
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and unless there be in us what two and two are, what is one plus other, the happenings within us remain just good and ill. There is no one or other with the Father of lights. May we be given every good gift and eveiy perfect gift wherein we are exalted above time to the Father of lights with whom is no variableness nor temporal nature, So help us God. Amen.
XL
EVERY GOOD GIFT
Omne datum optimum et omne donum perfectum de sursum est descendens a patre luminum {Jac. l^^). St James says in his epistle, Every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from above from the Father of lights.'
Now yc must know that people who resign themselves to God and diligently seek to do his will, to these, I say, whatever God may send will be the best. As God lives, be sure it is the very best, and there can be no better way. Some other may seem better yet is not so good for thee; God wills this way and not that, therefore this way is bound to be the best. Sickness or poverty, hunger or thirst, what God does give thee or what he does not, that is the very best for thee, aye, though it be fervour or the interior life which, alas ! thou dost lack. Whatever thou hast or hast not, accept it all to the glory of God, and then whatever he sends thee will be for the best.
Peradventure thou wilt say. How can I tell whether it is God's will or not ? If it were not God's will it would not be. Neither sickness nor anything else dost thou have excepting God wills. And therefore knowing it to be God's will thou oughtest to rejoice in it and to be so content therewith that any pain shall lose its sting for thee ; aye, even in extremity of pain to feel the least affliction or distress were altogether wrong : accept it from God as the best since it is bound to be the best thing for thee. It is of the essence of him to will what is best. Let me then will it too ; there is nothing that should please me better. Supposing there was someone I tried hard to please and whom I knew for certain liked me in a grey coat more than any other ; doubtless that coat would please me too, and I should prefer it to any of the rest however nice they were. Given then my wish to please a certain person, the things I know he wishes both of word and deed are the things that I would do and those alone. Judge for yourselves then of your love ! If ye do indeed love God ye will Uke nothing better than that which best enables him to work his will in us. However great may seem the pain or the privation.
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except thou take deliglit therein as great as in thine ease and plenty, it is wrong.
One thing I am wont to say, and it is the fact, that daily we cry in our pater noster^ Lord, thy will be done ! and when his will is done we grumble and are discontented at it. Whatever he does let us deem that the best and like that best of all. Those who do take it as the best always remain tranquil. Sometimes ye will say, Alas ! 'twere better something else had happened, or, had that not been, things would have turned out better. As long as thou dost think so thou wilt never be at peace. Accept it all for the best. That is the first moral of our text.
There is another meaning, mark it well. He says every gift.' The very best and the very highest, these are innate gifts and in him the most innate of all. God gives nothing so gladly as great gifts. Once in this very place I said, God likes forgiving big sins more than small ones. The bigger they arc the gladder he is and the quicker to forgive them. It is the same with graces, gifts, and virtues : the greater they arc the greater his pleasure in bestowing them, for the giving of largesse is his nature. The bigger the things and the better the more shall ye get. [The noblest creatures are the angels who are minds and nothing else ; they have no carnal nature and they are in number infinitely more than all the corporal things.]
Once upon a time I laid it down that to be properly expressed a thing must proceed from within, moved by its form : it must come, not in from without but out from within. It really lives in the recesses of the soul. There all things arc present to thee, subjectively alive and active in their zenith, in their prime. Why art thou unaware of it ? Because thou art not at home. The more noble a thing the more common it is. Feeling I have in common with the beasts and life in common with the trees. Being is still more innate in me and that I have in common with all creatures. Heaven exceeds all neighbouring things, and it is nobler also. The nobler the thing the bigger it is and the more universal. Love is as noble as it is universal. It does indeed seem hard, as our Lord commands, to love our evenchristians as ourselves. The unenlightened say that we ought to love them just the same as they love themselves. Not so. We ought to love them no more than our own selves, which is not difficult. If you come to consider, it is matter for reward more than a behest. The command seems hard but the reward desirable. He who loves God as he ought and must (whether he would or not), and as all creatures love him, will love his evenchristian as himself, rejoicing in his joys and hoping for his honour as much as for his own and treating the other like himself. By this means he is always happy
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whether in honour or in need, just as though he were in heaven and withal has more enjoyments than the blessings of himself alone.
The plain truth is that it is wrong for thee to hold thine honour dearer than another's. Remember, an thou seekest aught of thine thou never shalt find God, for thou art not seeking God merely. Thou art seeking for something with God, making a candle of God, as it were, with which to find something, and then, having found it, throwing the candle away. Thus shalt thou fare : aught that thou findest with God is naught, whatsoever it be, whether profit or wages or the interior life or anything else : naught dost thou seek and naught shalt thou find. Thou shalt find naught because it is naught thou dost seek ; that is all. All creatures are a mere naught. I say not they are small, are aught : they are absolutely naught. A thing without being is not (or is naught). Creatures have no real being, for their being consists in the presence of God. If God turned away for an instant they would all perish. I have sometimes said, and it is true, that he who has gotten the whole world plus God has gotten no more than God by himself. Having all creatures without God is no more than having one fly without God ; just the same, no more nor less.
This is a true saying. The man who gives a thousand marks of gold for the making of convents or of churches is doing a great deed. But that man gives a great deal more who gives a thousand marks for naught ; he is doing far more than the other. When God created all creatures he could not move in them, they were so small and narrow. But the soul he made so like himself, so nearly his own peer, on purpose to give himself to her : nothing else that he could give her would she care for in the least. God must give me himself for my own as he is his own, or I shall get naught, nor is aught else to my taste. Whoso receives him thus outright must wholly have renounced himself and gone out of himself; he gets straight from God all that he has, as his own just as much as it is his, and our Lady and all the habitants of heaven. All this is meet and proper to this man. Those who have renounced themselves and are in this ' sense dead unto themselves receive the same, no less.
Thirdly, the term Father of lights.' The word father implies to us a son. Father stands for abstract generation, and is an expression for the universal principle of life. The Father generates his Son in his eternal intellect and the Father generates his Son in the soul just as he does in, his own nature ; he bears his Son in \ the soul as her own, and his existence depends on his bringing his Son to birth in the soul, whether he would or no. On one occasion '
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I was asked what the Father is doing in heaven ? I said, He is begetting his Son, an act he so delights in and which pleases him so well that he does nothing else but generate his Son» and these .? twain are flowering with the Holy Ghost. When the Father gives birth to his Son in me I am his very Son and not another : we are another in manhood, true, but there I am the Son himself and no other. As sons we are lawful heirs. He who knows the truth wots this right well. The word father connotes just be- getting and having of sons. We are sons in his Son and are the Son himself.
Now consider the words, they come from above.' I said, referring to this very thing. Whoso desires to receive from above must needs be below in true humility. Know in good sooth, if a thing is not right underneath it receives nothing nor conceives nothing : not a single thing however small. Hast thou an eye to thine own self or to any thing or person, then thou art not right under and thou receivest nothing ; but being brought right under thou receivest all at once and in perfection. It is God's nature to give, and his existence depends on his giving to us when we are under. If we are not, then we get nothing : we do him violence and kill him. Or if unable so to do to him, we do it to ourselves as far as in us lies. If thou wouldst really give him all, see to it thou dost put thyself right humbly under God, raising up God in thy heart and in thy understanding. The Father sent his son into the world in the fullness of time of the soul, when she had finished with time. Wheii the soul is free from time and place the Father sends his Son mto the soul. This is the explanation of the words, the best gifts come from above from the Father of lights.' Let us be ready to receive these same best gifts. So help ? i us God the Father of lights. Amen.
XLI
A LITTLE AND YE SHALL NOT SEE ME
Modicum videbitis me et modicum non videbitis {Joh. I617, i»)* I quote in Latin from the Gospel of St John a saying of our Lord to his disciples. The translation runs, A modicum, a little, ye shall see me and a modicum, a little, and ye shall not see me.' The disciples were ignorant and did not understand. They were sa3ring to each other, We know not what he means.' So St John relates, and he was there. Follows a parable which I will not dwell on. Then, knowing what was in their hearts he says quite plainly, I shall see you again and your joy shall be full.'
Now, to my mind this saying will bear four interpretations.
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More or less the same in wording but widely different in meaning. The kernel of the prime conception and of eternal happiness is knowledge. One theologist who spoke at Paris insisted with loud fulminations that this is not so. Then up and said another one, better than the best they have at Paris : Sir, you are very positive, but in the gospel did not God declare the very thing that you denounce so roundly ? Our Lord's words are, This is eternal life, to know thee the only true God ' -- A little and ye shall see me.' Meaning to say, ye must get to look upon everything in you as little and of small account if ye are ever to see God. It follows that we must observe minutely what will help and hinder divine knowledge. However small what comes from God, if treated rightly it recurs, it comes again, for we have one divine thing of our own that we can work with as with our own soul ; not that I work and God looks on : I, as it were, co-operate with my own tool which is mine and in me. Thus man being lifted up in time shall sec God out of himself. I have sometimes said, the time St Paul saw nothing he saw God. Now I say something better : when St Paul saw all nothing he saw God : when he saw all things as nothing he saw God, and what God means to say is this : when things are all reduced to naught in you then ye shall see God.
Again, he says, a little and ye shall not see me.' While time and world, which is little, is within you, ye shall not see me. The angel swore on his eternal life that when this life is done there shall be no more time. And in his gospel St John quite plainly states, the world was made by him and they knew him not.' In line then, to quote a heathen doctor, world -and -time is a little thing. It is out of world-and-time that we see God.
Thirdly. He said, a little and ye see me not,' as though to say : the very smallest thing that is foreign to the soul will prevent her seeing God. For heaven is shut to strangers ; even an angel from another heaven would not succeed in getting in, for it is not his. Why has my mouth, my ear, no sense of heaven ? Because they are not like it. St Bernard says, My eye is like the heavens in being round and clear and placed high in the body, nor can it brook the entry of any foreign matter.' Before my eye can see the painting on the wall this must be filtered through the air and in a still more tenuous form be borne into my phantasy, to be assimilated by my understanding. These properties, both, the soul must needs possess ; and this likeness, how subtile soever it may be, with its suggestiveness, its hint of sin, the soul rejects as foreign to herself. If God himself were foreign to the soul she would have none of him. What the eye perceives has to be conveyed to it by means, in images. If there were no means we
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should see nothing. If an angel sees another angel or anything that God has made, he does so by some means. But himself and God he sees immediately. If my soul knows an angel she knows him by some means and in an image, an image imageless, not in an image such as they are here. Soul and angel are material things compared with God. Angelic knowledge, anything created, is a means. Which God wholly lacks : he is known without means, without little. For my soul to know God with nothing between thou must be with me and I with thee.
I will now suggest a meaning quite other than these three. While ye are little ye do not see me. To see me ye have to grow great.' Intellect is great indeed, yet small compared with the light of God. Our Lord upbraided his apostles saying, There is still in you but a little light.' They were not devoid of light, but it was weak, the light of grace, the brightest thing God ever made or ever could have made. And after all the soul is small so long as she is still in grace. Sometime or other the soul must rise in grace. If grace is not yet overcome, the soul has still to ascend in grace and, being perfected, to transcend grace : then she sees God.
Fourthly, and ye shall not see me ' : being poor in light and grace ye cannot see God. One must abound in light and grace before one can see God. Grace is a surpassing light, superangelic. In grace we can sec God but from afar. While grace exists in us as grace we are not able to see God. Ye do not sec me because I am going to my Father.' While the soul progresses God remains unseen. While we are on the way to God we have not gotten him. With finding God all progress ends, as our Lord said to St Mary Magdalene, Touch me not, I am not yet ascended in thee to my Father.' While God is ascending in the soul and has not reached the zenith, we are unable to see God. St Paul says, God dwells in light inaccessible.' And one saint declares, No man ever saw God.' St Paul tells us We shall know God as we are known.' As God knows himself so we shall know him ; as he sees all things in himself so we shall see all things in him. We shall know as we are known,' St Paul says. The little being cleared away, I shall see as I am seen, as he sees himself, without little, with nothing between ; all in himself and in him all things, nothing outside him ; and we too shall know without little and without means. We shall know in his Son. The Son is the image of the Godhead, not the Godhead itself : he is the idea of God the Father. The Father's reflection is his only Son. In that idea where nothing exists, in that image we shall be reflected in the Son and by the Son reflected back into the Father : in that image, all the same, where there is no this nor that, we shall know
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God with God's only Son. May the little depart from us and allow us to know thee the one true God. So help us God. Amen.
XLII
THE IMAGE AND ITS OBJECT
Modicum etjam non videbitis (Joh, My Latin quota-
tion is from the Gospel of St John which wc read on Sunday. It is what our Lord said to his disciples, A modicum, a little, and ye see me not.' Anything, however small, adhering to the soul prevents your seeing me. St Augustine being asked the meaning of eternal life answered and said : Dost thou ask me what is eternal life ? Ask eternal life, see what it says itself. None knows what heat is like the hot, nor wisdom like the wise, none knows the meaning of eternal life so well as the eternal life itself. Our Lord Jesus Christ says, This is eternal life, to know thee God, the one true God.'
A modicum, a little, and lo ! ye see me not.' Now you must understand that if the soul saw God even from afar, or in some intervening thing, as in a cloud, an instant, she would not turn away from him, not for all the world. What think ye then would happen if she saw God in himself, as he is, face to face in his naked essence ? All creatures God has ever made or could make if he would amount to very little, a mere nothing as compared with God himself. The heavens are big, so vast indeed, were I to tell ye would not credit me. If you could take a needle and prick the heavens with it, that needle-point of heaven, as compared with the whole heavens plus this entire world, would be greater than this universe compared with God. Well and truly then it may be said, a trifle, a little, and ye shall not sec me.' Whilst thou seest aught of creature thou seest naught of God ; however little, it must go. Says the soul in the Book of Love, I ran about and sought him whom my soul loveth and I found him not.' She met with angels and many things besides, but she found not him whom her soul loved. Then she goes on to say, It was but a little I passed from them and I found him whom my soul loveth,' just as though to say : when I had gotten beyond creatures (little things and of small account) I came on him whom my soul loveth. The soul must pass beyond, she must transcend, all creatures before she can find God.
Now you must know, God loves the soul so mightily, he who should rob God of loving the soul would rob him of his very life and being : would kill God, if one may so say ; for the very love wherewith God loves the soul is what his Holy Breath is blowing in.
8
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But if God loves the soul so much the soul must be a most important thing.
The philosopher says in his book On the Soul : If there were no means the eye could see a gnat, an ant, in heaven. And he was right, referring to the air and fire, etc. that intervene between the eye and heaven. Another philosopher declares that without means no eye could see at all. Both are expressing the same truth.
The first one says that if there were no means the eye could see an ant in heaven. And that is true. If nothing intervened between God and the soul she would see God every whit, for God himself is wholly free from means and brooks no sort of intervention. If the soul were stripped of all her sheaths, God would be discovered all naked to her view and would give himself to her, withholding nothing. As long as the soul has not thrown off all her veils, however thin, she is unable to see God. Any medium, but a hair's-breadth, in betwixt the body and the soul stops actual union. That is true of corporal things and how much more of ghostly. Boethius says, Wouldst know the naked truth ? Then cast off joy and fear and trust and hope and pain. Joy is a means, fear is a means, faith and hope and pain, they all are means. While thou regardest them and they have regard to thee thou canst not see God.
The second doctor says : without means the eye would see nothing. If I cover my eyes with my hand I can see nothing of my hand. If I put it before me I sec it quite distinctly. This is due to the dense nature of the hand which must be rarefied and rendered volatile in air and light and in effigy be carried to my eye. The same thing with a mirror. If thou hast it facing thee thy image is reflected in the glass. The eye, like the soul, is a mirror, and things presented to it all appear therein. I do not see the hand, the stone, itself : I see the image of the stone, but I do not see this image in a second image or by any other means : I see it without means and without image. This image is itself the means : image without image like motion without motion although causing motion and size which has no size though the principle of size. Even so the image is in this sense imageless that it is not seen in another image. The eternal Word is the means and the image itself which is without means and without image, so that the soul in the eternal Word conceives of God and knows him without image and with nothing between.
There is one power in the soul ; intellect, of prime importance to the soul for making her aware of, for detecting, God. It has five properties. First, it is detached from here and now. Next, it is like nothing. Thirdly, it is pure and uncompounded.
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Fourthly, it is in itself active or self-searching. Fifthly, it is an image.
First, it is detached from here and now. Here and now, that, in other words, is time and place. Now is the minimum of time ; not a fragment of time nor a fraction of time : a smack, a con- nection, an end of time. Small though it be it must go ; every- thing time touches has to go. Again, it is detached from here. And here means place. The spot I am standing on is small, but it must disappear before I can see God.
Secondly, it has no like. A philosopher says, God is a thing that nothing is like and that nothing can become like. But according to St John, we shall be called God's children ' and if we are God's children we must resemble God. How then can this doctor say God is a thing that nothing is like ? The answer is that in being like nothing this power is like God. God is like nothing and this power is like nothing. You must understand that all creatures are by nature endeavouring to be like God. The heavens would not revolve unless they followed on the track of God or of his likeness. If God were not in all things, nature would stop dead, not working and not wanting ; for whether thou like it or no, whether thou know it or not, nature funda- mentally is seeking, though obscurely, and tending towards God. No man in his extremity of thirst but would refuse the proffered draught in which there was no God. Nature's quarry is not meat or drink nor clothes nor comfort nor any things at all wherein is naught of God, but covertly she seeks and ever more hotly she pursues the trail of God therein.
Thirdly, it is pure and unmingled. By nature God can tolerate no mingling or admixture. Nor is there in this power any inter- mingling or admixture : it is free from impurity and nothing foreign can occur therein. To tell a comely person he is fair and dark would do him an injustice. The soul must be without admixture. If someone hangs something to my cloak or sticks something on it then anyone who wears the eloak will wear too its attachments. If I go out hence, there will then go with me the whole of my attachments. What the spirit rests on, is attached to, takes the spirit wdth it. The man who rests on nothing, is attached to nothing, though heaven and earth should fall, will remain unmoved.
Fourthly, it is ever seeking, travailing, within. God is such that he ever abides in the innermost. And intellect is ever seeking him. But will goes out to what it loves in him. So at the coming of my friend, suddenly my heart goes out to him and he is glad. St Paul declares, we shall know God as we are known.' And according to St John, we shall see God as he is.*
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Now if I am coloured I must have something in me that will take the colour. I should never colour unless I had a colour nature. And I can only see God in what he sees himself in. St Paul declares that God dwells in light inaccessible.' It is not to be denied that keeping in the way, in the entry, though all well and good, is yet a long way from the truth, for it is not God.
Fifthly, it is an image. Mark this, it is important : it gives you the whole sermon in a nutshell. Object and image are bound up with one another so that we cannot part them. We can think of fire apart from heat and heat without the fire. We can think of the sun apart from light and of light as independent of the sun. But we cannot part the object from its image. I say more : Almighty God himself cannot disentangle them : they are born together and they die together. 1 do not die because my Father does. Suppose you die, then we no longer say, he is his son, we say, he was his son. Cloth that is bleached is like all whiteness in its whiteness. But if you blacken it, it is dead to whiteness. And here it is the same. If the image, God's likeness, disappeared, there would perish also its exemplar, God. One thing I would say : ye arc become two, ye are become three. Now mark my words. Intellect peers in, it searches every corner of the Godhead and finding the Son in the heart of the Father, in his ground, it takes him and sets him in its own. Intellect presses in ; she is not content with good or wisdom, nor with trutli nor yet with God himself. She is no more content with God than with a tree, a stone. She never rests until she gets into the ground whence truth and good proceed and takes them in principio, in the beginning, the fount of truth and goodness, where they rise before their coming forth : a ground far higher than truth and goodness arc. Her sister (will) contents herself with God as being good. But intellect, leaving this behind, goes in and breaks through to the root whence shoots the Son and whence the Holy Spirit blossoms forth. May we discover this and be for ever blest. So help us Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
XLIIIi
KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE
Meistcr Eckhart said : Doctors debate which is the nobler, knowledge or love. Some say that love is better than knowledge. I say it is not. Our best authorities declare that knowledge is nobler than . love. Love and will take God as being good. If God were not good, will would have none of him ; if God were not
^ Jostes, No. 10.
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lovely, love would scout him. But understanding would not. Knowledge is not confined either to good or to love or to wisdom or lordship. By putting names to God the soul is only dressing him up and making a figure of Gk)d ; nor is this the doing of knowledge. Though God were neither good nor wise, still under- standing would seize him ; it strips everything off, not stopping either at wisdom or good, nor majesty nor power. It pierces to naked being and grasps God bare, ere he is clothed in thought with wisdom and goodness. Where the Son has his beatitude, there in the Father, understanding finds hers.
Now I am going to say something never read nor preached before.
At the College yesterday they admitted that there is a ground within the soul corresponding to the Father-nature. Just as the Father is bringing forth his Son in the Holy Ghost and these three are one God, so this ground is bringing forth understanding and will, one power as God is one Word. Withal this ground is free from any taint of creature. All the things we attribute to the soul form a screen round this ground wherein God is looking at the soul and the soul is looking at God. According to St Paul, We beholding the vision of God's splendour arc changed in that same image from glory to glory.' This image is too closely joined to God for creatures to dissever and God himself will not divide it. Alas ! we reck so little of this image, we keep it not so bright as it was given us by God ! Whatever wc may do God is never satisfied unless we there abide in utter destitution and so enable God at all times without ceasing to bring his one -begotten Son to birth in this same ground. This birth befalls not once a year nor once a day nor once an hour, but all the time, above time, in the while which is neither here nor now. This is the ground I speak of. May we live in suchwise that God can energise in us. So help us God.
I have sometimes said that the soul is an imitation of God ; now I say that she is his image, and in the very same form the Father has eternally formed, and the same that Christ is formed in.
According to Meister Eckhart, All creatures contain one re- flection : one, that is the denial of its being the other ; the highest of the angels denies he is the lowest. Gk)d is the denial of denials : the one which is exclusive of all otherness. To call a tree a tree is not to name it, for all the species are con- fused. If we name it in its first eruption, in its perfection, we do not call it a tree, we call it pure divine nature. Another notion of it, rather better. The divine nature is the great divider. Meister Eckhart says, The Pharisee besought our Lord to eat with him. What is the Pharisee ? He stands for detachment ; a
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Pharisee is one who is detached from all and united into one. The prophet cries, Lord have mercy on the work which is in thee.' The highest work God ever wrought was done in mercy. Under- standing goes in deep enough to lay hold of being simply as being- in-itself, but where being is losing itself, drowned in itself, there understanding falls away.
Friar John says : It is a question among the theologians whether it lies with the soul, or with God, for her to be God. I say the power lies in the soul. Suppose the soul ready to be God, then God must work in that power and draw the power into himself : the energy then is in God and the capacity is in the soul. Were I wholly that I am I should be God ; there would be for me neither time nor place nor change. There is nothing so easy to me, so possible, as to be God. To stay quiet requires no work, whereas if I change to another I must reduce myself to naught : but I remain as I am.
I say, no creature is so vile but it can boast of being; in proportion to its being is its power of being God, for whatever is being is God.
Bishop Albertus says, Man is divine above all as receiving unhindered the inflowing Deity. In the words of the saint, The light of my soul is never extinguished and my desire is ever in the beholding of God.
XLIVi
IN ALL THINGS I SEEK REST
In omnibus requiem queesivi (EccL 24iji). things I
seek rest.
The masters tell us that God made the powers of the soul by nature receptive to their likes, thus the car is always hearing and the eye is always seeing. What my eye sees is one with it, just like the air with light. The nature of the eye is to see colour, otherwise it would not be an eye. And conversely with colour, by nature it affects the eye or it would not be colour. To think of it as colour yet incommunicable to the eye would be to deny that it is colour. I can see the minster. But no one sees it in me. For a thing to be visible in me, it must be so placed that its reflection can be seen in me. Standing in front of me and face to face a man could see his image in my eye. Stand over flowing water and you cannot see yourself. But supposing it is clear, then where it is collected and still enough for a reflection you can see your form in it. They say glass is transparent, like a crystal. But cover it with lead or wax and it reflects : it gives an image of whatever stands before it, perfect in every detail.
^ See also Wackemagel, No. Ixiii.
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God made the soul, her highest power, her best, in order to beget himself therein. There, says a philosopher, begetter and begotten are the same and there is neither time nor place nor matter. Matter means gross bodily things ; it is intractable and hinders. Hence it has been said that if the Father could he would make himself. But he cannot, so he makes his like.
Our Lord said, I dwell in Jacob and I rest in Israel.' Jacob stands for riddance. God is gotten nowhere excepting in the soul that has put all creatures under her feet. St Augustine says, God is being born within the soul the whole time without ceasing, but not born to us to whom he is not manifest but hidden. As long as God is hidden in the soul by aught, he is not born to us, and you may be quite sure that God is never born to any soul excepting she has put all creatures under her feet : where there is no other there God begets himself, not his likeness, his own self : God and God. Well and truly then the Son may say, I dwell in Jacob and in Israel 1 rest. And said he : My Father sent me and he engendered in me that which is my nature : that I am being born all the time within the soul who is pure enough for him to see himself in.' There God is at rest and the soul reposes in God. To deprive God of resting in the soul would be to deprive him of his deity. To rob him of it even in one's thoughts is to rob him of his Godhood, since he is pleased to rest in all things. David says : My Lord said to my heart : thou art my Son ; this day have I begotten thee in the reflection of the Holy Ghost,' and again he said : I have begotten thee in my innermost heart, in the depths of my soul ; I have spread my roots, I have estab- lished myself in the city of Zion and my power in Jerusalem.' The soul in Zion, who has transcended things and is dwelling in her central depth, in her docs God give birth to his inmost self. The heavenly Father said to his only Son : As I begat thee in my inmost heart, even so I charge thee by thy divine nature that thou comest not to birth save in tl\c innermost recesses of the soul. -- ^Whosoever would deny to God that he should beget himself in this way in the soul would deny him his God-nature. May God thus beget himself in us, So help us God. Amen.
XLV
IN ALL THINGS I SEEK REST
In omnibus requiem queesivi {Eccl, 24^]^). We find this in the Book of Wisdom. We may imagine Wisdom in friendly
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conversation with the soul, saying, In all things I sought rest.' To which the soul replies, He who created me rested in my tent.' And Wisdom says again, My rest is in the holy city.' If I were asked to say to what end the creator has created creatures, I should answer : rest. And were I asked a second time, what are all creatures seeking so eagerly by nature ? I should answer : rest. And if a third time I were asked what the soul seeks in all her agitations, once more I should say : rest.
Look how the face of divine nature turns foolish and demented all the powers of the soul with longing for it, so as to draw them to itself. God likes this so well, it pleases him so much that his entire God-nature is turned into this bent. He says, In the holy place likewise I repose.' As the soul rests in God so God reposes in her. If she rests partly in God he rests partly in her. If she rests wholly in him he rests altogether in her. In those limpid souls where God can see the reflection of himself, God is reposing in the soul and the soul is reposing in God. To deprive God of this, though but in thought, is to deprive him, to deny to him, his Godhood who is seeking rest in all things, for God's nature is rest.
Fourthly, whether they know it or not, creatures are all in search of rest. No one can shut or open his eyes without seeking rest : he is ridding himself of some hindrance or finding some- where to rest. These arc the two motives of all human action. As I often say, my love is placed where I most clearly see God's likeness. But rest is more like God than any creature.
Mark how the soul must be for God to rest in her. She must be pure. What makes the soul pure ? Keeping to spiritual things. She is exalted too by these. The more she is exalted the purer she becomes in her intention and the more efficient in her work. As the philosopher says about the stars : they become less potent as they near the earth, being out of their true course In their proper orbit, though they are invisible on earth, they have more pull upon it. St Anselm apostrophises the soul, Withdraw thyself a little from the tumult of external things.' And again,
Flee away and hide thee from the rush of inner thoughts which cause such great disquiet to the soul.'
We can ask of God no better thing than rest. All God wants of man is a peaceful heart ; then he performs within the sqpl an act too Godlike for creature to attain to or yet see. The divine Wisdom is discreetly fond and lets no creature watch. As our Lord says, I will lead my bride into the desert and will speak to her in her heart/ into a solitude, that is, away from creatures.
Fourthly, he says the soul must rest in God. God cannot do divine work in the soul, for in the soul things are all ruled by
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measure. Measure means limit, within and without. There is none of this in God's operations, which are infinite : openly enclosed in God's revelation. David says, God sits above the Cherubim. He docs not say, above the Seraphim. Cherubim means wisdom, knowledge which brings God to the soul and leads the soul to God. But not into God. Not in her own intelligence does God perform his godly operation, because in her this is ruled by measure ; but he uses it as being God, divine. The highest power steps forth (that is, the will) and breaking into God, leads in the soul with her intelligence and all her powers and makes her one with God. Here God is acting above the power of the soul : not as in the soul but as in God. The soul now dowsed in God and in divine nature, receives divine life ; now she is subject to the law of God and is of the order of God. To take an illustration from natural philosophy. At the moment of conception the child in its mother's womb has neither limbs nor colour. But when the soul is poured into the body it takes form and colour and becomes an entity (in virtue of the soul), with the created nature of the soul and the appearance of a living being. And the soul, when perfectly atoned with God and dowsed in his divinity, loses all her hindrances, her feebleness and instability, and suddenly renewed with divine life grows orderly in all her ways and virtues. Look at a light, the nearer the wick the duller and denser the glow ; as the flame shoots up from the wick it gets brighter and brighter. The more exalted the soul the better God can do in her his divine work in his own likeness. Like a mountain rising up two leagues above the earth, graven with magic runes and sacred characters which defy the winds and rain. Even so the really holy soul is uplifted into perfect calm, absolute and changeless in divine activity. That religious has good cause for shame who is moved so readily to glo#m or anger or desire. He is no true religious.
Lastly, creatures are all seeking rest whether they know it or not. Never is the stone bereft of motion while it is not lying on the ground. And similarly fire. All creatures also : they seek their natural place. The loving soul finds rest nowhere except in God. David says, God has ordained to everything its place : to fish the water, birds the air and beasts the earth and to the soul the Godhead.' And Job declares in the same strain, What is in God he gives us for our joy and bliss.' God grant us peace and rest in him, So help us the eternal truth, which is himself. Amen^
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XL VII POVERTY
The really virtuous man does not want God. What I have I want not. He makes no plans, he sets no store by things. As God is higher than man so is he readier to give than man is to receive. Not by his fasts and vigils and his many outward works does a man prove his progress in the virtuous life, but it is a sure sign of his growth if he finds eternal things more and more attrac- tive than the things that pass. The man who has a thousand marks of gold and gives it all away for love of God is doing a fine thing ; yet I say, it were far finer and far better for him to despise it, setting it at naught on God's account.
A man should orient his will and all his works to God and having only God in view go forward unafraid, not thinking, am I right or am I wrong ? One who worked out all the chances ere starting his first fight would never fight at all. And if, going to some place, we must think how to set the front foot down we shall never get there. It is our duty to do the next thing : go straight on, that is the right way.
There are five kinds of poverty. The first is devilish poverty ; the second, golden poverty ; the third is willing poverty ; the fourth is spiritual poverty ; the fifth, divine poverty.
The first, or devilish poverty, applies to all who have not what they fain would have, outward or inward. That is their hell.
The second, golden poverty, is theirs who in the midst of goods and properties pass empty out and in. If everything they own was burnt the effect on them would be to leave them quite un- moved. Heaven must needs be theirs and they would have no less.
The third is willing poverty and belongs to those who, renouncing goods and honours, body and soul, leave everything with right good grace. These give judgment with the twelve apostles and by pronouncing judgment it is their judgment day who, knowing what they leave, yet set another in their heart and mightily bestir themselves about their own departure. Such are the willing poor.
The fourth are spiritual poor. These have forsaken friends and kindred, not merely goods and honour, body and soul ; further, they are quit of all good works : the eternal Word does all their work while they are idle and exempt from all activity. And since in the eternal Word is neither bad nor good, therefore they are absolutely empty.
The fifth are godly poor, for God can find no place in them to ^ Jostes, No. 34.
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work in. Theirs is riddance without and within for they are bare and free from all contingent form. This is the man : in this man all men are one man and that man is Christ. Of him one master says, Earth was never worthy of this man who looks on heaven and earth the same.' This man is object-free in time and in eternity.
Now enough of those who have no object in eternity, but one thing more of those who are objectless in time. What is meant by object ? There are two objects : one is otherness (not I) ; the other is a man's own proper self (his 1).
The first otherness is becomings all that has come into existence ; such things breed otherness and pass away. This applies to the passage of time.
He who knows one matter in all things remains unmoved. For matter is the subject of form and there can be no matter without form nor form devoid of matter. Form without matter is nothing at all ; but matter ever cleaves to form and is one undivided whole in every single part of it. Now since form in itself is naught, therefore it moves nothing. And since matter is perfectly impartible, therefore it is unmoved. This man then is unmoved by form or matter and is therefore objectless in time.
Man's other object is to possess his proper self, to identify himself with all perfection, with that most precious treasure his own aught : that is his quest. Now when a thing has gotten its own form, no more nor less, that thing is all its own and no one else's. He who conceives this really is perfect in the sense that he is wholly objectless to eternity, etc.
XLVII
THIS IS LIFE ETERNAL
Hcec est vita ceterna ut cognoscant te solum deum verum etc, (Joh. 173). Here beginneth a discourse on a gospel saying, Christ's dictum, This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God and thy Son whom thou hast sent.'
Now no one knows the Father except his only Son, for he says himself, No man knows the Father save the Son and no man knows the Son save the Father.' Ergo, if man is to know God, and therein consists his eternal bliss, he must be, with Christ, the only Son of the Father. If ye would be blest ye must be the only Son ; not many sons ; one Son. True, ye are many in your carnal birth, but ye shall be one in the eternal birth, for in God there is no more than the one natural spring with its single natural outlet of the Son ; not twain but one. And hence if ye are one with Christ ye are the sole issue with the eternal Word.
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How does man come to be the only Son of the eternal Father ? I answer. The eternal Word did not take upon itself this man or that, it took upon itself one indivisible free nature, human nature, bare and formless, for the impartible form of manhood is wholly without form ; and since in this union the eternal Word took human nature formless, therefore the Father's image, his eternal Son, became the form of human nature. Here it is just as true to say that man became God as that God became man. For human nature was transformed by taking the divine form which is the image of the Father. It follows that to be the Son ye must depart from and discard whatever makes for division in you. Man is an accident of nature. Do away with accidents and take yourselves in the freedom of your impartible humanity. But this very nature wherein ye take yourselves is become the Son of the eternal Father by union with the eternal Word, and therefore ye with Christ become the Son of the eternal Father by reason of enjoying the same nature which was there made God. Beware lest ye take yourselves as either this or that : realize yourselves in the liberation of your undivided manhood. If ye would be one ye must be rid of not, for noVs pride is division. How so ? Well, suppose I say, Thou art not the man. This not puts a division between thee and this man. To be undivided ye must be free from not There is one power in the soul which is immune from not, which has not aught in common with any mortal thing : there is nothing in this power ; only God is seen there face to face.
A man being thus the Son, his motion, his energy, whatever he enjoys, he has gotten of his own. Now the Son of the Father is the eternal Son as being descended from the Father. Further, all he has he has within himself since he is one in essence and in nature with the Father ; his essence and his quiddity, he has both in himself and in this sense he prays, Father, as I and thou are one even so I would they should be the same.' And just as the Son is one with the Father in his essence, so thou being one with him in essence and in nature, hast got it all in thee as the Father has in him. Thou hast it not on loan from God, because God is thine own : all thou hast gotten thou hast gotten of thine own and such works as are not produce of thine own are dead works in the sight of God. These thou art moved to by extraneous things and they are not living : they are dead, for anything alive is endowed with a motion of its own. If man's works are to live they must be indigenous : not foreign things nor outside but within him.
Remember. If ye love right as God ye love not right as right, therefore ye neither take it nor love it as a whole but as divided.
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But God is right, so ye are not taking him nor loving him in his entirety. Take right as right and ye take it as God. Then where right is at work ye will be working too, seeing that ye do right all the time. Though hell stood in the way of right ye would still do right and that not as a hardship but a pleasure, because being right itself yc must do right. The more a thing participates in a common nature, the more it is one with the impartibility of the common nature, the more impartible it is itself. To the whole truth, God help us. Amen,
XLVIII
BEHOLD, I SEND MY ANGEL
Ecce ego mitto angelum 7neum etc. {Matt, ll^o, Luc. 737 ). Behold, 1 send my angel before my face to prepare my way before me. And he whom we seek shall suddenly come into his temple. Who knoweth the day of his coming ? For he is as a fire that blazes up.' Suddenly, he says, he shall come into his temple. The soul shall come with all of her possessions, be they sins or be they virtues, and offer them all up at once, lifting them up in the Son into the Father. As the love of the Father is the loveli- ness of the Son. The Father loves nothing at all but the Son and such things as he finds in the Son. Let the soul then rise up in her whole power and offer herself to the Father in his Son so that she with the Son may be loved by the Father.
He says, Behold, I send my angel.' The word behold suggests three things. Something great or marvellous or rare. Behold, I send my angel to refine the soul and prepare her for divine light. Divine light is always in the angelic light and of the angelic light. The soul would be troubled and distressed if God's light were not shaded therein. God, clouded by angelic light is always waiting to come out and shine upon the soul. I am wont to say, when I am asked what God is doing, that he is begetting his Son, bearing him ever fresh and new and with such delight that he does nothing else besides this work with his Holy Ghost and all things in it. Hence his words, Behold I.' He who says I does the very best work. None but the Father can say this word right. The act is peculiar to him and there is no issue thereof but his Son. In this act God tells forth his all. When God does this work in the soul, that is his birth ; his birth is his work and his work is his Son. God performs this operation in the innermost depths of the soul so secretly that neither saint nor angel knows, nor is the soul herself a party to it save that she is the patient ; God does ^it by himself. It is really the Father who says, I send my angel.'
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Now I maintain we cannot be content with this and will have none of him. It was Origen who said, Mary Magdalene sought our Lord ; she sought for one dead man and was disappointed to find two living angels.' She was right, for she expected God. Dionysius says of the august principalities of angels, that divine order reigns there and divine activity and divine likeness or divine truth, as far as that is possible. What is divine order but divine power and from them both springs love which is ardour and wisdom and truth and power. For love is burning in the realm of essence : transcendental, actual being, free from nature. It is its nature to be natureless. To think of goodness or wisdom or power dissembles the essence and dims it in thought. The mere thought obscures essence. Such is divine rule. And where God finds its like within the soul there docs the Father give his Son birth. The soul's whole power bursts alight. Out of this power, out of this light, leaps the flame : love. The soul with all her might ascends to the order of God.
Now to speak of the order of the soul. According to a heathen doctor, the supernal light of the soul is very bright and clear and dearly loves itself, whereas the soul dislikes herself and never sheds this natural light upon herself unless her lower powers are ordered to her highest ; her natural light being high enough to reach angelic nature, but all averse from her inferior powers, it will not pour therein nor will it drench the soul unless these lower powers will give way. When a lord rules over a peojfle the serf is under the knight and the knight is under the baron. They all desire peace and to that end they will all help each other. And even so each several power is subject to the others and helps to keep peace in the soul, perfect rest. Our doctors define perfect rest as absolute freedom from motion. In it the soul can rise above herself to the order of the gods. In this absolute rest the Father gives the soul his only Son. Now he ranks first in order of divinity.
The other members take somewhat lower rank as I was saying of the angels who have God's likeness very strong in them and illumination. In this interior light they soar above themselves into the divine image, all face to face with God in his divine light and so much the same that they do God's work. Angels illumined like this and who are so like God, absorb and suck in God. I often say that were I void and had this fiery inner love and likeness I should absorb God altogether. Light streams out and lights up what it falls on. To call a man enlightened as we sometimes do, means little. Where it comes in it is far better ; where it breaks through into the soul and makes her Godlike, divine, as far as may be, and light inwardly. In this interior light she
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towers above herself in the light of God. Now she has come home and is at one with him and is his fellow-worker. Nothing is wrought by creature, the Father works alone. The soul shall never stop until she works as well as God. Then she and the Father shall do his work together : she shall work as one with him, wisely and lovingly. That we may be in unity with him, God help us. Amen.
XLIX
BEHOLD, I SEND MY ANGEL
Ecce mitto angelum meum (Malach. 3j, Luc, 7^^), It is written in the gospel, Behold, I send my angel.* Angels are within our ken for the evangelists deelare, we shall be like the angels.' One authority says, an angel is an image of God. Another one says he is fashioned like God. A third one describes him as a clear mirror wherein is reflected the goodness of God, the absolute stillness and mystery of God, as far as that is possible. Angels, again, have been defined to be pure intellectual light free from material things. We shall be like the angels. Perception here means seeing in the light that is in time, for anything I think of I think of in the light that is in time and temporal. But angels perceive in the light that is beyond time and eternal. They know in the eternal now. Men know in the now of time. The now of time is infinitely short. Yet take away this now of time and thou art everywhere and hast the whole of time. This thing or that thing is not all things ; as long as I am this or that, have this or that, I am not all things nor I have not all things. Purify till thou nor art nor hast not either this or that, then thou art omni- present, and being neither this nor that thou art all things. An angel is and acts as an intelligence in his degree, beholding God without ceasing and his object is intelligible essence. Hence he is far removed from things. Remote from time and tempor- alities.
Mark the prophet's words, he says, I send my angel.' The evangelist, however, omits the pronoun I. This points, in the first place, to God's elemental nature ; to the fact that God is uiinameable, transcending speech in the abstraction of his essence where, without word or utterance, God is ineffable to creatures. It shows next, that the soul is ineffable and wordless ; in her proper cause she is inarticulate, nameless and mute. The I is suppressed because there she has neither word nor utterance. Thirdly, it suggests that God and the soul are so entirely one that God has not a single thing to tell him from the soul, nor is he any
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other than the soul. The I is silent because he and the soul are every whit the same ; he has no property apart from soul nor does any other nature come within his ken. In the other reference, the text says 1 to indicate God's is -ness : that God simply is. All things are in God ; out of him, without him, is naught. All creatures are infernal and of no account compared with God. What they are in truth that they are in God, for it is God alone who is the truth ; the word I stands for the actuality of divine truth for it is the glyph of one-existence. It proclaims that God alone is. Secondly, it means that God is inseparate from things ; that he is more innate in them than they are in themselves. And man should be inseparate from things : not as cleaving to self but as wholly detached from himself ; thus he is inseparate from all things, and he is all things. So far as thou art nothing to thy- self so far thou art all things and iriscparate from all things ; and so far as thou art not divorced from all things so far thou art God and all things, for God's deity consists in his being present in all things. Wherefore the man who is inseparate from all things enjoys divinity as God himself enjoys it. Thirdly, the word / is in a sense the end of name for it is no proper name : it signifies the perfection of name and means immutability, dispassion : that God is immoveable, intangible, eternal stability.
Fourthly, it points to the absolute purity of the divine being which is entirely without admixture. Goodness, wisdom and anything else that we can attribute to God are impurities with God's abstract essence ; coexistence is foreign to essence, but the word I denotes God's pure essence, his being in itself without anything alien and strange. The angels arc the image, the mirror of God, which contains the reflection of the Godhead, of the glory, the stillness and the mystery of God. Let us like the angels imitate God. According to philosophers, to make a portrait of a man one must not copy Conrad nor yet Henry. For if it be like Conrad or like Henry it will not recall the man, but will remind one of Conrad or of Henry. Moreover, Conrad's portrait will not be like Henry for, given the knowledge and the art, one could do Conrad to the life, the very image of him. Now, God both will and can : he made thee like unto himself, the very image of himself. But like him argues something foreign and aloof. Now there is nothing foreign nor aloof betwixt God and the soul, therefore the soul is not like God : she is identical with him, the very same as he is.
More I do not know and cannot tell, so here my argument must end. But I was thinking on the way, that we ought to be utterly detached in our intention, having no one, nothing, in view but the Godhead as such : not happiness nor this nor that.
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just God and Godhead in itself. Aught beside that thou intendest is a divine impurity. Seize the actual Godhead itself. God help us so to do. Amen.
L
I CAME FORTH FROM THE FATHER
Exivi a patre et veni in mundum (Joh. ICgg)- I quote from the Gospel of St John. Our Lord says, I came forth from the Father and am come into the world and again I leave the world and return to my Father.' Another of his sayings is, Amen, Verily I say unto you whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name the same shall be yours.' Scholars say the word amen is an expression for stability. Our Lord says, Heaven and earth shall pass away before my word shall pass away,' which never changes. The heavens which arc manifold and the unnumbered stars are all self-coloured. The moon alone is pied, thick and clear, dark and light. That is due to the neighbourhood of earth. And our doctors teach that in God there is no yesterday nor morrow, it is to-day and now all the time in God. Augustine observes that the architect who builds a house therein displays his art ; though it may fall to ruin the art within his soul neither ages nor decays. And again Augustine says, All things are immutable in the eternal Word, nor do they wear away albeit in themselves they are corruptible, apt to be in some sort or not to be at all.
He says, Verily ' {i.e, without fail or invariably), whatsoever ye ask of my Father in my name the same shall be yours.' Accord- ing to St Augustine, To pray to God for aught save God is not to pray at all.' John Damascene declares that seeing herself the soul sees spirit ; seeing an angel she sees spirit, yet, beholding God, she and the angel arc but corporal things compared with him.' Their mind is as matter to God. Angelic light is darkness as compared with him. Our Lord says, Verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye ask in my name the same shall be yours,' meaning, what is in man's name is man ; what is in light's name is light ; what is in God's name is fixed and immutable. The name of God belongs to none but him who stands in this light. No man can say Father except he be Son and none is called Son unless he be one with the one-begotten Word. Whoso asks in God's name may demand of the Father whatever he will. Words have enormous power and have gotten it from the emanation of the eternal Word.
Our Lord says, I am come into the world.' The Father comes into his Son with all he is, he comes into his Son with all he has,
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he comes into his Son with all that he affords and, fourthly, he comes in an intellectual act. It is proper to the Son to dwell in the Father and it is proper to the Father to dwell in his Son and in the Holy Ghost. The full promise of the Father is brought forth in the Son to the end that the Son may transmit it to the soul. To use a favourite simile of mine. When a stone is thrown into a pond the impact starts a circle, small but energetic, which sets up other circles, the second being larger than the first albeit not so potent and the third one bigger still ; one is gotten from another without stopping ; and if the throw was hard enough the water's edge is reached before the ripples are exhausted. One unique throw with the world a sheet of water and the water would fail ere the circles died away.
Now mark the application. First, out of the Father there leaps forth the Son, small, but so puissant in his godly strength that it is he who causes the whole emanation. The second sally is the premier angel, following hard upon the first event. It speeds apace, and though less energetic than the first and fully small, it is endowed with so much force that its superfluous energy supplies the lower angels while its successors, yet more widely flung, are bigger in circumference than the second or the first. They keep on brimming out the one behind the other, all busy pouring themselves forth from the highest to the lowest of the angels ; but however far it be from the initial sally of the eternal Word to the first angel, this latter is too high to be affected by any eori)oral thing. Further. Our master claims for the lowest of the angels that in view of his energy projecting into God, the very basest of the inferior angels has so much of God's might that the smallest fraction (a chip as it were from the carpenter's axe), the minutest trace, of his activity makes all things grow and flourish. If this chip does not fall from his work, everything instantly perishes. They spread far and wide, reproducing so far as they may the first welling out of the Son from the Father ; but this first emanation was so charged with power that given a thousand or more worlds they would be wanting in capacity ere the first issue had been spent, just as the water's edge was reached before the ripples were exhausted that arose from the impact of the stone.
Our Lord says, I came forth from the Father and am come into the world.' fV orld meaning pure or virgin. He is referring to the soul. Boethius says the world of the soul is called pure because she is fashioned like the fair and virgin world in God. And God is that soul which has gotten her into the perfect image of the divine world and wholly there abides, not peering forth but, all aloof from the outside world, standing still in the light-world
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in God. Into this soul comes the Son, begotten there in all the panoply of God : Father, Son and Holy Ghost, all together in one perfect being. The soul that has gotten in her the Son, has in one perfect entity the entire promise of the Godhead. One thing more. Creatures communicate themselves so far as they are good. It is peculiar to God as being wholly good that into whomsoever does partake of him he empties himself wholly in his Son. Which is another argument for the soul who has gotten the Son receiving the Godhead altogether. Thirdly, the Father is performing, in his Son, an intellectual operation. According to the philosophers, man's highest happiness consists in the mental exercise of wisdom. And the Father's whole delight, his perfect bliss, is this intellectual wont which is the birth of his Son. This birth he so enjoys that he puts his whole might into it and his entire nature. Accordingly the soul having gotten the Son by a feat of understanding, in him possesses all that God can give, in one perfect joy and bliss.
Our Lord says, I came forth from the Father and am come into this world,' into the light-world, that is. The soul, true reflection of the divine world, into her enters the Son ; just as he falls from the Father he is born in the soul. In this very same birth he is born in the world, in the soul, and bearing her up brings her to birth in the Father. As he says, again I leave the world,' the outer world, and rc-ascend to my Father,' with the light- world of the soul, copy of the world divine, made on the same last, in the same likeness. He carries her up to his Father, into the first, into the ground whence the Son comes out and strikes down from the Father.
There is another meaning in his words, I came forth from the Father,' which is this : the Father goes into his Son in all his deity, for he is wholly intellectual. He goes clean into his Son. Had he more sons they would get naught ; he could never have but one Son for he is none other than his understanding. Had he a thousand sons they must needs be all the same Son.
Our Lord says, I came forth from the Father and am come into the world. Again I leave the world and return to my Father.' He implies that his going out is his going into the soul. But her going in is her going out. The soul goes out of her outermost into her innermost, out of her own into the Son's. Her being caught up to the Father is his quitting the outer world and, with the soul, ascending once more to his Father. Mark tells of some- one addressing our Lord as Good Master.' He replied, There is none good but God,' for in coming forth he falls clean into the soul with all he is. No creature exists that can give itself whole ; it goes out in kindness and work but itself stays at home. His
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exit is his entrance. His passage out of the Father is his passage into the soul. Ilis emanation verily is God giving himself once for all in his Son. We say : the only-begotten Son who proceeds from the Father is the same as himself. From the moment the Father launches forth in all his might in the Son, he (the Father) reverts to pure essence. He has no other course seeing he has spent all his substance on his Son. Were there no time nor place nor matter, nothing left at all, the begetter would be as the begotten. It follows that the Son so called, must be the only Son and be one with the Father who utters in one single Word the whole of what he knows, the whole of what he can afford, in one single instant, and that instant is eternal.
Now our doctors say : natural acts make for unity. God vouchsafes himself, gives himself, as a whole to the soul in order that she may be one with him. Moreover, his first issue is his only Son. Again, our doctors teach that the highest of the angels is pure yet he forms a part of nature. But the only Son never entered any nature, he remained superior to nature : in pure being he went into the Father. The second eruption into nature, so our masters say, the highest spirit, remained by nature simplex, one in proportion to the nearness of his nature (to its origin). He broke in to let us out : his exit thence is his entrance here. TIcncc his words, Let. . . .'
LI
HE SOUGHT TO SEE . . . WHO HE WAS
Et qumrehat videre Jemmy quis esset etc, {Luc. lOg). St Luke relates that when our Lord walked upon earth in human nature there was a rich man who sought to see him, and eould not for the press for he was small of stature.' According to a holy man. Only he is rich who has plenty of God and virtue. To be well off for goods and stinted for God makes one poor and not rich, for things are as nothing to God. Hence the protest of that seigneur whom his retainers lauded for his power and his riches. Quoth he, I trow they laud not me one whit who have forgot my strongest claim to praise, my power over my body to demand of it what I will.' This man who sought to see .lesus did outrun the crowd and climbed up into a tree in order to see him. And Jesus said, Make haste and come down, for to-day I abide at thine house.' Whoso would see Jesus must outrun all things. What does it show when a man does not hasten past things ? It shows he has not tasted God. If he had tasted God he would hasten to pass by all things, and not pass by merely but break through all creatures. What his love is ready to leave he breaks
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through. If wc fail to see God that is due to our feeble desire no less than the concourse of creatures. Aim high, be high. To see God needs high aspiration. Know, ardent desire and abject humility work wonders. I vow God is omnipotent, but he is impotent to thwart the humble soul with towering aspiration. And where I cannot master God and bend him to my will it is because I fail either in will or meekness. I say, and I would stake my life upon it, that by will a man might pierce a wall of steel, and accordingly we read about St Peter that on catching sight of Jesus he walked upon the water in his eagerness to meet him.
Look you : a thing that grows in the filling will never get full. Take a vessel, a stoup ; if you pour a stoup in and it stretches thereby then it will not be full. And so with the soul : the more she demands the more she is given ; the more she receives the bigger she grows. Who is Jesus ? lie has no name. Where do we sec God ? Where there is no yesterday nor morrow : where it is now and to-day, there we sec God. What is God ? One master says, If I were forced to tell of God then 1 should say, God is a thing no mind can reach or grasp and that is all 1 know about him. Another master says, lie who knows of God that he is unknown, that man knows God. Then comes St Augustine with his dictum, God is something sovran, supreme, which is common to all partakers. lie means that God is somewhat wherein every creature must be ; for if he fall out of the hand of the mercy of God he will fall back into the hand of the justice of God. lie must ever be in him. Needs must a man have his being in God and have enjoyment in God withal, aye in God himself, an he will. But he who docs not lind eternal satisfaction and enjoyment in God himself must get it out of things, things that arc base, far lower than his footstool ; yet creatures without exception get their being from God, even the damned in hell persist on somewhat of his being. Though they dwell not in God in felicity, still they must go on without him, against their will, in damnation. What folly it is to refuse to be with him wc cannot be without !
St Augustine says, What is God ? lie is something we cannot conceive any better.' But I say, God is better than anything we can conceive ; 1 say, God is somewhat, I know not what, verily I know not. He is all that is being rather than not- being, existent more than non-existent ; our highest aspirations arc but grovelling things falling hopelessly short of God. He transcends heart's desire. When I preached at Paris I declared, and I durst now repeat, that not a man at Paris can conceive with all his learning what God is in the very meanest creature, not even in a fly. More- over, I now say that the whole world is powerless to conceive it
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What God is in himself no man can tell except he be ravished into the light that God is himself. What God is in the angels is very remote and nobody knows. What God is in the God-loving soul not a soul knows but the soul he is in. What God is in these nether things, I know to some extent but very little. What time God comes within our ken the natural faculties vanish. May we be rapt away into the light that is God himself and therein Be forever blest. So help us God. Amen.
LII
THE GOOD HOUSEWIFE
Consideravit domum etc. The good housewife looks well to the ways of her house, not eating the bread of idleness.' This house represents the soul as a whole, and the ways of the house are the powers of the soul. An ancient philosopher says the soul is made in between one and two. The one is eternity, ever alone and without variation. The two is time, changing and given to multiplication. He means to convey that the soul in her higher powers touches eternity, God to wit, while her lower powers being in contact with time make her subject to change and biased towards bodily things, which degrade her. Could the soul know God as well as the angels do she would never have come into body. If she could know God without the world the world would not have been made for her sake. The world was contrived on her account for training and bracing the eye of the soul to endure divine light. The sunshine falling on the earth is dimmed first in the air and diffused on various things, for no human eye can support the sun. And even so the light of God is over strong and bright for the soul's eye to bear, without being fixed and given up by matter and reflection which accustom it to dwelling in the light divine.
In her superior powers the soul is in contact with God ; so she takes after God. God takes after himself ; he has gotten his form from himself and from no one beside. Ilis form is that of perfect self-knowledge, absolute light. When the soul comes in contact with him in real understanding, then she is like him in form. Suppose you press a seal into green wax or red, or into cloth, just enough for the seal, the seal being stamped right into the wax so that none of the wax is left over unsealed, then it is one and the same with the seal. In just the same way the soul is wholly united with God in image and form when she is in contact with him in actual gnosis. St Augustine says the soul is of more noble build than any other creature, and that is why no mortal thing, destined to perish at the latter day, can hold communication with
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or eke affect the soul save from a distance and by messengers. Such are the eyes and ears and the five senses : these are the soul's ways out into the world, and by these ways the world gets back into the soul. According to one master, the powers of the soul flow back into the soul laden with fruits ; they never go out but they bring something back. So beware lest thine eyes bring back aught to hurt thy soul. My firm conviction is that everything a good man sees must better him. On seeing evil he thanks God for saving him therefrom and prays God to convert him to what he is. On seeing good his great desire will be to have it perfected in him.
This seeing serves two purposes : it scotches what is mischievous and makes us forthwith remedy our faults. Many a time I have laid it down that great workers, great fasters, great vigil-keepers, if they fail to mend their wicked ways, wherein true progress lies, do cheat themselves and are the devil's laughing-stock. A man once had an arrow he grew rich on. lie was neighbour to a sower. When the arrow was in use a breeze from any quarter would catch it by the head and turn its tail into the wind. So this man approached the sower and quoth he, What will you give me to tell you the way of the wind ? ' Thus he sold his arrow and waxed rich thereby. And so might we become right rich in virtue by finding out our frailties, and then, in rue, setting ourselves to cure them.
This St Elizabeth did with much care. She looked well to the ways of her house. She had no fear for the winter for her house- hold was doubly clad. Probable ills she provided against. Any lack she worked hard to supply. So she ate not the bread of idleness. Withal her superior powers she kept oriented to God. The superior powers of the soul arc three. The first is intuition ; the second irascibilis, i,e, the power of attack ; the third is will. In the act of imbibing knowledge of the very truth into the impartible power whereby we apprehend God, the soul is a light. And God too is light, and when the divine light is flooding the soul, soul becomes merged into God just like a light into light. Then she is called the light of faith which is a divine virtue. And whither the soul is unable to go with her senses and powers thither faith takes her.
The second is the attacking force whose special function it is to progress. As the eye is for seeing colour and shape and the ear is for hearing sweet voices and sounds, so the soul with this power is ever advancing ; if she glances aside to waver from him, that is sin. She cannot brook that aught should be above her. I trow she cannot brook God even being above her ; unless he be within her and she has gotten as good as God himself, she
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never rests. With this power God is apprehended by the soul, as far as that is feasible to creature and so it is called hope, whieh is a divine virtue also. Herein the soul has such a clear prospect of God that she fondly imagines God in his whole being has not a thing withholdcn from her. King Solomon says, Stolen waters are sweet.' And St Augustine tells us, The pears I stole were nicer than the ones my mother gave me, because they were forbidden and locked up.' So is that grace far sweeter to the soul which she has won by special work and wisdom than that which is our common property.
The third power is interior will, turned ever face-like towards God in godly will, drawing from God his love into itself. God is drawn by the soul and the soul is drawn by God, and this is divine love, another divine virtue. Divine felicity lies in three things. In knowledge and in liberation from the bondage of creature : in having enough of, having finished with, self and all creatures. Further, the soul's perfection lies in gnosis, in conception, in conceiving God and in union of perfect love. Do we want to know what sin means ? Lapsing from felicity and virtue, that is the whole cause of sin. It behoves every soul to look to her ways. She had no fear for the winter with her household doubly clad,' as the scriptures tell of her. She was clothed with strength to withstand imperfection and was adorned with the truth. To all appearance this woman was rich and had the world at her feet, but in secret she knelt at the shrine of true poverty. And when her outward comforts failed she fled to him to whom all creatures flee, setting at naught the world and self. In this way she trans- cended self, despising men's despisery and not minding it, for all she had in mind was the tending of the sick and the cleansing of the foul, which she managed by dint of her pure heart. Even so let us look to the ways of our house and not cat the bread of idleness. So help us God. Amen.
LIII
WHOSOEVER WOULD COME AFTER ME
Dominus dicet : qui vult venire post me etc, {Matt, I624 ; Luc, 923). Our Lord says, Whosoever would come to me let him take up his cross and with willing martyrdom forsake himself and follow me.' Everything by nature is pursuing God after its own fashion. Fire draws upwards, earth falls downwards, and similarly every creature here is searching out the place God has ordained it for. Origen says a man forsakes himself when he by striving rids himself of customary sins and denies himself those things
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he is addicted to ; so doing he takes up his cross with willing pain and disciplines himself in virtuous uses. Basilius, the saint, once said that any man who leaves the things that are behind him and beneath him and which are not God, has left himself. And treating of this subject in the book wherein he speaks about the soul, St Augustine calls her nobler, mightier, grander than any other creature and in these respects most like to God of all, barring the angels, who arc nobler than her nature because they were the first to be poured forth and loosed from spirit although they keep a refuge in it. This the soul has not. She has to pour into the body.
Various people comment sagely upon this : If God is quite impartible why did he not create all things simply like the angels ? That w^ould never do, theologians say. One sort of creature could not show forth God. He made many kinds of creatures for each one to show forth a modicum of God albeit no more of him that one drop of water reveals about the sea. Not but what a drop of water tells us more about the sea, and indeed the universe, than any creatures can reveal (of God). For out of drops we might get a sea, but not by means of any ercatures could we succeed in getting God. St (iregory observes that, The soul whom God shines into so that she sees him somewhat, to her creatures arc dwarfed or merely ciphers.
Thirdly, the text refers to one who dies a martyr's death as forsaking self. Our Lord says, Moses, to me no man comes as himself.' Now according to St Chrysostom, To be an other than I am I must abandon that I am.' This is accom])lished by humility. * Nothing ', says St Gregory, gives more power than does lowliness.' We sec this well with Moses, who when he wanted to rest drove his flock of sheep into the valley. It was there he saw the bush burning but not consumed. I will go,' said Moses, and look at this great sight.' Then God called to him, Stay, Moses, go no further ! Doff thy shoes.' The feet arc symbols of desire. They must be bare : drawn out of everything temporal and mortal ; then the soul can offer her whole self to her Lord. One of the saints has said that if the soul should rise and, being unillumined, offer herself to our Lord she would be rebuffed and come to grief ; like an eye that likes trying to look at the sun finds it grows weaker and blinder.
LIV
FROM HIM AND THROUGH HIM AND IN HIM
Ex ipso et per ipsum et in ipso sunt omnia, ipsi gloria in scecula (Rom. II36). St Paul says, From him and through him and in him are all things, to whom be glory and honour.' These words
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are said of the three Persons and the unity of their nature. From him applies to the Father, the origin of all things in eternity and in time. Through him applies to the Son, through whom all things proceeded forth. In him applies to the Holy Ghost, in whom all things are contained, made spirit and brought back to their end. From another point of view these words, again, betoken the three Persons by their from and through and in. As these words are distinct even so do they show the distinction of the Persons. Put from the word him (which is the same for all) we gather the oneness of their nature. He says, To him be glory and honour.' Proclaiming the three Persons as one God, to whom alone be all honour.
Now we proceed to speak of the things of God, of Persons and of essence, which we hardly understand. Those that cannot follow this discourse can take refuge in the dogma I have ta ight before, that the three Persons arc in one essence and one essence in the three Persons. Remember we are speaking of Father and paternity, and you must understand that these two are not apart in two hypostases, but they are one hypostasis, and moreover they arc one and three rationally speaking. Consider the meaning of paternity. It means the power of father-kind. A father is known by the fact that he begets, but we recognise paternity in a potential father. Take, for example, the maid who is a virgin. By nature she is maternal though not actually mother. The same thing with a father ; in his power to beget he is paternal, but the fact of his begetting makes him father. Mark this difference between father and paternity when the Word is gotten ghostly in the soul. This we take to be the case when the soul, sublimed and in the proper state, grows pregnant with God's light and divine by nature : by the unique power of God grown big with Deity. You sec, in this immanent power, soul too is paternal. But radiant with revelation, she with the F'athcr begets and is then with the Father called father. This father and fatherhood differ as applied to the soul. Mark, too, that Son differs from filiation, remembering that these two are not separate in two hypostases : they arc the same hypostasis. We find filiation in potential father-nature, unborn. If he were not unborn in his potential nature the Father could not beget him, for a thing that comes out must first have been in. So much for filiation. But the Son we explain as the Father's begetting of his own Word, whereby the Father is Father. The Son, moreover, is God in himself, not God of himself but of the Father alone. Were he God of himself he would not be one with the Father so there would be two without any beginning. Which is impossible. We postulate three distinct properties, the Father's property is that
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he comes from none but himself. The Son's property is that he does not come from himself : he descends from the Father by way of nativity. The Holy Ghost's property is that he comes from the Father not as being born : he proceeds from them twain, both Father and Son, not as a birth but as love. For two who are sundered in Person cannot together bear one but they can bear mutual love. The Holy Ghost is not born because he proceeds out of two and not merely out of the Father, albeit certain doctors do maintain that the Holy Ghost comes from the Father alone and not from the Son at all. This is false ; for when the Father gat the Son he gave him his whole nature as well as all perfection, which goes with being of that nature, the Father withholding nothing from his Son. It follows that the Father cannot alone bring forth the Holy Ghost as he alone did get the Son. Had these doctors envisaged it aright, they would no doubt have said the same. They were speaking without understanding. So it is wrong to say the Son is God from himself and not from the Father. The Son may be said to bring forth the Spirit yet not from himself : from the Father whence he comes himself. Thus the Holy Ghost comes from them twain and not from one ; but not as being twain, as being one. So much for the Son and filiation.
It may be asked concerning Spirit and spiration, Can we use these terms or not ? Is there some objection, which makes it inad- missible ? Filiation is found latent in the nature of the Father, that is plain, seeing he is not merely brought forth out of him. Herein lies the objection to speaking of Spirit and spiration. Let us see if we can find precisely the right meaning of Spirit and spiration. We have here two and one. That is the difference between Spirit and spiration. In the first, wlicn we predicate two we mean Father and Son. But by saying in one we refer to spiration. This same in one is formless : the mark of spiration. Again, when we say in another that signifies Spirit, who is another than Father and Son in his Person.
LVi
GOD MADE THE POOR FOR THE RICH
God made the poor for the rich and the rich for the poor. Lend to God, he will repay you. Some say they believe in God who believe not God. It is a greater thing to believe in God than to believe God. I may trust a man to pay me back five shillings
^ See also Wackernagol, No. lix, from which the last sentence ia added.
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I have lent him yet not trust in the man. So if a man believes in God why will he not trust him to repay what he lends his poor ? He who gives up all things gets back an hundredfold. If he expects his hundredfold he shall get nothing : he is not giving up the things but getting more, an hundredfold. Our Lord repays an hundredfold the man who leaves all things. Letting go all things he gets an hundredfold return and eternal life. If it happens to a man in the course of riddance to get again the very same he gave, then, not giving all, he shall get nothing. Anyone who looks to find anything in God, knowledge, understanding or devotion or whatever it may be, even if he find it will not be finding God but knowledge, understanding or devotion : all things I heartily commend ; but to him not lasting.
Seek nothing at all, not understanding nor gnosis nor piety nor inwardness nor peace but only God's will. The soul who is as she by rights should be, would not be satisfied even if God gave her his whole Godhead ; it would no more console her than his giving her a fly. God-knowledge is vain apart from God-will. In God's will are all things, eternal and perfect and pleasant to God ; but out of God's will things are all of them naught and not pleasant to God and not perfect. Never pray for any mortal thing ; if thou must pray for anything at all, pray for God's will and nothing else for therein thou hast all. To ask for aught beside means getting nothing. In him is naught but one and one is indivisible and aught save one is part, not one. God is one and anything extra that is sought or found is not God but a fraction. Peace, intuition or anything else than simply God's will is for self-love and is naught ; but if he seeks God's naked will then whatever he may find or have revealed to him therein that man may take as a gift of God without ever thinking or looking to sec if it is of nature or of grace or from whence or in what wise it may be : he need have no anxiety whatever on that score ; he is going the right way and while following the broad lines of the Christian life there is no need to scrutinize each detail. He can just take each thing from God, and whatever comes accept it as the best for him, and have no fear of meeting on his lonely road with anything, do what he may, that hinders his awareness of the love of God, which to him is all that matters.
People have a way of saying, when it falls to them to do or suffer something, If only I knew it was the will of God I would gladly suffer and put up with it.' Dear God I what a question for a sick man to ask, docs God intend me to be ill ? He ought to know it is the will of God by the very fact of being ill. And so with other things. Whatever comes accept it as God's will, pure and simple. Some, when things prosper with them, inwardly
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or outwardly, praise God and have faith in him. They will say, for instance, I have gotten four quarters of corn this year and as many of wine : I put my trust in God.' Nay, I say thou dost trust in the corn and the wine.
The soul is created for good so great, so high, that she cannot rest in any mode ; all the time she is hastening past modes to the eternal good, to God who is her goal. This is not won in the heat of the assault, in the stress and strain of action or of passion, but by gentleness and true humility and self-abnegation in that and everything that may betide. A man should not dragoon himself :
Thou shalt do this at whatever cost,' that would be wrong for so he lends importance to himself. If anything should chance to grieve or trouble or disquiet him, again he would be wrong for that means giving way to self. When out of the depths of humilia- tion he calls on God for counsel and bending low before him accepts with quiet faith whatever he may send, then he is right. It all depends, in teaching and advising, if a man will listen, disregarding everything but God. Many and various are the ways of putting this, but it promotes the proper play of conscience to refuse attention to casual happenings and for a man when he is by himself to make an offering of his will to God and then proceed to take each thing alike from God, grace or whatever comes, inward or outward.
Whoso sees aught of God's secs naught of God. The righteous man does not need God. What I have I am not in need of. He serves for naught, he cares for naught, he has God and that is all he needs. As God is higher than man so is he readier to give than man is to receive. Not by fasting and good works can we gauge our progress in the virtuous life, but a sure sign of growth is a waxing love for the eternal and a waning interest in temporal things. The man who owns an hundred crowns and gives them all in the name of God to found a cloister is doing a good work. And yet I say, it were a better to despise and naught himself for love of God. It behoves a man in all he docs to turn his will in God's direction and keeping only God in view to forge ahead without a qualm, not wondering, am I right or am I doing something wrong ? If the painter had to plan out every brush-mark before he made his first he would not paint at all. And if, going to some place, we had first to settle how to put the front foot down, we should never get there. Follow your principles and keep straight on ; you will come to the right place, that is the way.
This is a collation of Meister Eckhart's.
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LVI
THE EMANATION AND RETURN
Nolite timere eos qui corpus occidunt, animuni autem occidere non possunt {Matt. lOgg). Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul.' Spirit does not kill spirit ; spirit gives life to spirit. Them which kill you ' are flesh and blood which die by one another. Man's most precious possession is blood, when it is well-liking. The most mischievous thing in man is blood when it is ill-liking. When the blood rules the flesh, the person is humble and patient and chaste and has all the virtues. But where the flesh has the upper hand he is supercilious, hasty, and lascivious and has all the vices. Praised be St John the glorified of God himself.
Now mark. I will say something I never said before. When God created the heavens and the earth and all creatures, God did no work ; he had no work to do ; there was no activity in him. God said: We will make a likeness.' To create is easy : we do it when and as we will. But what I make, I make myself, with myself and in myself, imprinting my image clearly in it. We will make a likeness ' : not the Father nor the Son nor the Holy Ghost: we, the holy Trinity in concert, we will make a likeness.
When God made man he wrought in the soul his like work, his ever-cherished, his working work. This work was a great one, no less than the soul : she was the work of God. God's nature, his being and his godhood depend upon his working in the soul. God be praised, God be praised ! God works in the soul ; he is in love with his work. The work is love and the love is God. God loves himself and his nature, his essence and his Godhead. In the love wherein he loves himself therein God loves all creatures. With the love wherewith God loves himself therewith he loves all creatures, not as creatures : creatures as God. In the love wherein God loves himself therein he loves all things.
Again I say what I have never said before. God enjoys him- self. In the joy wherein God enjoys himself therein he enjoys all creatures. With the joy wherewith God enjoys himself he enjoys all creatures, not as creatures : creatures as God. In the joy wherein God enjoys himself, therein he enjoys all things. And mark. All creatures tend towards their ultimate perfection. Apprehend me, I beseech you, by the eternal ever-valid truth and by my soul. For yet again I say a thing I never said before : God and Godhead are as different as earth is from heaven. More- over I declare : the outward and the inward man are as different, too, as earth and heaven. God is higher, many thousand miles.
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Yet God comes and goes. But to resume my argument : God enjoys himself in all things. The sun sheds his light upon all creatures, and anything he sheds his beams upon absorbs them, yet he loses nothing of his brightness. All creatures sacrifice their life for being. Creatures all come into my mind and are rational in me. I alone prepare all creatures to return to God. Beware, all of you, what ye do.
To return to my inner and my outer man. I see the lilies in the field, their gaiety, their colour, all their leaves. But I do not see their fragrance. Why ? Because what I give out is in me. What I am saying is in me and I speak it forth of me. My outward man relishes creatures as creatures, as wine and bread and meat. But my inner man relishes things not as creature but as the gift of God. And again to my innermost man they savour not of God's gift but of ever and aye. I take a bowl of water and place a mirror in it and set it in the sun. The sun sends forth his light-rays both from his disc and also from the bottom of the bowl, suffering thereby no diminution. The reflection of the mirror in the sun is in the sun. The sun and it are thus what it is. And so with God. God is in the soul with his nature, his essence and his Godhood, but he is not on that account the soul. The soul's reflection is in God. God and she are thus what she is. There God is all creatures. There God's utterance is God.
While I subsisted in the ground, in the bottom, in the river and fount of Godhead, no one asked me where I was going or what I was doing : there was no one to ask me. When I was flowing all creatures spake God. If I am asked. Brother Eckhart, when went ye out of your house ? Then I must have been in. Even so do all creatures speak God. And why do they not speak the Godhead ? Everything in the Godhead is one, and of that there is nothing to be said. God works, the Godhead does no work, there is nothing to do ; in it is no activity. It never envisaged any work. God and Godhead are as different as active and inactive. On my return to God, where I am formless, my breaking through will be far nobler than my emanation. I alone take all creatures out of their sense into my mind and make them one in me. When I go back into the ground, into the depths, into the well-spring of the Godhead, no one will ask me whence I came or whither I went. No one missed me : God passes away.
All happiness to those who have listened to this sermon. Had there been no one here I must have preached it to the poor-box. Some poor souls will go back home and say, I shall settle down and eat my bread and serve God. Verily I say, they persist in error, and will never have the power to strive for or to win what those others do who follow Christ in poverty and exile. Amen.
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LVII
SUCH IS THE NATURE OF GOD
A master cries, Dear God, how well for me did my love bear fruit !
Our Lord says to every loving soul, I was made man for you, and if ye are not God for me ye wrong me. I in my God-nature did dwell in your man's nature, so that none guessed my godly might seeing me walk like any other man. And even so shall ye in your humanity hide you in my divinity, and none shall guess your human weakness : your life being all divine they shall see naught in you but God.' This does not mean soft words or pious mien or much parade of holiness, so that our name borne far and and wide is highly honoured by the friends of God ; nor that as cherished and elect of God we fondly think God has forgot all creatures but ourselves and anything we ask of God is straight- way done. No, not by any means ! That is not what God wants of us : all the other way.
He would have us found wholly unmoved wheri people call us cheats and liars or whatever it may be whcrcl^y we are bereft of our fair name ; and not only evil speaking but evil deeds as well : denying us our animal necessities ; and not only temporal needs but bodily hurt. (He would that) our sickness, or whatever ill it be, should help us in our bodily work ; that we should always do our best despite that people turn it to the worst account ; further, that we should suffer in this sense not alone from people but from God as well, who, withholding from us his present con- solation, builds as it were a wall between us and when we bring our work to him seeking his help and comfort, he behaves towards us as if he shut his eyes and refused to sec or hear : he leaves us in our need to stand and fight alone, like Christ forsaken by his Father. Then hiding us in his divinity, behold us unbowed down by woe and with no other help than the words Christ uttered,
Father, they will be done.'
Such is the nature of God that we know it by nothing better than naught. -- How, by naught ? -- By getting rid of all means, not merely by spurning the world and the possession of virtue ; I must let virtue go if I would see God face to face ; not that I should flout virtue, but virtue being innate in me I transcend virtue. When a man's mind has lost touch with every thing then, not till then, it comes in touch with God. A heathen philo- sopher has said, nature cannot transcend nature. Ergo, no creature can see God. If he is seen it must be in light that is supernatural. Theologians have a question, When God uplifts
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the soul above himself and above all creatures and leads her home into himself, why does he not raise up the body too so that it has no earthly needs ? One of the masters -- I think St Augus- tine -- answers this as follows. When the soul attains to union with God then at last the body enjoys all things to God's glory. Through man all creatures have flowed forth and the body's rational use of creatures is not a drawback to the soul : it is an added dignity, for creatures can find no better way of returning to their source than in the righteous man who of his soul can say that even for an instant it has been absorbed in union with God. For then there is no obstacle between God and the soul, and as far as the soul follows God into the desert of his Godhead so far the body follows the bodily Christ into the desert of his willing poverty : as the soul is united with his deity so the body is atoned in Christ by the operation of true virtue. Well, then may the heavenly Father say, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,' for not only has he gotten in the soul his only Son : he has begotten her his only Son.
From the very bottom of my heart I say, Man, how can aught afflict thee or be hard to bear when thou considerest that he who yonder subsisted in the form of God and in the day of his eternity and in the glory of the saints, and who before was born the splendour and substance of God, did enter the prison, the trap of thy sense- nature which is so unclean that aught, however pure, is besmirched and fouled by coming near it, yet notwithstanding this he abode there for thy sake ? What is there thou wouldst not gladly suffer, reading of the bitterness of thy Lord and God, pondering the afflictions, all the woes, that did befall him ? The scorn and contumely he bore from king and soldier, from knaves and passers by his cross ? How the glory of the eternal light was mocked and scorned and tortured ? Behold, what innocence, compassion and true love, and nowhere shown to me more clearly than where the love-power pierced his heart. Make thee then a bundle of the woes of thy Lord God and let it lie between thy breasts. Regard and realize his virtues, how all his works make for thy weal, and see thou pay him back in his own coin his infamous and shameful death and his pain-bearing nature wherein he, sinless, suffered for thy sin as if it had been his ; as he says in the Prophets concerning his afflictions, Lo, I suffer for my sins,' and speaking of *the fruits of all his labours, By your works shall ye possess this kingdom I ' calling our sins his sins and his works our works ; and he has answered for our sins as though he had committed them, whereas we profit by his works as though they were our own. And this should make our labour light, for the good knight laments not his own. wounds, seeing his king who is wounded with
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him. He offers us the drink he drank himself. He asks nothing of us but what he has already done or suffered. We ought to suffer gladly, for God did nothing else while he sojourned upon earth. May we in God's nature so transcend and lose our human nature, all our weakness, that nothing should be found in us but good alone. So help us God. Amen.
LVIII 1
DIVINE UNDERSTANDING
Lord God Almighty, all things are in thy power. Power and lordship lie in two things, in freedom and in the possession of many good things in peace. What is freedom ? A heathen philosopher says, That thing is free which cleaves to naught and to which naught cleaves.' So there is nothing free but the first cause, that is, the cause of all things.
To lordship belongs the ])ossession of many good things and beautiful. God is all good in all ; hence he possesses himself in all. What God has, that is he in all. The love and will, the wisdom, the goodness we say that he has, these he is. If God is this, he is not naught, for God was prior to naught. God has no before nor after : but naught has a sequel ; its sequel is aught. Naught's foregocr was God, for lie was prior to naught. Naught's issue is aught. God then has no before nor after. Lo, the cause of all things, self-subsistcnt, discriminate light which is himself ! God is a light shining in itself in silent stillness. The one light, the one essence itself, which knows and understands itself. The understanding of this unique light is the light from the light, it is the eternal Person of the Son from the eternal Person of the Father. The Father spoke one Word, namely, his Son. In this only AVord he spoke all things. The Word of the Father is none other than his understanding of himself. The understanding of the Father understands that he understands, and that his under- standing understands is the same as that he is who is understanding. That is, the light from the light.
Job says, God spake one Word ; this was his own conception of himself : it was his Son. In this one conception he conceives all things ; he sees them as issuing from nothing. They are that in themselves. But as subsisting eternally in him, they are without themselves. What they were (without) themselves, was he him- self : God is nothing but God, for God is without other. All creatures are a light, for they are conceived in the light of unity
' See Pfeiffer, Zt.J. dtsch. Alt., Bd. 8 (2), 1850. For authorship see Preger'? Qeachichte, p. 319.
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and eternity. Creatures flowing forth as light reveal the hidden light. As St James says, Every good gift and every perfeet gift come down from above from the Father of lights.' We may deduce from this that all things are one light radiated by the Father for the purpose of revealing his own hidden light. And as all things have been one liglit proceeding forth, so also they are all one light which is flowing back, if they turn not away there- from of their own free will. Those who are steadfast in the face of multiplicity, behold wliat light and grace are revealed to them ! For the sovran good is so ordered towards the soul that she receives it not except by means. As St Dionysius says, The means is light : grace that illumines understanding.' What is understanding ? Understanding means seeing a thing quite clearly and without mistake. St Dionysius says, Disengage thy- self entirely from things if thou wouldst understand the highest good, God namely.' VVliat are wc to understand by God ? That he is the one power. Let us therefore unify ourselves so that this one power may energise in us. He is also the good which moves things towards their good, namely himself, albeit he himself remains unmoved. And lie is perfect simplicity ; and the simpler the soul is the better she understands his simplicity. How can we be perfectly simple ? By departing from things and from our- selves, and knowing our own mind and all the working of the powers of the soul, except the chief one, understanding : leave that to God alone. The passive soul stands to lose all this and leave God to work without hindrance ; then he begets his perfect likeness in her and conforms her to himself. Then she understands with him and loves with him. This is perfection. It is sometimes asked. Do we love God with the love wherewith the Father and the Son love one another ? Let us consider.
Two kinds of love belong to us. One is the virtue. In this love we go on growing and any good we do in this love wins us eternal merit. But the love of the Father and the Son knows no increase for it is the Holy Ghost. Thus our love is as nothing compared with the love of the Father and the Son : it is the virtue that we grow with. The other love which is in us is the love of the Father and the Son. As St Paul says, God's love is poured into our heart.' In giving us his love God has given us his Holy Ghost so that wc can love him with the love wherewith he loves himself. We love God with his own love ; awareness of it deifies us.
Intuition of the Sovran Good, that is God ! To have that is to have the life most worth of any creature. God is willing his own clear conception and his own delight. What is willing in the Godhead ? It is the Father watching the play of his own nature.
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What is this play ? It is his eternal Son. There has always been this play going on in the Father-nature. Play and audience are the same. The Father's view of his own nature is his Son. The Father embraces his own nature in the quiet darkness of his eternal essence which is known to none except himself. The glance returned by his own nature is his eternal Son. So the Son embraces the Father in his nature for he is the same as his Father in his nature. Thus from the Father's embrace of his own nature there comes this eternal playing of the Son. This play was played eternally before all creatures. As it is written in the Book of Wisdom, Prior to creatures, in the eternal now, I have played before the Father in his eternal stillness.' The Son has eternally been playing before the Father as the Father has before his Son. The playing of the twain is the Holy Ghost in whom they both disport themselves and he disports himself in both. Sport and players are the same. Their nature proceeding in itself. God is a fountain flowing into itself,' as St Dionysius says. The Father has eternally been loving himself in his Son just as the Son has been loving himself in the Father eternally. Their mutual love is the Holy Ghost : the third Person, who proceeds from the other two as love. The essence of the Godhead begets not. The Father's Person begets the Person of the Son eternally and together they pour forth their Holy Ghost : their mutual love. Father and Son are the pouring-in and the Holy Breath is the thing inpoured, identical in nature Avith them both. Did the essence of the Deity beget there would be more than one essence ; but there is not. There is one essence which gives all things life and being, for the Son is born out of the heart of the Father eternally and shall bring back into it again all things which issued forth therefrom in him. As (Christ declares, When I am exalted I will draw all things to me.' The Floly Ghost proceeded forth as love to make our spirits one with him. The Son takes back with him all the things that issued forth in him and the Holy Ghost returns with all that he expired. St Dionysius says, Son and Holy Spirit are the light of the God-bearing Godhead.' St Philip cried, Lord, show us the Father and wc shall be satisfied.' Our Lord answered and said, Philip, he who seeth me seeth my lather.' The Son revealed the mysteries of the Father for he was like him in all things and of one nature with him. Nothing satisfies the soul except the Father who is altogether good and absolutely simple. The more simple the soul the more like God she is. God spake never a word but one : his simple understand- ing. If the soul is to be simple she must withdraAv from multi- plicity into his one conception. That can happen here only noAV and then.
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The soul has three understandings. First, the understanding of things that are above her. Next, the understanding of herself. From this knowledge she passes to the third : the one alone. Therein she loses herself speaking never a word but possessing herself in silence for God has rapt ht^r up above herself to him ; she is not and knows not by herself. What she understands she understands with him and even this she must forgo, must leave to that wherewith she understands it. As St Dionysius says, Make thyself passive, void of definition. One single glimpse of the abstraetion that God is, more unifies the soul with God than all the works of holy Christendom.'
Try diligently, therefore, to get some grasp of truth : in the conception of it thine own wont is altogetlier lost and thou dost live in truth. Those exalted ones who stand therein can never be disjoined from God. They are the blessed who know God in himself eternally. God is unchangeable, so these can never more be separated from him. It behoves us therefore to depart from all unlikencss to our highest good.
LIX
THE JUST LIVES IN EI'ERNITY
Justua in perpetuum vivet apud dominum est mersce cjus {Sap, Sie). We read to-day in the epistle the wise man's words, The just lives in eternity.' I have defined elsewhere what a just man is, but here I say in another sense, that man is just {i.e, righteous) who is informed with and transformed into justice (righteousness). The just lives in God and God in him, for God is born in the just and the just in God : at every virtue of the just God is born and is rejoiced, and not only every virtue but every action of the just wrought out of the virtue of the just and in justice ; thereat God is glad, aye, thrilled with joy, there is nothing in his ground that docs not dance for joy. To unen- lightened people this is matter for belief but the illumined know The just seeks nothing in his work ; only thralls and hirelings ask anything for work, or work for any why. If thou wouldst be informed with, transformed into, righteousness, have no ulterior purpose in thy work ; form no idea in thee in time or in eternity, not reward nor happiness nor this nor that, for verily all such w^orks are dead. Believe me, the idea of God in thee, if thou dost work with that in view, means death to all thy works ; they are good works spoilt and thou dost sin to boot, for thou doest like the gardener who first plants the garden and then roots up the trees but still expects a crop. So thou dost
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throw away good work. If thou wouldst live and have thy work live also thou must be dead to all things and reduced to naught. It belongs to creature to make aught from aught, but God's idiosyncrasy is making aught from naught, wherefore, if God is to make aught of thee or in thee, thou must first come to naught ; so enter thou into thine own ground and work ; works wrought by thee there arc all living.
He says, his reward is with the Lord.' lie says with, meaning that the reward of the just is where God is himself ; that the happiness of the just and God's happiness arc one ; the righteous are in bliss where God is in bliss. St John says, The Word was with God.' He says xmth because God is righteousness and the righteous are like him. Whoever is in righteousness is in God and is God.
Further, with regard to tlie word, just. lie does not say, the just man or just angel, he simply says, the just. The Father begets his Son the just and the just his Son ; every virtue of the just, every act done by the just, is nothing but the Son being begotten by the Father. The Father never stops, he is always trying to beget his Son in me, according to the scriptures : For Sion's sake will I not hold my peaee and for Jerusalem I will not rest till the righteous is revealed and shincth like the lightning.' Sion is the height of living, the contemplative life, and Jerusalem the profoundest calm. Not for the most exalted life nor for the deepest peace will God desist until the riglitcous is revealed. God and God alone works in the just. If thy works are prompted by anything external, then thy works are dead. For thy works to be living it must be God that prompts them in the innermost recesses of thy soul : that is thy life and that alone.
Further I declare : if it seems to thee that one virtue is greater than another, if thou dost cultivate it more and value it above the rest, then thou art not loving it as it is in righteousness nor is it God who is working in thee. As long as a man prizes or leans to one virtue more than to another he neither takes nor feels it as it is by rights, and he is not righteous. The just man loves and practises virtue as a whole, in righteousness, as righteousness itself. It says in holy writ : Before the fabricated world, I am.' He says, I am before, above. Meaning that in eternity, exalted above time, man does one work with God. People sometimes ask how man can do the work that God was doing a thousand years ago and in a thousand years will be doing still. They cannot under- stand it. But in eternity is no before nor after ; the happenings of the past milleimium and the future one and now, in eternity arc all the same. God's doings of a thousand years ago and now and a thousand years to come are but one single act. It follows that
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the man who is exalted above time into eternity will do with God what he did in the past and also what he does in the next thousand years. This is matter of knowledge to the wise and of belief to fools.
St Paul says, We are eternally chosen in the Son and we should never rest until we get to be what wc have been in him eternally.' The Father ceaselessly endeavours to get us born in his Son so that we may be the same as his Son is. The Father is begetting his Son, and in his begetting the Father finds so much peace and pleasure that his entire nature is expended in it. That which is in God moves him to beget ; by his ground, his nature and his essence the Father is moved to generation. And you must know, God is born in us as soon as all our soul-powers, which hitherto have been tied and bound, are absolutely free (and passive) and when the mind is stilled and sense troubles us no longer. Then the Father begets in us his Son. Then wc keep as free from forms and images as God, and find ourselves as free from likeness as God is void and free in his very self. When the Father bears his Son in us we shall know the Father with the Son and the Holy Ghost in both of them and the holy Trinity, and therein all things as a mere naught in God. Then time and number are no more. God's essence neither does nor suffers, nor does his nature suffer, but it works.
Sometimes a light is apparent in the soul and she fondly thinks it is the Son, whereas it is nothing but a light. When the Son reveals himself within the soul the love of the Holy Ghost is revealed at the same time. It is the nature of the Father to beget his Son, and it is of the nature of the Son for me to be begotten in him and in his nature ; it is of the nature of the Holy Breath for me to be consumed therein and melted and reduced entirely to love. One who is thus in love and altogether love, will think that God loves none but him and knows no love for anyone nor yet from anyone but him alone.
Some doctors hold that the spirit finds its beatitude in love. Some make him find it in behohling God. I say he finds it not in love nor in gnosis nor in vision. But, it may be asked, has the spirit in eternal life no vision of God ? Yes and no. Once born he neither sees nor pays heed to God. But in being born he does see God. The spirit is in bliss then, not in its begetting but as being begotten, for then it lives as the Father lives, impartible, in its abstract and essential nature. Wherefore do thou turn from things and realize thyself in thy naked essence, for outside essence all is accident and the accidental makes for why. Let us live in the eternal, So help us God. Amen.
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LX
LIKES LOVE AND UNITE
Meister Eckhart says, Likes love and unite with one another ; unlikes hate and shun each other. According to one master, no two things arc so unlike as earth and heaven. Earth knew itself by nature alien and unlike to heaven. Wherefore it fled from heaven to the lowest place and there bides still lest haply it draw night at all to heaven. And the celestial nature grew aware that earth had fled and had possessed itself of the lowest place. And that is how the heavens came to empty themselves out into the earth in fruitful wise, indeed the masters say the broad expanse of heaven does not withhold a needle-point in size, it brings itself forth every whit as fruitfulness on earth. So earth is the most fruitful of all mortal creatures.
Likewise I say about the man who has brought himself to naught in himself, in God and in all creatures. That man assumes the lowest place and God is bound to empty himself whole into his soul, else would he not be God. I warrant you by God's eternal truth, that into any man who is brought low God pours out his whole self in all his might, so utterly that neither of his life, his being, nor his nature, nay, nor of his perfect Godhead, docs he keep aught back, he empties out the whole thereof as fruits into that wight who in abandonment to God assumes the lowest place.
To-day as I pursued my way pondering my discourse and wondering how to make you understand, I hit on an analogy. If yc can follow this my meaning W'^ill be plain and eke the drift of all my teaching. The analogy is with my eye and wood. My eye when it is open is an eye. It is the same eye, shut ; and the wood is neither more or less by reason of its seeing. Now mark me well. Suppose my eye, being one and single in itself, falls on the w^ood in seeing, then though each thing stops as it is, yet in the actual seeing they are so far the same that we can argue : my eye is the wood and the wood my eye. Now if the wood were free from matter and wholly immaterial, as my eyesight is, then we could truly say that in my actual vision wood and eye are essen- tially the same. If this is so with corporal things, then how much more with ghostly. Remember, my eye is far more one with some transoceanic sheep's that I have never seen than with my ear, albeit with this it has organic union. The sheep's eye works like mine, and therefore I impute to it more unity of action than I can do to eye and ear which have their different functions.
I have often spoken of the light within the soul, which is un- created and eke uncreaturely. It is this light I am so often hinting
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at in my discourses, it is the light which lays straight hold of God, bare and unveiled, as he is in himself ; that is to say, it catches him in the act of self-begetting. Hence I can truly say this light is rather one with God than with any of my powers wherewith it has organic union. For know, this light within my soul i^; no better in its essence than the humblest, the grossest of my powers ; my sight or my hearing, for example, or any other sense which is the sport of heat and cold, hunger or thirst, seeing that essence is impartible.
Now I maintain, if thou dost turn from thine own self and from created things, then in what measure thou dost this thou dost attain to unity and happiness in thy soul-spark ; a thing which is immune from time and space. This spark is opposed to creatures. It has no want but just God, God as he is in himself. Not enough for it the Father or the Son or Holy Ghost, nor even all three Persons, so far as they preserve their several properties. I trow this light would not be satisfied with the alone-begotten fruit of Deity. Nay, more, and even stranger to relate, I warrant you this light is not content with the changeless impartible essence of God, which neither gives nor takes, but wants to find its source ; it wants to get into its simple ground, into the silent desert whcrcinto no distinct thing ever pryecl, not Father, Son nor Holy Ghost. At the centre, where no one abides, there this light is quenched in still stronger light, wherein it is more one than in itself, for this ground is the im[)artible stillness, motionless in itself, and by this immobility all things are moved and all those have their life who, rceollceted in themselves, do live the life of mind. May we too live this intellectual life, So help us God. Amen.
LXI
THERE COMES FORTH A ROD OUT OF THE ROOT OF JESSE
Egredietur virga de radice Jesse et jlos de radice ejus ascendet et requiescet super eum spiritus domini {Isaias Hi, g)- read to-day in the Mass that there comes forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and out of the root conies forth a flower, and on this flower there rests, reposes, the spirit of the Lord. Jesse means a brand, which is burning ; it signifies love in the abstract, where it is no more called love, where nothing adventitious exists, and in this ground where as yet nothing grows, it germinates just like, within the root, the coming shoot. The offshoot has three properties : likeness to what it shoots from, the nature of the same, and it is of exactly the same species ; thirdly, it is free from all attach- ments, simply an emanation. Thus the Son proceeded from the
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Father, as another Person with the Father, albeit in the Father essentially the same. Accordingly he says, Out of the root came a rod and on the rod came a llower.' My loving is a heavenly matter, for likes all end in same and the same is in the ground, and a thing that grows out of another is in every respect the same kind. An apple grafted on a pear-tree has the taste of both. It is not so here : this has the llavour of the one alone ; itself is not therein and yet it is therein. It could never come out were it not first within in the abstract, in brooding essence. The wine is in the vine : it is and it is not.
I say concerning God's freedom that it yields no nature save one. God starts with the Son, and the Son is another than the Father who is power, and from them twain there blossoms forth the Holy Ghost. Our philosophers teach that the sun draws the flow'^ers out of the roots through the stem, tirnelcssly wellnigh and too subtly for any eye to follow. The soul, which lias no nature in her ground, the ground of love, where slie is love, emerges from this nature where she is stoied in God. VVhatcviH' enters this being has much the same being. At the coming of the bride he devotes himself to her and works with all his might within his ground, in his innermost, where naught exists, where activity stops altogether. The tree of the Godhead grows in this ground and the Holy Ghost sprouts from its root. The flower that blossoms, love, is the Holy Ghost. In this Holy Ghost the soul flowers with the Father and the Son, and on this flower there rests and reposes the spirit of the Lord. He could not repose had he not rested first upon the Spirit. The Father and the Son rest on the Spirit, and the Spirit reposes upon them as on its cause. What is rest ? St Augustine says, rest is complete lack of motion ; body and soul bereft of their own nature. One philosopher says, God's idiosyncrasy is im- mutability. That is, all creatures. Man as trans(;ending motion. Jesse means a fire and a burning ; it signifies the ground of divine love and also the ground of the soul. Out of this ground the rod grows, i,e, in the purest and highest ; it shoots up out of this virgin soil at the breaking forth of the Son. Upon the rod opens a flower, the flower of the Holy Ghost. We beseech the Lord our God that we may rest in him and he in us to his glory. So help us God. Amen.
LXII
WHAT MANNER OF CHILD SHALL THIS BE?
Puis puer isle erit ? Etenim manu^ domini erat cum illo {Luc, l^g). What manner of child shall this be ? The hand of the Lord is with him.' The hand of the Lord means the Holy Ghost, for two
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reasons. First, because work is wrought with the hand ; and next, because it is one with the arm and with the body. All human actions start in the heart, extend to the limbs, and are done by the hand ; so the seat of the soul being chiefly in the heart, in the heart is the mainspring of licr energies. Likewise it is the Father who is the fount and oi'igin of all divine activity, and the Son is represented by his arm ; as it says in the Magnificat, he hath shewed strength with his arm.' Divine power proceeds from the body via the arm to the hand, whereby is signified the Holy Ghost, even as the soul which courses through the body and in material things proelaims her ghostly properties. Wherefore we argue that the Holy Ghost is meant by the hand which wrought in this child.
Now mark the state of the soul wherein God is apt to work. He speaks of a ehild, suggCvsting pure joy, an unblemished state. The soul God works in must be pure and clean. A master says, The eternal wisdom tarries in Zion, her rest is in that pure city ' ; Zion meaning a height and a watch-tower (or resting-place). Again, she must be withdrawn (rom mortal, impermanent things. And thirdly, she must be on the watch for coming hindrances. God comes out of kindness because of the love he bears to the soul. He has endowed her with a godly light, the reflection of himself, so that he may be able fri'cly to energise in her in his own likeness. Love cannot be without finding or making alike. Suppose I have bidden a man, unless he have gotten some liking for me, he will never willingly follow me. And so with the soul which follows God ; God's members must all do his bidding whether they want to or no. If they do it reluctantly, then it is painful to him ; no work is ever pleasant that is done without liking.
No creature can do more than in her lies. The soul makes headway solely by the light that God has given her, that being her own, presented her by God as a bridal gift. God comes in love with intent that the soul may arise, that in love she may energise above herself. For love cannot be without finding her like or making alike, except in as far as God works in love passing soul. Soul does not ply the work of grace (since that is not her nature) till she is gotten yonder, where God is plying himself, where the work is as noble as the worker, his own nature, to wit. As with light, for example. In wood it produces its like : heat and fire, and the harder the wind blows the fiercer the flame. Now put love for the fire and the Holy Ghost for the wind : the stronger breathes the Holy Ghost the more all-consuming its fire, albeit not sudden ; it keeps pace with the growth of the soul. If the whole man were consumed at once it would not be well, for one niight live a thousand years and still go on waxing in love. Light
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acts upon flowers, making them grow and bear fruit ; in living creatures it makes for life ; in man it makes for happiness. This comes by the grace of God which raises the soul to a higher power ; for if the soul is to be like God she must transcend herself. Amen.
LXIII
ATONEMENT
Manete in me {Joh. 15^); beatxis vir^ qui in sapientia morahitur (EccL 1422)* Abide in me,' says our Lord Jesus Christ in the
gospel ; and the other text from the epistle says, Blessed is the man that shall continue in wisdom.' Both mean exactly the same thing. Mark then what is required of a man to dwell in him, i.e, in God. He requires three things. First, to renounce himself and all things, not cleaving to aught that is grasped by the senses within nor abiding in any creature existing in time or in eternity. Again, he must love neither this good nor that good : he must love good for good's sake, since nothing is good or desirable except in so far as God is therein. Wc ought to love things no whit more than just as much as wc love God in them ; nor is it right to love God for his heaven's sake nor for the sake of anything at all except the good he is in his own self. Whoso loves him for aught abides not in him, but abides in the thing he is loving him for. If then ye desire to dwell in him, ye must love him for naught but himself. Thirdly, he must take God not as good nor as right, but he must apprehend him in his pure and virgin substance where he is apprehending himself. Goodness and right are the garment of God which is covering him. Do thou then strip God of all cover- ings : discover him in his vestibule bare, just in his naked self. So shall ye abide in him.
Whoso abides in him thus has live things. First, betwixt him and God there is no difference at all, they are one. Angels arc many, beyond number, they can do nothing without number ; they arc numberless because of their simplicity. The three Persons in God, who counts as three, they, again, have number. But betwixt man and God is not alone no difference but no multi- plicity : nothing but one. The second is, that he is conceiving his happiness in that same virgin nature where God is conceiving himself and conserving himself. Thirdly, his knowledge is one with God-knowledge, and this knowing consists in co-operation and con-sciencc in God's operation and science, to wit, the actual energy and gnosis at work towards the end that God may be ever being born in man.
How is God ever being born in man ? Look you. Suppose a
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man hews out and brings to light the divine form which God has wrought into his nature, then God's image in him stands revealed. Birth must be taken in the sense of revelation, the Son being said to be born of the Father because he reveals the Father as father. So the more and the more clearly God's image shows in man the more evidently God is born in him. And by God's eternal birth in him we understand that his image stands fully revealed. The fifth thing is that this man is ever being born in God. How can a man be ever being born in God ? Lo ! by revealing this form in a man the man grows like unto God, for the form of man is the same as the image of God whieh is God in every respect. The more he is like God the more he is one. So man's eternal birth in God we understand to mean ideal man refulgent in God's image, which is God in form and matter, wherewith man is the same. This oneness of man and God is a matter of likeness of form, man being Godlike in form. So when we talk of man being one with God and take him to be one with God by nature, we refer to the exemplary element in him which is on a par with God, and not to his created nature. When we look at him as God we are blind to him as creature ; remembering his deity we forget his creature-nature ; withal this same oblivion must not be construed to mean the negation of his created nature, rather the affirmation of God in him whom we are regarding as God. Christ, for example, who is both God and man : what time we arc considering his manhood we disregard his Godhead ; not that we are denying him his Godhood, we simply ignore it for the nonce. And hence the explanation of St Augustine's dictum, What a man loves a man is.' If he loves a stone he is that stone, if he loves a man he is that man, if he loves God -- nay, I durst not say more ; were I to say, he is God, ye might stone me. I do but teach you the scriptures. Man being all meet for God is conformed to, in- formed with and transformed into, the divine uniformity wherein he is one with God. All this man gets by abiding within.
Now mark the fruits borne by a man when he is one with God : together with God he is V)earing all creatures and big with beatitude for every creature in virtue of being one with him.
The other text from the epistle says, Blessed is the man that continues in wisdom.' He says, in wisdom,' wisdom being a feminine noun and feminine nouns denote passivity. Now in God we posit both action and passion, for the Father is doing and the Son is suffering, this being characteristic of born natures. Eternal born wisdom, wherein all things stand distinct, is the Son, and that is why he says, Blessed is the man that continues in wisdom.' Blessed is the man,' he says. Now as I have often told you, there are two powers in the soul : one is the man and the other is
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the woman. He says, Blessed is the man.' The faculty of soul we call the man is the chief power of the soul, wherein God is a naked light ; for nothing but God enters into this power and this power is ever in God : the man who has gotten all things in this power has gotten them not as being things, he has them as being in God. We ought to abide all the time in this power because in this power all things arc the same. Thus abiding in all things alike and knowing them all in God as the same, man possesses all things ; he has discarded their grossest part and has gotten them now in their good and desirable nature. In this wise he possesses them yonder for God in his own nature is unable to forbear, he is obliged to give thee everything he ever made and his own self to boot. Blessed is the man who abides all the time in this power, he is ever-abiding in God. May we abide at all times in God, So help us our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
LXIV
THE SWIFT RIVER
Fluminis impetus Iwtificat civitatern del : sanctijicavit tabernacu- turn suurn altissimus {Psalm 455). The sudden or swift river
makes glad the city of God.' Here we must note three things. First, the swift stream ; next, the city it serves ; thirdly, the benefit it brings.
The prophet knows not how to stem the torrent of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost flows into the soul as fast as she is poured forth in humility and so far as she has gotten the capacity. He fills all the room he can find. Consider, next, what city it is it flows through. It is really the soul. A city is something enclosed and centred within. And so must the soul be whereinto God flows. She must be safe from outside alarms, her forces assembled within. According to St John, the twelve apostles were gathered together when they received the Holy Ghost. Even so the soul must be gathered and brought to herself in order to welcome this divine stream which fills to the full her cup of delight.
I sometimes say, beginners of the virtuous life shoiild do as he does who describes a circle : the starting-point once fixed, he keeps it so and then the trace is good. In other words, learn first to fix the heart on God, on good and on good works. Great deeds performed with shifting heart profit but little if at all. There were once two doctors. One of them declared that the good man cannot be moved. The other disagreed. What I say is, the good man may forsooth be moved, but he cannot be
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changed for the worse. I trow the good man is not easily hindered. But if aught can worsen him he is not perfect.
Thirdly, the good of it. Which is, the prophet says, that God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.' It is the soul he means. Soul would not that God wrought with her aught that is mixed with creature. Some things God does with help of creature and some unaided. If the grace which is a help and which is coming through my words could enter your heart without means, as though spoken by God, your soul would forthwith be converted and she could not help it. By pronouncing God's word I become a co-worker with God and grace is mingled in me, God speaking it through me, and since I am to you as the means, it is not received intact in your soul. But the grace which is uttered by the Holy Ghost itself is received direct and imprinted unaltered in the soul what time the soul is recollected into the single power which has intuition of God. Grace springs up in the heart of the Father and flows into his Son, and in their mutual love it proceeds from the wisdom of the Son into the gift of the Holy Ghost and in the Holy Ghost is sent into the soul ; and this grace is the face of God and is sealed in the soul by the Spirit of God, without means and unchanged, making the soul like God. This God does by himself unaided by creature.
No creature is noble enough to help in this work ; God has not graced their nature with such excellence. But he can do it easily enough in his own perfect nature. God will not let a creature assist him in this work, so for the nonce he elevates the soul to a much higher level than lier natural habitat, where she is out of reach of any creature. It were well within the compass of an angel's noble nature, provided God would let an angel serve. But that would offend the soul for in that hour she disdains the slightest taint of creature ; even the light of grace wherein she is atoned would be flouted by the soul did she not know she cannot pass it by. After all, it is not natural to her, it is quite supernatural, her flouting at that moment everything that is not God, for God leads forth his bride out of creaturely values into hiinself and speaks with her in her heart, that is, he makes her like himself in grace. For this exalted act the soul must recollect herself.
The powers of the soul arc filled full of delight by this pure infusion of grace. Grace is to God as the shine to the sun ; it is one with him and it carries the soul into God and makes her exactly the same as God and as such she enjoys God's perfection. I'o the soul that has gotten and enjoyed divine perfection all that is not God has a bitter, nauseous savour. Then again, the soul wants the highest of all, so she cannot abide aught above her. I say, aye, and I durst maintain, she cannot even bear God being
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above her and I can prove it thus. For if the soul were spirited away far beyond things to perfect freedom from them and came in touch with God in his abstract divinity, natheless she would never rest till, thrusting into that, he shall have drowned her in himself and drowned himself in her alone. What though God be far above her in nobility of nature, she cannot rest till she has gotten God, so far as it is possible to creature to conceive him. The greatest happiness in earth or heaven lies in likeness to God, which divine nature makes in the highest degree : to wit, the image of itself. And this is what the soul is striving for seeing no so^il can throughly follow God without having in her the image of God. It is for us to sec whether the grace we have received is every whit divine, whether it smacks of God's perfection, whether it is in common with and is emanating in his grace into whatever can receive it. Even so ought man to be flowing out into whatever can receive him. So help us God. Amen.
LXV
THE JUST LIVE FOR EVER
Jicsti autem in perpetuum vivent et apud dorninwn est merces eorum {Sap, 5 ^q), The just (or righteous) live for ever and their
reward is with God.' Let us look at this carefully. It sounds quite trite and commonplace, whereas it is, in fact, a most remarkable and precious dictum. The just live.' Who arc the just ? One scripture says. That man is just who gives to each his own. So the just are they that give to God his due and to the saints and angels theirs and to his fellow what is his. God's is glory. Who are they that glorify God ? Those who having gone out of them- selves seek not their own in anything whatever it may be, or great or small ; who look for nothing over them nor under them nor yet beside them ; not mindful of possessions, of honours, comfort, pleasure, nor inwardness nor holiness nor of reward nor heaven. They have finished with all that is theirs. God glorifies them and they truly glorify God and render him what is his due.
We ought to give the saints and angels joy. Wonder of wonders ! Can a man in this life give joy to those in life eternal ? Aye, surely. Marvellous, incredible to tell, every saint rejoices, takes ineffable delight in each virtuous deed, each good desire or inten- tion ; their joy no tongue is able to express nor any heart conceive, as I have said. And why ? Because their love to God is so immeasurably great, they hold him so right dear, that his glory is to them more than their happiness. Not alone the saints and angels, but very God himself is as much pleased thereat as though
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it touched his^pwn felicity and was vital to him, to his own delight and satisfaction. Remember then, even if we serve God for no other reason than for the exceeding joy of those in life eternal and of God himself, yet we ought to do so gladly and with all diligence. Also, we ought to help those that are in hell and succour those still living.
A man of this sort is in one way just, but in another sense the just are they that take everything alike from God no matter what it is, big and little, good and bad, all the same, no more nor less, but one thing like another. If one thing is to thee of more moment than another then thou art unjust. Thou must be rid of own-will altogether.
I was thinking just now : if God does not will what I do then I must will what he docs. Some folks always want their own way ; that is bad, that way lies sin. Those others are a trifle better who would like to do God's will and have no mind to go against it, yet when they are sick they wish God would choose to make them well. These people would have God, then, con- forming to their will rather than they to his. We condone this although it is wrong. The just have no will at all ; whatever God wills, it is all one to them, regardless of the hardship.
The just are so set on justice that were God not just they would not care a fig for God ; they are so stauneh to right, so perfectly indifferent to self, they reck not of the pains of hell nor of the joys of heaven nor anything whatever. Were all the pangs of those in hell and all the pain borne or to bear on earth to be the fruits of justice, they would not mind one jot, so true they are to God and right. To the just man nothing gives more pain, there is no greater hardship, than what is contrary to just- ness, equipoise. -- How so ? --If one thing can cheer and another can depress, you are not equable ; to be cheerful one moment and less or not at all so in the next is uneven-tempered. But the devotee of right is so stable that what he loves is his very life, nothing can upset him, nor docs he care for aught beside. St Augustine says, Where the soul loves there she is, rather than where she gives life. -- Our text sounds plain and commonplace enough, but there are few who realize the actual meaning of it. One who grasps the import of justice and the just will understand all I have to say.
The just live.' There is nothing in the world so dear as life or so desirable. No life so bad or hard but man would go on living. It is written, the nearer to death the greater the pain. But however distressful life is there is still the desire to live. Why dost thou eat ? Why sleep ? To live. Why long for good or glory ? That knowest thou right well. But wherefore
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live ? For the sake of living, albeit thou ignorest for what reason thou dost live. Life is so desirable in itself, we want it for its own sake. Those who are in hell in eternal pain have no desire to lose their life, whether fiend or soul ; their life is such a noble thing, llowing as it does straight from God to them. That is the reason why they want to live. What is life ? God's exist- ence is my life. If my life is God's existence then God's being is my being and God's is-ness is my is-ness, neither more nor less. They live eternally with God, on a par with him, not below him nor above. All their works are wrought with God and God's with them. St John says, the Word was with God.' It was exactly like and side by side with him, neither under nor over but equal.
When God created man he took the woman out of the man's side that she might be his equal. Not out of his head nor out of his feet did he make her, ix, neither man nor woman, but his peer. So the just soul is like to God, by the side of God, on a level with him, not under nor yet over.
Who are they that are his like ? They that are nothing like, they alone are Godlike. God's essence nothing is like, therein is no image nor form. Those souls who are his equals, to them the Father gives as equals withholding nothing from them. All the Father has to give he bestows upon this soul, provided she is just and no more to herself than to another. Her own honour, her own profit, aught of hers, she neither wants nor thinks of more than any stranger's. Personal belongings are repugnant to her, alien and remote, be they bad or good. All love of this world is based on love of self. Leave this and thou hast left the world.
In eternity the Father is bringing forth his Son just like himself. The Word was with God and the Word was God ' : the same in the same nature. I say, moreover : he has brought him forth in my soul. Not merely is she with him and he equally with her but he is in her : the Father gives birth to his Son in the soul in the very same way as he gives him birth in eternity, and in none other. He must do, willy-nilly. The Father is begetting his Son un- ceasingly, and furthermore, I say, he begets me his Son, as his very own Son. Moreover I declare, not only does he beget me his Son, he begets me himself and himself me : me his essence and his nature. In his nethermost deep I come welling up in his holy Breath, where there is one life, one being and one act. God's activity is one ; he begets me his Son then without difference. My bodily father is not my real father except for one small portion of his nature and I am different from him : he may be dead and I alive. My heavenly Father is my real father ; I am his and all I have I get from him ; I airi the son of him and of none other. Since the Father performs a single act therefore he
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makes me his Son without any distinction. As St Paul says, We are wholly transformed into God and changed.'
Take an illustration. In the sacrament the bread is changed into the body of our Lord, and however much bread there is it becomes no more than the one body. Likewise were the bread to be changed into my finger it would make no more than the one finger. But suppose my finger is changed back to the bread, then the one is as much as the other ; for when one thing changes to another it is identical therewith. Even so if I be changed into him and he makes me one and the same with himself, then by the living God it is also true that there is no distinction. The Father gives birth to his Son without ceasing. Once the Son is born he takes nothing from the Father, for he has it all ; but while in the act of being born he is receiving from the Father.
The moral of this is that it is not right of us to ask from God as from a stranger. I call you not servants but friends,' said our Lord. The servant asks, tlie master pays. I was wondering lately whether I am willing to ask or to accept anything from God. I must take earnest counsel with myself, for by accepting anything from God I make myself inferior to God, like a servant to his master, in respect of giving. That is not the case with us in eternal life,
I once said here, and it is very true : When a man goes out of himself to find or fetch God, he is wrong. I do not find God outside myself nor conceive him excepting as my own and in me. A man ought not to work for any why, not for God nor for his glory nor for anything at all that is outside him, but only for that which is his being, his very life within him.
Some simple folk fondly imagine they are going to see God as it were standing there and they here. Not so. God and I are one in knowing. When I take God into me in loving I am going into God. Some say that happiness does not lie in knowledge but in will alone. They are wrong ; if it were merely a matter of will it would not be one. Working and becoming are the same. When the carpenter stops working the house will stop becoming. Still the axe and stoj) the growth. God and I are one in operation : he works and I become. Fire changes to itself the fuel cast upon it, which is converted to its nature. The wood does not assimilate the fire, the fire assimilates the wood. We shall be changed into God so that we shall know him as he is,' says St Paul. And the manner of our knowing shall be this, I him as he me, not more or less : just the same. The just live eternally, and their reward is with God ' : identity with him, as I have said. Let us love justice for its own sake and God without a why, So help us God. Amen.
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LXVI
PUBLISH THE WORD
Prccdica verhum (2 Tim. 42 ). St Dominic says, translating the words of St Paul, Publish, proclaim, bring forth and propagate the Word.' It is remarkable that anything should come forth and at the same time stay within. That the Word should come forth and still remain within is very wonderful ; that all creatures should come forth and remain within is very wonderful ; what God gives and promises to give is most wonderful, it is incomprehensible, incredible. That is as it should be ; if it were comprehensible and credible it would not be appropriate to him. God is in all things. The more he is in things the more he is out of things : the more he is within the more he is without. I have often said, God is creating the whole world now this instant. Everything God made six thousand years ago and more when he made the world, God makes now all at once. God is in all things ; but as God is divine and intelligible, therefore God is nowhere so much as in the soul, and the angels if you will, in tlie innermost soul, in the summit of the soul. And when I say the innermost 1 mean the highest and when I say the highest I mean the innermost. In the depths, at the summit of the soul, they arc both the same. Where time has never entered and no form was ever seen, at the centre, the summit, of the soul, there God is creating the whole world. All God's creation of six thousand years ago, all his creation of a thousand years to come, if the world lasts so long, is wrought by God in the innem\ost recesses, at the apex of the soul. All the past and future is con- trived by God at the summit of the soul. The Father bears his Son in the innermost recesses of the soul and begets thee with his only Son, no less. But if I am Son then I must be Son the same as he is Son, and in no other way. If I am a man I am a man man- fashion. If I am the Man I am the Man Man-fashion. As St John says, Ye are God's sons,'
Speak the Word, tell it abroad, pronounce it, bring forth and propagate the Word.' Tell it forth ! ' What is spoken in from without is a gross, objective thing. Tell it forth ! ' That implies that thou hast it in thee. The prophet says, God spake one and I heard two.' True, God did speak but once. His utterance is but one. In his Word he speaks his Son and the Holy Ghost and the whole of creatures, all of which are but one utterance in God. But, I heard two,' the prophet says. Meaning, I understood it to be God and creature. Yonder where God speaks it it is God ; but here it is creature. People fondly think that God became man yonder. No ; Gk)d was made man here as well as there, and he
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was made man for one purpose only : to beget thee his one-begotten Son.
Yesterday I quoted from the Paternoster the words, thy will be done.' Better his will than mine. That I should do it, is what the Paternoster means. First, by being (oblivious or) asleep to things, ignoring time and images and ereaiurcs. Philosophers will tell you that being in deep sleep a man might pass a hundred years oblivious of creatures, time and images and yet aware of God at work within him. As the soul says in the Book of Love, I sleep, but my heart waketh.' So when all creatures are asleep in thee thou durst be awake to God's doings in thee.
Labour in all things ' says our text, and this is open to three interpretations. It means, turn all to good account, or, see God in everything, for God is everywhere. St Augustine says, God created all things not that he might leave them and go on his own way : no, he is still in them. People imagine they have more if they have' things plus God than if they have God without the things. They are mistaken. All things plus God amount to nothing more than God alone ; and he who fondly weens that if he has the Son and tJie Father wdth him he has more than if he had the Son without the Father, is mistaken too. The Father plus the Son is no more than the Son is by himself and the Son plus the Father is no more than the Father by himself. To find God in all things is a sign that he has begotten thee his only Son, no less.
Again, turn everything to good account, means, love God the same in poverty as wealth, hold him as dear in sickness as in health ; as dear in trials and in sufferings as in immunity from sufferings. The heavier to bear the lighter to bear : like two buckets, the heavier the one the lighter tlie otJier, and so the more one gets rid the easier the riddance. The God-lovcr parts with the world as cheerfully as with an egg. The more he gives up the easier it grows.
Thirdly, labour in all things ' means : where thou findest thyself about manifold things, at variance wdth pure and simple essence, let that be thy work : work in all things ' and fulfil thy destiny.' It also means, lift up thy head, and this is twofold in its implication. The first meaning is : part with all that is thine and appropriate God ; then God will be thine as he is his own ; he will be God to thee as he is God to his very self, no less. What is mine I get from no one. If 1 get it from another it is not mine hut his from whom I got it. The other meaning is, dedicate all fhy acts to God. Many people cannot understand this, and I am not surprised ; to know the meaning of it the soul must be in
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great detachment and uplifted over all these things. May we attain to this perfection. So help us God. Amen.
LXVII 1
THE POWERS OF HEAVEN SHALL BE MOVED
Virtutes cadorum movebantur {Luc, 21 20 ). This is a gospel- saying of our Lord, and the translation runs, The powers of heaven shall be moved.' Heaven is suggestive of some mysterious or hidden thing, God being so mysteriously coneealed by the light of his divine splendour that no man may by dint of his own intellect attain to the beatific vision of his godly countenance. As Job exclaims, Who can by searching find out the things in heaven ? ' As though to say, no one in the world. The sage laments this, crying, Alas ! O Lord, thou art a hidden God ! ' According to St Augustine, God hides in the recesses of the soul, disguised in the workings of grace wherein he shows himself to the soul covertly, so that none may know except the soul wherein he is thus privily concealed.' And St Paul says, Everything, which is in the soul, is hidden.' The soul then is the godly heaven '^and ghostly where in unbroken stillness God does his perfect work. As God spake by the prophets, Behold, I create in you a new heaven.'
It is the stirring of the powers of these incarnate heavens by the light of God's glory shining on them which Christ refers to when he says, The powers of heaven arc shaken.' These words betoken to us the good works of the soul whereto she is wont what time God being hid in her makes her the heaven of his incomprehensible divinity. For every act proceeds from power and power proceeds from essence. So from these words we learn three things about the noble nature of the soul. First, her transcendent being. |, (Thus he speaks of heaven,) Next, her powerful faculties. (Hence i j the word powers,) Thirdly, her fruitful operation. (Hence the ' word moved,)
Now to begin with let us note that if the soul has got a heavenly being she must possess three heavenly properties. First, the innate eternity of heaven. Secondly, its motion in a circle... Thirdly, its overflowing into creatures underneath. These three! things I demonstrate as follows : The first, that heaven is eternal,
I explain in this way. The heavens have an incorporeal, immaterial nature in corporeal guise. No outside semblance is admitted. Colour is excluded, and no variable force can ply therein, hence its state is one of fixed abiding. Then the circular motion of the ^ See also Spamer's Texte^ A. 6, for a longer version.
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heavens is argued thus. Anything that travels in a circle comes back to its start ; and anything that comes back to its start travels in a circle. Now the philosopher says the mover of the heavens is in the East where the sun rises. We see with our own eyes that every day the sun dawns in the East and sets into the West to rise again next day at the place where, the philosopher says, the mover resides. It returns each day to its start. Ergo, the sun goes round. This is not to be confused with the sun's own period of revolution. The starting-point of its own path is not reached in one day : it takes it a whole year, three hundred and sixty-five days, that is to say. Rather we must take this as referring to the heavens altogether, with the sun in their train. The sun doing yearly what they accomplish daily. Thirdly, the heavenly downpour into creatures I argue from the fact that everything subject to birth and decay is unstable and lacking in celestial power. As the philosopher observes in the book of The Celestial Nature, Heaven is to all inferior things the influx of being and of life.'
Now for the soul to be this ghostly heaven she must return to her eternal being, to the circular motion of her cause and to her highest nature streaming down into her lower powers. First and foremost let me say that as she goes it does behove the soul to turn to her eternal being and diligently note how by God's grace she is immortal in her nature which he has rendered meet to share in his eternal bliss. She is an incorporeal nature in corporeal ' guise, spirit not following body in its fleshly birth, so no extrane- ous semblance can invade her, provided she is ever on her guard against the fading of her own exemplar wherein she is reflecting and manifesting God in his own proper nature. Nor may she brook the entrance of any naughtiness to oust her from her heavenly perfection and cast her into suffering, for she suffers without suffering in the power of God whereby she is fortified in suffering. Withal no other power can ply in her ; she is so secure in God who is immutable stability that neither death nor life nor depth nor height nor any creature can part her from his fixed and changeless deity. So with King David she may say, In cleaving to God lies the gift of immortal felicity.'
Secondly, the soul progresses in a circle, for she rises with the rising sun, in her eternal nature, to wit, in her heavenly Father's heart, where there is ever dawning the true Son, his self-begotten Son, the light and shine of his eternal sufficiency. And she returns into the Father's mind where she is spoken in celestial wise, as the prophet hath it, God fashioned the heavens in his understanding.' This intelligible heaven means the soul returned intact to God as to her source. For he speaks into her his eternal
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Word, and confirms her in all heavenly perfection ; as the prophet cries on becoming the heaven of the Deity, By God's Word are the heavens, fixed and established.'
Thirdly, this spiritual heaven of the soul drips divine grace and consolation. Just as the angel-mover rolls the heavens round and gives them energy, furnishing the heavens with the power of his might for heaven to pass on and thus supply all things with their being and activity and life, even so God dispenses to the soul his godly power with all its grace, which wells up in the Father's heart, so giving her the means of growing vigorous and strong in his own proper motion wherein she gives her being and activity and life to all her lower powers, to the members of her body and to all their operations, till they, grown living in God's eyes, do bring forth fruit of life eternal. This was the draught the prophet craved when, mindful that the Holy Ghost was troubling the deep waters of his heart and that his highest power was receiving and conceiving the dearest power of divinity, Isaias cried, Drop dew, ye heavens from above,' meaning to say, pour into all my powers, all my members, all my works, the sweet celestial dew which ye have gotten into you from God.'
Further we must note how he has decked the natural heavens with seven planets, seven noble stars which arc nearer tq^ than the rest. I'lie first is SaMrn, then comes .Jiipiter, tfien Mars and then the Siiif ; after that comes Venus and then Mercury and then the Moon. Now when th<i soul becomes a spiritual heaven our Lord will deck her with these same stars ghostly, as .John saw in his apocalypse when he espied the King of Kings seated upon the throne of the majesty of (Jod and hav ing seven stars in his hand. Know that the first star, Saturn, is the purger ; Jupiter, the second, the well-wisher ; the third one. Mars, is him of wrath ; the fourth, the Sun, the light-giver ; the lifth one, Venus, is the lover ; the sixth one. Mercury, the winner ; the seventh is the . Moon, the runner.
In the heaven of the soul Saturn becomes angelic purity, bring- ing as reward the vision of God, as our Lord says, Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall sec God.^ After him comes Jupiter, the gracious, whose reward is the possession of the earth ; not the one we wear by way of body, nor that we tread on with our feet ; but the one we are in eager search of : that earth which ^is flowing with the milk of humanity and the honey of divinity. ^ Ht is of this our Lord declares, Blessed are the meek in heart for they shall inherit the earth.' Next follows Mars, of grim, determined nature and passionate suffering for God, bringing reward of the kingdom of heaven, as our Lord says, Blessed are they that suffer persecution for God's sake for the heavenly
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kingdom is theirs.' And after him the sun of light bringing as its guerdon to the soul, with knowledge of the truth the habit of right-doing and of giving unto everyone his own ; and she being God's by creation and adoption docs therefore give herself to God withal. According to the words of our Lord, Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.' Then comes Venus, the lover, bringing reward of union with God ; as our Lord said, He that loveth me is beloved of my Father ; such conic unto him and abide with him.' From her, too, comes reward of consolation, since love sets the loving heart lamenting and mourning for her love. As our Lord says, Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.' After her comes Mercury, the winner, directly the soul forgoes everything for God, bearing as his prize the palm of deity, including the kingdom of heaven. According to the words of our Lord, Blessed are the spiritual poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' Last comes the Moon, the runner, with her meed of happiness attained, as St Paul says, So run that ye may obtain.' Now the soul attains God best by running to him with a tranquil heart, for his abode is in peace. Our God chooses peace for his children, and his child is lieir to his eternal bliss, as our Lord says, Blessed are the peaceful for they shall be called the children of God.'
Beyond these planetary stars there is the heaven where the fixed stars are which shine by night, the signals of the works wrought by the soul. In the night of the shadow of this world these shine before men, according to the words of our Lord, Let your light so shine before men that they may sec your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.' The other stars all get their light from the radiance of the sun. Venus as well, the love-star, which shines brightest of them all. Accordingly, the works we do arc pregnant most with power and brightest light when we have wholly gotten us the nalurc of the amiable Venus, star of love, whose nature is receptive to the sunshine of the true and intelligible Deity.
LXVIII^
THE POWERS OF THE SOUL
Igitur perfecti stmt cceli et terra et ornnis ornatus eorurn (Gen. 2^). Thus the heavens and the earth were linished and all the adorn- ment of them.' Even so the heavens of the innef man are finished and all the ornaments thereof. In the passage where Christ speaks of the powers,' wc construe these to mean the sovran powers of the soul. For the soul has got three powers ip her spiritual mind ^ No. 07 (2) in Pfoifler's text.
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which are heavenly inasmuch as they are capable of doing heavenly work, for every heavenly power is of the breath of the mouth of our God. ^ ^ ^
The first power receives, the second sees, the third love s. What time the soul is occupied in entertaining God, in seTfrecollection and intellectual contemplation, the love of her will transports her right into God. Then occurs that movement of the heavens, in the act of fecundation, which is latent in eternity. For the end of all motion is rest. As saith Isaiah the prophet, The heavens are moved and the earth withal and after the motion comes rest.' Now there is not perfect rest in intellectual vision, for in mental operations there is a certain motion of external things towards the soul, in virtue of which movement the forms of these same things are drawn into and pictured in the soul, starting a psychic motion in the isness of the soul and the real being of the things appearing in the picture ; and this motion extends to the will which is not at rest any more.
Hence we see that in the starry heavens, the revolving heavens, God is none other than the mover, the starter, the source of energy whence the heavens get their power and their spin. And so too in this life he is present in the soul as the mover of our free will towards himself and towards good works, he being the fount of grace, which, from his godly heart, flows down into the soul.
Beyond this heaven there is the motionless heaven, and this firmament is the abode of th(^ blest. In this heaven God is in all his felicity, engaged in the personal act of his eternal divinity. For the Father goes on begetting his Son in himself without ceasing, and Father and Son breathe forth with equal power their holy Breath, both Son and Holy Ghost abiding with the Father in the essence, and in the vision of this Trinity of Persons lies the whole happiness of creatures which are able to participate in his divine felicity. So the soul, having conquered the multiple heavens and possessed herself of their mysterious power, is plunged into the unity of the motionless heaven, called fire or the empyrean, not because it is burning but because it is enlightening, all who are in this heaven being ablaze with the cherubic light of divine love. The soul becomes the heavenly habitation of the eternal Deity, and he performs his godly work in her, whence she receives the nectar which is denied to such as have not reached this fiery celestial mind. For her heavenly Sire begets in her his Son whom she lures out of bis Father's heart, and Father and Son breathe into her their holy Breath, the Son never leaving his Father's heart but proceeding forth from his Father in such fashion that he ever abides in i^is Father's heart. Thus the Father dwells in the soul ; he clasps the soul to his breast, and in this embrace of
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the Father she conceives within her his Son as a proceeding Person and at the same time is aware of his presence with the Father in his essence. For thus saith the Father, I will lead her into the wilderness, into the solitude, and will speak into her heart.' His leading her into the desert, into the solitude, means making her void, deserted of creatures ; he empties her of corruptible things and says all he can to her heart. He can speak but one word, and that Word is eternal : it is his only-begotten Son. That is the Word he speaks to the soul, giving birth to his Son in her, and in this birth the Father and Son inspire her with their Holy Ghost which teaches her all things.
Thus the soul gets all things from the Father and has gotten all things in the Son and knows all things in the Holy Ghost and so, possessed of all things, she is resting in God without end.
LXIX
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND
Sciiate, quia prope est regnum dei {Luc, ily^). Our Lord says. The kingdom of God is at hand. Yes, the kingdom of God is within us, and according to St Paul our salvation is nearer than we think. In what sense is the kingdom of God near at hand ? Let us consider this carefully. Supposing 1 were king all unbeknowest to me, then I should be no king. But suppose I have the firm con- viction that I am the king and everyone maintains and insists upon it with me and I know for certain that all the world is of the same opinion, in that case I am king and all the king's treasure is mine. Failing any one of these three things I can be no king. Even so our happiness depends on our knowledge, our awareness of the sovran good, which is God himself. I have one power in my soul fully sensible of God. I am as certain as I live that nothing is so close to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to my own self ; my life depends upon God's being near me, present in me. So is he also in a stone, a log of wood, only they do not know it. If the wood knew of God and realized his nearness like the highest angel does, then the log would be as blessed as the chief of all the angels. Man is more happy than a log of wood in that he knows and is aware of God, how near at hand God is. The better he knows it the happier he is and the worse he knows it the more unhappy he is. He is not happy because of God's being in him and so near him or because of having God, but because he is aware of God, of his nearness to him ; because he is God-knowing and God-loving, and such an one knows that God's kingdom is at hand.
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Thinking upon God's kingdom, often I am dumbfounded at. its grandeur ; for God's kingdom is God's self in all his fullness. God's kingdom is no little thing : all imaginable worlds God might create, these make not up his kingdom. The soul God's kingdom dawns in, who is conscious of God's fullness, her none durst counsel nor instruct : she is by it instructed and assured of life eternal. He who knows, who is aware, how near God's king- dom is can say with Jacob, God is in this place and I knew it not.
God is just as near in creatures. The wise man says, God has spread his nets and lines all over creatures, and we can find and know him in any one of them if only we will look.
A philosopher says, That man knows God aright who is equally aware of him in all things ' ; and, To serve God in fear is good ; to serve him in love is better, but he who is apt to behold love in f( ar does best of all.' A life of rest and peace in God is good ; a life of pain in patience is still better ; but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all. One may go in the fields and say one's prayers and be conscious of God or go to church and be conscious of God ; if we arc more eonseious of God by being in a quiet place, that comes of our own imperfection and is not due to God, for God is the same in all things and all places and just as ready to vouchsafe himself so far as in him lies ; and that man knows God aright who ever finds him the same.
St Bernard says, Why does my eye see sky, and not my foot ? Because my eye is like the sky, more than my foot.' For rny soul to see God then, she must be heavenly. What makes the soul alive to (lod in her, aware how close to her he is ? I answer : Heaven permits no alien intrusion, no mortal lack can pene- trate therein to do it outrage. And the soul that knows God is so firmly established in God that nothing can reach her, not hope nor fear nor joy nor grief nor good nor ill nor nothing that would bring her down to earth.
Heaven is at all points equidistant from the earth. And likewise it behoves the soul to be equally remote from every earthly thing and no nearer to one than to another but equable
i^y> hi grief, in having and in wanting ; whatever it be she mUwSt be dead, dispassionate, superior to it. Heaven is clear and unsullied in its brightness, free from any taint of time and place. No corporal thing finds room therein. Not itself in time, incredible in swiftness is its revolution, its actual course being timeless though from its course comes time. Nothing hinders the soul from knowing God so much as time and place. Time and place are fractions, God is an integer. So if the soul knows God at all she must know him above time and space, for God is neither this nor that as these manifold things are : God is one.
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If the soul would see God she must not look at anything in time. While the soul is regarding time and place or any such idea she can never recognise God. Before the eye can see colour it has to be rid of all colour. Before the soul can see God it must have nothing in common with naught. The seer of God knows that creatures are naught. Comparing one with another, creature looks fair and is aught, but compare it with God, it is naught.
Further I declare : any soul that sees God must have forgotten herself and have lost her own self ; while she secs and remembers herself she nor sees nor is conscious of God. But when for God's sake she loses herself and abandons all things then in God does she re-find herself, for knowing God she is knowing herself and all things (which she rid herself of) in God in perfection. To know the sovran good and the eternal goodness, really, 1 must know them in the good itself, not in partial goodness. To know real being I must know it as subsisting in itself, that is, in God, not parcelled out in creatures.
In God alone exists the whole of godhood. Not in one man exists the whole of manhood, for in a single man exists not all mankind. But in God the soul finds perfect manhood and all things in their prime, for she knows them in their essential nature. The dweller in a richly furnished house must know far more about it than another person who, though full of information, has never been within. And by this same token I am as certain as I live, and as God lives, that the soul who knows God knows him above time and place. In this God -conscious state the soul perceives how near God's kingdom is, namely, God in all his fullness. There is much discussion among doctors at the School as to the possibility of the soul knowing God. Not by reason of his harshness docs God exact so much from man but out of his great kindness, wanting the soul to be more capacious, big enough to hold the largesse he is anxious to bestow.
Let no one deem it difficult to arrive at this however hard may seem, and be, indeed, to start with, the parting from and dying to all things. Having once got into it no life is more easy, more delightful or more lovely. God is so very careful to be always with a man to guide him to himself in case of his taking the wrong way. No man ever wanted anything so much as God wants to make the soul aware of him. God is ever ready, but we are so unready. God is near to us, but we are far from him. God is in, we are out ; God is at home, we are strangers. The prophet says, God leads the just by a narrow path to the high road out into the open,' that is, to the true freedom of the spirit become one spirit with God. Ours to follow his lead and let him bring us to himself. So help us God. Amen.
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LXX
THIS IS A SERMON ABOUT OUR LORD'S BODY
This is a sermon on our Lord's body by Brother Eckhart. He says that the bread of our Lord's body has many names, but three special ones are ^iven it in holy writ. In the first place it is called the heavenly bread, in the second it is called the bread of anprels, and thirdly the bread of lamentation. And whoso would worthily receive this bread of our Lord's body must have these three things. First, none can enjoy the heavenly bread who is not a heavenly man. This means that as the heavens with the sun and moon and the entire system arc above all earthly, temy)oral things, so man iti his desires, his senses and his thoughts must be lifted up to celestial things. Secondly, no man can enjoy the bread of heaven except he be an angelic man, for no creature was ever so perfect as an angel. This man must be at all times perfectly pure in heart and body. Thirdly, it is called the bread of lamentation ; this no man enjoys except he be a man of sorrow, one, that is to say, who pondering our Lord's martyrdom shall rue the treatment meted out to our Lord on earth. Whoso has not this rue shall not enjoy the bread of sorrow. So, then, a man must have three things before he can approach this bread. First, having gotten to the excellent condition of knowing good and ill, he must choose the good and worthy and reject the foul and evil. Next, with his heart divorced from worldly loves, this man must go in godly love and all godly things. Thirdly, he must order all his activities.
LXXIi
2
BOETHIUS SAYS: HE WHO WANTS TO SEE TRUE
Boethius says, He who wants to see true in this light I speak of let him relinquish four things,' which are set down. He must relinquish the joys of ^ the- world and care. .iuad>^wajit-iuij^ while these are in thee^ it is dark and clouded therein. St Paul says God dwells in light inaccessible. Anything approaching this light the light consumes and turns to its own divine nature, even as I said of the divine essence ; what is taken into the essence is changed into essence. Speaking of understanding : as it is characteristic of God to subsist unmoved in his pure and virgin essence, his own being, so is this property imputed to understand- J^ing, which is so noble as to be selLsubsistent.
^ For No. 71 (1) see Jostes, No. 16, of which it forms a part.
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I have told how understanding has to break through the image of the Son ; as he himself declares, I am the light of the world ; no man cometh to the Father but through me.' As the wise man explains in the Book of Wisdom, when the soul is borne into God by his divine wisdom, she is clarified and sublimed in light and in grace, all that is foreign to the soul being detached and shelled away together with a portion of herself. Further, I related how the soul, now throughly purged of soul accretions, is carried up and flows back into the Son as pure as she flowed out in him. The Father created the soul in the Son, so if wc are ever to get into the ground of God, into his innermost heart, we must take the lowest place in our own ground, in our own innermost self, in abject lowliness. When the soul enters into her ground, into the innej;: most recesses of her being, divine power suddenly pours into her, producing much activity, both' manifest and secret, and the soul s grows big and high in fiiydur with God. This is and must be in the soul who, rightly disposed in the ground of humility, ascends, borne aloft in the divine power : she never stops until she gets right into God and coming to absolute rest in him, abides wholly within without looking out, subsistent in his pure essence ; for even therein is the soul. God is pure being. The philosopher says that nothing at all can get into God, who is pure being, but what is also pure being. Ergo, the soul is pure being who has gotten therein, soaring right up into God. Amen.
LXXII 1
THE PROPHET SAYS: LORD BE MERCIFUL
The prophet said, Lord be merciful to the people that is in thee.' The Lord replied, All that enter in will I make whole and love much.'
I take the words of the Pharisee who besought our Lord to dine with him and our Lord's injunction to the woman, vade in pace ! It is good to pass from restlessness to calm : praiseworthy but imperfect. Go in peace,' be not disquieted : God implies that we ought to enter into peace and continue in peace and end in peace. God said, In me ye have peace.' So far in God so far in peace. Is aught in God, it is in peace ; is aught out of God, it is without peace. St John says, Whatever is born of God over- cometh the world.' What is born of God seeks peace and ensues it. He that pursues the even tenor of his way and is at peace is a heavenly man. Heaven constantly rotates, in its motion seeking rest.
1 See also Jostes, No. 10.
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The Pharisee besought our Lord that he would dine with him. The food a man eats is changed in him into his body, like the body by the soul. Body and soul are one in being, not in act, thus my soul is united with my eye in one mode, that of seeing. Even so the food a man consumes mingles with his nature as regards its essence but not its activity ; and the great atonement we are destined to with God shall be of essence not of operation. Hence the Pharisee's request that God would eat with him.
Pharisee signifies a solitary, one who knows no end to detach- ment of soul. The more noble the powers the more they liberate. Some powers are far higher than the body and sufficiently aloof to shell off and detach completely. As the philosopher well says, What once moves mortal things never enters into them. Again, by being free and unattached the unlettered man may in love and longing receive wisdom and impart it. And thirdly, having no end means having no finality, no ultimate security until one is at rest and all unwitting of disquiet : until the soul-powers being fixed on God are wholly unattached. As the prophet cries, Lord be merciful to the people that are in thee.'
One master says, Of all the exalted works God has ever wrought in creatures mercy is the most familiar and the most mysterious, his work in the angels not excepted.' In it the work of mercy is exalted to mercy as it is in itself and as it is in God. Of God's activity the first outcome is mercy ; not in the sense of his for- giving man's sins nor of one man's forgiving another ; his highest work is mercy in the sense that he initiates the soul into the highest and most perfect thing she can conceive in this world. In his bottomless ocean God is productive of mercy.
The prophet said, Lord be merciful to the people that is in thee.' What people is in God ? St John says, ' He that dwellcth in love dwellcth in God and God in him.' St John says, Love unites, love initiates into God.' Haply it is accessory. Love does not unite, not in any wise. Satisfaction (or, enough) is not what holds together, binds together. Love unites iq act uud^not in es§<?n.Qe.. The best authorities aver that intellect strips every- thing off and grasps God bare as pure being in itself. Intellect penetrates goodness and truth, and, lighting 6n virgin essence, it seizes God in the abstract as,. being..>.without n^^ Neither *'knowledge nor love unites aught. Love takes God only as being good and God escapes from name. Good, love goes no further than that. Love takes God under a veil, under a garment. Not so understanding : understanding takes God as he is known in itself; it can never comprehend him in the sea of his own un- fathomable nature, Above biQtb jWiese pereeptwns^ ia^f^^ God energises as mercy at the summit and perfection of his activity.
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A philosopher says, There is something in the soul, intimate, mysterious, far higher than tiie soul herself, whence emanate her / powers of intellect and will. St Augustine says : Just as that is ineffable out of which the Son leaps from the Father in the first p'f6cessi5n,'^'scrthefe exists some occiiTt thing behind the first procession of . intellect and will. According to the philosopher who is our chief authority upon the soul, no human wisdom ever can attain to what the soul is. That requires supernatural wisdom. What the powers of the soul issue from into act, we do not know : about it haply wc do know a little, but what the soul is in her ground no man knows. Any knowledge thereof that may be permitted to us must be supernatural ; it must be by grace : God's agent of mercy.
LXXIII
ST BENEDICT'S DAY
IHlectus deo et hominibus etc. ( Eccl. 45i). In this passage from the Book of Wisdom the wise man speaks of (Moses), the beloved of God and men, whose memory is in benediction. God made him like the saints in glory.' And this may well be said of the saint whose festival wc keep to-day. Ilis name is Benedictus, blessed, so that to him are especially appropriate the words used here, cujus rnemoria in benedictione esty i.e. whose memory is in benediction, the more so as of him also we read that a glory was revealed to him wherein he saw the whole world gathered up as it were into a ball, and our text says, God made him like the saints in glory.'
As to this glory. St Gregory says that to a soul who is in this glory all things seem small and narrow. The natural light that God has poured into the soul is so splendid and so strong that God's bodily creation is all poor and meagre to it. This light is more glorious than any corporal thing God ever made, withal the meanest, vilest corporal thing illumined by this light, which is intelligence, becomes exalted above mortal things. It is clearer and brighter than the sun and purifies things from both time and matter. This light' is so far-flung it vaults the boundaries of space. Wider than space, it transcends the great and good as God transcends wisdom and goodness ; for God is not either wisdom or good, but from God come wisdom and goodness. Intel- lect comes not of wisdom, nor intellect is not the outcome of truth nor is not gotten thereof as will is of goodness. Will wants what is good and is engendered thereby an(d (truth) is the issue of intellect not intellect of the truth. This light which flows out of the intellect is intelligence, which is like an outburst, an outflow
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or a stream as compared to what intellect is in itself. And this outburst is as far removed therefrom as heaven is from earth.
There is another light, the light of grace, compared to which this natural light illumines a mere pin-point of the earth, nay rather a mere pin-point compared with the whole heavens which are incredibly more vast than all the earth. God's presence in the soul by grace is instinct with more light than any intellect can give : the light of intellect is but a drop in the ocean of this light, nay less a thousandfold. Hence to the soul who is in God's grace all things, and whatever her mind can grasp, will appear small and mean.
I was asked the reason why virtuous folk who are in the good graces of God are so zealous to serve him. I said it was because they had tasted God, and it were strange indeed if, onee tasting and enjoying God, the soul could stomach aught beside. As the saint hath it. Once the soul tries God she finds the things that are not God repugnant and distasteful.
Take the wise man's words in another sense : Beloved of God and men.' The verb is does not appear. He does not say : he is beloved of God and men, for he is not thinking of his changing and unstable temporal nature which the essence so far transcends. Essence is all-embracing and withal too transcendent ever to be touched by anything created. They that fondly think to have some knowledge of it know nothing whatsoever. As St Dionysius says, anything we know that we are able to impart or that we can define, that is not God ; for in God is neither this nor that which we can abstract nor has he limitation. In him there is only one thing and that is himself. Hence for theologians there is the burn- ing question : how comes this motionless, this intangible, solitary essence to be common to the soul, to be within the purview of the soul ? and they are greatly exercised as to how the soul receives it. I can only say that his divinity consists in the communication of himself to whatever is receptive of his goodness, and did he not communicate himself he would not be God.
The soul God loves and to whom he does communicate himself must be so wholly free from time and from all taint of creature that God in her smacks only of himself. In the middle of the night, when all things were asleep,' the Scriptures say, thy word, O Lord, came down from thy royal throne.' In the night ' means when no creature peers into, appears in, the soul, and it is in this quiet, this inarticulateness of the soul that the word is spoken in her intellectual nature. This word is that of her own understanding : the expression of the Word as it is and abides in the intellect.
Often I feel afraid, in discoursing about God, at how utterly
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detached the soul must be to attain to union with him. We durst not deem this unattainable : nothing is unattainable to the soul that possesses God's grace. To none were things ever more easy to leave : to the soul that has gotten God's grace things are all (easy) to eschew. Further I say, none ever had pleasanter task to perform : to the soul with God's grace all things are (pleasant) to leave because creature can cause her no pain. St Paul says, I am persuaded that no creature can separate us from God ; not fate nor life nor death.'
Look you. Nowhere is God so really God as in the soul. In every creature is somewhat of God, but in the soul God is divine, for she is his rest. According to one master, God loves nothing but himself : all his love is lavished on himself. Marry, a fool were he only to take a penny who at one stroke could seize an hundred pounds ! God's love in us is the blossoming forth of the Holy Ghost. One word more of this : God loves nothing in us but the good he does in us himself. In the words of the saint, Nothing is crowned by God excepting his own work that is wrought by him in us.' Let no one be affrighted at my saying that God loves none beside himself ; it is all to our advantage, for therein he has in view our highest happiness. He purposes to lure us to himself, to get us purged and take us to himself, so that with himself he may love himself in us and us in him. So he must needs, so far as our love goes, attract us to himself by every means he can, pleasant or disagreeable. God, despite himself, is ever hanging over us some bait to lure us into him. I never give God thanks for loving me, because he cannot help it ; whether he would or no it is his nature to. What I do thank him for is for not being able of his goodness to leave off loving me. To know ourselves, to be installed in God, this is not hard, seeing that God himself must be working in us ; for it is godly work, man acquiescing and making no resistance : he is passive while allowing God to act in him. Let us, waiting upon God, enable him to take us into him, so that becoming one with him he may be able to love us with himself. So help us God. Amen.
LXXIV
THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER
Convescens prcecepit eisah Jerosolymis ne discederent etc. (Act. I4). This passage which I have quoted in Latin comes in the Mass for to-day. St Luke records how our Lord being about to depart to heaven was in company with his disciples whom he commanded that they should not leave Jerusalem but should wait for the
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promise of the Father which they had heard from his mouth for they should be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.'
He speaks of the promise or pledge of the Father. To us as well was given this pledge of baptism in the Holy Ghost and of being received thereby to dwell above time in eternity. Not in the things of time is the Holy Ghost bestowed. When a man turns from temporal things and goes into himself he notices a heavenly light, a light that comes from heaven. Though heaven- descended it is under heaven. There is no satisfaction in this light, for it is mortal, they say that it is matter. Now iron, which by nature falls, will rise, against its nature, and hang suspended to a loadstone in virtue of the master-force the stone receives from heaven. Wherever the stone turns there the iron goes with it. Even so the mind, unsatisfied witli this infernal light, will scale the firmament and search the heavens to find the breath that spins them, the heavens by their revolution causing all things on earth to grow and flourish. Its spirit never rests content until it pierces to the coil, into the primal origin where the breath has its source. This spirit knows no time nor number : number does not exist apart from the malady of time. Other root has none save in eternity, where there is no number except one. This spirit, transcending number, breaks through multiplicity and is trans- fixed by God, and by the fact of his piercing me I pierce him in return : God leads this spirit into the desert, into the solitude of its own self, where it is simply one and is welling up in itself. This spirit has no why, for if it had a why the unity would also have its why. This spirit is in unity and freedom.
Doctors declare this will is free in the sense that none can bind it excepting God alone. God docs not bind the will, he sets it free, free to choose naught but God himself, and this is real freedom. For the spirit to be incapable of willing aught other than God's will is not its bondage but its true liberation. Some people say. If I have God and tlie love of God then I am at liberty to follow my own will. They labour under a mistake. So long as thou art capable of anything against the will of God and against his law thou hast no love of God though thou cozen the world that thou hast it. One who is in God's will and in God's love is fain to do the things God likes and leave undone the things God hates, and he can no more leave undone a thing that God wants done than he can do a thing that God abhors ; just like a man whose legs are tied together, he cannot stray and neither can he err who is in the will of God. Someone once said, God may command me to do evil and shun virtue, but I am incapable of sin.' No one loves virtue without being virtue. He who abandons himself and everything, who seeks not his own in any wise but does all he does
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for love and without why, that man being dead to all the world is alive in God and God in him.
Here someone may object, It is all very well for you to tell us these things, but we ourselves know nothing of them. -- That I also rue. This knowledge is so noble and so common, it is not to be purchased . for a farthing or a penny. A just mind and a free will, have but these, and it is thine. To abandon all things on this lower plane where they exist in mortal guise is to recapture them in God where they are reality. Everything that is dead here is life yonder and all that is dense matter here is spirit there in God. If you pour fresh water into a clean basin and, all being clear and bright, stand it in a quiet place, then, holding your face over it you see it at the bottom as it really is. That is V>ecause the water is free from impurity and still. It is the same with people who in a state of freedom and interior calm envisage God in peace and quiet, and when they are able to see him just as well in turmoil and disquiet there is perfect equanimity ; but if a man enjoys him less in trouble and unrest, that argues him not equable (unjust). St Augustine says, When the days arc weary and the time is long a man should turn to God, where no such thing as long exists and things are all at rest.' The lover of justice is possessed with justice, and he is this virtue.
Our Lord said, I have called you not servants, I liave called you friends, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth.' And so may my friend know something that I ignore, yet have no mind to tell me. But our Lord says, All that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.' I marvel how some priests, and these with pretensions to eminence and learning, allow themselves to be misled into interpreting these words to mean that he shows us of the path only the bare minimum needful to our happiness. That is not what 1 hold ; there is no truth in it. Why was God born man ? That I might be born God himself. God died that I might die to the whole world and all created things. And it is in this sense that w^e must understand the saying of our Lord, All that I have heard of my Father I have revealed unto you.' What does the Son hear of his Father ? The Father can only beget ; the Son can only be gotten. All the Father has and that he is, the whole basis of God's essence and God's nature, he brings forth once for all in his one-begotten Son. This the Son hears from his Father, this he makes known unto us, we being this same Son. All the Son has he has from his Father : essence and nature, we are this only Son. No one has the Holy Ghost except he be the only Son. Father and Son expire their holy Breath, and once this sacred breath inspires a man it remains iiv him, for he is essential and pneumatic.
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True, thou mayst receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, the likeness of the Holy Ghost, but it abides not with thee ; it is impermanent. Just as a man may blush for shame, or blench, it is an accident and passes. But one by nature fair and ruddy is so always. So with this man, as being the only Son his holy Breath is of the nature of him. As it is written in the Book of Wisdom, This day have I begotten thee in the reflection of my eternal light, in the fullness of the Godhead and the glory of all saints.' He is begetting him now, to-day. There is childbed in the Godhead, there are they baptized in the Holy Ghost according to the promise of the Father. After these days which are not many,' or a few, then comes the fullness of the Godhead,' where there is neither day nor night ; where things a thousand leagues away are as near me as the ground whereon I stand ; that is the fulfilment, the full enjoyment of Godhood ; that is oneness. While the soul secs any difference she is unjust ; as long as aught looks out, looks in, there is no unanimity. Mary Magdalene sought our Lord within the tomb ; seeking one dead man she found two living angels, but still was unconsolcd. Said the angel, Why art thou cast down ? Whom seekest thou, woman ? ' As though to say, Thou dost seek one dead and hast found two living.' Whereto she might have answered, That is the burden of my discontent, that I find two where 1 sought one alone.'
While anything created can make a clear impression on the soul she is disconsolate. I say, as I have often said before, so far as the soul's created nature goes there is no such thing as truth. I declare that there is something beyond the soul's created nature. But certain priests cannot understand how there can be anything so nearly kin to God, so much the same as he is. It has naught in common with naught. Anything made or created is naught, but this is alien and remote from the made and the created. It is something self-contained, taking nothing from outside. Our Lord departed to heaven, beyond all light, beyond all understanding, beyond all human ken. He who is thus translated beyond light of any kind dwells in the unity. As St Paul says, God dwells in the light that no man can approach unto,' which is in itself the perfect one. A man then must be dead, must be dead indeed, devoid of any being of his own, wholly without likeness, like to none, to be really Godlike. For it is God's character, his nature, to be peerless, incomparable. May we be the same in the oneness of God himself. So help us God. Amen.
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LXXVi
ASCENSION DAY
Expedit vobis etc. vado parare vobis locum etc. (Joh. I67, 142). When he was about to depart from this world to his heavenly Father, Christ said to his disciples, It is expedient for you, it is for your good, that I should go, for while I am with you the Holy Ghost the Comforter will not come unto you.' With these words our Lord consoled his disciples knowing full well that they were troubled because he had warned them of his ascension. Our Lord will not suffer his lovers to be troubled, for fear is painful. And St John says, Love casteth out fear.' Love is incompatible with fear and pain, for the waxing of love is the waning of fear, and when love is perfect all fear is gone. But at the beginning of the virtuous life fear is of use to man, providing him a thoroughfare for love. As the bodkin or the awl makes a passage for the thread and the shoe is stitched with thread, not with the iron ; and as the bristle's part towards the thread is to put it in as fastening while the bristle is withdrawn ; so, to begin with, fear makes room for love and love binds to God, whereas fear passes out.
Leaving now this argument we turn to the words of my Latin quotation, the words of our Lord, I go to prepare a place for you.' Here we notice two things taught and proved by our Lord in his ascension. The first one is that the soul is by nature heir to heaven. God is her lawful heritage, for no one generates the soul but God. God made her without any intervention. Some doctors will maintain, perhaps, that the divine light pouring into the angels, the whole creaturely idea that God reflects into the angels before it is exemplified in divers creatures, that this divine light, this image in the angels, is what makes the soul. Not so. The soul does not permit of any meddling, any interference in God's activity towards her, but fresh and pure as this flows out of God in one unbroken stream, so docs the soul proceed from God. Most privily has God embarked and launched forth the soul, so that no one knows for certain what she is. One philosopher calls her a light, and that is well said ; for like the light streaming out of the sun and shining into all creatures so is the soul sent straight from God. St Augustine says, Since the soul is emitted from God she is nowhere at rest except in God. Another master says she is a spirit, and this is true in a certain sense ; God is a spirit, and the soul is made like to God, so she may well be called spirit, being to God as spirit to spirit. A third master dubs her a fire, speaking the truth in symbol, for fire is most lofty in its nature, ^ See also Wackemagel, No. 65.
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most theurgic in its operation, and it never rests until it licks the heavens. It envelops all the elements for being much wider and higher than the air, or than water or the earth, it must be sur- rounding all the rest. It comes next of all to heaven and revolves therewith. The air goes with it, partially, because of being dense, while water, which is altogether grosser, is unable to keep pace and runs behind. The soul is called a fire because, in her desire, she does keep pace with God, like fire with the heavens, for the soul cannot rest except in God. Some souls which are rather dense follow haltingly, as air lags after fire. And some, again, being downright gross, are, like water, earth-bound and incapable ojf keeping up with God but run behind ; for seeing or hearing some- thing good will stir them with desire to be good, so they do follow after ; like water drifting to and fro without a change of level, so are these people moved while abiding of the same mind as before. A fourth doctor calls her a spark of God's celestial nature, and this jumps with our theory of her heavenly origin. Where one clod falls, there, generally speaking, all earth would fall as well ; a single clod reveals the ground to be its rcsting-placc. And whither one spark flics to from the fire, that place is revealed as the resting-place of fire.
Now we have sent one spark to heaven, the soul to wit of our Lord Jesus Christ, which shows the common resting-place of souls is nowhere but in heaven ; and herein we have proof of the entire soul being heavenly. The body, on the other hand, is made of the four elements, so its habitat is naturally earth. But the soul is in intimate union with the body, and they must ever stay together despite that the body is of earth and the soul a denizen of heaven. God found a wise solution of this problem, himself becoming man and going in his proper power to heaven, so that in him wc have already sent one clod of earth to heaven. And the whole earth likewise must belong to heaven, for Christ's resting- place is nowhere but in union with his Father ; and as God is three in Person so is he one in nature, they having one being and one life. Thus our Lord Christ shows us that our being and our life are eternal in divine union.
The second thing oUr Lord has taught and proved by his ascen- sion is how we must prepare ourselves to follow after him in pursuance of his words, I go to prepare a place for you.' Just as, on those four grounds, the soul is called light, spirit, fire or a spark of God's celestial nature, even so man is lifted up or gotten ready also by four things finely symbolised of old in the prophet Moses, of whom we read that he gathered his flock together and drove it into the wilderness, into the backside of the desert,' and there upon the mount of God he saw a bush burning but unconsumed.
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Moses wished to turn aside and see this wonder, the burning bush which would not burn away. But the Lord called to him out of the bush, and said, Draw not nigh ; put off thy shoes,' under which figure we are taught four precious lessons.
First, in the name Moses, for Moses being interpreted means, one taken from the water. So shall a man be rescued from instability, from out the tempests of this world.
Next, that man's animal passions and desires must all be herded up into the highest power of his soul. Unless the soul is gathered up and lifted out of created things the Holy Ghost cannot enter in nor energise in her. All divine work done by God is wrought by him in spirit, above time and place, for mortal things arc fatal to the flow of God. Divine light shed on spiritual creature will engender life, but if it falls on mortal things it fades, either dimmed or extinguished altogether. That is why our Lord declared, It is expedient for you, it is for your good, that I should go away.' For his disciples loved him as a man and mortal. Now there can be no doubt that our Lord was nobler than anything God ever made. If he then was a hindrance to his followers it is unquestionably true that other things we love, which are inferior to God, will hinder us much more. Ergo, the soul must transcend the world if she wants God to ply his godly work in her. And St Augustine says explicitly, we can transcend the world in love and knowledge, and that lacking love and knowledge we are nothing, i.e, in the world.
In the third place we learn, that man can see and know God's work, but that while in this body he must needs stop short of actual attainment, just as Moses saw the burning bush but could not go right up to it ; he wanted to, however : a case of the love which docs not consume the body and has no spiritual potency.
Fourthly, putting off the shoes signifies the freeing of the soul's desire, its withdrawal from all mortal and perishable things. To this and things still higher, O God help us. Amen.
LXXVI
ASCENSION DAY SERMONS 1
Expedit vobis ut ego vordam etc. {Joh. I67). We read in the gospel how our Lord said to his disciples, It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away ye cannot receive the Holy Ghost.' And this by reason of three hindrances which beset three kinds of people. First, sinners who let creatures hinder them, using them
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ungodly for their pleasure. These people are wandering in God's way, for creatures are a way of God. Hence St Augustine's dictum, Cursed be they that wander in the way of God.' I will say no more of these ; following their animal passions they are divorced from God. Also, there are good people who are over- busy with their material wants and take too much pleasure in externals. Concerning them God said, He that loveth his soul shall lose it ' (loveth carnally, that is : over-fondness, for it will lose a man his soul) and he that hateth his soul shall keep it unto life eternal.' Meaning those that follow not their inordinate pleasures and desires.
A second hindrance blocks the path of other good and truly pious people. Namely, the seven sacraments. Sacr amentum means a sign. That man never gets to the underlying truth who stops at the enjoyment of its symbol ; and the seven sacraments all point us to the same reality. Marriage (for example) is a symbol of divine and human nature and also of the union of the soul with God. To rest in the illusion means delay in the attain- ment of real oneness. Ye durst not think of marriage as the mating of a man and a woman with each other for the indulgence of their outward passions and for the leading of a life of pleasure. That is not real marriage. Marriage means obedience to the marriage rule with its seven times and its works of mercy. Again, some pious souls are hampered with scrupulosity in the matter of repentance and confession ; they boggle at the symbol and neglect the thing itself. Our Lord says of these, He that has bathed needs but to wash his feet.' Which is as good as saying, Once purged by heartfelt rue and throughly shriven, a man needs not to re-confess old sins though he must wash his feet,' that is, his will and conscience : them let him cleanse by confessing daily faults.
Also, some of the devout hinder themselves by over-occupation, outwardly, with the blessed sacrament of God's body, to the detri- ment of their receiving it ; these cultivate the rites at the cost of the reality, for the thing itself is inside not in its outward show. Wherefore they receive not God's body worthily. The sacra- ments all point us to the one and only truth, so we ought not to dally with the symbols but penetrate to the actuality. Those who follow the spirit of God's truth will worship him in spirit and in truth. So said Christ himself to the woman drawing at the well at Samaria when she asked him where to pray, whether on the mountains where her fathers used to pray or where the Jews then worshipped. Quoth our Lord, The hour cometh and is now, when true worshippers shall worship not only on the mountains and in the Temple but in spirit, in the place of God.' The moral of
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which is that we ought to pray to God not only on the hill-tops and in churches, but we ought always to be praying, at all times and everywhere. St Paul says, Rejoice evermore ; in everything give thanks ; pray without ceasing.' Even so pray they whose every deed is done like-mindedly for the love of God ; who, careless of their personal pleasure, bow themselves humbly before God and leave him alone to act. The prayer of the lips was enjoined by holy Christendom for the recalling of the soul from her outward senses wherein she dissipates herself in a multiplicity of perishable things. Being recollected thence into her highest power {i.e, know- ledge and memory and will) she is turned to spirit, and when the spirit is joined to God in perfect unity of will, it is turned to God. Then, not till then, he is in true prayer, when he has reached the goal of his creation ; for wc were created solely to be God, and that is the reason why we were fashioned like him. Whoso does not attain to being one with God in spirit is not a really spiritual man.
Good, pious souls are hindered too from their proper object by lingering with holy joy over the human form of our Lord Jesus Christ ; and by the same token, over-reliance upon visions is a pitfall to some people ; they see things pictured in the mind, it may be man or angel or the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and give credence to their ghostly messages. They hear, perhaps, that they are best-beloved or about the faults or virtues of another ; or they may hear that God is doing something for them. In this they are deceived. God never does a single thing for creature but only by reason of his kindness, for he is the end of every Christian prayer: Do this, O Lord, for the sake of thy only Son Christ Jesus.' He himself said to his disciples, It is expedient for you that I should go away.' Here he was addressing not alone his then disciples but all his disciples of the future who purpose to follow him to high achievement. To them his manhood is a hindrance so long as they still cling to it with mortal pleasure ; they ought to follow God in all his ways and not keep solely to his way of manhood who reveals to us the way of Godhood ; for verily Christ said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by me, and he who would enter by any other door the same is a murderer and deserves eternal death.' Such are those who claim that they themselves arc capable of good or that God docs things for them, whereas Christ even, stated he was not from himself : the Eternal Wisdom said about itself, He that created me reposes in my tent,' who withal is uncreated for God is unborn wisdom. We may take this as referring to eternal wisdom's birth, for the Son proceeded forth by way of birth, where birth is the same thing as creation. The eternal wisdom was born of the power of the Father. He and the
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Son, his wisdom, and the Holy Ghost, his goodness and their mutual love, these (three) are one in nature and distinct in Person. And what is this tent that Wisdom talks of ? That is the manhood of Christ Jesus, wherein the Father reposes with his Son, they being of one nature, God in their Person as well as God by nature. This tent of humanity let us adore only in its oneness with the Godhead : for man is truly God and God is truly man. Let us not encumber ourselves with any creature excepting Jesus Christ, who only is our help and the way to his Father. When, taking leave of creatures, we enter the true path, which is .Jesus Christ, we are not wholly blest albeit within sight of the divine reality ; for while we are in sight of, we are not yet one with, what we see. While we notice any thing we are not one with it. Where there is no more than one no more than one is seen : God is not seen except by blindness, nor known except by ignorance, nor understood except by fools. According to St Augustine, no soul can get to God who goes not without creature and seeks not God without likeness. And that is the meaning of Christ's words, Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye and then wash the mote out of another's eye.' For you must understand that anything created is likened to a beam in the eye of the soul, preventing divine oneness by the fact of being creature. And because the soul is creature she has to cast herself out of herself; she must east out all the saints and eke our Lady, for all of them are creatures. She must be quite naked and wholly unnecessitous. Thus the soul enters the union of the Holy Trinity. She is further blest by becoming one with the naked Godhead whereof the blessed Trinity is the self-revelation. In the abstract Godhead there is no activity : the soul is not perfectly beatified until she casts herself into the desolate Deity where neither act nor form exists and there, merged in the void, loses herself : as self she perishes, and has no more to do with things than she had when she was not. Now, dead to self, she is alive in God and the dead perish (in the tomb). Even so is naughted the soul entombed in God.
Some people fondly ween that they have gotten into the Holy Trinity who have never got beyond themselves. Loath to leave themselves, they keep their selfish interests and pleasures and interior sweetness, all of which they have forsworn, just the same in thought and will. These are no disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ who never looked for sweetness in anything he did ; on the contrary, he said, My soul is sorrowful even unto death.' Meaning his most -lofty soul, and he was thinking also of his bodily life. This was sorrowful even unto death,' until a term was put to the conditions of our exile, until our death was dead. And our soul too is troubled even unto death,' until there dies within us
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whatever is alive there of own will, own interests and multitudi- nous will. When the soul is dead as to the life of her desires and selfish interests and is buried in God, then, hidden and unknown to any creature, she can never be troubled any more.
Now mark the signs whereby a soul is known to have been taken into the Holy Trinity. First, it is vouchsafed to her that at the sight of the Holy Ghost her sins are blotted out and she forgets herself and things. In the next place, she has gotten a conception of the Godhead, namely the eternal wisdom of the Father, the knowledge and discernment of all things ; and she is bereft of opinion, hypothesis, belief, for now she knows the truth ; and whereas hitherto she has taken things on trust and learnt by wordy arguments and hearsay, now things presented to her, whether by men or angels, she need ask none about, like those with no notion of reality, who, when an abstract truth is revealed to them, will try to grasp it with their finite mind : a thing that is beyond angelic understanding. Whereupon they question others on the subject, propounding it in the material form in which they have conceived it, and these take it as they hear it, in a concrete sense, and so pronounce it wrong and contrary to the Christian faith. It is false to them, because they accept it at face-value, which they arc unable to see through. In this they are mistaken. Furthermore, the soul who is in truth translated into the Holy Trinity is immediately endowed by the Father's power and strength with the ability to do all things. As St Paul says, I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.' Now the soul works not, knows not, loves not ; but God is working in her, perceiving himself in her. According to the words of Jeremiah, Verily ye are God's in divine knowing and loving.' God help us to this truth. Amen.
2
I GO TO HIM THAT SENT ME
Vado ad eum qui misit me {J oh, IG^). I go to him that sent me.' These words have a threefold meaning. In the first place, Christ went to his Father in his manhood. In the second place, the soul of Christ went in the light of grace. In the third place, the soul of Christ went in his Godhead.
About this saying, Thomas, Origen, Damascenus and Richardus hold the same opinion, and I hold it with them. What we say is, that Christ in his manhood went first through our manhood ; he has known all the wants that flesh is heir to, for he has been through every creature and set creature lower than mankind : the humanity of Christ has carried our humanity beyond the realm of creature, exalting our nature above the angelic nature in the unity of God
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and man. The manhood of Christ went also by itself without impediment of creature, for he alone was ever perfect in virtue at every point of time.
In the second place, the soul of Christ went without means in the light of grace. In the light of grace the soul of Christ received four gifts which Mary his mother never did receive nor did any of the saints. The first gift of Christ's soul was wisdom, the knowledge of his end. The second gift was understanding, which his soul received on achieving virtue as distinct from means. The third gift Christ's soul received was that in all she did she remained unchanged. The fourth gift was that of doing nothing except in virtue of the love of God.
In the third place, the soul of Christ went in his godhood ; he went, that is to say, in the personality of the eternal Word, for this eternal Person is essentially the vehicle of human nature. He also went the way of the three Persons of whom he is one Person. He went in his own nature to the Father-nature in the understanding of them both. And he went in the work of the Person of the Holy Ghost, who effects the union of human nature and divine Person. Touching Christ's words, I go to him that sent me,' Lincolniensis and Master Henry Augus- tiniensis tell us what he means by go.' I hold with Thomas and Gilbertus that by this word he meant to say, I go to release you from the straits whereto ye have been brought by Adam's transgression ; I go to set you free from the bonds of creature ; I go to him that sent me, in my understanding wherein I take you straight to him ; I go the way of my own nature, the way of my lordship, wherein alone I keep unto myself what creature has no part nor lot in. He went in essence and in nature ; he went to reveal in his own Person the essence and the life to creatures in separation ; for the Persons are God in their personal divinity according to their nature's unity.
Here arises the question. Is the Person of the nature or the nature of the Person ? In answering this it must be borne in mind that it is the nature of the Persons to manifest the fruits of their own nature.
The soul too goes to the Father. First, in the fixed intention to cumber herself no more with creature unless with the objective form of Christ. Secondly, she goes in responding to whatever calls God may make upon her. Thirdly, she goes in the sweet savour of divine love wherein suffering is no suffering to her. Christ ascended into heaven ; he ennobled his humanity by withdrawing it from time and establishing it in eternity. Lifting up his soul he gave her his essential self, the essence he is ever making manifest in his personal works. Further, the soul ascends flying with the feathers of the virtues, wisdom, prudence, strength
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and justice namely, for on these four virtues the soul is able to wing her way past time and past all creatures which exist in time. And she flies as well in the three godly virtues of faith, hope and charity, resting in the love that is God, wherein we behold the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Now it must be remembered that three kinds of men see God. The first see him in faith ; they know no more of him than what they can make out through a partition. The second behold God in the light of grace but only as the answer to their longings, as giving them sweetness, devotion, inwardness and other such-like things which are issuing from his gift. The third kind see him in the divine light. Christ's disciples beheld God as the satisfaction of their longings, but they did not see him as one who longs to love. Philip said to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father and satisfy us,' as though to say. Lord, show us thyself as transcending creature, as the immediate entry to the soul which thou dost nature in her proper nature. Jesus answered, He that seeth me seeth my Father,' as though to say, Whoso seeth me unchanging, as well disposed towards them that would wound as towards them that show the wish to please me ; whoso seeth me apart from my humanity as the door into the soul, the same beholds my Father as energising in his personal power and I in personal wisdom and the Holy Ghost in personal goodness : having God means having all these three in the one essence of their nature.
3
THE soul's place *
Our Lord said to his disciples, It is expedient for you that I should go away, for while I am with you the Holy Ghost will not come unto you.' With these words our I^ord comforted his disciples after supper on the eve of his departure, knowing full well that they were sorrowful at finding he was going to leave them. Our Lord will not long suffer his lovers to be troubled. Fear is cruel and therefore incompatible with love. As a man gains in love he loses his fear. But at the beginning of conversion fear goes through the soul as the awl goes through the shoe in making a passage for the thread ; and even so the heart is pierced with fear of sin which is then followed and chased out by love. Our Lord's words to his disciples, I go to prepare a place for you,' teach us two valuable lessons of which we have the proofs in his ascension.
The first one is, that the soul is by nature made for heaven and God is her lawful heritage. For God brought forth the soul ' A variant of LXXV. In PfoifEer's text it is part of (2).
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alone in lineal descent and no man knoweth what she is. They say she is a light, for as the sunlight is poured forth in beams upon all creatures, even so the soul is the immediate product of the light of God. St Augustine says, the soul proceeds from God and returns to God, so she is not at rest except in him. The soul is a spirit formed in the likeness of God and agreeable to him as one spirit is to another. Philosophers, again, compare the soul with fire, a thing most lofty in its nature, most theurgic in its operation, which never stops until it licks the heavens. Fire encircles all the elements ; spreading much wider and higher than the air or than water or the earth it envelops all of them. It comes next to heaven and revolves therewith ; the air goes rather slower because it is more dense, and water being denser still is unable to keep pace and runs behind. The soul is called a fire because in her desire she can keep up with God like fire with the heavens, nor has she any rest except in him. Also, the soul is called a spark of God's celestial nature, and this jumps with our theory that the soul is intrinsically heavenly. For where one clod falls there earth in general would fall as well ; and thus a single clod of earth will betray the resting-place of the earth itself ; so too the spark which shoots out of the fire will indicate the resting-place of fire. Now we have scut a spark to heaven, namely the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ, which shows the resting-place of souls is nowhere else than heaven ; yonder they belong. But the resting-place of body, made up as it is of the four elements, is by nature upon earth, and yet God joins these twain to one another and fates them to remain together : soul and body for their mutual uses. Of this God found a wise solution, himself becoming man and going in his proper power to heaven, the resting-place of Jesus Christ being in union with his Father. And since God is threefold in his Persons and simple in his nature, they having one common life and being, it follows that the place our Lord Jesus Christ prepares for our life and being is that of eternal union with God.
The other thing Christ taught by his ascension is what prepara- tions we must make for following him, pursuant to his words, I go to prepare a place for you.' Just as it is upon four grounds that soul is called light, spirit, fire and a spark of God's celestial nature, so wc must be prepared in four particulars. When Moses would have gone and looked at the burning bush upon Mt. Sinai God told him to put off his shoes, which teaches us four lessons.
The first is in the name Moses, which means, taken from the water, and so shall we be taken out of instability, rescued from the storm of the world-flow. Next, all our animal passions, with their agitations, must be herded up into the very topmost, the ghostly
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power of the soul. Unless the soul is raised to a higher power, from temporal to celestial things, the Holy Ghost cannot enter in to do its work in her. The work God docs is wrought by him in spirit, and any temporal or mundane thing obstniets the flow of God. On this account Christ said to his disciples, It is expe- dient for you that I should go away,' for his discipic's loved him as a man and mortal, so that despite his being the most perfect good God ever sent or that could become, yet he was a hindrance to his followers by his bodily })resencc ; how much more then must gross temporal things be hindrances to us ? The soul must rise above herself and above this time if she wants God to do his work in her. However well we see and understand the act of divine love wc cannot in this body perfectly attain thereto any more than Moses could reach the burning bush. But wc must regulate our lives so as to get to Christ our Lord when time is done.
4
HINDRANCES
When the disciples knew their Lord was leaving them he said,
It is expedient for you that I should go away, for unless I go away ye will not receive the Holy Ghost.' Three kinds of pco))le are hindered from so doing.
First, sinners who by using creatures at their godless pleasure hinder their soul's beatitude. These are wanderers in the way of God. Concerning them St Augustine says, Accursed are they that wander in God's way.' I will not here discuss them further ; following their animal passions they turn their hack on God. Also, there are some who arc over- fond of ministering to their outward wants. Touching these our Lord .Jesus said, He that loveth his soul shall lose it ' (or, in other words, to pander to the body is to lose the soul), and he that hateth his soul shall keep it ' (meaning those that follow not their own inordinate desires).
Secondly, a number of good people arc hindered by the seven sacraments. Sacramentum means a sign, and anyone who rests content merely with the sign will never get to the interior truth. But the seven sacred rites all point us to the unique reality. Marriage, for example, is a symbol of divine and human nature, an earnest of the union of the soul with God. And anyone who lingers in the mere illusion is kept from the eternal fact. It is no true marriage when a man and woman indulge their sensual passions and live according to their fleshly lusts ; married life involves keeping the marriage rule with its seven times and its works of mercy.
Thirdly, mauy pious souls are hindered by scrupulosity in
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confession and repentance, the outward forms thereof, but they take no trouble about the truth itself. Jesus says of these, He that has bathed needs but to wash his feet ' ; once cleansed, that is, by genuine sorrow and confession, no man has need to re-confess old sins ; but he should wash the feet of his desire and purify his conscience by shriving from new faults. And devout souls are hindered too from spiritual attainment by indulgence in sheer physical enjoyment of the humanity of Christ. When our Lord said to his disciples, It is expedient for you that I should go away,' he was addressing not them only but all who in the days to come should try to follow him to high achievement. For these there is a hindrance in his manhood if, regardless of his Godhood, they content themselves with that. We ought to follow God in all his ways, not kec^p to his humanity as distinct from his divinity.
The Lord Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh to the Father but by me, and whoso shall enter by any other door the same is a thief and a robber.' He also said he was not from himself. The Eternal Wisdom said, He that created me is resting in my tent ' and witlial is uncreated. Christ is the born wisdom and power of the Father. His wisdom is the Son and his goodness is the Holy Ghost, they being of one nature and distinct in Person. And this tent that Wisdom speaks of is the humanity of Christ wherein the Father reposes with his Son and with the Holy (rhost who are alike in nature and are God in Person. Wherefore let us worship this tent of his humanity solely in its oneness with his deity. For man is truly God and God is truly man. Nor ought we to encumber ourselves with any creature excepting Jesus Christ, who is our saving way to his heavenly Father and apart from whom there is no other way. But albeit we have taken leave of creature and entered the true path, which is Jesus Christ, we are not wholly blest. Though wc are in sight of the divine reality wc are not yet the same as what we see. St Augustine says. No soul can get to God who goes not minus creature to find God minus likeness. And this finds warrant in Christ's words, Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye then thou canst take the mote out of thy brother's eye.' Whence we draw the moral that any temporal thing is a beam in the eye of the soul and prevents divine oneness. It follows that the soul will have to cast herself out of herself and stand all bare of creature and wholly unncccssitous, for so she puts herself upon a par with God who, naked and unindigent of things, goes absolutely free from matter. Thus at length the soul enters the union of the Holy Trinity to be wholly blest when, casting herself into the desert of the Godhead where neither act nor form exists, she is
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lost to self in the rapture of reunion : as self she comes to naught and has no more to do with things than she had when she was not. Now dead to self she is alive in God. But the dead perish in the tomb. So perishes the soul as such, entombed in the desert of the Godhead. Of such St Paul declares, Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.' According to Dionysius, burial in God is nothing but the crossing over into uncreated life. This crossing is beyond the ken of multitudinous knowledge.
Such is the nature of the soul that where she is she is entire : where this nature exists it exists as a whole in each member ; and by the same token, God is in all places and in every creature, for what lives in the soul is none other than God. So leaving every- thing to him let her dcj)art from all that is not God nor rest until she grasps the uncreated God. So help ns our Lord Jesus Christ who, as though to-day, ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of the Father with whom and with the Holy Ghost he is the working of the Deity. Amen.
LXXVIli
THE IMAGE IN THE SOUL
Faciamus honiineni ad imaginem el similitudinein nostrarn {Gen, Igo)* said, Let us make man in our image.' What
is God's speaking ? The Father observing himself with impartible perception perceives the impartible purity of his own essence. There he sees the image of creatures as a whole, there he speaks himself. His Word is his clear perception and that is his Son. God's speaking is his begetting.
God said, Let us make.' Theologians ask : Why did not God say, Let us do ' or I.et us work ? ' Doing is an outward act beseeming not the inward man. Work (*omcs from the outward and from the inward man, but the innermost man takes no part in it. In making a thing the very innermost self of a man comes into outwardness.
When God made man the innermost heart of the Godhead was concerned in his making. A heathen philosopher says, God made* all things with wisdom. The Doctor says, The Son is the wisdom or love of the Father wherewith he made all things.'
God said, Let us make man.' Why did God not say, Let us make manhood,' for it was manhood that Christ took ? Man and manhood differ. Talking of man we mean a person ; talking of manhood we mean human nature. Philosophers define what nature is. It is the thing that essence can receive. Hence God assumed manhood and not man. It is written in the book of ' See also Greith, pp. 99-104, etc.
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Moses, Adam was the first man that God ever made. And I say that Christ was the lirst man God made. How so ? The philosopher says, what is first in intention is last in execution. When a carpenter builds a house his first intention is the roof and that is tJic finish of the house.
God said, Let us make man.' Whereby he gave it to be understood that he is more than one : three in Person, one in essence. St Augustine relates that when he was looking for the image in the soul he sought it in the outward man, and there he found four likenesses and three links and two faces. He found nothing of the image. Then he hunted for it in the inner man, and there he found one thing which answered to the simple essence in its simplicity and to the various Persons in its trinity of powers. He found two faces to it. One working downwards and the other upwards. With the lower face she knows herself and outward things. The upper face has two activities ; with one she knows God and his goodness and his emanation ; with this she loves and knows him to-day and not to-morrow. I love God to-day and not to-morrow. Now the image will not lie in her three powers, by reason of their instability. Another power is in the highest face, which is concealed ,* in this concealment lies the image.
The image has five properties. First, it is made by another. Secondly, it answers to that same. Thirdly, it has emanated from it ; not that it is the divine nature but it is a substance subsisting in itself ; it is the pure light that emanates from God and only differs from him in understanding God. Fifthly, it tends towards what it came from. Two things adorn this image. One is, it is according to him ; the other, there is somewhat of eternity therein. The soul has three powers : the image does not lie in them ; but she has one power : the actual (or active) intellect.
Now St Augustine and the New Philosophers declare that in this lies impartible memory, intellect and will, and these three are inseparatc, i.e. the hidden image answers to God's essence. The divine being ((xod) is shining straight into this image, and the image shines straight into God with nothing between.
May God come into us and we into him and be united with him, So help us God. Amen.
LXXVIII
THE SPECULATIVE INTELLECT
St Paul reminds us that we being planted in the likeness of God may attain to higher and truer vision. For this St Dionysius says we require three things. The first is, possession of one's
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mind. The second is, a mind that is free. The third is, a mind that can see. How can we acquire this speculative mind ? By a habit of mental concentration.
The soul has a ghostly spot in her where she has all things rnattcr-free just as the first cause harbours in itself all things immaterially. The soul has also a light in her with which she creates all things. When this light and this spot coincide so that each is the seat of the other, then, only then, one is in full posses- sion of one's mind. VVliat more is there to tell ? It means our outAvard man's farewell to all satisfaction in creatures and the inner man's being so meet for God that nothing arises within him that he would have changed : then, not till then, a man is self-possessed. This cannot happen here for, as tlic Doctor says, when this that wc are siicaking of befalls, the highest power of the soul secs God in her own power. As St Dionysius puts it. Then the soul is not called soul, she is the sovran power of God.
The second thing is a free mind. Freedom means not being in any way bound ; our being as free and clear and unalloyed as we were in our first emanation when wc were loosed in the Holy Ghost.
The third is the speculative mind. Herein the soul sees God. What does the soul see when she sees God ? Dionysius says she sees the one power. This unique power makes her one with it. She sees in him also the good passing good, embraeing all good things. He wants to entice us out of ourselves, to make us unwilling to stay in ourselves. As the heathen philosopher says. The arch delight, all delights excelling, attracts the soul out of all enjoyments into the sovran truth where all things end. And the same master says, Why arc we unaware of this ? B(*causc wc are bent on louver things. Supposing that we find ourselves desirous of God before all else, tlien God has touched this highest power. By this touch she is moved out of herself and into him ; not that she is moved by grace as one thing moves another, for she has no body to her deity. St Dionysius says that the motion of the soul is as in a circle, since she never varies from her centre.
He says too, God is splendid, and this by reason of three things. He is clear, he is a mutual illumination, he is one and the same. What docs clear mean ? Free from admixture of body ; persisting in his purity or light-nature. According to the scriptures, the soul is sevenfold clearer than the sun. The sun is clear albeit a corporal thing. But I declare the soul to be an hundredfold clearer than the sun, for the sun is bodily whereas the soul is ghostly. And her surpassing clarity is due to the ascendency of spirit over matter. Now if the soul is clear like this then God must be infinitely
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clearer, for he created her, and the cause is more than its creature has.
lie is also a mutual illumination, for all that is in God is God. And St Augustine says the Father and the Son shine into each other in the Holy Ghost, who is the tie between them. And the three hypostases, which arc the three Persons, have one nature, like three lights with one shine. So too with us there should be unanimity, all multiplicity focussed to the highest power and this sovran power cast into God there to abide without reflection.
Thirdly, he is one and the same, this being characteristic of divinity, which is the same as unity. This is not said of creature, for it cannot be maintained of any creatures that it is from them- selves they have their being. St Paul says, What we have we have received from the unique good, God namely, from whom are all good things.' Things are not from themselves. That which is from itself and from which all things are, is God. It is expressly taught that God is one and the same. And it is for us to be like him. When we have parted from ourselves then we are not-being rather than being. May we, being planted in the likeness of God, attain to higher and truer vision, So help us God. Amen.
LXXIX
THE SON OF THE WIDOW
Adolescens, tihi dico : surge {Luc, 7^^). To-day we read in the gospel about the widow with an only son who had died. And our Lord came to him and said, Young man, arise ! ' And he sat up.
By the widow we understand the soul ; her husband was dead, so her son was dead also. Her son we take to mean her intellectual nature. Our I^ord, sitting by the well, said to the woman, Go home and fetch me thine husband.' Not hers that living water which is the Holy Ghost ; that is vouchsafed alone to those who are quickened in their understanding. Intellect is the summit of the soul. It has fellowship and intercourse with the angels in angelic nature. Angelic nature no time can touch, nor can time touch the intellec^tual nature. Unless she lives in this her son will die. She was a widow. No creature lives but has some good and some shortcomings. She was a widow in this sense : intellect was dead in her, and with it perished also the fruit of it, the Son.
Widow, in another sense, suggests abandonment, one who is forsaken. Even so must we abandon creatures and forsake them utterly. The prophet says, The woman who is barren, more in number are her children than hers who is fruitful.' So with the
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soul who travails ghostly : manifold are her offspring, instantly does she bear fruit. The soul that has gotten God is bringing forth fruit all the time. God must needs accomplish his work. God is ever at work in the eternal now, and his work is the beget- ting of his Son ; he is bringing him forth all the while. In his birth all things have proceeded forth, and so great is his pleasure in this birth that he spends his whole energy upon it. God bears himself out of himself into himself ; the more perfect this birth is the more docs it bear. I say that God is all one, he knows nothing but himself alone. God cannot know himself without knowing all creaturcis. God gives himself birth all at once in his Son ; he says all things in him. He says, Young man, arise I '
God exerts all his power in his Son so as to quicken the soul back to God. And hell-torment really means the frequent lapsing of the soul fiorn the purpose of God's effort, which is, to bring the soul to life again. God makes all creatures in a word, but in order to vivify the soul the whole of his power is expended in his Son with intent for the soul to be brought back therein. In his birth she comes to life, and God bears his Son into the soul so as to quicken her. God speaks himself in his Son. In the word wherein he speaks himself in himself he speaks himself into the soul. It belongs to all creatures to be born. A creature without birth would not be at all. According to one master, it is a sign of the divine birth that all creatures are wrought in it. Hence his words, Young man, arise ! '
The soul has nothing God can speak into excepting her intelli- gence. Some powers are too vile for God to speak to. He could of course address them, only they would not hear. Will as will is not receptive, not in any wise ; will consists in aspiratioji. So he says, Young man, arise ! ' The powers of the soul age not, they say. Not so the corporal faculties, which How ])ast and decay. The more a man knows the better he knows, and this ennobles the soul. But the corporal powers do not have this result, so his words, Young man, arise ! ' have reference to the noble powers of the soul.
Philosophers define as young things which are near to their beginning. Man has perennial youth in his intellectual nature ; the more he is in his active (intellect) the nearer he is to his birth, and a thing near its birth is young. The first issue of the soul is her intellectual nature, next follows will and then all the rest of her powers. Now he says, Young man, arise ! ' The soul herself is one indivisible work ; what is wrought by God in the impartible light of the soul is more lovely and fair than the whole of his work in creatures. Yet foolish folk take bad for good and good for bad. To him who understands aright the unitiue work.
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of God in the soul is better and nobler and higher than the whole world.
Above this light comes grace. Grace enters neither into intellect nor will. For grace to enter into intellect and will, intellect and will must transcend themselves. A master says, There is I know not what, wholly mysterious, above them,' meaning the spark of the soul, the only part of her which is God- receptive. Here in this minute spark, called the spirit of the soul, there occurs true union between the soul and God. Grace never did any virtuous work : it has never done any work at all albeit good works are the outcome of it. Grace does not unify by works. Grace is the inhabiting and co-habiting of the soul in God. Work of whatever kind, external or internal, is beneath it. All creatures are searching for the Godlike. The more vile they are the more they search outside. Air and water, for example, flow away, but heaven steadily goes round and in its course is bringing forth all creatures ; therein being godlike so far as in it lies. Moreover, in its motion it is seeking rest. Heaven never condescends to serve inferior creatures. And in this it is very much like God. God's birth of himself in his Son is denied to creatures. But heaven is striving after this act which God performs in himself. And if heaven does this, and also other creatures much baser than the soul, then it is thankless and shameful of her to make such scant effort to compass such things as resemble the works God does in eternity.
According to philosophers, the soul can give birth to herself in herself and bear herself out of herself back into herself. In her natural light she works wonders ; she is able to separate one. Fire and heat are one ; in her intellect she divides them. Wisdom and goodness arc one in God : in her intellect wisdom is never envisaged as goodness. Why ? Because wisdom enters more into God. The soul brings forth in her God out of God into God ; she is with young in her very self, and this by dint of her nearness to God, of her being the image of God.
As I have often said, image as image, ix. as a reflection, is an inseparable thing. Soul as living in the reflection of God has real union no creature can sever. Not God himself, not angels, nor any sort of creature is able to disjoin the soul who is in the image of God. That is true union, and therein lies true happiness. Various philosophers are in search of happiness. My verdict is, that happiness lies neither in intellect nor will : happiness lies above them both, and it is there as happiness and not as intellection, and God is there as God and soul as the image of God. May he unite us to him in this sense. So help us God. Amen.
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LXXX
THERE IS ONE POWER IN THE SOUL
Adolescens, tihi dico : surge {Luc. 7^4). We read in St Luke's gospel about a youth who was dead. And our Lord came and took compassion on him and touched him and said, Young man, I say unto thee, I command thee. Arise ! '
Now you must know that in all good people God is present all at once and there is something in the soul wherein God lives and something in the soul where the soul lives in God, and if the soul turns outwards towards external things she dies and God dies also in the soul. But he does not die in himself at all and he is alive to himself. Just as, when the soul leaves the body the body dies and the soul lives on in herself, so (iod may be dead to the soul and be alive to himself. Andknow, there is one power in the soul wider than wide heaven, which is so incredibly extensive that we are unable to define it, and yet this power is much vaster still.
Mark now. In this exalted power the Father is saying to his one-begotten Son, Young man, arise ! ' It is God, and the closeness of its union with the soul is past belief, for God is so lofty in himself that nothing whatsoever can attain thereto by under- standing. It is wider than the heavens, aye than all the angels, albeit one angelic spark is the cause of all the life on earth. Desire is far-reaching, limitless. All that mind can conceive, all that heart can desire, that is not God. Where desire and understanding end, in the darkness, there shines God.
Quoth our Lord, Young man, I say unto thee. Arise ! ' If I am to hear God speaking in me I must be wholly estranged from all that is mine, as strange as I am to things under the sea, and especially from time. The soul is as young in herself as when she was made, for age as relating to her is an affair of the body, affecting iier use of its senses. As one philosopher observes, an old man with the eyes of youth would sec just as well as a boy. I made a statement yesterday which seems almost incredible, I said that Jerusalem is as near my soul as the ground I stand on now. Aye, in good sooth, a thousand leagues beyond Jerusalem is every whit as nigh my soul as my own body is, of that I am as sure as of my being a man, and to any learned clerk it is not hard to understand.' Know then that my soul is as young as when I was created, aye, much younger. And I tell you, I should be ashamed were she not younger to-morrow than to-day.
The soul has two powers which have nothing whatever to do with the body, namely intellect and will, which function above time. Oh, if only the soul's eyes were opened so that her under-
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standing might behold the truth ! Then it would be as easy to a man to give up everything as to give up peas and lentils, aye upon my soul, to him all things would be but vanity. There are some who give up things for love albeit greatly prizing what they leave. But to this man who knows in truth, it matters not one whit that he should leave himself and everything, for anyone who takes this course has all things for his own in truth.
There is one power in the soul to which all things are alike sweet ; the very worst and the very best arc all the same in this power which takes things above here and now. Now meaning time and here meaning place. This place I arn in now, suppose 1 went out of myself and were entirely empty, why then I ween the heavenly Sire would bear his only Son within my mind so clearly that my spirit would bear him back again. Verily, were my spirit as ready as the wsoul of our Lord .Jesus Christ then would the Father energise in me as perfectly as in his onc-begotten Son, no less, seeing that he loves me with the selfsame love wherewith he loves himself.
St John said, In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.' Now to luar this Word in the Father (where it is absolutely silent), a man must be quite quiet and wholly free from images, aye, and forms as well. A man must be so true to God that nothing whatever can gladden him or sadden him. lie must sec all things in God, as they are there.
He says, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise ! ' Meaning to effect this thing himself. If someone tells me to carry one stone he may as well tell me a hundred if he is going to do it himself. If he orders a hundredweight load he may just as well make it a thousand if it is for his own back. And God will do this work himself if onl}^ we will wait and not resist. If the soul would but stay within, she would have everything there. There is one power in the soul and that not merely power but being ; and not merely being : it radiates life, and is so pure, so high and so innately noble that creatures cannot live in it ; none but God can abide therein. Nay, even God himself is forbidden there so far as he is subject to condition. God cannot enter there in any guise : God is only there in his absolute divinity.
Then, the fact of his speaking the words, Young man, I say unto thee.' What is God's speaking? It is his working, and God's work is so noble, so sublime, that God alone can do it. You must understand then, that our whole perfection, our entire happiness, will lie in traversing and transcending all creatureliness, all time and all limitation and getting into the cause which is causeless. We pray thee O Lord, that we may be one and indwelling. So help us God. Amen.
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LXXXI
I HAVE CHOSEN YOU
Ego elegi vos de mundo (Joh. 15^^). These words wliich I quote in the Latin are from the gospel of to-day, the feast of one of the saints, Barnabas by naTiic, who is commonly referred to in the scriptures as being an apostle. Our Lord says, I have elected you, selected you, chosen you out of the world, from all created things, that ye should bring forth much fruit and that your fruit should remain,' for it is very good to bring forth fruit and for the fruit to remain, and the fruit does remain if we dwell in love. At the end of this gospel our Lord says, Love one another as I have ever loved you ; my Father hath loved me eternally and so have I loved you ; keep my commandments, so shall ye remain in my love.'
All God's commandments come from love, from the kindness of his nature ; did they not come from love they would not be God's law, for God's law is the goodness of his nature and his nature his benignant law. Whoso dwells in love dwells in the goodness of his nature : he dwells in God's love, and love is without why. Suppose I had a friend and loved him for benefits received and because of getting my own way, I should not love my friend, 1 should be loving my own self. I ought to love my friend on his own account, for his virtues, for his own intrinsic worth : 1 love my friend aright loving him like this. And so with the man abiding in God's love, seeking not his own in God nor in himself nor in any thing but loving God sim})ly for his kindness, for the goodness of his nature, for what he is in himself : tliat is true love. Love of virtue is the flower, the ornament of virtue, aye, the motJier of all virtue, all perfection and all happiness : it is God, for God is the fruit of virtue, and it is this fruit wliich remains to man. When a man works for fruit and the fruit remains to him he rejoices greatly. Sup])osc he has a vineyard or a field and makes it over to his man to work while keeping all the produce ; he may give into the bargain all the things thereto belonging and still be much rejoiced to have the fruits remain in pa)unent. Even so a man rejoices in the fruit of virtue ; he has no worries, no vexations, because he has made over himself and everything.
Our Lord says, Whoso shall leave anything for me and for my name's sake, to him will I restore an hundredfold and eternal life to boot.' But if thou leave it for that hundredfold and for the sake of eternal life, thou art leaving nothing ; nay, so thou leave it for a thousandfold reward thou art leaving nothing : leave thyself, give up self altogether, that is real riddance. A man once came
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to me (it was not long ago), and told me he had given up a quantity of land and goods to save his soul. Alack ! I thought, how paltry, how inadequate, the things thou hast resigned. It is blindness and folly so long as thou dost care a jot for what thou hast forsworn. Forswear thyself, that is true resignation.
The man who has resigned himself is so impartial, this world will have none of him, as I said here not long ago. The devotee of justice is given up to justice, seized of justice, identified with justice. I once wrote in my book : The just man serves neither God nor creature : he is free ; and the more he is just the more he is free and the more he is freedom itself. Nothing created is free. While tlierc is aught above me, excepting God himself, it must constrain me, however small it be or however (great) ; even love and knowledge, so far as it is creature and not actually God, confines me with its limits. The unjust man, whether he would or no, is the servant of illusion : serving the world and creature he is the bondman of sin.
1 was thinking lately ; that I am a man belongs to other men in common with myself ; I see and hear and eat and drink like any other animal ; but that 1 am belongs to no one but myself, not to man nor angel, no, nor yet to God excepting in so far as I am one with him. All God's work he puts into his one replica of him- self, and though radically differing in their operation, (creatures) all tend to reproduce themselves. In my father nature took its normal course. In the course of nature I should be a father like himself. The tendency is ever towards self-repetition, towards the preservation of the species : it is every man's intention that his work should be himself. Any shifting or hindering of his nature and the result is woman : thus where nature stops God begins to work and to create ; for without woman there would be no men. The child as conceived within its mother's womb has shape and colour and material being ; so much is wrought by nature. That lasts for forty days and forty nights, and on the fortieth day God creates the soul in much less than the twinkling of an eye. Now ends the work of nature, all nature can contrive in colour, form and matter. The activity of nature goes out altogether, and as the natural energy is finally withdrawn it is restored intact in the rational soul. This then is the work of nature and the creation of God. In created things (as I have said repeatedly) there is no truth.
There is something, transcending the soul's created nature, not accessible to creature, non-existent ; no angel has gotten it, for his is a clear (intelligible) nature, and clear and overt things have no concern with this. It is akin to Deity, intrinsically one, having naught in common with naught. Many a priest finds
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it a baffling thing. It is one ; rather unnamed than named, rather unknown than known. If thou couldst naught thyself an instant, less than an instant, I should say, all that this is in itself would belong to thcc. But while thou dost mind thyself at all thou knowest no more of God than my mouth docs of colour or my eye of taste : so little thou knowest, thou discernest, what God is.
Plato, that great priest, who occupied himself with lofty matters, makes reference to this thing. He speaks about a light which is not in this world; not in the world and not out of the world; not in time nor in eternity : it lias neither in nor out. God the eternal Father, the fullness and the sink of all his deity does he give birth to here in his one-begotten Son, so that we are that very Son, and his birth is his presence within and his abiding within is his bringing forth. That remains ever the same which comes welling up in itself. Ego, the word /, is proper to none but to God himself in his sameness. Vos, the word implies your collective unity, so that ego and vos, I and you, stand for unity. May we be the unity itself, unity abiding. So help us God. Amen.
LXXXII
THE FEAST OF MARTYRS
In occasione gladii mortal stmt {Hehr. II37). read of the blessed martyrs, whom we commemorate to-day, that they were slain with the sword. Quoth our Lord to his disciples, Blessed are ye when ye suffer for my name's sake.' And according to the scriptures these martyrs suffered death for Christ's name, being put to the sword.
Here we learn three things. First, that they are dead. Man's sufferings in this world have an end. St Augustine says pain and the work of pain is finite and the reward is infinite. Secondly, that, seeing this life is mortal, we have no need to fear all the pain and travail falling to our lot, for it will end. Thirdly, that it behoves us to emulate the dead in dispassion towards good and ill and pain of every kind. The i)hilosophcr says heaven is immoveable. Referring to the soul as being the heavenly man who is imperturbable. One master enquires. If creatures are so vile, how comes it they so easily distract the soul from God ; is not the soul at her vilest better than heaven and all creatures ? The Doctor says it comes of minding too little about God. Were we to pay due heed to God it would be nigh impossible to lapse. From which we draw the moral that we ought in this world
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to emulate the dead. According to St Gregory, no one gets so much of God as the man who is throughly dead.
The fourth point is the weightiest. He speaks of their being dead. Death gives them being. A philosopher says, Nature never breaks but to mend.' Air to fire, for instance, is a change for the better ; but air to water were destruction and untowardness. If this is nature's way much more is it God's : he never destroys without providing something better. The martyrs died : they lost their life and found their being. The philosopher says, Most precious is being and life, and knowledge is higher than life and nobler than being, for in knowing we have life and being.' Yet life is nobler than being in the sense that a tree has life whereas a stone has being. Again, take being pure and simple, as it is in itself, and being transcends both knowledge and life, for in that it is being it is both knowledge and life. They have, I say, lost their natural life and have acquired being. The philosopher says there is nothing so like God as being : in so far as it is real being it is the same thing as God. The philosopher says, Being is pure, exalted : all that God is is being. God knows nothing but being, he is conscious of nothing but being ; being is his ring. God loves naught save his being, he thinks of naught save his being. I say, all creatures are being. One master says some creatures are so nigh to God and so instinct with divine light that they give being to other creatures. Tliat is not the case : being is too pure, too high, too much the same as God, for anyone but God to be able to give being. God's idiosyncrasy is being. The philo- sopher says one creature is able to give another life. For in being, mere being, lies all that is at all. Being is the first name. Defect means lack of being. Our whole life ought to be being. So far as our life is being, so far it is in God. So far as our life is akin thereto, so far it is kin to God. There is no life so feeble but taking it as being it excels anything life can ever boast. I have no doubt of this, that if the soul had the remotest notion of what being means she would never waver from it for an instant. The most trivial thing perceived in God, a flower for example as espied in God, would be a thing more perfect than the universe. The vilest thing present in God as being is better than angelic knowledge.
When angels turn to creaturely knowledge, then it grows dark. St Augustine says. When angels know ereatures in God, twilight falls ; when the soul knows God in creatures it is eventide. But knowledge of creatures in God is the dawn. And when she knows God in himself as pure essence, that is high noon. It should be the soul's desire to see, as though in non-sense, this most noble being. We advocate dying in God, to the end that he may raise
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us up to being which is better than life : the being our life subsists in, wherein our life is quickened into actuality. We ought to face ^ death willingly and die in order to obtain a better resurrection.
I said on one occasion that a bit of wood is more precious than gold, a surprising statement. But a stone is nobler (having being) than God and his Godhead without being, if such a thing is possible as to abstract his being. That must be a vigorous life in which dead things revive, in which even death is changed to life. To God naught dies : all things are living in him. They being dead (as the scriptures say about the martyrs) are quickened into life eternal, into the life where living is real being. We must be so tliroughly dead as to be moved by neither good nor ill. What we know we must knoAv in its cause. We never really know anything in itself till we know it in its cause. There is no understanding it until wc^ apj^rehend it in its origin. Just as life is never perfected till it returns to its original source, wherein life is real being. The thing that k(ieps us from remaining there is, as the philosopher explains, our being in contact with time. What time can touch is temporal and mortal. The philosopher states that the heavenly progression is eternal ; true, it gives rise to time, and that makes it mortal. In its course it is eternal, all unwitting of time ; in other words, the soul obeys the laws of abstract being. Another thing is its being full of opposites. What are opposites ? Good and bad, white and black are in opposition, a thing which has no j)lace in real being.
The philosopher says the soul is given to the body for her perfecting. Soul apart from body possesses neither intellect nor will : she is one with no attendant power of speech ; true, she has it in her ground, in its root as it were, but not in fact. The soul \ is purified in body by collecting things scattered and dispersed. The resultant of the five senses, when these are recollected, gives her a common sense wherein everything sums up to one. In the second place, she is purified by a saving habit, that namely of ascending into the unitive life. The soul's perfection consists in liberation from the life which is in part and admission to the life which is whole. All that is scattered in nether things is gathered together when the soul climbs up into the life where there are no opposites. The soul knows no opposition when she enters the light of intellect. Anything short of this light falls into death and dies. Perfection of soul consists, thirdly, in absence of sensible affection. What is prone to aught other shall die, it cannot last. We beseech thee Lord God to help us escape from the life that is divided into the life that is united. So help us God. Amen.
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LXXXIII
ST GERMANUS' DAY
In diebus suis placuit deo et inventus est Justus {Eccl. In
these words which I quote in Latin we celebrate the saint, Ger- manus by name, whose virtuous life so much is written of and whose festival is kept to-day in holy Christendom.
In his days,' that means there is more than one day. There is the soul's day and God's day. Days here, all that have passed for seven thousand years, are as near God's day, to-day, as is yesterday. Why ? Because time yonder is in the present now. The heavens revolve, hence time ; day started when the heavens began to spin. Yonder the soul's day is passing in the present, in her natural light where all things are, where there is perfect day, God's day, day and night in one. Yonder in the day of eternity the soul is in the essential now ; there the Father is be- getting his (one-begotten Son) in the here and now, there the soul is being reborn in God. As often as this birth takes place she is giving birth to the only Son. Full many arc the sons of virgins born who travail in eternity, superior to time. But however many sons the soul gives birth to in eternity she has no more than the one Son, for it is supcrtemporal ; it comes to pass in the eternal day.
Just indeed is he who lives in virtue and in virtuous deeds ; who seeketh not his own in any thing, iicithcr in God nor creature. That man dwells in God and (iod in him. He takes delight in flouting and getting rid of things, in being done with things as far as that is possible. St John says, God is love and love is God and he who dwells in love dwells in God.' Doubtless he is well lodged as heir to God, and he in whom God dwells has a good lodger. One of the masters says, God gives the soul a gift which moves her lo interior things. And it has been explained that the soul is moved directly by the Holy Ghost, for in the love wherein God loves himself, in that same love he is loving me, and the soul loves God in the same love wherein he loves himself; and were there not this love wherein God loves himself there would be no Holy Ghost at all. It is the heat, the blowing of his holy Breath that the soul loves God in.
In one of the Evangelists we read, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.' In another we read, This is my beloved Son in whom all things please me.' And in a third we find, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleasing to myself.' Whatever pleases God is pleasing to him in his only Son : whatever God loves he is loving in his only Son. So it
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behoves a man to live so that he is one with his only Son, so that he is his only Son. Between the only Son and the soul there is no difference. Between the servant and his lord there is no like love. As long as I am servant I remain unlike, remote from his only Son. If T could see God with my eyes the same as I see colours, that would not be right, for that which is visible is temporal. The temporal taken according to time is taken at its lowest value. Noxv is time and place in itself. While man has time and place, number and quantity, he is not as he should be, is not just, and God is remote and not his own. Our Lord says, Whosoever would be my disciple let him forsake himself,' as though to say, no one can hearken to my teaching till he is rid of his own self. All creatures in themselves are naught, ami that is why I counsel you to abandon naught and enjoy the perfect state where the will is just. His own will once relinquished man relishes my doctrine and can listen to my word. One master says, All creatures have their being straight from God, therefore by nature God must love them better than they do themselves. Did the soul know its own detachment it would not stoop to any thing.
We say about this bishop, He was well-])leasing to him in his days.' The soul's day and God's day arc different. In her natural day the soul knows all things above time and place ; nothing is far or near. And that is why 1 say, this day all things are of equal rank. To talk about the world as being made by God to-morrow, yesterday, would be talking nonsense. God makes the world and all things in this present now. Time gone a thousand years ago is now as present and as near to God as this very instant. The soul who is in the here and now, in her the Father bears his one-begotten Son and in that same birth the soul is born back into God. It is one birth ; as fast as she is reborn into God the Father is begetting his only Son in her.
I have spoken about one power in the soul ; in her first issue she lays hold of God not as being good nor yet as truth : delving deeper still she grasps him in his loneliness, in his solitude ; she finds him in his desert, in his actual ground. But being still unsatisfied, on she goes in quest of what it is that is in his Godhead, of the special property of his peculiar nature. They say no property (or, union) is closer than that of the three Persons being one God. And next they put the union of the soul with God. When the soul, being kissed by God, is in absolute perfection and in bliss, then at last she knows the embrace of unity, then at the touch of God she is made uncreaturely, then, with God's motion, the soul is as noble as God is himself. God moves the soul afte his own fashion. God contemplating creature gives it life ; crea- ture finds life in contemplating God. The soul has intelligent,
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noetic being, and therefore where God is there is the soul and where the soul is there is God.
Of this saint we say, he was found just.' Just means equable, alike in joy and sorrow, in bitter and in sweet ; one to whom nothing comes amiss, whom nothing keeps from feeling himself one in righteousness. Like to like. Love loves its like alway and God loves the just man like himself. May we find that we arc in this case in the time, in the day of understanding, in the day of wisdom, in the day of beatitude. So help us O undivided Trinity. Amen.
LXXXIVi
LIKE THE MORNING STAR
Quasi Stella matutina in medio nehulce etc, {EccL 50^), Like
the morning star in the midst of a cloud and as the moon at the full and as the sun in his glory, so did he shine in the temple of God.' These words are commonly applied to aJl the saints and teachers who in their virtuous lives and knowledge of God have been a shining light to worldly hearts which, caught with creatures in the fog and cloud of darkness or ignorance, are straying like blind men from the way of eternal liberation, but more especially do they apply to the holy father we celebrate to-day, St Dominic by name, a mainstay of Christendom and founder of the Preaching Order which he started and established to propagate God's word and to help poor sinners.
He shone like the morning star in the temple of God. What is God and what is the temple of God ? Four and twenty doctors met together to settle what God is, and they could not do it. Thereafter at a time appointed again they came together bringing each his verdict. Of these I will pick out two or three. One says : God is something to which all changing, temporal things are nothing ; all that has being is from him and is insignificant compared with him. Another says : God is somewhat that transcends being, that in itself needs none and that all things need. A third says : God is the intelligence wliich occupies itself solely in understanding itself.
Passing over the first and the third I will speak of the second ; God transcends being. Nothing that has being, time or place is proper to God, he is above them ; his being in all creatures shows him superior to them, for that which is the same in many things . must be prior to them. According to some doctors, the soul is in the heart alone. Not so ; it is an error some eminent Scholas- tics make. The soul is whole and undivided at once in foot and eye and in each member of the body. Again, I take a span of ^ Sermon on St Dominic's Day. See also Jostes, No^ 31.
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time, which need not be to-day ov yesterday. But if I take the now that includes all time. The now wherein God made the world is as near this time as the now I am speaking in this moment, and the last day is as near this now as was yesterday.
One of the doctors says : God is impartible, eternally energising in himself, immanent, uriindigent of instrument or aid, in need of none but what all things need and to which all things tend as to their final goal.' To this goal there is no way, it is beyond all ways, debouching in the open. St Bernard says, Divine love is a wont without a way.' I'he physi(ian wlio sets out to make a sick man whole has no particular mode of lu'altJi in view ; he has a mode whereby he hoj)cs to make him well, but how well he hopes to make him is not sjiccilied : he will make him as well as he can. How shall wc love God then ? As well as we can ; without measure. Each thing works after its own fashion ; things do not work in natures superior to their own ; fire, for examjde, only works in wood. God works above all natures, in the uncondi- tioned ; wherever he can stir he is at work in modeless mode. Before ever there was being God was working : he wrought in non-existent being. Advamted theology lays down that God is abstract being : he is as mucli above being as an angel is above a fly. I hold it is as wrong for me to say that God is being as to say the sun is black or white. God is neither this nor that. As St Dionysius says, * He who thinks that he sees (iod, if he sees aught sees naught of God.' But when I say God is not being, is superior to being, I do not witli that deny him being : I dignify and exalt it in him. If I find some copper in the gold, as existing there it is in a nobler being than itself. St Augustine says : God is mode-free mode, power-free power, good-free good.
In the elements of the Scholastic teaching, wc find being divided into ten modes (or categories), all ol' which arc denied to God. God is subject to none of these mod(s nor is he deficient in any. The first, which has most being of them all, wherein all things have being, is substance ; and the last, which has least being, is called relatio, and in God it is the same as the first one is, which has most being. In God all things have the same form (idea), though this is the form of very different things. The most exalted angel, the soul, the fly, have all the same prototype in God. God is not being nor yet goodness. Goodness cleaves to being and does not go beyond it : if there were no being there would be no goodness. Being is purer than good. In God is no good nor better nor best. To say that God is good is to do him wrong ; as well say that the sun is black. But our Lord himself declares, None is good but God alone.' What is good ? That which communicates itself. Him we call a good man who
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gives himself and is of use to people. And hence the dictum of a heathen doctor, * A hermit is neither good nor bad, in the sense of giving himself and helping other people.' God par excellence communicates himself. No thing gives of its own being, for creatures arc not of themselves. What they give they have gotten from another. Nor do they give themselves. The sun gives light, no more ; the fire gives heat, the fire itself remains ; but God does give his own, for it is from himself he is and in all the gifts he gives he first and foremost gives himself. In all his gifts he gives himself: God, as he is, so far as the recipient will allow. St James says, Ev^ery good gift comes down from above from the Father ol lights.'
When we take God in his being we take him in the forecourt of his habitation, for quiddity or mode is the way into his temple. Then where is God in his temple ? Intellect is the temple of God wherein he is shining in his glory. Nowhere does God dwell more really than in the temple of his intellectual nature, where he is in his stillness by himself, all undisturbed. As one of the doctors says, God in his self-perception is perceiving himself in himself.
Now turning to the soul, she has a drop of intellectual nature, a spark, a ray, and she has sundry powers which function in the body. One is the power of digestion, more active by night than in the day, whereby man grows and thrives. And the soul has a power in the eyes which makes the eye so sensitive and delicate and too fastidious to accept things in the coarse-grained mode they have themselves, but they must first be filtered and refined by light and air, owing to the presence in it of the soul. Another power in the soul is that wherewith she thinks. This power is able to picture in itself things which are not there, so that I can see the things as well as I see them with my eyes, or even better. I can see a rose in winter when there are no roses, there- fore with this power the soul produces things from the non-existent, like God who creates things out of nothing.
A heathen philosopher observes that the soul who loves God takes him under the veil of goodness ; and so far 1 have quoted mainly from the heathen doctors who know in the light of nature merely. I have yet to come to the sayings of the saints who see in a light far more exalted. He says then, that the soul in loving God is taking him under the veil of goodness. Intellect draws this veil from God and takes him bare, stripped of goodness, of being and of every name.
At the School [the College of St Jacob] I used to teach that intellect is higher than the will, both as belonging to this light. Another theologian at the other School put will before the intellect on the ground that will enjoys things as they are in themselves,
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whereas intellect enjoys them as they are in it. That is quite true. The eye in itself is a better thing than the eye as painted on the wall. Nevertheless, 1 still maintain that intellect is higher than the will. Will takes God under the garment of good. Intel- lect seizes him naked, divested of good and of being. Goodness is a garnxent under which God is concealed and will takes God in this garment of goodness. If God had no goodness my will would repudiate God. It would be unseemly to robe a king in drab on his coronation day. I am not hap])y by reason of God's goodness. Never should I think of asking God to beatify me with his goodness, for he could not do it. Goodness is his vesture. My beatitude lies wholly and solely in the fact that God is knowable and in my knowing him. A philosopher says, The intellecit of God is what angelic being is suspended from.
It is a question where the image really has its being : in the mirror or the object it proceeds from ? My image is in me, of me, mine. While the mirror faces me, it is my image in it; if the mirror falls it is my image which has been destroyed. Angelic being likewise depends upon the presence of God's intellectual nature wherein he secs himself like a morning star enveloped in the mist. I always have before my mind this little word quasi, like : indeed, it is the burden of my entire teaching. What at school the children call a mock, a by-word.
The truest thing that man can predicate of God is word-and- truth. God calls himself a word. And St John says, In the beginning was the Word,' meaning that man is a word with the eternal Word. Like Venus, Fria's star, which Friday is named after and which has many names. When it is earlier than the sun and is uj) before it then it is called the morning star ; when it rises later than the sun and the sun sets lirst then it is called the evening star. Now it is above and now IxJow the sun, hut of all the stars it best keeps its distance from the sun, never going far away, and the moral of this is that any man who would attain to God must stay by, in the presence of, God the whole time and refuse to let God be put out of his mind by fortune or misfortune or by any creature whatsoever.
And he says, like the moon at the full in his days.' The moon is the ruler of moist nature. The moon is never nearer to the sun than at the full, and then it gets its light at first-hand from the sun, but owing to the fact that of all the stars it is the nearest to the earth, it suffers from two drawbacks : being pale and mottled and also being liable to lose its light. It is never so potent as when it is furthest from the earth, and in that position it tells most upon the sea ; when it is on the wane its effect gets less and less. And the higher the soul rises above earthly things the
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more powerful she grows. Merely creature-lore will place a man beyond the need of sermons. For every single creature is a book. But anyone who means to get to that whereof we speak, to where my arguments all tend, must be as the morning star : a man in the presence of God, always with him, equally near him and exalted above mundane things : a word by the Word.
There is one word both thought and spoken : angels, the soul and all creatures. Another Word, thought but unspoken, I can conceive. And there is still another Word unthought of and unspoken which never proceeds forth but is eternally in him who speaks it : in the Fatlier, for it is he who speaks it, it is eternally proceeding and abiding. Intellect is intrinsically active and more and more outwardly effective in proportion as it is directed inwards. God's ha])piness consists in its operation. And here again the soul should be an ad -verb. As the intellect of the soul turns more inwards, the more closely, more minutely is it identified with what it knows. The more powerful it is the more clearly it reflects and is atoned with God. That is not the case with corporal things : the stronger they arc tlic more external is their action. God's happiness lies in the subjective working of the intellect wherein his Word abides. It is this eternal Word the soul should be a word with and, doing one work with God, she will find her happiness in self-perception : in the very thing that God is happy in. May we ever be a word with this Word, So help us the Father and this same Word and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
LXXXVi
A NEW COMMANI^IMENT I GIVE UNTO YOU
Mandaturn novum do vobis etc. {Joh. In the Gospel of
St John wc find our Lord's words to his diseq^les, A new com- mandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you. By this shall all know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another.'
We know of three kinds of love that our Lord had, and in this we must be like him. One is natural, the second gracious and the third divine. In God there is notJiing not God ; in ourselves, however, we may consider them as an ascending scale, from good to better and from better to perfection. But in God is neither more nor less, he is just the simple, pure, essential truth.
The first love God has, in this wc learn how his divine goodness has constrained him to create all creatures, wherewith he has been big eternally in his ideal preconception, intending them to enjoy ^ Soo also Wackernagel, No. 66.
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his goodness with him. And among all his creatures he bears no more love to one than to another : as each is able to receive he pours his love therein. Were my soul as capacious, as roomy, as a Seraph's, who has nothing in him, God would pour out into me the same as he does into that angel. If you describe a circle, a ring of dots with one point in the middle, from this point all the dots will be equidistant ; for one dot to get nearer it will have to be displaced, for the middle point is constant at the centre. So with divine being : it is not questing round about but abiding altogether in itself. In order to receive from it a creature must infallibly be moved out of itself. And when wx talk of man we arc talking of all creatures ; Christ himself exhorted his dis- ciples, Go forth and preach the gospel to all creatures,' for crea- tures all culminate in man. Not but what, as being, God is pouring himself out into all creatures, to each as much as it can take. Which is a lessoix to us to love all creatures equally with what we have received from God (though some are nearer to us by kinship or by natural friendship), as wc are favoured equally with the boon of divine love. I sometimes seem to like one better than another, and yet I have the same goodwill towards that other person whom I have never seen, only, by asking more of me, this one enables me to give him myself more. God loves crea- tures all alike and fills them with his being. And we too should pour forth ourselves in love upon all creatures. Wc often find the heathen arriving at this amiable state in virtue of their natural understanding. As the heathen philosopher observes, man is by nature a kindly animal.
The second love of God, the spiritual, he is llowing with into the soul and into the angels, and it is by this light which is super- natural that, as I was saying, creature is rapt away out of itself. Creatures are so enamoured of their own natural light, it needs a strong inducement to take them out of it into the light of grace. In his natural light man enjoys himself, but the light of grace, which is unspeakably more ]>owerful, robs him of his self-enjoy- ment and draws him into itself. As the soul says in the Book of Love, Draw me after thee in thy sweet savour.'
Now we cannot love God without first knowing him, but the essential point of God is in the centre, equally far from and near to all creatures, and the only way of getting closer to it is for my natural intellect to be displaced by a light more intense than itself. Supposing, for example, that my eye were a light and strong enough to bear the sunlight in its glory and unite therewith, its interior state would then be due not to itself alone but to the sunlight as well. So with the mind. The intellect is a light, and if I turn it right away from things and in the direction
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of God then, since God is perennially flowing with grace, my mind is illumined and united with love and therein knows and loves God as he is in himself. Here we have the explanation of how God is flowing out into rational creatures in his light of grace and how we with our intellect approaching this gracious light are rapt out of ourselves and ascend into the light of God himself.
The third love of God : in this it is granted us to learn how God has been begetting his one-begotten Son and is giving birth to him, as the Doctor says, now and eternally, he, like any woman, being brought to bed in every virtuous soul who has embarked on the interior life. This birth is his understanding, perennially up-springing in his paternal heart, wherein he has gotten all his bliss. All he has to give he expends on understanding : it is his progeny, his only pride. His entire happiness is centred in his Son ; he loves nothing but his Son and all he finds in him ; his Son is the light that has been for ever burning in his paternal heart.
To enter there we shall have to climb by way of natural light into the light of grace and therein wax into the light that is the Son himself. There in the Son we are loved by the Father with his love (his Holy Spirit) which has its eternal source in him and having blossomed forth to his eternal birth (namely the second Person) is wafted by the Son back to the Father as the love of both. The Doctor says, I sometimes think of what the angel said to Mary, Hail, full of grace ! ' what is the good to me of Mary's being full of grace if I am not full also ? What does it profit me the F ather's giving his Son birth unless I bear him too ? God begets his Son in the perfect soul and is brought to bed therein that she may bring him forth in all her works. Thus we, by the love of the Holy Ghost, being unified into his Son, shall know the Father with the Son and love ourselves in him and him in us with their mutual love.
Whoever would achieve this triple love must needs have four things. The first is, real dispassion towards creatures. The second, the true life of Leah, that is to say, the active life which is set in motion in the ground of the soul by the action of the Holy Spirit. The third thing is, the true life of Rachel, the contempla- tive life. The fourth is, an aspiring soul. A master was once questioned by his pupil about the angelic order. He answered him and said, Go hence and withdraw into thyself until thou understandest : give thy whole self up to it, then look, refusing to see anything but what thou findcst there. It will seem to thee at first as though thou art the angels with them and as thou dost surrender to their collective being thou shalt think thyself the angels as a whole with the whole company of angels. The pupil
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went away and withdrew into himself until he found all this in truth in his own ground. Then returning to his master he gave him thanks and said : It was as you foretold. On giving my whole mind to the subject of the angels and aspiring to their estate, at first it seemed to me that I was all the angels with the angels. You see then, said his master, that as you draw a little nearer to the source, wonder after wonder is wrought upon the soul ; for while a man is still on the ascent and receiving through the medium of creatures, he has not come to rest. But once he has climbed up into God, there in the Son he will be receiving with the Son the whole of what God has to give. May wc, ascend- ing in this way from one love to another, be united into God and there in bliss abide eternally. So help us God. Amen.
LXXXVI^
DETACHMENT HAS FOUR STEPS
Detachment has four steps. The first breaks in and makes away with all a man's })crishable things. The second one deprives him of them altogether. The third not only takes them but makes them all forgotten as though they had not been, and all about them. The fourth degree is right in (k)d and is God himself. When wc get to this stage the King is desirous of our beauty.
LXXXVII
THE POOR IN SPIRIT
Beati pauper es spiritu quia ipsorum est regnuui coelorum (Matt, 53). Beatitude itself opened its mouth of wisdom and said, Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' Angels and saints and everything that was ever born, all must keep silence when the eternal wisdom of the Father speaks ; for the wisdom of the angels and all creatures is mere naught compared with the wisdom of God which is unfathomable. This wisdom has declared that the poor are blessed.
There are two kinds of poverty. One is outward poverty, and this is good and much to be commended in him who makes a voluntary practice of it for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose wont it was on earth. About this poverty I shall say no more. But there is another poverty, an interior poverty, whereto refers this saying of our Lord, Blessed arc the poor in spirit or poor of spirit.' And I would urge you now to be this same if ye
^ Authorship doubtful. Excerpt only.
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would understand my argument, for I do assure you by the eternal truth, excepting yc are like this truth we speak of it is not possible for you to follow me. Several people have asked me what poverty is ? This we will now try to answer.
Bishop Albcrtus says, By a poor man is meant one who is not satisfied with anything God ever made,' and this is well said. But, taking poverty in a higher sense, we say better still, a poor man is one who wills nothing, knows nothing, has nothing. It is on these three heads that 1 propose to speak.
Jn the first place, a poor man wills nothing. Some folks mistake the sense of this ; those, for example, who win personal repute by penanees and outward disei})lincs (arul arc highly esteemed, God 'a merey, though knowing so little of God's truth !), To all outward ap})earanee these are holy, but they arc fools within and ignorant of the divine reality. These peo])Ie define a poor man to be one who wills nothing. Explaining this to mean that he never follows his own will at all, but is bent on carrying out the will of God. In this thej^ are not bad ; their intention is good, and we commend them for it : (iod keep them in his mercy. But 1 trow that these are not poor men nor are they the least like them. They arc much admired by those' who know no better, but I say they are fools with no understanding of God's truth. Peradventure heaven is theirs by good intention, but of the poverty in question they have no idea.
Supposing someone asked nu\ What then is a poor man who wills nothing ? I should answer this. As long as it can be said of a man that it is in his will, that it is his will, to do the will of God, that man has not the poverty that I am speaking of, because he has a will, to satisfy the will of God, which is not as it should be. If he is genuinely poor a man is as free from his created will as he was when he was not. I tell you by the eternal truth, as long as yc possess the will to do the will of God and have the least desire for eternity and God, ye are not really poor : the poor man wills nothing, knows nothing, wants nothing.
While 1 yet stood in my first cause I had no God and I was my own ; I willed not, I wanted not, for I was conditionless being, the knower of myself in divine truth ; then I wanted myself and wanted nothing else ; what I willed I was and what I was I willed. I was free from God and all things. But when I escaped from my free will to take on my created nature, then I got me a God ; for before creatures were, God was not God : he was that he was. When creatures became and started ereaturehood, God was not God in himself but he was Gk)d in creatures. Now we contend that God as God is not the final goal of creature nor such great riches as the least creature has in God. If a flea had intellect and could
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intellectually plumb the eternal abysm of God's bein^r out of which it came, then, so wc maintain, not God and all God is could fulfil and satisfy that flea. Wherefore we pray we may be quit of God and get the truth and enjoy eternity, for tJie highest angel and the soul are all the same yonder where I was and willed that I was and was that I willed. Thus sliall a man be poor of will, as little willing and desiring as he willed and wanted when he was not. And in this wise a man is poor who wills nothing.
Secondly, a poor man is one who knows notliing. Wc have sometimes laid it doAvn that a man ought to live as though he lived not, Avhether for himself, or truth, or God. But now we change our ground and declare withal, that a person in this poverty has gotten all he was when he lived not in any wise, not to himself, nor truth, nor (iod : he is so quit, so free of any kind of knowledge that no idea of God is alive in him ; for while man stood in the eternal species (iod, there lived none other in him : what lived there was himself. And so wc say this man is as free from his own knowledge as he was when he was not ; he Jets God travail as he will while he himself stands idle as ^vhen he came from God.
Now the question is. Wherein does ha])piness lie most of all ? Some masters say it lies in love. Others, it lies in knowledge and in love, and these come nearer to the im^rk. We, again, contend it neither lies in knowledge nor in love, hut there is in the soul one thing from which both knowledge and love flow and which itself does neither know nor love like the powers of the soul. Who knows this knows the scat of happiness. This has no before nor after nor is it expecting anything to come, for it can neither gain nor lose. It is wanting, in the sense that it knows nothing about working in itself; but, it just is itself, enjoying itself God- fashion. And in this sense I say man ought to be idle and free, all unwitting, unaware, of what God is doing in him, that is the way to be poor. According to the masters, God is being, intel- lectual being which knows all things. But 1 say, (iod is not being nor yet intellect nor knows not this nor that. God is exempt from all things and he is all things. Being ])oor in spirit means being poor of all particular knowledge, even as one who wots not anything, not God nor creature nor himself. Here there is no question of a man desiring to know or recognise the way of God. In this wise may a man be poor in knowledge of himself.
Thirdly, the poor man has nothing. It has been often said that perfection means not having the mortal things of earth, and haply this is true in one particular case, namely, when it is volun- tary. But this is not the sense I mean it in. I have already
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said, the poor man is not he who wants to do the will of God but he who lives in such a way as to be free from his own will and from the will of God, even as he was when he was not. Of this poverty we say, it is the deepest poverty. Secondly, we say, that man is poor who has no knowledge of God's work in him. Being as free of knowing and perceiving as God is of all things is the barest poverty. But the third poverty, the straitest I am about to tell of, ix, having nothing.
Here I would remind you how I have often said, and eminent authorities have said the same, that one must be devoid of things and of activities, both inwardly and outwardly, if one would be a fitting place for God to work in. Now we say something else. Granting a man is bare of everything, of creatures, of himself, of God, yet if it is still in him to provide God with the room to work in, then we do affirm : as long as this is in the man he is not poor with the strictest poverty. God does not purpose in his work that man should have in him the place God does his work in ; poverty of spirit means freedom from God and all his works, so that if God chooses to travail in the soul lie must be his own workshop, as he likes to be. Finding so poor a man, then God is his own patient and he is his own operating room, since God is in himself the operation. Here in this indigence man is obeying his eternal nature, that he has been and that he is now and that he shall be for ever.
There is the question of those words of St Paul, All that I am I am by the grace of God.' Here the argument soars above grace, above understanding and above desire. The answer is that St Paul's words are true ; not that grace was in him ; the grace of God wrought in him perfecting him to unity and then the work of grace was done. Grace hav ing done its work there re- mained Paul as he was. As we should say, he was a man too poor to have or be a place for God to work in. To preserve place is to preserve distinction. Why I pray God to rid me of God is because conditionless being is above God and above distinction : it was therein I was myself, therein I willed myself and knew myself to make this* man and in this sense I am my own cause, both of my nature which is eternal and of my nature which is temporal. For this am I born, and as to my birth which is eternal I can never die. In my eternal mode of birth I have always been, am now, and shall eternally remain. That which I am in time shall die and come to naught, for it is of the day and passes with the day. In my birth all things were born, and I was the cause of mine own self and all things, and had I willed it I had never been, nor any thing, and if I had not been then God had not been either. To understand this is not necessary.
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One learned doctor says, his breaking- through is nobler than his emanation. When I flowed out of God then all things said. There is a God. Withal this eaufiot make me blest, for in it I acknowledge myself creature ; hut in my breaking-through, 1 hen as standing passive in the will of God, free of the will of God and all his works and eke of God himself, I transcend all creatures and am neither God nor creature : I am that I was and that I shall remain now and for ever. Then I receive an impulse which carries me above all angels. In this impulse I conceive such passing riches that I am not content with God as being God, as being all his godly works, for in this breaking- through I find that God and I are both the same. Then I am what I was, I neither wax nor wane, for I am the motionless cause that is moving all things. Now God can find no place in man, for man has gotten by his poverty that he has been eternally and ever shall abide. Here in the spirit God is one, that is tlic straitest poverty a man can know.
Whoso is unable to follow this discourse, let him never mind. While he is not like this truth he shall not see my argument, for it is the naked truth straight from the* heart of God. May we so live as to experience it eternally. So help us God. Amen.
LXXXVIII
THE VIRGIN BIRTH
Ave, gratia plena ^ dorninus tecum / {Luc, log)- Hail, full of grace, the I.ord is with thee ! The Holy Ghost shall descend into thee from above, from the lofty light-throne of the eternal Father.' Here there are three things to be understood. First, the radiant nature of the angel ; secondly, that he knew himself unworthy to behold God's motlicr ; thirdly, that he was speaking not alone to her but to a goodly multitude, to every virtuous soul desiring God.
I say : had Mary not borne God in ghostly fashion first, he never had been born of her in flesh. The woman said to Christ, Blessed is the womb which bare thee.' To which Christ replied, Blessed not alone the womb which bare me : blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.' It is more worth to God his being brought forth ghostly in the individual virgin or good soul than that he was born of Mary bodily.
This involves the notion of our being the only Son whom the Father has eternally begotten. When the Father begat all creatures he was begetting me ; I flowed out with all creatures while remaining within in the Father. Like what I am now saying ;
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it springs up within me, then I pause in the idea, and thirdly I speak it out, and all of you receive it : but really it is in me all the while. So am I abiding in the Father. In the Father is the exemplar of all creatures. This exalted nature has its intellectual prototype in God. And not merely intellectual but intellect itself. The best God ever did for man w'^as to be man himself. I will tell you a story to illustrate my point. Once upon a time there was a rich man and his wife. The lady by mischance did lose an eye whereat she grieved excessively. Then came her lord to her and said, O wife, why so distressed ? ' Quoth she, My lord, 'tis not my eye I mourne ; I monrne for fear lest you should love me less.' -- Nay wife, I love thee,' he replied. After- wards, not over long, he put out one of his own eyes, and going to his wife he said, Lady, so you may know I love you I have made myself like you : now I too have only one eye.'
According to the philosophers, creatures arc all striving to bring forth and emulate the Father. Another doctor says that every active cause works solely for the sake of its result, to find rest and peace in its end. This is mankind, who scarce could credit God's great love for him till God did put out one of his own eyes by taking human nature. This was made flesh.
Said our Lady, How shall this be ? ' The angel replied, The Holy Ghost shall come down into ihcc from on high, from the lofty throne of the Father of eternal light.' In 'principio. Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given.' Child in his frail humanity. Son in his eternal deity. One philosopher declares that creatures are all striving after their ])rimitivc pure nature, after their supreme perfection. Fire as lire docs not burn : it is too intangible, too pure to burn at all ; it is tlie firc-nature which will burn, infusing into the dry wood its nature and its light according to its own most high perfection. God has done the same. He has made the soul according to his own most perfect nature, pouring into her the whole of his own light in all its pristine purity, while he himself remains all undefiled.
Now you must know that I lately said : When God created all creatures he had surely gotten first something uncreated setting forth the general idea of creatures : to wit, the spark, which is so nearly God that it is a single, impartible one, bearing the form of all creatures, formless and above form.
Yesterday in the schools there was a theological discussion. I said I was astonished at no one being able to give the solution of my question : If I am the only Son whom the Father has eternally begotten, have I eternally been Son ? I say, yea and nay. Son, yes, inasmuch as the Father has eternally begotten me ; not Son in my unbegotten nature. In principio. We are given to
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understand that we arc the only Son whom the Father has been bringing forth for aye out of liis arcane understanding of the eternal mystery of the first beginning of his primitive light-nature which is the end of all perfection. There I have been at rest for aye, asleep in the dormant understanding of the eternal Father, immanent, unspoken. I trow, seen in that light, any bit of stick would be an angel and would be intelligent, and not alone intel- ligent : it would be pure intellect in that first pure nature which is the perfection of enlightenment. Out of his light-nature he has been eternally begetting me his one ])egotten Son in the express image of his eternal Fatherhood to the c-nd that I may be the Father and beget him of whom I am begotten. liike one who stands before some lofty peak hailing, Art there ? ' And echo answers back, Art there ? ' He (*ries, Come forth 1 ' -- Come forth ! ' the voice replies. This is what God does : he begets his Son into the summit of the soul. By the fact of his bearing his Son into me I bear him back into the Father. It was nothing else, God's virgin birth, than his getting his Son back again.
I used to wonder (it is many years ago) whether I should be asked why one blade of grass is so unlike another ; and as it happened I was asked why they are so different. 1 said, it is more marvellous they are so mucli alike. One philosopher says that the blades of grass arc all different owing to the superfluity of the goodness of God which he pours out abundantly into all crea- tures the more to show his majesty. 1 said it is move wonderful how much the grass-blades are alike, ex[)laining that just as all the angels are the sanu^ in their original pure nature so all the grasses arc the same and all things arc identical.
I was thinking as I came along that one might here in time succeed in mastering God. Supposing I were up on high and told him, Come up hither,' that would be diflieult. Rut if I said, Bide down below,' that would be very easy. That is what God does. If a man is lowly God is unable to withhold his goodness ; he is obliged to sink himself, to pour himself, into that lowly soul, on the lowest of the lowly bestowing himself most of all and bestowing himself wholly. What God bestows is his nature, and his nature is his goodness and his goodness is his love. All joy and sorrow come from love.
I was thinking on the way as I was walking licre, T should not have come were I not prepared to get wet for friendship's sake. If you have all got wet let me get wet too. Good and ill both come from love. Man should not be afraid of God. Some fear is harmful. The right sort of fear is the fear of losing God. It behoves man to love God since God loves man consummately. The masters say that all things arc in travail, labouring to beget
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themselves in the image of the Father. They talk of earth as fleeing from the heavens ; of her fleeing down and reaching heaven downwards ; of her escaping upwards to encounter the lowest of the heavens. Earth has no escape from heaven : flee she up or flee she down heaven still invades her, energising her, fructi- fying her whether for her weal or for her woe. God treats man the same : weening to escape him we run into his arms, for all corners are exposed to him. God will give birth to his Son in thee whether thou like it or loathe it ; whether thou sleepest or wakest God goes on with his work. That we have no sense of it is because our tongue is furred with the slime of creatures and possesses not the salt of divine affection. If we had godly love we should savour God and all the works God ever wrought and receive all things from God and be doing the same work as he docs. In this sameness we are all his only Son.
God created the soul according to his own most perfect nature that she might be the bride of his only- begotten Son. He know- ing this full well decided to go fortJi out of the private chamber of his eternal Fatherhood where he has slept for aye and be proclaimed abroad while inwardly abiding in the lirst beginning of his primitive light-nature. So lifting up the tent of his eternal glory the Son proceeded out of the Most High to go and fetch his lady whom his Father had eternally given him to wife and restore her to her former high estate. For this reason he went forth and comes leaping like a love-impassioned swain. He came forth only to return again into his chamber, into the silent darkness of his mysterious Fatherhood. He proceeded out of the supreme in order to go in again accompanied by his bride and show her the hidden mystery of his secret Godhead, where he is at peace with himself and with all creatures.
/n yrincipio signifies, in the beginning of all things. It also means the end of all things, since the first beginning is because of the last end. I trow that God himself is not at rest as being the first beginning : he is at rest where he is the end and cessation of existence, not that existence is then brought to naught : it is brought to its ultimate perfection. What is the last end ? It is the mystery of the darkness of the eternal Godhead which is unknown and never has been known and never shall be known. Therein God abides to himvSelf unknown, and the light of the eternal Father has been shining there for aye, and the darkness docs not comprehend the light. May we find this truth, So help us the truth whereof we speak. Amen.
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LXXXIXi
1. THE WORD OF GOD
Christ said, Blessed is the man who hears God's Word and keeps it.' The Father himself hears nothing, sees nothing, says nothing, begets nothing excepting his own Word, and in this Word the Father sees and hears and brings forth himself, even this Word and all things, his godhood in principle and himself in nature ; this Word with the same nature in another Person. Observe his mode of speech. The Father, fructifying, brings forth his own nature all at once, as understanding, in his eternal Word ; not at will nor as an act of will. That which is done or spoken by the power of his will he can in that same power refrain from if he will. Not so with the Father and his eternal Word ; whether he would or no he is obliged to speak his Word, to procreate unceas- ingly : this is rooted, so to say, in the Father-nature as deeply as the Father is himself. The Father speaks his Word then, willingly but not from will, naturally, not from nature. In this Word the Father speaks my and thy and every individual human soul as this same Word. In this utterance thou and I are the natural Son of God like the Word itself. As I have already said, the Father knows nothing but this Word and himself and all divine nature and all things in this Word, and everything he knows therein is like the Word and is the Word itself in nature and in truth.
When the Father gives thee, reveals to thee, this gnosis, he is giving thee his life, his being and his deity, really and truly, all together. The human father shares his nature with his son but not his life or being. You can prove this by the fact that if the father dies the son may go on living or the son may die and the father go on living. With a common life and being they would live or die together. They are separate individuals as regards their life and being, and in this they differ from the heavenly Father and his Son. If I take a light from one place and put it in another these lights, as lights, are separate things, for one may go on burning while the other has gone out, and vice versa. Thus they are neither one nor yet eternal.
But, as I was saying, the heavenly Father gives thee his eternal Word, and in that Word he gives thee his own life, his being and his godhood, all at once ; for the Father and the Word are two Persons and one life, one being, undivided. When the Father finds thee mentally seeing into this same light, this light itself in its own proper nature, as he sees himself and all things in his paternal power in his Word this very Word in utterance and in
^ Fragment. Pfeiffer's text seems to be a compound of several sermons.
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truth, then he gives to thee the power of begetting, with himself, thyself and all things and his own power in the shape of this same Word. Then with the Father thou art ever giving birth to thyself and all things in the here and now. In this light, as I have said, the Fatlier sees no difference between thee and him ; no more inequality, whether more or less, than between himself and his own Word. For in this light the Father and the soul and all things and the Word itself are one.
2. THE WORD OF THE SOUL i
-- Which of the words my soul speaks is most like the eternal Word ?
-- There are two words which most fully reveal the eternal Word as well as the love that flows therefrom, so St Augustine says. One word is the Word of (iod and the other is the word of herself which the soul speaks.
-- How does she speak the Word of God ?
-- See, God is in all things, therefore God is also in thy memory ; and when the soul in her understanding gives birth to the image of God, as it lies in her memory, then God is the word of thy soul, and when' this word proceeds into the will it becomes love therein. Thus God Father is in thy memory and God Word in thy intellect and (iod Spirit in thy love, though but one God.
-- May we say then, generally, that God speaks his own Word in the soul ?
-- Ves, for when God speaks his Word in himself the Word acquires true distinction of Person ; but when our heart speaks the Word of God from memory, the word spoken by God does not acquire true distinction of real Persons, it is only a likeness and reflection of the eternal Word.
-- When the Word of God is born in him and his memory speaks this Word, how can it be said : God speaks his Word in the soul ?
-- To say, God speaks his Word in the soul is true ; and to say the soul speaks this Word in her intellect is also true, for God and man speak the Word of God together in our life. As a woman cannot bear her child before she has conceived it, so memory must first be big with the child she bears.
XC
ELIZABETH'S FULL TIME CAME
Elizabeth impletum est teinpm pariendi et peperit filium {Luc. I57). Now Elizabeth's full time came that she should be delivered and ^ See Greith, p. 102.
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she brought forth a son and called him John. Then said the people, What manner of child shall this be, for the hand of the Lord is with him.' One scripture says, The greatest gift is that we are God's child ' : that he begets his Son in us. The soul who is God's child, in whom the Son of God is born, in her shall nothing else be brought to birth. God's ultimate purpose is birth. He is not content until he brings his Son to birth in us. Nor is the soul content until the Son of God is born in her. It is thence grace springs. Grace is infused therein, grace doing nothing : its work is its becoming. It flows out of the essence of God and into the essence of the soul, not into her powers.
When the time was fully come grace was born. Time is ful- filled when time is done. He who in time has his heart established in eternity and in whom all temporal things are dead, in him is the fullness of time. Rejoice in God all the time,' says St Paul. He rejoices all the time who rejoices above time and apart from time. Three things prevent a man from knowing God at all. The first is time, the second body, and the third is multiplicity or number. As long as these three things are in me God is not in me nor is he working in me really. St Augustine says, Because the soul is greedy, because she wants to have and hold so much, therefore she reaches into time and, snatching at the things of time and number, loses what she already has.' While there is more and less in thee God cannot dwell nor work in thee. These things must go out for God to come in ; except thou have them in a higher, better way : multitude summed up to one in thee. Then the more of multiplicity the more there is of unity, for the one is changed into the other.
I said on one occasion, unity unifies multiplicity but multi- plicity unites not unity. Once having gotten over things, every- thing in us raised up to a higher power, we sliall never be cast down. If I minded God and God alone, had nothing over me but God, then nothing would be hard and surely nothing troublesome. St Augustine says, Lord, when I turn to thee, all hardship, suffer- ing and toil are taken from me.* Once gotten beyond time and temporalities we are free and joyous all the time ; then is the fullness of time, then the Son of God is born in thee. I once said that in the fullness of time God sent his Son. If aught is born in thee except the Son thou hast gotten nothing of the Holy Ghost and neither is grace working in thee. The origin of the Holy Ghost is the Son. Were there no Son there would be no Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost does not proceed, it cannot blossom forth, except where the Father is in travail with his Son. Then he gives him all he has, natural and essential. It is in this giving that the holy Breath wells out. And it is God's intention to give
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himself entirely to us. As fire, to consume the wood must pene- trate the wood, finding the wood unlike. That is a matter of time. First it makes it warm, then hot, then it smokes and crackles, on account of its unlikencss ; and the hotter the wood grows the quieter and stiller it becomes, and the liker to the fire the more peaceful it becomes till at last it turns to fire altogether. For fire to consume the wood there must be no unlikeness.
In truth, which is God, if thou intendest aught but God or seekest aught but God alone, the work thou doest is not thine nor is it God's. Thy intention in thy work that also is thy work. That which energises in me is my father and I am subordinate to him. It is impossible in nature that one should have two fathers : in nature one father is the rule. When other things are all ful- filled and done with, then there is this birth. A thing that fills is everywhere in contact with its boundary, nowhere falling short ; it has length, breadth, height and depth. If it had height and no length, breadth or depth it would not fill. St Paul says, Pray that ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the height, breadth, length and depth.*
These three things stand for three kinds of knowledge. The first is sensible. The eye sees from afar what is outside it. The second is rational and is a great deal higher. The third corre- sponds to an exalted power of the soul, a power so high and noble it is able to see God face to face in his own self. This power has naught in common with naught, it knows no yesterday or day before, no morrow or day after (for in eternity there is no yester- day or morrow) : therein it is the present now ; the happenings of a thousand years ago, a thousand years to come, are there in the present and the antipodes the same as here. This power descries God in his vestibule. In him, over him, through him,' says the scripture. In means, in the Father ; over him is in the Son ; through him, in the Holy Ghost. There is no truth but contains the whole of truth, as St Augustine says. This power knows all things in the truth. From this power nothing is veiled. According to the scriptures, men's heads should be bare, the women's covered. The women are the lower powers, which are veiled. The man is the power which is bare and face to face.
What wonders shall come from this child ? ' Speaking lately to some people who are very likely here to-day, I said, nothing is so hidden but it shall be revealed. All that is naught shall be done away, hidden and not thought of any more. We shall know nothing of naught, shall have nothing in common with naught. All creatures are a mere naught. That which is not here or there, which is an oblivion of all creatures, that is fullness of being. I told them how nothing that is in us shall be hid, that we shall
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disclose and give up to God everything we find within ourselves, willing or unwilling, good or bad, whatever we are prone to we shall die to in the truth. If we discover everything to God he shall discover to us in return everything he has : he shall hide from us in truth absolutely nothing of all that he has gotten, not wisdom, truth nor holiness nor deity nor nothing whatsoever. As God lives this is in truth the ease. If we disclose nothing to him, no wonder if he reveals nothing to us : we must both do the same, as we to him so he to us.
It is lamentable how some people think themselves so far advanced, so one with God, although they have not yet abandoned self at all but hug themselves, like trivial things, in fortune and misfortune. They are precious far from what they think. They are full of notions and intentions. I sometimes say, if a man who seeks nothing finds nothing, what right htus he to con\plain ? After all, he has found what he sought. To seek or purpose aught is to seek or purpose naught and to pray for aught is to get nothing. But a man with no ulterior motive, who sets his mind on God and God alone, to that man God unbosoms himself wholly and gives him all the things concealed within his heart and for his very own as they arc God's own, no more nor less, provided he is after God and not things in between. What wonder if a sick man does not relish meat and wine ? He cannot taste the meat and wine ; his tongue wherewith he tastes is covered with a coating which is nasty and bitter by reason of the sickness of the man : he does not taste the proper flavour, everything tastes bitter. He is right ; things are rendered bitter by means and hindrances. When the hindrance is removed he tastes things properly. As long as there is anything between, God will never taste like himself to us and life will seem very hard and bitter.
I once said that virgins follow the lamb wherever it goes, close behind. Some are virgins, some arc not, whatever they appear. Wherever this lamb goes the virgins follow, some only while it leads them in the pleasant places that they like. When it takes them into suffering, travail and discomfort they turn back and refuse to follow, and these are not virgins for all they seem to be. Some say. Lord, I want to go in honour, riches, comfort. Well, if the lamb has led you by that way I wish you well in following his footsteps. True virgins will follow the lamb through the highways and byways, whithersoever it may lead, and have no pity on themselves, befall what may. In the fullness of time there was born John,* that is, grace, as I have explained. May all things be fulfilled in us and grace be born in us, So help us God. Amen.
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XCI
REJOICE O HEAVENS
Laudate coeli et exultet terra {Is. Ego sum lux mundi
{Joh. 8^2)- I quote two Latin texts : one from the lesson, the words of Isaiah the prophet, Rejoice, O heavens and earth, God hath comforted his people and will have mercy on his poor ones.' The other comes out of the gospel. Our Lord's saying, * I am the light of the world : he that followeth me walketh not in darkness ; he shall find and have the light of life.'
First take the words of the prophet, Rejoice, O heavens and earth.' Verily, verily, by God, by God and as God liveth, at the least good deed, the least good will, the least good desire, all the saints in heaven as well as all the angels rejoice with such great joy as all the joys of this world cannot equal. With the saints, the higher the more joyful, and all their joy combined is but a speck to the delight that God takes in this act. God plays and laughs in this good work, whereas all other works, those which redound not to God's glory, are dust and ashes in God's sight. Therefore he cries, Ye heavens, rejoice ! God has comforted his people.'
Consider the words, God has comforted his ])eople and will have mercy on his poor.' His poor,' he says. The poor arc left to God alone, for no one troubles about them. Anyone who has a friend, a poor one, if he docs not forget him and if he has posses- sions and is wise, will say Thou art my servant,' and he is soon forgot; but to the beggar he will fliiig, God guard thee,' and be ashamed of him. The poor are left to God : wherever they go they may come upon God and have God in all places ; God takes them in charge, for they are abandoned to him. Wherefore he says in the gospel, Blessed are the poor.'
Now take the words, I am the light of the world.' I am,' that touches the essence. According to philosophers, all creatures can say I,' for the word is common property ; but the word sum, am, none can really say but God alone. Smn signifies one thing which is big with good things as a whole, and it is denied to creatures that any one of them should have all human consolation. If I had my heart's desire but my finger hurt me, then I should have it not, for with a wounded finger, while it hurts me, I lack entire comfort. Bread comforts a man when he is hungry, whereas if he is thirsty bread wifi give him no more comfort than a stone ; and the same with clothes, when he is cold, but being hot no clothes will comfort him ; and this applies to creatures, hence all creatures have a certain bitterness of heart. True, creatures have this
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comfort for their souls, that none can deprive them of their rights. Their property is all in God whatever possessions they may have in creatures. As it is written in the Book of Wisdom, In thee all good belongs to my soul.' Creature comfort is imperfect, it has innate defect. But God's comfort is complete, with no shortcoming ; it is whole and perfect and he needs must give it thee, for he cannot work unless he gives thee himself first. God is foolishly in love with us, it seems he has forgotten heaven and earth and all his happiness and deity, his entire business seems with me alone, to give me everything to comfort me ; he gives it to me suddenly, he gives it to me wholly, he gives it to me perfect, he gives it all the time and he gives it to all creatures.
He that folio weth me walketh not in darkness.' Philosophers attribute three powers to the soul. The first power ever seeks the sweetest. The second ever seeks the highest. The third one ever seeks the best, and the soul is too noble ever to rest anywhere but in her source whence drops what goodness is made out of. Behold, so sweet God's consolation, all creatures go in quest of him, hunting after him. Nay, I say more : it is creature's life and being, this searching after God, this hunting for him.
Peradventure ye will say. Where is this God all ereatures are in quest of and whence they get their being and their life ? (Fain would I speak of the Godhead whence comes all our happiness.) The Father says, Son, this day do I beget thee in the reflection of the saints.' Where is this God ? Where the saints leave off there I begin. Where is this God ? In the Father. Where is this God ? In eternity. No man ever found God. As the wise man says, Lord, thou art a liidden God.' Where is this God ? Su))pose a man in liiding and he stirs, he shows his whereabouts thereby and God does the same. No one could ever have found God ; he gave himself away. One of the saints has said, I sometimes experience such sweetness in me that, forgetting creatures altogether, I dissolve right into thee. But when I try to embrace thee Lord, lo, thou art fled. What wouldst thou then ? Why draw me on only to run away ? If thou dost love me wherefore dost thou shun me ? Nay, Lord, it is to make me more eager to obtain.' The prophet says, my God.' -- Who told thee that I am thy God ? ' -- Lord, I cannot rest except in thee, I have no well-being but in thee.' May we thus seek God and also find him, So help us God. Amen.
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XCII
GOD-PARENTS AND GOD-CHILDREN
Posui VOS ut eatis et fructum afferatis (Joh. Christ said to
his disciples, I have set you to go and bring forth fruit.' God spake to them and to us all who are in darkness. Being in the dark we need a light to walk by. But Christ says : I am the light of the world.' If we keep in the true love of our head we shall be lighted by Christ. For a taper goes on burning at the tip in virtue of its contact with the flame which consumes the matter it supplies and changes it into itself.
Observe. When Christ said to his disciples, I have set you to go,' he referred to our being taken up into the light of grace. The prophet says, I was sitting when he took me up into himself.' Sitting, we stop groping and, in the light, can see our way. To wit, the way of virtue. That is the meaning of Christ's words, I have set you to go.' Sitting is not going. We cannot go the right way without first sitting in the light of contemplation and making out the way to take ; all our works must be a light to lighten our neighbour's darkness.
Now Dionysius says : These, who have thus gone out of
themselves and are living in the light of truth, these (I say) are the christened, they arc god-children and godfathers.' Bishop Albertus expounds this as follows : God-children are they who, reading or hearing the holy scriptures read, take them to heart and show them forth in good works whereby they ultimately find the truth in God. The christened again arc dead in God, there is no longer anything alive in them but God. As St Paul says, We are dead and our life is hid with Christ in God.' But the most perfect of all are the godfathers, who are drowned in the unfathomableness of God ; not only does God live in them but they are alive in God and there is now in them the beginning of eternal life.
Consider now those who arc god-children. Comprehending the scriptures in the light of faith they come into the dew of grace and in this gracious dew inhale the fragrance of the path of life eternal. As saith the Bride in the Book of Love, Take me along with thee, out in thy desert, within in thy fastness.' Out in the desert means detached from creatures ; the inner fastness is the subjective certainty of truth which tieither life nor death can alter. Such are these god-children, sons of power and wisdom and goodness. To them our Lord cries in the Book of Love, How beautiful arc thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter ! ' The shoes being the holy life put on the feet of love and knowledge in the desire to walk
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therein. But the christened are in mystical union with God and are actually leading the life of God. What shall I say of these ? In their eating and drinking, their sleeping and their entire wont there is nothing found but God, did we but know it. Burn them, they yield but the test of divinity, the sweetness of the Holy Ghost, wherein they are gotten full of sap. But this none knoweth save the children of true light and him they dwell in, namely God. The children of darkness know it not, whose hearts are filled with the poison of everlasting death. Wherefore the light is turned to darkness in them and the eternal sweet to bitterness. God light us with the light we used to bask in in his Son eternally, so shall we escape from darkness into the true light !
But the third class, yclept godfathers, these climbing hill and mountain have followed the track of the true sons with will and knowledge, and the flaming heat of the Holy Ghost having burnt up all their matter, they show now only the one light in God. In this light they have come to rest, at peace after their labours, the peace of absolute eonseiousness, a j)ea(?e which is never dis- turbed. Thought fails in speaking of these fathers, for they have received all good and perfect gifts from the Father of lights and have reached the goal of virtue. This goal set John, the soaring eagle, wondering in the Apocalypse. And Christ answered him, saying, I am the first without beginning and the last that has no end.' Amen.
XCIII
THE CROSSING
Ejchibite membra vestra servire justituv iti sanctificationem (Rom, 619). St Paul says, Yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness, for the wages of sin is death but the reward of virtue is eternal life.' The soul has but two members to offer for service of the sort acceptable to God, these are will and understanding.
One master says, God exerts the whole force of his will in loving the soul. But my point is that God's sole object in loving the soul is to make her love him in return. Again, I contend that God devotes his divine nature to pleasing the soul, to making her like him and enjoy his society and be friendly with him and love him. Thirdly, I hold that this love which comes up in the ground of the soul, sprouting out of the ground of the Godhead, that this (I say) is the self-same love wherewith God loves his one-begotten Son, and nothing less. And fourthly, if so be that man is planted in God as he is in creature, then I maintain it is in the very ground
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of the Holy Ghost's being and becoming, the very ground where the Holy Ghost is coming out in blossom.
St Paul does well to say, Yield your members.' For intellect, albeit natural, is too exalted to be moved by mundane things. Yet, rendered to the source whence it proceeded forth it is absorbed in God, and that which absorbs it it becomes. Will, that is will proper, is as such omnipotent. But thousands die without acquiring this genuine will. Doubtless they had desires and inclinations like other animals. One man does something trifling, does it just once and sends it on the wings of praise and thank- fulness up to its source. Another one does some important work which occupies him long and constantly, and yet this little thing done once is more acceptable to God than the other man's great work which cost him so much time and trouble. Why ? I will tell you. Because the trivial act was carried up past time into the now of eternity, therefore it was to God's entire satisfaction. Though one should live through all the time from Adam and all the time to come before the judgment day doing good works, yet he who, energising in his highest, purest part, crosses from time into eternity, verily in the sight of God this man conceives and does far more than anyone who lives throughout all past and future time, because this now includes the whole of time.
One master says that in this crossing over time into the now, each power of the soul will sur{>ass itself. The five powers must pass into her collective power (or common sense), and common sense will vanish into the formless power wherein nothing forms. Intellect and will are transcended. True, grace is a creature, but by no means altogether. The soul has no inherent grace excepting in her ground, and above this ground of the soul grace is indigenous. Therein grace docs nothing, although it is effective in the uses of her powers ,* but in the ground of the soul grace, happiness and God's ground are one and the same life wherein God is living. There the power behind the eye is as noble as the understanding ; there foot and eye rank equal. What the soul is in her ground has never been determined. But Paul says, The grace of God is eternal life.' Paul also says, The wages of sin is death.' The deaths men die arc all of them as nothing to the death of the soul who is divorced from God, from which may God preserve us. Amen.
XCIV
THE SOUL
St Paul says, Put off self, put on Christ.' In abandoning our- self we initiate Christ and holiness and happiness and are ennobled.
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The prophet marvelled at two things. First, at God's doings with the sun and moon and stars. And secondly he marvelled at the soul, at the prodigious things God does and has done with her and for her sake, yet do what prodigies he may she still preserves the absolute dispassion which befits one of her noble lineage. Mark the nobility of her descent. I make a letter of the alphabet like the image of that letter in my mind, not like my mind itself. And so with God. God makes things in general like the universal image of them in himself, not like himself. Certain things he has speeially made like emanations of his own, such as goodness, wisdom and other so-called attributes of God. lint the soul he has made not merely like the image in himself nor like anything proceeding from himself that is predicated of him, but he made her like himself, nay, like he is, all told : like his nature, his essence, his emanating-immanent activity, his ground wherein he is subsisting in himself, wherein he is begetting his alone -begotten Son and where the Holy Ghost comes into flower : in the likeness of his in-dwelling out-going w^ork did God make the soul.
It is a law of nature that fluids nm downhill into anything adapted to receive them ; the higher not receiving from the lower but the lower from the higher. Now God is higher than the soul, and hence there is a constant flow of God into the soul, which cannot miss her. The soul may well miss it, but as long as a man keeps right under God he immediately catches this divine influence straight out of God. Nor is he subject to aught else, not fear nor pain nor pleasure nor anything that is not God. Put thyself therefore right under God and thou shalt receive his inflowing divinity wholly and solely. The soul does not receive from God as from a stranger, as the air docs the light of the sun, which it takes as a foreign intrusion. The soul receives her God not as a stranger nor as inferior to God, for inferior is both different and distant.
Philosophers say the soul receives as a light from the light, wherein is nothing foreign or remote. There is something in the soul wherein God simply is, and according to philosophers this is a nameless thing and has no proper name. It neither has nor is a definite entity, for it is not this or that nor here nor there ; what it is it is from another wherewith it is the same ; the one streams into it and it into the one. Hence the exhortation Enter into God in holiness,' for here is the source of the soul's whole life and being. This (light) is wholly in God and her other without him, so in this one the soul is ever in God, provided she smother it not and extinguish it in her.
Philosophers say this (light) is present in God and never goes out in him and God is ever in it. I say, God has ever been in it
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and of it eternally. The union of man and God is not a matter of grace (for grace is creature and creature has nothing to do with it), except in the ground of divinity, where the three Persons are one in nature and it (grace) is that nature itself. Wherefore an thou wilt, God and the universe are thine. That is, if thou wilt put off self and things : doff the habit of thy personality and take thyself in thy divinity.
The philosophers say that human nature has nothing to do with time ; that it is deeper-seated and more firmly rooted in a man than he is in himself. God took on human nature and united it with his own Person. Thus human nature was God who donned man's nature only, not any individual man. Would 'st thou be very Christ and God ? Put off, then, whatever the eternal Word did not put on. The eternal Word never put on a person. So do thou strip thyself of everything personal and selfish and keep just thy bare humanity ; thus thou shalt be to the eternal Word exactly what his human nature is to him. Thy human nature is no different from his : they are identical : what it is in him it is in thee. And hence 1 said at Paris that every prophecy of holy scripture is fulfilled in the just man ; for being perfect, the whole promise of the old and new testaments is accomplished in thee.
How to be perfect ? There are two aspects of the question. The prophet says, In the fullness of time the Son was sent.' Now fullness of time is of two kinds. In the first place a thing is ful- filled when it is done, as day is done at eventide. So when time drops from thee thy time is fulfilled. Again, time is fulfilled when it is finished, that is, in eternity. Time ends when there is no before and after : when all that is is here and now and thou scest at a glance all that has ever happened and shall ever happen. Here there is no before nor after ; everything is present, and in this immediate vision I possess all things. This is the perfection of time, and I am perfect and I am truly the only Son and Christ. May we attain to this fullness of time. So help us God. Amen.
xcv
BUT NOW THE LIGHT IN GOD
Eratis enim. aliquando tenebrWy nunc autem Ixlk in domino {Ephes* 5g). St Paul says, For ye were sometimes darkness but now the light in God.' The prophets walking in the light perceived and knew the truth umbraged in the procession of the Holy Ghost. Sometimes they were moved to return to the world and speak of things they knew to be conducive to our happiness, thinking
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to teach us to know God. Whereupon they would fall dumb, becoming tongue-tied and for three reasons.
First, because the good they knew by sight in God was too immense and too mysterious to take definite shape in their under- standing. Such ideas as formed were so unlike what they had seen in God, were such a travesty of the reality, that they held their peace for fear of lying. Another reason was, that what they had gotten in God rivalled God's very self in its immensity and sublimity and yielded no idea nor any form for them to express. Thirdly, they were dumb because the hidden truth they saw in God, the mystery they found there, was ineffable. So it befell from time to time that, coming back and speaking of these things, they slipped, through lapses from the tnith, into gross matter and tried to teach us to know God by means of infernal creature things.
Paul says, but now the light in God.' Aliquando, to those who are instructed, is the same as tvhen and expresses time, which is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time. He means not time alone but temporali- ties ; not only temporal things but temporal affections ; not only temporal affections but the very taint and aroma of time ; for as, where an apple has lain the smell lingers, so with the contact of time. According to our best authorities the visible heavens and the sun and stars have nothing to do with time beyond bare contact with it. This I cite as showing that the soul, which towers high above the heavens, has, at her very summit, no connection with time at all. Many times I have explained about the act in God, the birth wherein the Father bears his one-begotten Son whose proeession causes the interior blossoming of the Holy Ghost, that the Spirit proceeds from both and that in this pro- cession the soul comes leaping forth, the image of the Godhead being sealed into the soul in this procession ; and that in the return of the three Persons the soul goes back, re-informed into her primitive and formless form. Or as Paul puts it, now the light in God.' He does not say, Ye are the light ' but now the light.' Meaning, as I have often said, that to know things (really) we must know them in their cause. The philosophers tell us that things are suspended in their birth as in a look-out over their existence. The Father gives birth to his Son now. In this eternal birth wherein the Father generates his Son, the soul comes into her existence which is the image of the Godhead imprinted in her soul.
It was mooted in the schools and maintained by some of the professors, that God imprints his image in the soul as a picture is painted upon canvas, and it fades. This was refuted. Others suggested with more truth, that God leaves in the soul a permanent
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impression of the nature of an abiding intention, as thus ; my wish of to-day is my purpose of to-morrow, the idea of which is kept alive by my actual thinking of it, just as, they said, God's works are done. For if the carpenter were perfect at his work he would not need materials : he would no sooner think a house than, lo, it would be made. And so with works in God : he thinks them and behold they are.
Then came a third professor who spoke most truly of them all. He pointed out that yonder no work is done at all : it is the now, being without becoming, newness without renewing, and this existence is his essence. God's content is too subtile for renewal. And also in the soul there is a subtile nature too fine and rare to be renewed. In God it is all the here and now ; unrenewable.
There are four points I had intended to discuss ; the subtile nature of God, the subtile nature of the soul, the work of God and the work of the soul. These I must leave over for the present.
XCVI
RIDDANCE
Qui audit me non confundetur (Eccl, 2430). The eternal wisdom of the Father says, He that heareth me is not ashamed. (If he is ashamed he is ashamed of his shame.) He that worketh in me does not sin. He that reveals me and fears me shall have everlasting life.' I will consider first these words of the eternal wisdom, He that heareth me is not ashamed (or, confounded).' To hear the eternal wisdom of the Father he must be within, at home and by himself.
Three things prevent our hearing the eternal Word. The first is body, the second number, and the third is time. If wc were rid of these three things we should be living in eternity and in the spirit, solitaries in the desert listening to the eternal Word. But our Lord says, No man heareth my word or my teaching till he be free from self.' ,To hear God's Word demands absolute self- surrender. Hearer and heard are one in the eternal Word. The subject the eternal Father teaches is his essence, his nature, his whole godhood, w^hich he divulges to us altogether in his Son, teaching us to be the Son himself.
A man who has gone out of himself and is the only-begotten Son owns what is proper to the only Son. God's work and teach- ing are all done in his Son. God works with the sole object of getting us to be his only Son. As soon as he perceives that we are his only Son, God makes for us impetuously ; he comes well- nigh to shattering his essence, naughting his very self, in his
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rash haste to show us the whole abysm of his Godhead, the fullness of his essential nature. God flies to make this ours as it is his. Here God enjoys and delights in his plenitude. And this man who is within God's love and ken is none other than what God is him- self. Loving thyself thou lovest all men as thyself. While thou lovest anyone less than thine own self thou dost not love thyself in truth : not till thou lovest all men as thyself, all men in one man who is both God and man. The man who loves himself and all men as himself is righteous, absolutely just.
Sometimes people say, I like my friends and benefactors better than other people.' But I say that is wrong, imperfect. True, we must make shift with it as we have to do with a side wind to cross the sea : it will take us over. Like our preference for one man above another, it is natural. To love another as myself means that I would as lief his fate for good and ill, for life and death, happened to me as him, which would amount to perfect understanding.
As bearing on this subject St Paul says, I would I were divorced from God for ever, for God and for my friends' sake.' And as you know, to leave God for an instant is to leave God eternally and to leave God at all is hell torment. What does St Paul mean then by wishing to be divorced from God ? Doctors debate whether St Paul was upon the way to his perfection or whether he was perfect ? I say he was perfect, otherwise he could not have said this.
I will put into plain words what St Paul means by wishing to depart from God. Man's last and highest leave-taking is leaving God for God. St Paul left God for Gixl : he left everything he could give or take of God, every concept of God. In leaving these he left God for God since God remained to him in his essential self ; not as a concept of himself, nor yet as an acquired thing, but God in his essential actuality. This is no case of give and take between himself and God : it is the one and perfect union. Here man is the true man whom suffering can no more befall than it can befall the divine essence, for, as I have said before, there is something in the soul so nearly kin to God that it is one and not united. It is one ; it has naught in common with naught and is naught to aught. Anything created is naught. It is remote and alien from creature. If man were wholly this he would be wholly uncreated and uncreaturely ; if everything temporal were so, were comprehended in this one, it would be nothing else than the unity itself. Were I to find myself but for a single instant in this case, I should esteem myself of no more moment than a worm.
God gives to everything alike, and as flowing forth from God
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things are all equal ; angels, man and creatures all proceed from God alike in their first emanation. To take things in their primal emanation is to take them all alike. If here in time they are alike, in God in eternity they are much more so. Any flea as it is in God is nobler than the highest of the angels in himself. Things are all the same in God : they are God himself.
God delights so in this likeness that he pours out his whole nature, his whole substance into it, in his own self. The joy and satisfaction of it are ineffable. It is like a horse turned loose in a lush meadow giving vent to his horse-nature by galloping full- tilt about the field : he enjoys it, and it is his nature. And just in the same way God's joy and satisfaction in his likes finds vent in his pouring out his entire nature and his being into this likeness, for he is this likeness himself.
It is a question whether those angels who are dwelling here with us to serve and guard us have less likeness in their joys than the ones abiding in eternity : is it in any sense a drawback to them to be serving and protecting us ? No, not at all. Their joy is undiminished, so is too their likeness ; for the work of the angels is the will of God and the will of God is the work of the angels. Neither in their joy, their likeness nor their work arc these angels handicapped. If God should bid an angel go pick the cater- pillars off a tree, the angel would obey him readily, nay, since it is God's will it would be his happiness.
Being established in God's will, a man will want what is God and what is God's will and nothing else. If he is sick he will not be wanting to be well. To him all pain is pleasure, multitude is pure and single, provided he is really in the will of God. Aye, though it were the pains of hell it would be joy and happiness to him. He has left himself and he is free, passive to all impressions. My eye can see colour because it is free to be coloured. When I see blue or white, my eye which is seeing the colour is taking the colour that it sees. The eye wherein I see God is the same eye wherein God sees me ; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one vision, one knowing, one love.
Man being thus in the love of God is dead to self and all created things, and no more mindful of himself than one a thousand miles away. This man abides in likeness, in unity, and there is no unlikeness in him. This man has left the world and himself as well. Supposing some man owned the world and for God's sake gave it up just as he had gotten it ; then God would give him back the world and eternal life to boot. And if there were a second man possessing merely the good will, who thought ; Lord were this whole world mine, nay two of them (or any number he may choose), I would resign it and myself as well, entire as I received it from
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thee : him would God recompense no less than if it had been given by his hand. Another man with nothing to resign, bodily or ghostly, would be the most resigned of all. He who for one instant wholly resigns self, to him shall all be given. To leave himself for twenty years and then to have self back again, an instant, is never to have left himself at all. He who both has and is resigned, nor ever casts one glance at what he has resigned but remains firm and unshaken and motionless in himself, that man is free. May we remain steadfast and immoveable, like the eternal Father, So help us God and his eternal Wisdom. Amen.
XCVII
DIVES
Homo quidam erat dives etc, (Ltic, IC^^). There was a certain
rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day and he had no name.'
This will equally apply to the causeless Deity and to the loving soul. There was a rich man.' Man means a rational entity. A heathen philosopher says, By man in the scriptures we mean God.' And St Gregory says, if there were in God one thing nobler than another we should say it is his understanding ; for in under- standing God is manifested to himself ; in understanding God is proceeding in himself ; in understanding God is proceeding forth into all things. Were there no understanding in God there would be no Trinity and no emanation of creatures.
He had no name. And so is the threefold nature of God name- less ; such names as the soul gives him are gotten of her own understanding. As the heathen philosopher says in his book, The Light of Lights, God is superessential and super- rational and unintelligible,' that is, to the natural understanding. I speak not of gracious understanding, for by grace we may be brought to know as much as St Paul did, who was caught up into the third heaven where he saw those things that he neither would nor could express. He could not express them as he saw them, for when we know a thing we know it either in its cause or in its mode or by its activity. God remains unknown because he is the first {i,e, he has no cause), he is unconditioned (i,e, unknowable) and he is inactive (in his hidden stillness). He is without the names that are applied to him. Moses enquired his name. God answered and said, He who is hath sent thee.' He could not understand it in any other form. God as he is in himself he cannot give creatures to understand, not that he cannot do it but creature cannot understand. As
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the heathen philosopher says, God is beyond nature, beyond praise, beyond reason and beyond understanding.'
This man was rich.' And so is God rich in himself and in all things. Mark the plenitude of God. It is fivefold. First, he is the prime cause, so he pervades all things. -- Next, he is essentially one, so he is universal. -- Thirdly, he is the fountain-head, so he is flowing into all things. -- Fourthly, he is unchangeable, so he is most desirable. -- Fifthly, he is perfect, so he is most incomprehensible.
Being the first cause he imparts himself. As tlie heathen philosopher observes, The First Cause pours into causes in general more than these secondary causes pour into their causes.' Again, he is indivisible. Bishop Albcrtus says a thing is impartible which is intrinsically one without a second. And the sum of all partiblcs amounts to what he is. In him creatures are one in the same, they are God in God. In themselves they are naught. -- Thirdly, being the fountain-head he is overflowing into all things. Bishop Albertus says : Into things in general he flows in three ways : in being, in life and in light ; and into the rational soul in particular as the potentiality of all things, the bringing back of creatures to their original source.' To wit, the light of lights : All gifts and perfections flow from the Father of lights,' as St James says. -- Fourthly, being unchangeable he is most comfortable. Here note that God unites with things while keeping his intrinsic oneness, and all things are one in him. Hence Christ's words, Ye shall be turned into me and I into you.' Owing to his unchangeableness and the littleness of creatures. For as the prophet says, all things arc to God as a drop to the ocean. And as the drop becomes the ocean not the ocean the drop so the soul imbibing God turns into God, not God into the soul. There the sold loses her name, her power and lier activity but not her existence. The soul abides in God as God is abiding in himself. Anent which Bishop Albertus declares that the will a man dies in he abides in eternally. -- Fifthly, being perfect he is most incom- prehensible. God is self-perfect and omni-perfect. What is perfection in God ? It means that he is brim-full of himself and is the sole good of all things. And because he is good he is the desired of all things.
XCVIII
HE WENT UP INTO A MOUNTAIN
Videus Jesus turbas ascendit in montem etc, (Matt. 5^). We read in the gospel that our Lord departed from the multitude and ascended into the mountain. There he opened his mouth and taught them about the kingdom of God.
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St Augustine says, The student of this subject sets his stool in heaven.' The student of God must rise above things scattered : these he must eschew. To take in God's instruction he must gather himself together and withdraw into himself, turning his back on care and the pursuit of nether things and on his powers so many and so various. He must leave all these behind, even as existing in his thought, not but what thought works wonders in itself. These thoughts must be transcended if God is to speak into the powers which are inseparate.
Again : He went up into the mountain ' implies that God is imparting the sublimity and sweetness of his nature. In this intuition wherein there must needs fall away everything that is creature, he is aware of nothing but God and himself as the image of God.
Tliirdly : his asegnt into the mountain betokens his exaltation (what is high is near to God) and concerns the powers trenching on divinity. Upon one occasion our Lord took three of his dis- ciples and led them up into a mountain where he appeared before them in that same light-body wherein we shall see him in eternal life. Our Lord said to the children of Israel, Remember what I told you about heaven : ye see there neither image nor form nor any likeness.' When a man does leave the multitude God comes into his soul without image or likeness.
St Augustine teaches about three kinds of knowledge. The first is bodily : the eye, for instance, is sensible of images. The second is mental but still admits of images of bodily things. The third is in the interior mind, which knows without image or likeness, and this knowledge is like unto the angels.
The higher angels are divided into three. One philosopher says ; The soul knows only in effigy. Things are all known in image and likeness, but angels know themselves without likeness, and God.' What he means to say is : God imparts himself to the soul at her summit without image or likeness.
He went up into the mountain and was transfigured before them. The soul must be transfigured or re-formed and sealed and re-cast in his form. I maintain that the soul transcends form, she being east in the form of God's Son. According to the masters, the Son is the image of God and the soul is formed in his image. I agree. But the Son is the image of God above form : the form of his concealed Godhead : the Son as the idea, as the conception of God, that is the form of the soul. By the fact that the Son loves the soul loves also. Where the Son is proceeding is not where the soul is suspended : she is above form. I'^ire and heat are one and yet far from the same. Taste and hue in an apple are one but by no means identical. The tongue can
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taste things which are lost on the eye ; the eye perceives colours the tongue knows not of. The soul knows one only ; she is above form.
The prophet says : God will lead his sheep into green pastures. Sheep is in the singular ; and so are they singular who are simplified to one. A philosopher says, that nowhere is the heavenly course so plain as in the simple hearts who guilelessly accept the heavenly influence and in children with no mind of their own. The clever and active-minded people are carried away into multitudinous things. Our Lord promises to feed his sheep in the primitive mountain pastures, on green grass. In God all creatures are in embryo. First, all creatures sally forth from God and then the angels. To have the nature of one particular creature is to bear the stamp of creatures as a whole. An angel's nature bears the impress of all creatures.. All that angelic nature can receive is summed up in him. Whatever God chooses to create his angels entertain on penalty of missing the perfection which belongs to other creatures.
St Augustine says : What God creates has a channel through the angels on high, where on the hill -tops everything is flourishing, where creatures are all fresh and green. Falling into time they droop and fade. Among the young green of all creatures there our Lord pastures his sheep. Creatures which flourish on these verdant heights are, as existing in the angels, more grateful to che soul than all the things of this world. The vilest of creatures as it is there, is to this world as day to night.
Whoever would be taught by God has to ascend this mountain ; there God will perfect them in the day of eternity when the light is full. What I perceive in God is light ; what touches creatures is darkness. The true light has no contact with creatures. Spirit- ual perception is light. St John says, God is the true light that shineth in the darkness.' What is the darkness ? In the first place ; independence, detachment : being blind and unaware of creatures. As I have frequently said ; to see God we have to be blind. Again, God is the light which shines in the darkness. He is the blinding light. That is, light incomprehensible, illimit- able, that knows no end. Its blinding the soul means that she knows nothing, is aware of nothing. The third darkness is best^ of all : there is no light. A master says, Heaven has no light, it is too high up for that ; it does not shine and in itself is neither hot nor cold.' In this darkness the soul has lost all light, she has outgrown what we call light and colour.
A philosopher says : Light is the Supreme, God's promised land.' A philosopher says ; The realization of every desire is brought to the soul in this light.' A philosopher says : There never was anything subtile enough to enter the ground of the soul
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but God only.' Meaning to say : God shines in that darkness where the soul transcends all light. For what though her powers are open to sweetness and light and grace yet into the ground of the soul she lets nothing but absolute God. Whatever besides of sweetness and light proceeds from him she receives merely into her powers.
According to our best authorities the powers of the soul and she herself are one : fire and fire-light arc one, and where it (light) changes to reason it changes to anotlier nature. Where intellect issues from the soul it invents another nature. Thirdly, the light of lights where soul transcends all light is on the mountain sum- mit where no light exists. Where Gotl breaks out into his Son is not where the soul hangs from. Where God is proceeding, we knowing God somewhat, is not where the soul is suspended, it is infinitely higher up than that ; she transcends light and knowledge completely. He says, I will deliver them and will gather them together and bring them into their own land where I will lead them into green pastures (upon the mountain of Israel).' Upon this mountain he opened his mouth. One doctor says : Our Lord opens his mouth here below leading us by the scriptures and by means of creatures.' But St Paul says, Now hath God spoken to us in his only-begotten Son in whom 1 know from the least to the greatest all at once in God.' May we out-grow whatever is not God, So help us God. Amen.
XCIX
BE YE RENEWED IN THE SPIRIT OF YOUR MIND
Renovamini spiriiu mentis vestree (Kphes- 423 ). Be ye renewed
in the spirit,' here called mens or mind. Thus speaks St Paul. Now St Augustine says that in the highest part of the soul, there known as mem or the mind, there was created along with the soul a capacity called by philosophers the casket or shrine of niind-forrns or formless images. This power makes the Father com- parable with the soul in his emanating deity whereof he has poured forth the whole hoard of divine being into the Son and into the Holy Ghost in distinction of Persons, just as the memory of the soul pours out treasure of ideas into the soul -powers. Now if with this faculty the soul sees form, whether she sec the form of an angel or her own form, it is an imperfection in her. But when all forms are detached from the soul and she sees nothing but the one alone, then the naked essence of the soul finds the naked, formless essence of the divine unity, the superessential being, passive, reposing in itself. O surpassing wonder, what
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lofty suffering is that, when the soul suffers nothing but the absolute unity of Gk)d !
Ye shall be renewed in the spirit, says St Paul. Renewal befalls all creatures under God ; but for God there is no renewal, only all eternity. What is eternity ? -- It is characteristic of eternity that in it youth and being are the same, for eternity would not be eternal could it newly become and were not always. Now I maintain that renewal befalls the angels, that is, in their knowledge of the future, for an angel knows of future things only so much as God reveals to him. And renewal befalls the soul in so far as she is soul, and she is soul in so far as she gives life to the body and is the form of the body. And renewal befalls her too inasmuch as she is spirit. She is spirit in so far as she is detached from here and now and from cv^cry thing that belongs to matter. But so far as she is the image of God and nameless as God is, no renewal befalls her but only eternity, as in God. Now mark ! God is nameless ; no one can know or say anything of him. A heathen philosopher says that what we know or predicate about the first cause is what we are ourselves rather than what the first cause is, for this transcends speech and knowledge. If I say God is good, it is not true : I am good, God is not good. I say more : I am better than God is, for what is good can be better and what is better can be best. But God is not good, therefore he cannot be better ; and since he cannot be better therefore he cannot be best. These three : good, better, best are remote from God who is above all. And if, again, I say that God is wise, it is not tme : I am wiser than he. Or if I say, God is a being, it is not true : he is a trans- cendental essence, a superessential nothing. St Augustine says, The finest thing a man can say of God is that he is silent from consciousness of interior fullness.' Wherefore hold thy peace and prate not about God, for prating of him thou dost lie, committing sin. If thou wouldst be free from sin and perfect, babble not of God. Neither know anything of God, for God is beyond knowing. One' philosopher says. Had I a God that I could know I would have him for my God no longer. Know'st thou of him anything ? He is no such thing, and in that thou dost know of him anything at all thou arc in ignorance, and ignor- ance leads to the condition of the brute ; for in creatures what is ignorant is brutish. If thou wouldst not be brutish then, know nothing of the unuttered God. -- What then shall I do ? ' -- Thou shalt lose thy thy-ness and dissolve in his his-ness ; thy thine shall be his mine, so utterly one mine that thou in him shalt know eternalwise his is-ncss, free from becoming : his nameless nothingness.
Be ye renewed in the spirit,' says St Paul. If we have a mind
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to be renewed in spirit, then those six powers of the soul, the higher and the lower, must each wear a golden finger-ring all gilded over with the gold of divine love. Consider the lower powers, which are three. The first is called reason, rationale ; on this thou shalt wear a golden finger-ring : light, so that thy reason may be all the time timclessly irradiated with divine light. The second power is rage, irascihilis ; on it thou shalt wear the finger-ring, thy peace. And why ? Because, in peace, in God ; without peace, out of God. The third power is desire, concupis' cihilis ; and on it thou shalt wear, enough, so that thou mayst have done with all creatures under God ; but with God thou shalt never have done, for of God thou eanst never have enough : the more thou hast of God the more thou wantest of him couldst thou have enough of him, could enough ever be applied to God, God were not God.
Also on each higher power thou shalt wear a golden finger- ring. Of these higher powers there are likewise three. The first is the retentive faculty, memoria. This power is likened to the Father in the Trinity. On it thou shalt wear the golden fmger- ring, remembrance, that all eternal things may be stored up in thee. The second one is understanding, intellectns. This power is likened to the Sou. On this, too, thou shalt wear a golden finger-ring, perception, that thou mayst be ever apprehending
God. In what way ? ' -- Thou shalt know him witliout image,
without semblance and without means. But for me to know God thus, with nothing between, I must be all but he, he all but me.' - I say, God must be very I, 1 very (iod, so consummately one that this he and this I arc one is, in this is -ness working one work eternally ; but so long as this he and this I, to wit, God and the soul, are not one single here, one single now, the I cannot work with nor be one with that he. The third power is will, voluntas. This power is likened to the Holy Ghost. On it thou shalt wear the golden finger-ring, love, that thou mayst love God. But thou shalt love God apart from loveworthiness : not because he is worthy of love, for God is unloveworthy : he is superior to love and loveworthincss. -- How then shall I love him ? ' -- Thou shalt love God non-spiritually, thy soul must be de-spiritualised : stripped of spirituality. For while thy soul is specifically spirit, she has form ; the while she has form she has neither unity nor union ; the while she lacks union she has never really loved God, for actual love lies in union. Wherefore let thy soul be de-spirited of all spirit ; let it be spiritless ; if thou lovest God as God, as spirit, as Person or as image, that must all go. -- Then how shall I love him ? ' -- Love him as he is ; a not-God, a not-spirit, a not- Ferson, a not-image ; as sheer, pure, limpid unity, alien from all
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duality. And in this one let us sink down eternally from nothing- ness to nothingness. So help us God. Amen.
C
ONE GOD AND FATHER OF ALL
Unus deus et pater omnium^ qui est super omnes et per omnia et in omnibus nobis {Ephes, 4g). I am quoting St Paul's words, One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in us all.' From the gospel I will take another saying, the saying of our Lord, Friend, go up higher.'
To begin with, when St Paul speaks of one God and Father of all ' the omission of the particle suggests some variation from his one God.' God is one in himself and apart from all. God belongs to none and none belongs to him, God is one. Boethius says, God is one and changes not. God's whole creation he created without changing. All things, once created, progress in changing. The moral of which is that we ought to be one in ourselves and wholly free from attachment. Firm and unshaken in God does it behove us to be. Out of God there is notliing but naught. No change nor movement can get into God. What seeks another place outside him, that changes. God has all things in him in one omnipotentiality ; God seeks not anything outside himself, for he has got it in him in its perfection. No creature can conceive it as it is in God.
Another teacher says, Father of all, blessed art thou.' This too is big with change, for calling him Father he makes us his children. And if he is our Father then we as his children shall have his honour at heart. Our Lord says, Blessed arc the pure in heart for they shall see God.' Purity of heart means separation, cleansing, from all bodily things, the isolation of the self and in this abstraction the plunging into God and being atoned with him.
David says, Those works are pure and guileless which arc pursued and perfected in the light of the soul ' ; and those are yet more guileless which abide therein in the depths of the spirit and proceed not forth. One God and Father of all.'
The other saying, Friend, come up higher, take the higher seat.' I will make of twain one. Friend, come up higher, draw up,' is the friendly conversation of the soul with God. He says, Friend, draw up, come up higher,' and, answering her : one God and Father of all. A certain philosopher says. Friend- ship resides in the will. But so far as friendship resides in the will it does not unify. Love does not unify ; true, it unites in act but not in essence. It merely says, One God, come up higher.
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draw nigh.' Into the ground of the soul nothing enters but God himself. Even the highest angel, although he is so nigh to God and is endowed so largely with God's love (his works are estab- lished in God in one essence not one operation ; he has in God an immanence, a settled habitation), this angel, strange to say, exalted though he be, is not allowed into the soul. One master lays it down that all creatures individually merit that God himself should work in them. Soul as transcending body is too virgin- exquisite to set her heart on aught save pure Deity himself. But nothing enters there until it has been shorn of all additions. That is why she was answered, one God.'
St Paul says, one God.' One is something more simple than good- ness and truth. Goodness and truth are constants, they are added to (only) in thought ; thinking attributes things to them. There is no addition to the one as proceeding in himself into the Son and into the Holy (ihost. He said, F riend, go up higluir.' A master says. One is the denial of denials. If I say God is good, that is an anirmation. One is tlie denial of denials, t he grave of expecta- tions. What does one mean ? That to which nothing is added. The soul receives Godhead as told forth in her, unadded to, unthought. One is the denial of denials. Every creature makes innate denial ; the one denies it is the othir ; an angel denies being any other creature. But (iod makes the denial of denials ; he is one and denies all other, for th(r( is notliing without God. All creatures are in God ; they are his very Godhead, that is to say, the fullness. He is the Father of all deity. One God, not proceeding, unmoved, unmindful of the Word. By the fact of denying God something -- and by denying God goodness I am not denying God, -- (I say), by denying God something 1 conceive something about him, that he is not ; even this has to go. God is one, he is the negation of negations. According to one master, the angelic nature secretes no power nor work, it has no know- ledge save of God alone. Everything else it ignores. As he says, one God and Father of all.'
Some of the powers of the soul take in from without, as, for example, the eye. Though it lets in but little, rejecting the great bulk, yet it is dependent on and does receive something from outside in the mode of here and now. But intelligence and intellect, paring to the core, seize what is neither here nor now. In her unconditioned state she is right in touch with nature, but she still receives from the senses ; what the senses bring in from outside the intellect uses. Not so the will ; in this respect will ranks above the intellect. Will accepts nothing save in abstract understanding, where there is neither here nor now. God intends to convey what a pure and exalted thing will is. It rises to
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familiar colloquy with God, and God says, Friend, come up higher, honour waits thee.'
The will wills happiness. It has been asked, what is the differ- ence between grace and happiness. Grace, as we are now in this life, and happiness as ours to be hereafter in eternal life, are to one another as the flower to its fruit. When the soul is brimming with grace and nothing is left her, then grace works to perfect all that exists in the soul ; not that it comes to actual work, but by its mere presence in the soul what the soul does grace makes perfect. Grace docs no work but, all-pouring, pours all at once into the soul. The third grace atones the soul with God. Its consumma- tion, its effect, is to bring back the soul to God ; hers, after the blossom, the fruit. Will, as the will to happiness, as the will to be with God and the actual ascent, in this singleness (of heart) God slips into the will, and the single mind seeing God as the truth, God slips into the intellect, llut his entering into the will raises it up. As he says, one God. Friend, come up higher.' One God : God's unity is the crown of God's divinity. God could never bear his one- begotten Son were he not one. The fact of being one determines all he docs crcaturcly and godly. Oneness belongs to God alone ; God's idiosyiu^rasy is oneness ; God must be one God or not be God at all. llivinc riches or wisdom or truth, it is all the same thing in God ; it is not one, it is unity. God has all he has in him ; it is one with him. Theo- logians say that heaven revolves with the object of gathering all things in ; hence its rapid motion. lie said, Friend, come up higher, thou art honoured.' It is the honour and adornment of the soul that God is one. God behaves as though he existed for no purpose but to please the soul ; as though he did adorn himself solely in order to attract the soul. And man desires now one thing now another ; he cultivates now wisdom and now art. If she has nothing of the one she will never rest ; (she will never rest) till she is all the same in God. God is one ; that is the soul's beati- tude, her ornament, her rest. A philosopher says, God orders all things in his operation. The soul is all things, and in all respects the noblest and highest and God pours in all at once ; God is one.
Cl
IN ALL THINGS I SEEK REST Part I
In omnibus requiem quwsivi {Eccles, 24^^). St Augustine says, My soul was created by thee and for thee wherefore she is ever restless till she finds thee. In all created things, which I search
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in understanding, there is no refuge for my soul, but in thee, God, alone. In the love-spring of thy substance are gathered up to one the perfections of all creatures, which in them are scattered and divided.' Were there any single creature with all creaturely perfections both in quality and number then God would not have made more than that one alone, as I have pointed out in my discourse, Whosoever would follow me let him take up his cross.' Now the whole happiness of creatures depends on resting in the sovran good which is the fount of all good things, and hence our Lady Mary says these words about herself wherein she counsels our interior man to cultivate in lowliness the habit of divine repose in which the soul is most of all united, and without it not. She says, In all things have I sought rest for my inner man.'
In this connection mark how the divine esseiu^c carries pent up in itself all creaturely perfection, creaturely existence being the reflection of God's essence. St .John says, Quod factum esty in ijjso vita erat : that which was made, in God was life. Creatures in their pre-existing form in God have been divine life for ever. Hence the opening words of our quotation from the Book of Wisdom, all things,' mean that our Lady sf)ught [)eaee for her inner man iu the eternal good of the divine nature wherein as in a magic mirror creature-nature as a whole is one in God eternally. Referring to the paradigm of all things in God, they being one divinity.
Theologians put three fundamental questions about these pre- existing forms in God, whereto attach some admirable doctrines and stimulating facts. The first question is, whether ideas of all the creatures exist in God eternally or not ? The second question is, whether these ideas arc one or more in number ? The third question is, whether the divine mind has ideas of all the things it knows or does it know at all without ideas ?
To the first question Doctor Thomas answers that, it is necessary to suppose in the divine being ideas of all the creatures. And his argument is this. The three terms, form, idea and semblance are identical in meaning. Now the form, idea or semblance of a thing, a rose for instance, is present in my soul and must be for two reasons. One is, because from the appearance of its mental form I can paint the rose in corporal matter, so there must be an image of the rose-form in my soul. The second reason is, because from the subjective rose-idea I recognise the objective rose although I do not copy it. Just as I can carry in my head the notion of a house I never mean to build. In both these ways [Le. as types and principles of knowledge] ideas exist in God, for with all natural things it is the rule for the natural form or char- acter of the progeny or fruit to exemplify the type belonging to
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its species ; as with mankind, for instance, the generative power of the father's manhood is repeated in the son's born manhood so that a man breeds men, a lion lions and a falcon falcons. The rose grows on a rose-bush not a cabbage-stalk ; fire engenders fire.
And sometimes the idea of the work is in the practical power not as a natural species but theoretically, as the house of wood and stone is designed in the architect's practical mind, who makes the outward house as much like his ideal as he can. Now since God created this whole world (not that all creatures are by natural birth descended from God's nature like the eternal Word of the Father, for in that case all creatures would be God, which no sane mind allows : creature-nature rejects it as an impossible, false thing), therefore God created all creatures by practical understanding of divine nature. So there must be eternally in the divine understanding the pre-existing form or idea to the likeness of which God created this creature and not another whereof God had no pattern in his mind.
The second question is, whether the idea is one or more in number ? To this the Doctor answers that, the ultimate end of the work is ever the real intention of the work's first cause. Now the ultimate end of the world is its good, i.e. the divine ordering of all creatures, as Aristotle says. Hence this ordering of the world must be eternally foreknown and foreordained in God, who is its first cause. Ergo, he has in him the particular ideas appropriate to that order, whence it follows that he must carry in him ideas of individual creatures. For just as no architect can carry in his head the plan of a whole house without the plans of all its details, so there must be in God as many forms as there are natural grades of created things emanating from him ; the rose, for instance, has one special form, the violet another; man has one distinctive type, an angel has another, and so with other things.
The astonishing thing is that this multiplicity of forms should consist with the simplicity of God in whom all essential things arc one. We can explain it thus. The idea of the work exists in the worker's practical mind as an object of his understanding which regards it as expressing his idea to which he forms the material work, and is not in the mind of the worker as a form of under- standing informing his mind and setting up active intellection. The plan of the house in the architect's mind is (something under- stood by him). It is not repugnant to the simplicity of divine understanding to see and understand more than one thing as object. But it would be repugnant to his simple nature if by a plurality of objective forms it were stimulated and reduced to the subjective act of understanding as opposed to the mirror of God's
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essence. Countless ideas exist in God in the sense that he sees and understands them, not in the sense that his intellect sees in them. To resume. God knows his essence perfectly so far as it is knowable both in itself and so far as all creatures in their natural mode are exemplified in divine essence ; and this express image of all creatures in the divine essence is their prototype, their idea. It follows that there are as many types as there are grades of nature to be typified.
With regard to this question of how the countless forms in the divine essence consist with their being the essence of God, they being many in number and the essence of God only one, it may be looked at in this way. We call these ideas the essence of God, not as such but inasmuch as the essence of God is a mirror reflecting all creatures. And since in the impartible essence of God we have the exemplar of all things, which we call their idea, therefore the form is many and the essence only one. Even as in a mirror there are many forms reflected, but an eye placed in the mirror would see all these forms as one object of its vision ; they would not be innate in it nor would they form the eye's intrinsic faculty of active present or passive and potential sight, for in that case the image would be no more than one.
The third question was, whether God has in him ideas of all the things he knows or does he know at all without ideas ? Doctor Thomas answers this as follows : These pre-existing forms are the origin or principle of the creation of all creatures, and in this sense they are types and pertain to practical knowledge. These forms, again, are the principle of all knowledge of creatures and as such they are really essential images of creatures ; wherefore of everything he knows and his conception of it he must have ideas.
This fact prompts the question. How does God know evil, which has no being in itself but is a privation of being ? The answer is this. As I said above, all creaturely existence has its idea in God, but since evil or sin has no being that is aught (as Dionysius says), but deprives good of good or virtuous being, as blindness of eye has no positive existence but it deprives the eye of sight, even so God's mind perceives all sin and evil in the idea of the corresponding good, not in the form of sin ; for instance, he knows lying in the idea of truth.
Consider next how God knows virtue. In the eternal mirror of his works God knows all creaturely perfections both natural and ghostly, perceiving in their pre-existing forms all accidents as substantial being. But accidents are various. Basic character- istics of the abiding nature of their subject God has no ideas of apart from the ideas which are proper to their subject : the whiteness of the daisy, for example, not its whiteness as a separate
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idea. But accidents subsequently added to the abiding nature he knows in particular ideas apart from the idea of any host. Whence it follows that all noble human attributes like acquired virtues and spiritual wisdom, God knows in separate eternal forms reflecting the wisdom and virtue of souls in general.
Moreover, since grace is not natural to creature therefore grace is communicated to the soul in the guise of accident, and by the same token, faith and other godly virtues are inspired super- naturally in the soul, and love and sometimes divine wisdom as with the prophets and apostles. Again, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost are supernaturally instilled into the soul. And spiritual sweetness too is an inspired accident. Wherefore of all the graces in mere creatures God has ideas wherein he knows the contingencies of grace.
In the divine essence there exist then also particular ideas reflecting the certainty or hope and divine charity of the soul, albeit she is but a creature. In their own ideas there exist as well all the gifts of the Holy Ghost, which have an adventitious character. This I affirm because the prime gift of love wherein he gives all gifts, this love he is himself in Person and in essence. And because, again, all the sacred rites of the seven sacraments, wherein the soul is sanctified and initiated into godly life, because all these were instituted to show forth the workings of grace in the soul, therefore God must know all the seven sacraments in eternal pre-existing forms and each in a distinct one. The cathartic virtue of baptism by natural water comes springing out of the eternal formal baptism of the mirror of God's nature. So, too, the primordial perfect conception of that nature survives in marriage, wherein the mutable nature of the father is reborn into the immortal and impersonal nature of the soul of his child, where nature, no longer ridden by the race-instinct governing creatures, is in that sense performing the work of all creation. Marriage is true to its exemplar as long as we preserve it in its natural purity and free from animal intention which is all opposed to its divine ideal. And the same I say about the other sacraments. God then has ideas of every longing, love and godly intuition, whether of sweetness or of inwardness, wherein he feels and knows at once all thy desires when thou dost call on him in prayer ; and in these same ideas the soul of any saint whom we invoke sees all our prayerful longings from the beginning of the world down to the very end in one flash of God's essence, just as an angel sees creatures and their prototype in God all at once in the vision of God, in the dawn, not in the evening light, or else they would not know our longing for them. Here ends the first part of this sermon.
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Part II'
Now it must be remembered that this rest of the inner man in the divine wonder born of vision and divine love, transcends in its perfection and its sweetness any activity of the outward man, and for nine reasons.
The first reason is, because in this passivity of the interior man, which is one of knowing and loving, the highest of the faculties in man are engaged in their noblest and most proper occupation and are thus detached and free from everything temporal and mor- tal, and these powers are knowledge and love. The life of the exterior man, on the other hand, is one of varying sensation. St Gregory says that Rachel, meaning the interior life, signifies a vision of the source, but Leah, the other sister, means the life of the exterior man, for she had weak eyes.
The second reason is, that man's interior wont of love and con- templation is more lasting, though not at the culminating point of actual vision, for the moment of supreme illumination is short- lived, and passes like a flash of lightning. According to St Augus- tine, the common use of love and knowledge lasts longer with the inner man than with the outer.
The third reason is, because man's inner life of rest and spiritual leisure is somewhat like the peace of the divine eternal essence ; for albeit the Father is ever in the act of engendering his Word that does not disturb his rest ; as our Lord says, My Father worketh until now.' The life of outward man, on the other hand, is one of perpetual physical unrest. Mary sat still and Martha kept about the house.
The fourth reason is, that the interior life is more self-sufficient than that of outward man. The inner man needs nothing for his work but the freedom from bodily affairs which comes with detachment of the soul-powers, together with knowledge and love. The freer and less occupied with mortal tilings the better adapted to God is the life of the inner man. But the life of outward man has need of many things which are disturbing : of working and talking and giving and taking and eating and drinking. St Luke tells us how Martha, meaning the outward man, was cum- bered with overmuch serving ; aye, though it be all on God's account, like works of mercy, natheless it entails a deal of trouble.
The fifth reason is, that the interior life is infinitely more enjoyable than that of outward man. As the philosopher says, Intellectual delights are free from drawbacks, but every mortal
^ This is not numbered separately in Pfeiffer's text.
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pleasure has its other side. St Augustine says that while Martha was distraught Mary was in company with her interior man. Hence the comment of one teacher, Mary taxed Martha before the eternal Word Christ Jesus.' Why did not Mary answer ? She did not hear, because she was not at home by herself. Where was she then ? She was with her inner man in the Word whose word she was attending to. For the soul is where she loves rather than where she is giving natural life.
The sixth reason is, because the interior life, apart from know- ledge and apart from love, is desirable in itself. But the outward life is desirable only in so far as it makes for the greater good of the soul. The prophet cries, One thing have I desired of the Lord and that same will I seek : to see God's will and behold his godly habitation.'
The seventh reason is, because the inner life is concerned with things divine and the outer with things human. St Augustine says, Mary heard the Word in the beginning, whereas it was the human word that Martha served.
The eighth reason is, because the inner life is that of the powers most proper to the soul. But the powers used for outward purposes we have in common with the brutes, the senses, namely. David says, Lord thou dost nourish man and beast.' And later on he adds, but I^ord, we men shall sec thy light in the light of thine own self,' that is, in the light of understanding whereby man is distinguished from the brutes.
The ninth reason is given by our Lord himself, who says, Mary has chosen the better part.' St Augustine says, Martha had no bad one ; hers was a good one too, though Mary had the best.' Hers the uses of the inner man, which starting here go on eternally. But the outward life of works of mercy ends where there is no poverty nor woe, that is, in eternity. Now though the inner life is intrinsically best, the outward life is sometimes better, as in cases of bodily necessity ; to feed the hungry, for example, were better than to spend the time in contemplation. According to one teacher, to see a man in any need and fail to help would make me guilty towards him, and St Augustine says I ought to lend him aid. In cases then of real necessity, to use the works of the outward man for the relief of one's own self or neighbour is better than to settle down to the interior man's spiritual idleness of mind and will. -- It is now explained how our Lady rested in the eternal good. Let us too seek rest for the inner man as well as for the outer. So help us God. Amen.
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CII
HONOUR THY FATHER
Hcec dicit dominus : honora patrem tuum etc, {Matt I54). This Latin quotation is taken from the gospel. The words were spoken by our Lord, and the translation runs, Honour thy father and mother.' And another commandment is given by God our Lord,
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods nor his house nor anything that is his.' The third point is that the people went to Moses and said, Do thou speak to us, for we cannot hear God.* The fourth, that God said to Moses, An altar of earth and in earth shalt thou make unto me and all that is offered thereon thou shalt burn away.' The fifth is that Moses went into the cloud and ascending into the mountain there he found God : it was in the darkness that he found the true light.
There is a saying of St Augustine's, Where the lamb sinks there swims the ox and the cow and where the cow swims the elephant runs and forges ahead.' Which is a pretty parable to draw a moral from. The scriptures arc the deep sea, St Augustine says, and the little lamb the humble, simple soul which is able to fathom Holy Writ. By the ox that swims we understand ill- tutored folk : each choosing out of them the things that suit himself. But in the elephant that goes ahead we recognise wise souls searching the scriptures and making progress in them. I am amazed how full the scriptures are withal the masters say they are not to be taken merely as they stand ; the material things in them, they say, must be translated to a higher plane, for which we must have symbols. -- First it reached to the ankles, next it came up to the knee, thirdly it rose to the girdle, and fourthly it covered his head and he was submerged altogether.
Now what does this mean ? St Augustine says, at first the scriptures will amuse and attract the child, and in the end, when he tries to understand them, they make fools of the wise, for none is so simple-minded but can find his level there nor none so wise but when he tries to fathom them will find they are beyond his depth and discover more therein. All the stories and quotations taken from them have another, esoteric, meaning. Our under- standing of them is as totally unlike the thing as it is in itself and as it is in God, as though it did not exist.
To return to our text. Honour thy father and mother,' and in a general sense it does mean father and mother, that we ought to honour them, and all who have spiritual power are to be honoured and preferred as well as the authors of thy temporal weal. Herein we wade, herein do we touch bottom ; but it is precious little we
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get out of it. It is a woman who says, If we ought to honour the authors of our outward good much more are we behoven to magnify the author of it all.' What we have here outwardly in multiplicity is all within and one. Yours to make this likeness like unto the Father. I was thinking this evening that all likeness ends in sameness with the Father. In the second place, thou oughtest to honour thy father, meaning thy heavenly Father, the source of thy being. Who honours the Father ? None but the Son : he alone does him honour. And none honours the Son save only the Father. The Father's whole love, his fondness, his favours, are for the Son and him only. The Father knows nothing at all but the Son. Such delight does he take in his Son that he wants nothing else but to be getting his Son, for he is his exact likeness, the perfect image of his Father.
The teaching of our school is that anything known or born is an image. They say that in begetting his only-begotten Son the Father is producing his own image abiding in himself, in the ground of the image, as it has ever been in him, {formce illius) ix, his immanent form. It is contrary to nature and seems to me irrational, the doctrine that God is known by likeness, by this thing or by that. For he, after all, is neither this nor that, and father is not satisfied till he returns to his first nature, to the innermost, to the ground and core of fatherhood, where he has been for ever in himself, in his father-nature : to where he enjoys him- self in the Father as the Father does himself in the one alone. Here wood, stone, grass-blades, all things are the same. This is the best of all, and I have fooled myself therein. All the natural powers being gathered to a head are plunged into the Father- nature, so that they are one, one Son, transcending all the rest and subsisting alone in the paternal nature, or if not the one they are at least the image of the one. This nature, being of God, seeks not what is outside her, nay, this nature, existing in itself, has naught to do with ornament : nature which is of God seeks none other than God's likeness.
I was thinking this evening that a likeness is an outwork (preamble). I cannot see a thing unless it has some likeness, some relation to me, neither can I know a thing excepting it is like me. God has all things hidden in himself ; not this and that distinct but one in the same nature. The eye is coloured and also receives colour, the ear not. The ear senses tone and the tongue has taste. It is a case of like to like. The form of the soul and God's image have the same nature : we being sons. If I had neither eyes nor ears still I might have being. Who robs me of my eyes robs me not therefore of my being nor yet of my life, for my life is seated in the heart. A blow aimed at my eye I parry by a lifting of the
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hand. A blow at my heart I should stop with any portion of my body. But if someone attempted to cut off my head I should hit out straight from the shoulder in order to preserve my life and being.
I am fond of saying, You must break the outside to let out the inside : to get at the kernel means breaking the shell. Even so to find nature herself all her likenesses have to be shattered and the further in the nearer the actual thing. On coming to one, where it is all one, she is the same. Who honours God ? He who is ever seeking God's glory.
Many years ago I was not ; not long after that my father and my mother eating bread and meat and the vegetables growing in the garden, I became a man. In this my father and my mother were unable to assist, but God made my body without aid and created my soul after the supreme. Thus I became possessed of life {possecli me). This grain of rye has it in its nature to develop into wheat, and it never rests until it has that nature. This corn seed has it in its nature to be all things and pays the penalty of death in order to be all things. And this metal, copper, has it in its nature to be gold, and it will never rest till it has gotten that same nature. Aye, this wood has in its nature the power of turning into stone ; I say more than that : it may indeed become all things if put into the fire and allowed to burn away and be transmuted to the firc-nature ; then same comes to same and has eternally one being. I trow that wood and stone and bone and all the grasses have collectively one being in the first nature. And if so with this nature then how about the nature which is so intrinsically pure that it seeks not either this or that but transcending all the others is simply making for its primitive perfection ?
I was thinking this evening, there arc many heavens. There are some incredulous who will not believe that this bread upon the altar may be changed, that God can do it. (How unworthy, to deny that God is capable of this.) If God has given to nature the power to be all things, how much easier to him must be the changing to his body of this altar bread. If this frail nature from a drop of blood can contrive a man, how much more possible for God to make his body from a bit of bread. Who honours God ? He who is ever seeking God's glory. This meaning is more obvious albeit the former is the better one.
The fourth point (is), they stood afar off and said unto Moses : Moses speak thou to us for we cannot hear God.' They were standing at a distance, that is the reason they could not hear God,
Moses went into the cloud and ascended into the mountain and there he beheld the divine light.' We see this light best in
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the dark : in suffering and travail this light is nearest to us, Let God do his best or his worst he is bound to give himself to us whether in travail or distress. There was once a pious dame with many sons, whom they sought to slay. Smiling she said, * Grieve not, be of good cheer and remember your heavenly Father, for from me ye have gotten nothing whatsoever.* As though to say, Ye have your being straight from God. This applies to us. Our Lord said, Thy darkness {ix. thy suffering) shall be turned into bright light.' But I must not love nor covet it. It was said by a master in another place, The mysterious darkness of the invisible light of the eternal Deity is unknown and never shall be known.* And the light of the eternal Father has ever ^been shining in this darkness and the darkness comprehends not the light. May we arrive at this eternal light. So help us God. Amen.
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OUT OF THE MOUTH OF THE MOST HIGH
Ex oro altissimi prodivi (EccL 24^). These words, which I have quoted in Latin, we may speak in the Person of the eternal Word. He says, I proceeded forth out of the mouth of the Most High.' This is the exalted source which uttered from the Father's heart the eternal Word which took on human nature in our Lady's womb. Not of this carnal birth am I going to tell, for much is told you of it. It is on the eternal birth that I propose to speak, and I will broach the subject by answering two questions.
The first one is. Whether the eternal Word can be called the perfect Word seeing it is still in the throes of birth ? -- Yes, for the eternal Word is gotten in the essential light and abides therein, untold to anything outside it, and is withal infallibly uttered by the Father. Hence it may well be called the perfect Word.
The second question is. Whether our intelligence can at all conceive the perfect Word ? for it is proper to every under- standing that it should understand. Is it not the same as our understanding in itself? -- I say no, because our word is gotten in a fitful light. Our understanding is a changing thing, so it cannot conceive a perfect word. The word you hear from me is not infallible, it is a sign of the Word within me.
Now mark the way of the eternal birth. The Personal under- standing as confined to its unity of nature is one with the under- standing whereby the Father understands himself in his char- acteristic nature. Were this not the case there would be two intelligible essences. But there are not : there is but one intelli- gible essence wherein the Father sees himself in his characteristic
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nature. The object of his thought is the eternal Word. Where this is confined to the natural understanding of the Father it is none other than the Father- nature. Where this same Word is directed to itself there is ever distinction of Person and withal one simple essence divine in nature. Here I will put four questions the better for you to understand the mode of the eternal birth, though, let me say at once, that this is inconceivable to the multi- tudinous mind. However, I will tell you as much as it is possible for your minds to grasp.
The first question is, Why is the Person of the Son called born and the Person of the Father not ? The answer is, that it is the personal understanding of the Father wherewith he understands himself in his characteristic nature, but the product of this con- ception is the eternal Word. Hence the eternal Word is said to be begotten and the Person of the Father not. -- Question two : Is the work of the eternal birth wrought by his personal power or by his natural power ? Some theologians say it is due to the personal power of the Father since it is proper to all begotten things to receive the same nature they arc gotten by. Where saw ye the father that imparted not his own nature to his son ? So runs the argument for the eternal birth being due to personal power. This is not my view. Where the personal understanding keeps to its unity of nature there is this nature Person. Now the eternal Word originates in the essential thought wherein the Father understands himself in his characteristic nature. It follows that the work of the eternal birth must be due to his natural power, for if the eternal Word sprang from the personal understanding of the Father then this eternal Word would be the cause of its own self, for this conception is the Word.
The third question is. Where does the Father-nature have maternal names ? Where it does maternal work. Where personal understanding keeps to its unity of nature and has intercourse therewith, there the Father-nature has maternal names and is doing mother's work, for it is exclusively a mother's work to receive the seed of the eternal Word. In essential thought the mother- nature has paternal names and docs paternal work.
The fourth question is. Whether this work is essential or does the Father play a casual part therein ? I say, no. If he stopped a single instant he would negate himself. For the eternal Word is the image of the Father as he conceives himself in his character of Person, with the added dignity which the eternal Word receives in its own Person, all the perfection which the Father has and all the omnipotence peculiar to his nature. The heretical doctor Arius observes concerning this ; It appears to me to be untrue that the eternal Word receives all the perfection that the Father
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has and all the omnipotence peculiar to his nature, for it cannot do what the Father does ; he cannot beget another Son. But as St Augustine says, That he does not beget another Son is not due to impotence, but it behoves him not to. A statement which some doctors misconstrue, giving to understand that the Son an he would could beget another Son. Which is erroneous, for in that case the Person of the Son would be the Person of the Father. The reason for not doing it is this. Each Person receives the same nature albeit variously : the Father as fatherhood, the Son as sonship and the Holy Ghost as the common product of them both. Here the Persons are an hypostasis of the nature, each Person receiving the one nature all at once as essence. Where (the Word) receives its dignity the three shine with one light, they having this light as their common being. The dignity the eternal Word receives by birth is that of being equal with the Father, for it springs from the essential conception of the Father. As con- fined to this conception it is none other than divine nature ; in its aspect of the Word it is distinct in Person and withal in nature one impartible essence.
Here arises the question. How can the eternal Word be at once discrete and one simple essence divine in nature ? The best answer theologians have to this is that it is due to the imparti- bility and simplicity of that nature. The entire content of divine nature is one impartible essence which operates by divine nature. May we attain this oneness so far as it is possible to us. So help us God. Amen.
CIV
SUFFERING
I say that next to God there is no nobler thing than suffering. Were there anything more noble than suffering the heavenly Father would have given it to his Son Jesus Christ, in exemplary fashion, for all things. We find in Christ, as regards his manhood, nothing so much as suffering. Suffering was with him at his birth, and it never left him while he was here on earth. I say, moreover, that had Christ been a man upon this earth without his deity, yet would he have been noble beyond all human ken by reason of his suffering; for granting that suffering is noble, he who has most suffering is the noblest. But no human suffering was equal to Christ's passion. And he is the more noble in proportion to it. Again I hold, if anything were nobler than suffering, God would have saved mankind therewith, for we might well accuse him of being unfriendly to his Son if he knew of something superior to suffering. And I say, were not suffering
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always noble, the heavenly Father would have left his Son some few hours on earth that were free from suffering. But we do not find that Christ on earth spent one single hour without suffering. Suffering then must be superior to all else. I ween that our Lady, God's mother, rather than that she should be deprived of the reward attached to the least instant of her suffering at sight of her child's martyrdom, would choose to have remained here upon earth and not behold God till the judgment day, provided that would win back this reward. So great the guerdon won in that short hour.
I declare, all the humility and virtue we attribute to our Lady brought her no such great reward or love of God as the least of all the sufferings that God sent her. I say that if our Lady, God's mother, and suffering stood together in the street and with our Lady all her earned reward for chastity, humility and her other virtues except suffering : to our Lady suffering would appear as lovely as sunshine in a burrow, for in that case she would be out- side God. And again, I say : suppose a man committed a sin beyond all sins, it might involve a suffering wherein by virtuous conduct he could cancel all his sin and win greater merit in God's eyes than any of his saints. Further, I maintain, no man apart from God has ever been so holy or so good as to deserve the least nobility such as the smallest suffering would give. Given one man endowed with the collective humility and virtues of all the people who have lived since God created the first man, he, for all his virtues, would not merit the reward a man wins by a little suffering. I tell you, right suffering is the mother of all virtues, for right suffering so subdues the heart, it cannot rise to pride but perforce is lowly. And suffering makes for chastity ; for in right suffering vice is burnt away. And to one who has mastered all the virtues, suffering is the mother of virtue as a whole. Noth- ing makes a man so like God as suffering. For he who has least vices is the most like God. But nothing is like suffering for killing a man's vices. Ergo, it makes man Godlike. Finally I say, not all the theologists together could describe what profit, what glory lies in suffering. Suffering alone is sufficient prepara- tion for God's dwelling in man's heart. God dwells only with the sinless. But suffering exorcises sin. Hence God is always with a man in suffering ; as he himself declared by the mouth of the prophet, Whosoever is sorrowful, I will myself be with him.'
[Peradventure thou wilt say, If it be a fact that suffering is so noble and profits one so much, why are not the Jews and heathens saved ? I see and hear a great deal of their sufferings, for as captives they are ever subject to the Christians and that
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causes them much suffering.' I answer. Baptism is the basis of the welfare, the salvation, of mankind. In the absence of it, virtues and good works are not rewarded with eternal grace. And since the Jews are not baptized, they have no guerdon of eternal grace, but are accursed on earth as well as in the other world.] ^ But thou mayst object, Why is it that all Christians are not saved ; they are all God's, and there is nobody on earth but is bound to suffer in some fashion ? My answer is, There are two kinds of sufferers. Some, when suffering befalls, take it not as if it came from God ; they resist it to the utmost, saying in their hearts. What have I done to God that he should visit me with such misfortune ? and are moved to tears. Not that in this thought they are to blame, but in other cases they chide God vehemently, whereas God sends the suffering to rid them of their sins and by not accepting it in the proper spirit they make it useless to them ; and to such as these there is no reward for suffering though they are always having it ; they scorn God's gift and thrust it from them. And they chase away God too, albeit they fain would have him. On the other hand, some people take it as from God, when their suffering comes, and send it back to God. They take it from God, saying in their hearts ; God, T accept this suffering from no one else but thee, for my sins have thoroughly deserved it. And they send their suffering back to God, saying in their hearts. Lord God, I willingly contribute all the suffering thou hast suffered from the hour of thy birth down to the very end ; for thou wert a pure and sinless soul, yet wert in great affliction ; it is more fit that I should be afflicted, I who am a man in sin. Accepting suffering thus, a man will merit the eternal kingdom. God help us to attain it. Amen.
^ This is probably a gloss which has become incorporated in the text.
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