Sermons and Treatises of Meister Eckhart

60. ‘ What is an angel ? ’ — Angel like soul is a perpetual nature. The soul has no parts, this and that. Wherever she turns she turns as a whole. 61. ‘ What is essential virtue ? ’ — In essential virtue man is in a state of having no active heart’s desire ; he knows what is right and is able to live up to his lights in the power of his primitive nobility. 62. ‘ What is the sign of eternal life ? ’ — Absence of hate is a sign of eternal light. So far as we fail in love towards all mankind, we never really have it. 63. ‘ Pray Sir, when are we discriminating ? ’ — When we know one thing from another. — ‘ And when are we above discrimination ? ’ — When we know all in all then we transcend discrimination. 64. ‘ What does St Paul mean when he speaks of “ redeeming the time because the days are evil ” ? ’ — He calls the days evil referring to the changeableness of time. He says, redeeming the time — ‘ When is time redeemed ? ’ — Let me tell you. To do a good work is not to redeem time but to pawn it. It is a good work to rest from sin and exercise some virtue. To do better work is not redeeming time. He who perfects by practice does better. To do the best of all, that does redeem the time. It is best of all to rest in the embrace of God. — ‘ But is that redeeming the time ? ’ — To be sure it is. Time is not redeemed in time. The redemption of time is the timeless spirit’s atonement above time.

65. ‘ Will you expound that sentence in St John’s epistle, “ Blessed are the dead that die in God ? ” When do we die in God ? ’ — When everything is dead that intervenes between ourselves and God. — ‘ Well then, will you tell me what is the joy of spirits in eternity : arc they always finding something new in God ? ’ — Verily Psay, if they did not find it ever new there would be an end to eternity. Were there aught in Gk)d exhaustible by creature, eternity would end and heaven cease to be. 66. ‘ Sir, what is true wisdom ? ’ — True wisdom, so says one philosopher, means the knowledge of all created things and the creator who has made them. 67. According to St Paul, the closest bond of love a man can have is harmony of will. Our Lord in his love made eternal provision for all human suffering when his Son died upon the cross. 68. He follows hardest on the heels of God who leaves all temporal things behind and clings to the eternal. 69. Joy is the reward of virtue, says one of the saints. — ‘ Tell me, when does a man do his duty by creatures ? ’ — ^When he knows them and leaves tjiiem.

70. A saint says. So long as we will and will not our free will is not captive to God. If any man does as he should God will do what that man would. 71, ‘ Sir, how would you define grace ? • — I define grace as him whom no joy nor pleasure can gladden, no pain nor adversity sadden. 72. The most successful prayers are the willing learners from creature or the spoken word. 78 . ‘ When does God work in man unhindered ? ’ — When he takes good and ill from God with the same thankfulness. — ‘ But, with one and the same thankfulness or each with thankfulness ? ’ — ^They must be received with the same thankfulness. Time is always true to its own nature but were soul and body displaced into eternity motion would be lost. The less moveable thou art the more thou art established in eternity. 74. ‘ Sir, when is virtue present in a man ? ’ — There is virtue in the soul just as memory and knowledge and love are in the soul, for they are spiritual in their substance. There is virtue in the soul and it is present in a man as long as it is not cast out in lawless utterances.

75. ‘ Will you tell me. Sir, why we are sometimes quite unmoved in suffering whereas at other limes we hail it with delight and then again it readily affects us ? ’ — Supposing a man is by himself with his senses indrawn from the multiplicity of things and recollected to himself, then his soul will be unmoved inasmuch as God is present in her. But if his senses are broadcast upon things and more or less unstable on those things, he will be readily affected. Then let him beware of lawless utterance ; he must recollect himself and in deep humility just appeal lovingly to God : ‘ Lord thou knowest I can do naught without thee,’ and quick as thought thou art back in God. ^ 76. ‘ Pray Sir, is one quite detached w^hen one gives no consent to sin and bitter as it was to part from things it were just as bitter to return to them ? ’ — Yes, surely. 77. ‘ Is eternal light vouchsafed to anyone who falls short ? ’-rOh yes ! It was to St Paul. 78. ‘Is no holy soul beatified that has shortcomings ? ’ — Yes, thousands if one reckoned them. — ‘ But no saint can be sanctified unless he has received eternal light ? ’ — Yes, numbers.

79. ‘ What do you mean, Sir, when you talk of divine light and eternal light, are they the same or is there a difference ? Do they consist in the same thing ? — They are not the same. By one light we know, by another we can and by a third one we do. Now to distinguish between them. To perceive divine truth and answer thereto, that I call divine light. I say it is God’s light because it is Godlike. It is not God himself ; it may be given by an angel or a saint. Eternal light, again, I define to be the perfect image of the impartible nature of God and of it St Paul says, the third heaven and its light are not immediately present to us here in this body ; we have to return to our true selves. Ah, woe is me, how wearisome my exile 1 It is impartible light when the soul departing from the body flies straight back to God into whose light she is absorbed. Beyond this her perception does not go. And I mean by impartible light the vision of God with nothing between : no creaturely hindrance, no time, no looking back : in eternity. — St John had eternal light ; he knew the whole truth and attained to it. All things were possible to him, but though not guilty of any mortal sin he was still liable to its suggestion. That no man can escape.

80. ‘ What is the sign of eternal light ? ’ — It is a sure sign when everything not God is irksome and virtue has become a second nature. 81. Talkativeness or over-attention to our daily wants is fatal to friendly intercourse with God. If wc would escape the purgatorial fires we must set a watch on all our ways, especially our words. Different is the cleansing fire of the perfeetion of God and the love of the soul, between them imperfections are consumed away. 82. Good people’s food is clear consciousness and intercourse with holy souls and constant reception of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. Neither the devil nor yet any creature ever gave an appetite for the body of our Lord Jesus Christ ; this comes from God alone, you may be sure. 84. ‘ Tell me. Sir, do we find in holy writ mention of any rapture besides that of St Paul ? ’ — No. — ‘ But they tell me three are to he found ; Adam was caught up while he was asleep and St John when he was resting on the bosom of our Lord and St Paul when he was felled to earth ; they each saw God without means, without any image or likeness.’ — Verily, I say, before the death of our Lord Jesus Christ no man had ever seen God in his God-nature except that golden temple our Lady Mary at the moment when our Lady conceived divine and human nature ; then she received eternal light and saw God in his simple nature, but before that no creature. — ‘ Then what was Adam’s rapture and St John’s ? ’ — When God created Adam his body was made painless like his soul. You could have hewn him in his sleep and it would not have hurt him for the lower powers of his soul were obedient to her higher ones and she was subject to the law of her perfect nature and unhindered by gross body and this was his by right of nature. Had he stayed at the summit of his soul he would have kept her in her maker. "He knew God had created him and that divine nature "was destined to unite with human nature and he had discriminate knowledge of all creatures, each in its natural perfection just as God had made them and he was carried away by enjoyment

of the sight. You must know that he was sleeping like any other man. — * Then what was the rapture of St John ? * — ^He was resting. Rest so called from its likeness to the abstraction of our Lord Jesus Christ and St John’s from its likeness to them both ; a gentle sinking into dispassion, that is what his rapture was. 85. ‘ Is a man liable to fall once he has had eternal light ? ’ — I say, No. If Adam had seen God he would not have fallen and the archangel Lucifer, if he had seen God in his impartible essence would not have fallen. — ‘ I have heard tell that in ecstasy there is no interference with free will. Is that really so ? ’ — It neither strengthens nor weakens the free will. Verily I say, anyone who holds that a man can fall after eternal light, though he commit no greater sin than St Agnes did, shall die infiillibly for it is lieresy and mortal sin to have this belief. That soul can no more fall than St Peter could. The heavenly Father might as well forsake his Son as the soul wherein he has given his Son birth. If the Father ends the Son ends ; if the Son ends eternity ends ; if eternity ends the soul ends.

86. ‘ Sir, when you speak of God’s birth, of the Father begetting his Son in the soul, is this birth the same as the rapture of St Paul and what happened at Pentecost to the disciples or are these different things ? ’ — They are exa(‘tly the same. — ‘ Then when you talk of eternal light do you mean God’s birth in the soul or is that something else ? ’ — I mean the same thing ; they are identical. But one thing I do say. Birth is the better term and nearer to the truth though in reality there is no difference. I will tell you why. An angel by nature is eternal light ; the sun is eternal light ; the stars are eternal light. Eternal light is ascribed to things that are not changed by time ; and since we can attribute eternal light to creatures so we may to man in an imperfect sense. But birth applies to the heavenly Father alone, this birth in eternity. God catches the soul all at once to himself and his birth is gottetl therein. There it is to him well-nigh the same as the Son in the Trinity. I say, well-nigh, for it is there by grace and the Son by nature. — ‘ Suppose a man has eternal light, is he prone to temporal sin ? ’ — It was after Pentecost that Peter sinned.

90. ‘ Can a man make certain of having nothing more to overcome ? ’ — St Paul had things to overcome after he was caught up. And our Lord Jesus Christ had to overcome. Though his soul and body were united with the Godhead and the Godhead is impassible, yet his future pains were present with him, racking all his soul-powers. 91. ‘ When the soul prepares for God by chasing away thoughts and discarding all the things she has relied on and endeavours to get rid of every means but without success, tell me. Sir, what ought she to do next ? ’ — When the images from outside are all gone let her abase herself and lovingly entreat of him somewhat that she still lacks. — ‘ But if she refuses to desire or entreat, being minded to remain quite simple ? * — Then let her simply fix her mind on God with vehement longing. — ‘ But surely, Sir, longing is a means and she wants to be quite simple and direct : without any images and free from this and that, with not a word or prayer to come between ? ’ — I say^it is impossible in the unglorified body ; she ought not to expect it. — ‘ If that is the case, Sir, then it seems to me her watchword ought to be refusal — of objective things and subjective images — and that is her best way.’ — There is no doubt of it ; she can do no more. When a soul like this is rapt above herself int6 naked knowledge of naught it is God who does it at his own good pleasure, absolutely freely, without any help of hers.

92. ‘ Sir, can we realize all our minds can grasp ? ’ — No. I can conceive of things I cannot be : the unglorified body is not so agile as the mind. 93. ‘ What is a reasonable man ? ’ — One who is controlled in joy and sorrow, him I call a reasonable man. — ‘ How would you define prayer ? ’ — St Augustine says, prayer is the soul’s detachment from things and attachment to God. — ‘ Tell me. Sir, can we be rid of things at once without any trouble ? ’ — No, it is always accompanied with pain : that indicates the pull of something higher. If it comes without pain it is no matter for rejoicing. True, St Paul lost things all at once, but afterwards he had to conquer them in detail. Conquests made by suffering are lasting. 94. What God has by nature in unity is not denied to any rational ^creature, by grace, in his individuality. Rejoicing and sorrowing, that is nature. We must expect nature in people. 95. ‘ Sir, are we punished for faults ? ’ — We are punished for sins and hindered by faults. — ‘ But you said that when a man has eternal light he never has anything between and now you say he is prone to sin. Do such people sin and is sin punished w4th fire ? You certainly did say that they have nothing between. How are these two facts to be reconciled ? How is the sin wiped out ? ’ — ^By the perfect love of the creator to his creature and the creature to his creator : the sin lies between them and in the fire of their love sin burns away.

96. ‘ Those to whom eternal light has come, do they afterwards remain in a state of love and vision ? I am wondering, being established in the one, where there is naught but one, how they manage to be one and other, for there is that in me, when spirit conceives unity, that passes all distinction. Arc grace and vision and light all the same ? ’ — No, not by any means. Take an illustration. The stars are put out by the sun and in the same way grace and vision fade when eternal light is given. The highest of the angels draws a form from God and on assuming it, adapts it further to himself and informs therewith the middle ones who pass it on to those below and the lowest give it to the soul and the fiend can copy it. So they may be deceived. But the soul in whom the heavenly Father speaks his Word does not receive from the lower angels : what the highest of the angels draws from God he pours into this soul without the intervention of the rest. Verily I say, seldom or never do people get through angels apparitions of such things as are given in time and temporalities.

97. ‘ What is the difference between nature and spirit ? ’ — I call that spirit whereby we are aware what we ought to have and what to leave whether we would or no. Spirit makes us do it, willy-nilly. Not to do it because we do not want to would be nature. 98. ‘ When is nature uppermost ? ’ — When we have at heart something we ought to get rid of and will not. 99. ‘ How would you distinguish, Sir, between sin, fault and infirmity ? ’ — It is sin to cleave with desire to anything that does not make for God. By a fault I mean any accidental falling short of God. And infirmity may be defined as not having the mind fixed on God all the time. 100. ‘ O thou fathomless Truth,’ cries St Paul, ‘ thy ways are past finding out ! ’ When he cries O, he is thinking of the hidden hoard of the divine nature. — ‘ What hoard ? ’ — The wisdom of God. Angels’ and souls’ desire is appeased by nothing but the best. The wisdom of God is savoured when all creatures point (us) towards the best. The other hoard is God’s art. Art amounts, in^temporal things, to singling out the best. True art loses this altogether and abides in the ground of them all. St Paul was caught up above this wonder and above this O and saw the very thing he is seeing to this day, the bond of life meanwhile persisting in his body as form does in its matter. His higher self received naked eternal light ; body was no hindrance, soul received from God.

101. ‘ When is the soul above O ? ’ — When she gets the simple impression of divine form, of the image which is the Son himself for so the Father is always letting down the apex of the higher world into the one below. — Anyone on earth may be deceived excepting him in whom the Father bears his Son. 102. ‘ What is the sign of the eternal birth ? ’ — While a man is subject to sensible affection he has no conception of eternal truth. When he does conceive the eternal truth no creature can comfort or discomfit him. The time when Paul was felled to earth he heard a voice which said to him, ‘ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ? ’ He said, ‘ Who art thou Lord ? ’ — " I am Jesus of Nazareth.’ The voice was not God : God was speaking through an angel. God can no more lose his nature than utter his eternal Word in sound or image. God said through an angel, I am Jesus of Nazareth. He said /, referring to the impartible I of divine nature. The shows distinction between the Father and the Son. Jesus of Nazareth suggests the union of divine and human nature.

108. St James says, ‘ With the Father of lights is no turning.’ There arc three kinds of turning. One of nature, another of will and a third of power. I speak of the first. Turning means changing from one thing to another, becoming more or less, going to and fro. One philosopher says, ‘ Things are all fighting their way back to naught.’ If God withdrew support things would all relapse into primeval chaos. The philosopher says, all created things are fluent. That is fluent which is not stationary in itself. If creature could touch bottom heaven would end and creature would be God. Natural change there is none with the Father of lights. Change is due to a longing for rest. If there were rest in him divine nature would pass away and heaven be at an end. He does not alter. What he has like nature is generation. If generation stopped things would all go back to their primeval nothingness. But of what avail are long discussions of God’s nature if we are not aware of his image in us ? 104. ‘ Pray Sir, what makes the soul unchangeable ? ’ — Stability of soul depends upon three things. First on her having her body well- controlled : what the soul wills, that her body must do without question. If Adam had preserved his natural perfection he could have done whatever he desired and creatures would all have beein obedient to him. But when he fell both his own body and all creatures left off obeying him : they were no longer true to him who was untrue to God. — ^The second thing is to have no attachment to or enjoyment in anything inferior to God. — Thirdly, no quarter must be given to the mortal nature. If Adam had stood firm he would not have become mortal. Adam as God made him on the first day would have survived until the day of judgment. St Paul declares, ‘ From the moment God called me not once have I looked back.’ If Adam had seen God in himself he could not have fallen. He knew that God had made him and what he made -hini^for and this he viewed with carnal pleasure. It was this and nothing else that carried him away.

105. When our Lord Jesus Christ was about to depart to heaven to his Father his disciples were with him at the place of his ascension, distraught and unable to speak or pay attention, so much were they engrossed with the bodily presence of our Lord. And while they stood staring up at the sky there came an angel saying, ‘ Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye here gazing up into heaven ? ’ Why so absorbed in that which, after all, cannot remain with you for ever ? Philosophers tell us that creature does not stay, it is flowing all the time back into its source. If the disciples had been proof to sweetness not one of them would have been distraught. For this the angel chid them saying, ‘ Why stand ye here ? ’ as though to say, why occupy your minds so much with the beloved bodily form of our Lord Jesus Christ ? Ye only waste yourselves on temporal things which, after all, are impermanent. ‘ Why stand ye gazing up into heaven ? ’ God is the form of the soul, the soul’s soul. When spirit is caught up above all images, into the eternal truth, then the soul stops and sees into heaven. It is man’s highest happiness that she cannot rest until, being rid of images, she is reflected back into the naught where she has been eternally without herself. Soul becomes Son when she is thus transported over all into the open where God is ; then soul draws out of God and when she is as we have said she is standing at the door. She loses her own nature drinking out of God, on the threshold of gnosis, where nothing enters into her except the eternal. Eternal rest, then, is not given her except by him.

106. Aristotle says, everything partial is painful ; the most united is most painful when divided. 107. Three kinds of people receive God. The first receive him for pleasure. God is sweet to them in anticipation so they entertain him selfishly and to their cost, with little genuine profit. The second receive him of necessity, in discarding sins, for without God they have no power to do it. The third lose desire and desiring naught receive him wisely and with real benefit. The benefit is this ; they recognise each fault with rue and in true penitence contrive that he shall find in us the reflection of what we seek in him ; thus getting him to dwell in us as we do in him we attain to angelic life : the upward flight, the simple glance into God’s nature, and at each ending of the act the steady reflection of God so that in multitudinous things like bodily necessity, she is not debarred from the eternal but in multiplicity is still united. 108. ‘ Pray Sir, is it possible for mere creature to partake of God’s nature ? ’ — No, for as St Augustine argues, God is remote from matter and that which has no matter has no parts and is indivisible. Creature can receive no part of God’s nature because God is impartible by nature. — ‘ I do not mean part. Sir, in the sense of fragment ; I mean part in the sense of community of spirit with spirit in divine nature. That was my idea in asking.’ — You must make allowance for the difference in creatures. One is united, another separated. See how one is united. The will of the Father and the obedience of the Son seized, with the power of their common Spirit, in the bare chamber of the virgin heart of

their chosen vessel Mary, her most pure blood-stream and therefrom, with all his members, wrought one faultless man and poured therein a soul complete with powers and this by the power of the Godhead. When, out of chaos (having brooded there for aye) a shining spiritual soul emerged, straightway all imperfection was removed and by the Spirit itself this soul was admitted to the rank of spirit and, sponsored by the soul, the body was received as well. Such is the mode of union of united creatures. — ‘ And how do separated creatures participate God’s nature ? ’ — St Peter says that creatures according to their natures partake of God in three ways ; as being, as life and as grace. As being, creatures all without exception. As life, receptive creatures, from angels and men downwards. Mark how the Father by his generative power created by the propagation of his Word. From his interior Word burst forth their common mind, by nature the one angel of all creatures. Him he commanded to pour his mobile power into the sun and from the solar energy there showered upon earth, increased and multiplied, trees, beasts and all mankind. As regards the soul, the heavenly Father draws up with his power the lower powers of the soul ; the Son lights up the middle ones and the Holy Ghost impinging on the sharpness of her mind, flashes it back to the absolute zero of the Tri-unity. I say to zero ; to the boundary line between united and separated creatures. Christ namely, as he was in his first light, bereft of personality which the middle Person of the Trinity preserves therein, where in essential wisdom he is transfixed, confused with God’s allperfection. Further, the soul gets light from God’s essential revelation. This is her aught and his causeless incomprehensibility. There her aught abides, graven in a point, mounted in the splendour of his eternal love-nature. In this sense mere creature receives and partakes of the divine nature.

109. ‘ When do we lose God altogether ? ’ — How do you mean, lose ? What is your idea in asking this ? — ‘ I mean lose in the sense of knowing God one without other : free from matter and form and exempt from creatures, which are matter and form, one and other. So that creature conveys to her not one whit of God for all they say that God is in all creatures. How is this loss to be accounted for ? ’ — I answer : Three sorts of people are deprived of God. One in material creatures, another in spiritual substances, the third above creature and below God. In the first case there is loss in creatures of gross material nature. This happens when, her senses being sated ‘with their objective forms, she escapes from their separateness to their perfect whole. Thus she loses the dense part of their nature and there remains to her only the sweetness of their innate nobility. In the second case, since no caused thing is superior to its cause and the aforesaid sweetness is derived from creatures whereas the soul proceeds from God, like though not of his same nature, therefore the soul being sated, not stinted, with this sweetness will acquire a fresh thirst, for ineffable sweetness, a longing for her first felicity. This finally detaches her from material nature and drives her to pure knowledge of herself and spiritual substances in general. Now she seeks delight in the enjoyments of her kind but finds it not for creatures are all dry and like no better than its like : abiding actuality is the only thing to quench her parching thirst. — In the third case she loses her activity. It happens thus. All spiritual substances act instantaneously though not at any instant of time. Losing instantaneously her materiality she loses each and every use of her separated nature. The thirst is followed by the loss of all variable activities and approach to the outskirts of eternity. Here she awaits the love-light wherein she secs the Trinity. This waiting is personified in Mary, Mary standing without at the sepulchre, waiting in her outward helplessness the embrace of the eternal nature. She saw two angels one at the feet and another at the head. Sight is light-perception. The angel at the head stands for the omnipotence of the majesty of God ; the one at the feet, for his subtile nature. They asked her, ‘ Whom dost thou seek ? ’ For the incomprehensibility of God and her passionate desirenature would form no satisfying union. Tlie question is one of incapacity for his incomprehensible nature ; she wants to embrace the whole extent of him and is not able to. She said, ‘ Jesus of Nazareth ! ’ He is the keeper in this solitude. Turning, she sees him standing in the likeness of a gardener : in the in-graven nature of the Person imaged in the ground of unity. He questionfid her,

‘ Whom seckest thou ? ’ This is the blinding transcendental light, the glory in the midst of the Trinity, which eclipses her own dim understanding and the aforesaid light. ‘ If thou hast borne him hence, tell me, ’ she says. She has lost her wits in the overwhelming light of the immediate truth. He says, ‘ Mary ! ’ using her own name. When the Father, departing from his essential personality, begets out of himself in otherness of Person his Word, the perfect reproduction of himself, he grasps with his paternal hand his impartible, beatific nature and harking back in spirit to himself is with himself as Son well-nigh in otherness. This is her name of whose child David cries, ‘ Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee.’ She would have touched him. Now behold and marvel at her love of God ! Not satisfied with rising beyond all creaturely conception she desires to sink into the undifferentiated oneness of the essence of the Three, of Gk)d with God, nature with nature, ftnd lose the creature-nature that is hers e’en though that would not be for her own highest happiness. For in oneness she would lose her knowledge, her love and her enjoyment, in other words, the actual goal of creatures. Hence his warning, ‘ Touch me not ! ’ for this touching means the refunding into God of separated natures, whereas it is to creatures full of love and feeling that the consciousness of unbroken oneness brings supreme felicity. If she runs into God or God runs into her, either way hers is the loss because of the immensity of his essential nature and the insignificance of her creaturchood. As a dewdrop to the ocean are all creatures as compared with their creator. He bids her ‘ Go to Galilee to my disciples and tell them of my resurrection ; there they shall see me as I said.’ Truly a bitter blow ! She, who was not satisfied with God in the likeness of the second Person, who wanted to merge into his oneness, and Jesus bids her go to Galilee to bring word of his presence to mere creatures : her, who was impatient of the universal Word in eternal unity ! She obeys him and goes thither. To Galilee, submissive to Jesus. Galilee means crossing (or transition). There is no temporal life but has to yield to physical necessity. Her watchword then must be, ‘ I no longer live but Christ liveth in me.’ She came to Jesus’ brethren who are three. Uninterrupted union ; perfect correspondence with the mirror of eternity, without any discrepancy whatever ; complete submission of the soul -powers and loss of all activity in the actual power of God in the essential nature of the body and the soul. Lo, she loses God in the limiting value of creature.

110. Love God with all thy soul. — ‘ What do you mean by loving God with all one’s soul ? ’ — Ascending naked to God with nothing between, that I call whole-souled love. The soul’s life is love, the soul’s love is gnosis and her gnosis is her being. The soul’s real being is delight. The soul is never so near to God but God stands one side soul the other. Being belies not itself. Augustine says, God is the soul’s soul and being. 114. ‘Pray Sir, can one be moved without sinning?’ — ^When the animal passions are stirred the movement comes from without, not from within. Like a tree blown about by the wind and not torn up from the ground because the roots hold. In a case of agitation allowance must be made both for the person and the cause. 115. ‘ Can one remain the same in good and ill ? ’ — Your bodily nature must always be the sport of joy and sorrow ; that it can never lose. But will remains the same in fortune and misfortune, without resentment in the depths of woe. The power of impatience is taken from the recipient of eternal light.

116. ‘ How do you megn Sir^ the power ? Pray explain.’ — I am using power here with reference to two things. On the one hand there is loss of the power of resentment. And on the other hand the power to be upset is removed from those who are vouchsafed eternal light. To lose their equanimity would be to them hell-torment and impossible. Joys and sorrows are not grown in the ground of eternal truth ; none of creatures’ nurslings are truth’s seedlings and that is the key to this matter of dispassion. 117. ‘ There is another thing that needs explanation. You say that power is withdrawn and they are not able for it. Is this inability of nature or of grace ? ’ — Nature acts differently. Were it a natural disability then effort would be vain, which it is not. It is an inability of grace ; the soul is caught in the blaze of divine light and held by the majesty of God in the reflection of the essential good of the third Person. There personal distinction disappears merged in the oneness of the Three. There she is lost to the multiplicity of creatures. That answers your inquiries about the loss of power in pious souls and how they are impotent to lose their equanimity. Now, at last, they are omnipotent.

118. ‘ For the love of God, Sir, expound to me one statement you are fond of making.’ — What is that ? — ‘ You say that inability to live up to one’s lights shows the absence of eternal light. The man who has eternal light can put his theories into practice. She only has to see a thing and lo, it is as though it had not been and she is free from it, which alarms me somewhat for I am never guilty of the most venial fault but first it is suggested to my mind and this does not prevent me from committing it. Tell me, Sir, what is her essential power ? ’ — ^Essential power is one. Her essential power is will-and-love and this is not a prey to images bodily or ghostly, so she is essentially potential and that is what I fnean when I call her really free from (passive to) it. 119. ‘I crave your counsel. Sir : In the throes of intellectual conception, at the actual moment of it, I would fain be absolutely free.’ — It is impossible ; gross matter forbids. Soul is volatile by nature, body is made of dense material. That this dense material should be as nimble as the psychic is not to be expected in the unglorified body. To the eye colour, to the car sound. There is no harm in that nor is it any barrier to eternal truth. We ought to disregard them it is true, but that cannot be. Yet one thing I can tell you for your comfort : no will or love is lost on these disturbers of the peace. Furthermore I say, the power to will and love being absent, her power is what I call essential power. It is a certain test of essence when nothing wrought from without gives any reaction within.

120. In the image-bearing form of God which impartibly contains the form of all things there shines the universal form unformed in oneness, which radiates one single light into all spirits variously : the highest spirits, as becomes their stable nature, without reflection and souls in this body according to their fitness in this passing time. Mark how this image-bearing light, which the soul receives from its reflection, carries her beyond this mode of changing time into eternity, to the level of the highest spirits. When a mind habitually dwells in its eternal image, God to wit, with more delight than in itself, to such a mind the image-bearing light appears in its eternal form. Then the mind is transported over these manifold and changing things which exist in time and inhabits these rather than itself. Remember, we are dealing here with spirit not with essence. 121. The image-bearing light of divine unity is impartible and yet both essence and nature. Now the question is, how is it essence and how is it nature ? The answer is as follows. As essence it subsists in permanent, immanent stillness. It appears as all things in impartible mode ; not in the mode of any creature : it is a mode of its own in that same absolute stillness. There the distinctions of the Persons are sublimed to this simple modeless mode. Behold it now the essence of the Persons and of all things : the essence of the Persons it is by nature but of creatures by grace. For consider. It contains the form of all things impartibly, as essence. In this form it is ingrained in all things. This same impartible form (or image) is also nature and as nature it preserves its one-being in the Trinity and the Trinity its one-being in the unity. And as this one-being in the Trinity it is the impartible potentiality of the Trinity : the nature of the Persons but not that of all things. For if it were the nature of all things it would reproduce itself in all the things in manifestation in its own potential nature. Then things would all be God in the same sense that God is God. Now that is not the case. This shows that it is not the nature of all things but only the nature of the Persons and there exists no thing but has its own appropriate nature.

122. Since the impartible image-bearing light behaves as essence and also as its nature, has it then, I ask, the idiosyncrasies of each or not ? — No, assuredly not. There is no more than one. Its chief idiosyncrasy is that it is shining by itself and is manifest only to the Persons. But in that this image-bearing light falls upon all things and the only thing that shows it is itself, you see it has the character of light. This character belongs to essential essence and it also belongs to its nature’s nature. Here essence and nature are shown to be one being with one idiosyncrasy not two idiosyncrasies ; for supposing there were two then one idiosyncrasy would cause the other ; which is impossible : the essential stillness behaves as simple essence and nature’s radiant Trinity as well. 128. Hence arises the question, in the essence and its nature do things all appear in impartible fashion or no ? — The answer is, Yes, they appear in the essence in immanent stillness and impartible mode : essence and nature one light in light’s summit. The essence is light’s source and centre. As such it is essence. Also in the Trinity nature shines with the light of all things in the same impartible way. But there is stillness in the depths of essence.

124. But how nature in the Trinity is one and three proceed from one is not to be deduced from the impartibility of the first cause. Augustine says, the Persons are one in nature. Hence nature and Persons are alike eternal. Intellect is by nature perfectly intelligible to itself in the light of nature and its conception of itself is other than this intellect. Intellect is not begotten ; it is the paternal Person who begets the knower in perfectly conceiving his own Person. Lo, on a sudden, the eternal birth ! Now there are two Persons and in the very act of the Son’s proceeding from the Father, the knower looking back, leaps to the perfect understanding of his Father whence he sprang. In that same origin these two natures know each other with one knowledge. The knowing is the same as the knower himself. Therein they know themselves one love in the omnipotence of the Father whence the knower sprang. This love is their common spiration : in this love they are one. It is the third Person. It starts with the rebirth, the reposing of the knower on the heart of the omnipotent Father. Thus the first river originates the second river, in conjunction with the original source. Hence the several natures are all one in nature and this nature is the same in the several natures. That is to say, Persons. ^

125. ‘ But what enjoyment do the Persons get out of their natural essence ? ’ — Well, as you may prove, the Persons are in their nature and their nature in the Persons : their nature keeps the Persons quite distinct while at the same time preserving them in unity. As preserving them in one, nature is simply the power of the Persons. In this same power the three Persons disappear into their nature. For essence and nature form one light in light’s summit, the impartible image of God, essence passing into nature ; moreover all the Persons being clapt into their nature vanish into the dim silence of their interior being. There they retain no personality for with this confinement goes entire loss of property. Lo, God de-spirited ! The fathomless deep is fathomed by the mastermind of God. The delight and satisfaction and perfection found therein no nature can describe. That is how the three Persons enjoy their natural essence. 126. ‘ Tell me, when the spirit runs back into its source, does it remain in its original source or in the naught of its idea ? ’ — Its proper habitation is its source. The naked spark of spirit is the mens. Mens is the natural image of the spirit. But mind is never perfect spirit till it passes into its exemplar and is lost to its own selfhood, escaping in that same natural image into its ideal nature. In this sense its abode is in the naught of its idea rather than in its source. But its origin is its real abode.

127. How is the Son re-born in the Father once he has come forth ? — In this way. The Father grasps the light of his own understanding and bears it into the ground of his essence. Thus the knower is reflected back into the light of his Father’s heart. 128. ‘I should much like to know, about the appearance of the paternal Person in the unity, where it is all-conceiving.’ — When the Father conceiving the impartible idea of all things in the unity, appears to himself in Person and essence, lo, the paternal Person vanishes in this mysterious unity and there is an end of the Father and of all distinctions. Unity conceiving all as one, nothing but one appears and communes with itself. But sinee logieally speaking there is Person in the unity, it is in this unity that it conceives its nature, appearing and calling itself Person and there too the paternal Person must conceive his unity, as the unity the Person, since both of them have the same nature. 129. Mark how conception differs. There is ideal conception and real concej^tion. Ideal conception is the nature’s general conception of the Persons, all the three. But the real conception is the special conception of each particular Person in its own proper nature in the nature.

130. ‘ Tell me, when God conceives the soul does he conceive her by ideal conception or by real conception ? ’ — He conceives her by ideal conception for this general idea embraces all in one ; supposing he conceived her by particular conception she would be bereft of the flower of her nature for in a particular conception nothing is conceived besides the special nature of the thing itself. In other words, its nature as a unit, an expression, not its innate nobility. 131. Mark the noble lineage of the Persons. They are uncreated and without beginning and infinite and inconceivable and are possessed of property which comes to them in the course of nature. Not so with the soul : she is created and has a beginning and is man and has possessions and not property for to her it is all given. 182. ‘ Is the seer as free as the will ? ’ — No, not by any means. If it were it would be always in the naked Godhead. But it is not ; it has to be doing its work, the ordering and management of the various powers. Will has not got this to do : it bids and forbids.

188. ‘ Now what I want to know is this : why has the Godhead a feminine name and no feminine function and the Person of the Father on the other hand a masculine name and a feminine function ? ’ — The explanation is this. The Godhead contains all things impartibly and the thing in which another is contained is called mother in virtue of this content. It has, however, no maternal act since it docs not as such give birth to anything. The Father, again, has a masculine name and a feminine function and the reason is that the Father in Person docs not contain things in him, he begets them out of him by the power of his Person. The Father in his proper personality is empty of the content which he impartibly contains. But also he plays a mother’s part, the unity providing him with all that ho brings forth. In this bringing forth he is functioning as mother ; as being free from content in his personal nature he retains his masculine name. The birth of the Son shows the Father travailing. But the Father is Father in that he begets. 134. ‘ Then there is this question : Is the Son born or is he not born or is he still to be born ? ’ — Let us consider. There are three Persons and that shows the Son is born for each of the Persons has its own peculiar nature. They could none of them have this if the Son had not been born. This proves the Son is born. But the Father changes not at all in his eternal childbirth : could we attribute to him any deed at all it would be in the sense that anything he docs he is doing now and what he is doing now he has always done, for with him there is no past nor future. This proves the Son has not been born : he is now this instant being born and this now is an ever-becoming ; as the Father himself says, ‘ To-day have I begotten thee.’ To-day is the etern&l now. It is in this now that his birth is taking place.

135. Remember, the eternal Word is both unborn and born. This is a hard saying, but being in the Trinity the Word must needs be born ; it cannot there be called the unborn Word. Taking the eternal Word as Person, it is born ; but take it in its essence and the Word is non-existent. Here the Word has to be born. 136. Now mark how we argue that the Word remains the Word unborn. Where the Word issues from the Father as a birth it shows its born nature and proclaims the Father parent. But where the Word proceeds from the Father as a light it is the species of the Father and shows the Father formless for it has the form of the Father. He himself declared, ‘ He who seeth me seeth my Father.’ Thus the Word reveals the Father in his own form and shows the Father formless and where the Word proceeds from the Father as understanding it proceeds as abiding within. As intelligence leaves not the heart but reveals to himself the man in whom it dwells, so we have the Word in the eternal procession of the Father, the Word which proceeds from understanding, while understanding itself does not issue forth but abides within. In this procession wc have, in the immanent understanding, the Word unborn. This explains what is meant by the unborn Word and how, in the eternal procession, the Word is as it were born of understanding and is still to be born and is this instant being born.

137. One of the masters (Erigena) says : The Father never wrought anything inferior to himself. If this is true, then all the creatures God has ever wrought are God. The question here is, whether the work wrought is as noble as the worker when the worker is God ? Let us see. We speak of a working work and a wrought work. The working work is God, the wrought work is not God for it is creature. Hence the explanation. When it is stated that the Father wrought no work inferior to himself that is as good as saying that the Father does one work and one alone in his own Person, to wit, the begetting of his Son in the eternal emanation personal and essential. Only this one work properly belongs to the Father-nature and all other work wrought we attribute not to the Father alone but to the three Persons atid one God. But, it may be objected, can the eternal emanation of the Son from the Father be called a work ? You can look at it in this way. Everything existing has its appropriate work ; the work of fire, for instance, is to heat and so with understanding : it is its work to understand itself. Here the work is not inferior to the worker. And in this sense the Son may very well be called the eternaf work of the Father. He brings him forth eternally as Person who yet remains in him in essence.

138. Then there is the question : Was the eternal Word conceived in Mary in Person and essence and was it in the bosom of the Father as Person and essence as well ? — In the continuous emanation wherein the Word emanates from the Father as it were from understanding, wherein the Word is now being born, in that same emanation Mary received the eternal Word in a point of time as Person and essence, in its immanence : the Word as flowing from the understanding of the Father. It remained in the bosom of the Father as immanent understanding personal and essential. Thus it came, coming after the manner of a flow and remaining within after the manner of an understanding. Ah, what light and grace enlightened souls obtain from this glorious knowledge ! 139. To return to Christ. According to theologists, our Lord Jesus Christ’s soul and Lucifer’s were made in the same light. The soul of Jesus Christ our Lord was the very wisest soul that ever was. She turned in the creature to the creator wherefore the Father clothed her in the divine garment and flower of her nature. Lucifer turned to the deficiency and he therefore fell, falling eternally. So fall all they who turn away from God to perishable things.

140. But this light which Christ’s soul supernaturally was, this was a creature and our Lord’s soul itself being creature too, which of these two creatures then, theologians ask, is the nobler and the higher ? — I was asking one wise doctor about this and he said that in one way the light is nobler but in another Christ. Sec what this supernatural light means. When Christ’s soul was created she was taken from herself and haled above herself into the Tri-unity. Therewith she was united. This was not natural to her, it was all above nature, what befell Christ’s soul. What befell was the supernatural light. Herein Christ’s soul was omnipotent, in virtue of this happening. Here the supernatural light is nobler than Christ’s soul, you can see that for yourselves. The adorner is more noble than the thing that it adorns. Take an illustration. Material is adorned by colour while the colour is displayed by the material, since it has no body of its own. Even so Christ’s soul is adorned by this supernatural light and on the other hand Christ’s soul makes manifest this supernatural light. 141. Now mark how the soul of Christ is nobler than the super-

natural light. The supernatural light having had its effect upon Christ’s soul (it happens in a flash), Christ has no more to do with this supernatural light, for the union of divine and human nature to one Person liappens instantly and once for all. Here the soul of Christ is nobler than the supernatural light. * a 42. Then as to souls who have overcome themselves so far as to imagine themselves God. This is due to nothing more than their own natural light : they are withdrawn into themselves till they can see themselves in it as light. You know how a blow in the eye will sometimes make one see stars. By stars in their eyes these souls see themselves. The way the supernatural light reveals the soul to herself is this : the naked spark of the soul, her mens, reflects the supernatural light and the pure essence of her spirit seeing itself in this supernatural light fondly imagines itself God. But as you see, it is nothing else than the spirit in the supernatural light, a very great perfection, none the less. 143. Another question is, whether God is (God) by nature or by will ? — He is God not by nature nor by will. If God were God by nature he would be a caused God : nature would have caused him. But that is not the case. And the same with will : were he God by will he would be subject to will and will would

be superior to God. Which is not true either ; but he is God naturally, not by nature ; he is God willingly and not by will. That is the answer. 144. Again, did God beget himself or did he beget some other ? — He did not beget himself nor any other : God the Father is unbcgotten God. He begat another and not any other. He begat another, i.e, another Person, not something other, i,e. another nature : the impartible nature of the Father is also the impartible nature of the Son and of their common Spirit. That is the answer. 145. It is a question among theologians whether the nature is common to the Persons and the Persons common to the nature seeing that each Person contains the whole of nature as its natural being. Docs God impart himself to human nature ? — ^Yes. — How can God impart himself to human nature if he is one in essence and distinct in Person ? — Each of the Persons has the nature as a whole and the Person of the Son, by assuming human nature, imparted himself to it, the two natures meeting in his Person. Here divine and human natures are in communion. Only the middle Person took on human nature but the three Persons are equally allied with the three powers of the soul. — Are these two natures one or are they united ? — They are united and not one. That is one which is in itself without any other and where two meet in one they arc united. — How arc these two natures united ? — They are united by something between so that each one keeps its own nature. The Person which took on human nature is the medium uniting these two natures. Had this Person not assumed man’s nature the two natures could not have been united. Neither robs thft other of its idiosyncrasy ; uncreated nature does not rob created nature of its createdness nor docs created nature rob the uncreated of its uncrcatcdness. — How did the Person take man’s nature ? — He assumed manhood and not man. — What is the difference between man and manhood ? — Man originates with perfect man and is not taken by a Person : it is two natures united in one Person. But manhood is emanating God and man and is taken by the Person of the Son and is divine and human nature and corporal nature united in one person. So much for man and manhood.

146. Did the Person take the manhood of our Lady ? — Yes and no. He took the bodily nature of our Lady and the nature of his spirit God produced from naught and poured it into corporal nature ; God inspired his spirit and embodied himself in his body. — Is our Lady, soul and body, one person ? — Yes. — Did he not take the person of our Lady ? — No. The eternal Word of the Father took to itself what was not there already. There was Person there for the eternal Word is itself a Person. But human nature was not there. Hence the eternal Word assumed a nature not a person ; God’s nature and man’s nature were united in one common form with one Person for Christ does not belie himself. — ^What brings about this union ? — Grace. — What is grace ? — According to Dionysius, grace is the light of the soul, which lights the understanding of the soul. This light is not God but it is something from God. Just as the sunshine is not the sun but something that comes from the sun so God sheds this light into the soul. In this light man knows and loves and to some extent enjoys in time what beatilic spirits know and love and feel in eternal life. But here in time man knows and loves in his own way, dimly : he docs not see God face to face as a spirit does in eternal life. Yet the mere feeling of him makes a man able to do all things, to practise all the virtues and in the virtues he grows Godlike and the liker God in virtues the more one he is with God. Thus grace makes for union.

147. There is a further cpiestion about the union of divine and human nature : have they both the same essence in the Person they arc joined in or have they two essences in this non-potential state ? — One Person can have no more than one essence. So far as the personal nature is Person each nature is its own hypostasis. Where two natures are created in one Person that Person has one essence and that in two natures so far as the two natures are unmingled. — Then we may consider nature as apart from essence in the personal union ? — Yes, it can be seen from another point of view. We find nature in its image unmingled but in the Person two natures are present in one Person as in their hypostasis. So far as both belong to the same Person the Person has ohe essence and that in two natures. The Persons arc eternal, they are in nowise creature for they have no before or after. Person, that is unity keeping silence albeit big with speech. The Persons are not contained by the unity : they arc in unity. 148. There is the question of the worker and the work, whether the work is as noble, as perfect as the worker ? This refers to the Persons of the Trinity. Examine it in this way. The Father is an origin able to originate an origin like unto himself. The Son is such an origin and he together with his Father originates their common Spirit. Here the worker and the work, the effectual work of revelation, are equally perfect. As Dionysius says, ‘ The first cause causes everything equal to itself.’ It was said by one master that the work wrought by God in the patient soul which is all bare of things is nobler than any of the works he has ever wrought in time in heaven or in earth. Just think what this means. The works God has wrought in the angels in heaven

were wrought by the almighty power of God who created them from naught. He was not hindered in this work. In the case of the soul which also he created out of naught, he endowed her with free will nor would God do a single thing without her free will’s sanction. But when the soul is passive and cleared of everything in her that might be a hindrance to God’s will and turning to God of her own account she gives God the freedom of her noble will as though she had never had free will, enabling God to work in her as freely as when he made all things from naught, then this work has two outstanding features. One is that her free will is no obstacle to God although he is so careful not to override free will : God can work as freely as he will, what he will and when he will and how he will just as if the soul had no free will. The second feature is that God being free in himself his work is freely wrought in what by right of its free will might well object but which does in fact raise no objection. And that is why this is the noblest work God does in heaven or earth in respect of creature. Now you may ask what this work is ? It is nothing less than God’s revelation of himself to himself in the soul. As sure as he is in himself he himself is in this work. That which is wrought in is turned into that which works there, to the likeness of him, the worker, who has wrought there his like. Here the work which is wrought is as perfect as the worker for it is his living image which is in the work.

149. The soul cannot prepare herself for the reception of God : he who prepares her, him does she receive in preparation. There is a special profit accruing to the soul in the reception of the body of our Lord, which she does not get in any other gift. — ‘ What profit is ‘that ? ’ — Her nature receives its own nature for Jesus Christ’s nature is our nature. Nature is received by nature albeit not received pure nature : it is received united with divine nature. 150. Mark how these two natures are united. They are not united nature to nature : they arc joined together in one Person, i.e. the middle Person. Just as the divine nature is the nature of this Person so is human nature in Christ the Person in the Trinity. For what the eternal Word assumed was humanity not a human person. Had the eternal Word assumed a human person there would be four Persons in the Trinity. But there are not. Jesus Christ’s humanity in the eternal Word is the very Person who has ever been the central figure of the Trinity. Therein is not one nature as there is one Person : the natures are of different nature and arc united in the Person. Wherefore whoso receives the body of our Lord receives the middle Person and divine nature and Christ’s manhood, which is Person in the

eternal Word, and Christ’s eternal soul. We receive this all at once in Jesus Christ’s body. This we do not do in any other gift in heaven or earth. Let us therefore prize this gift above all other gifts to be gotten here below. 151. When Christ gave his body to his disciples he said, ‘ Take, eat, this is my body.’ But Christ was mortal. Now the question is, did Christ give his body mortal or immortal ? According to Hugo of St Victor, every property of his original body of immortality, the whole of these Christ had in him what time he was mortal. So in spite of being mortal he could give his brethren his immortal body ; if ‘he had given them his mortal body the eating of it would have outraged them. Bishop Albertus controverts this doctor. I am amazed, he says, that such a great authority should hazard such a foolish statement. Every nature emanates from its appropriate form and Christ’s form here was mortal and no immortal property could emanate from his mortal form. If you really want to know how Christ gave his body, mortal and immortal, he gave his body as mortal in itself and immortal in its form and in its effect for its action is divine and he gave it therefore in another form than that of himself. He gave his body as immortal in its work and in its form and mortal in itself for in his mortal body Christ had power to communicate his body immortally as to its effect but not so as to its own nature.

152. It is a question whether in Christ’s body there remains aught of what it seems ? No, there is seeming without substance and substance without seeming. It seems to be bread but there is really no substance of bread : it is really the body of God without its appearance. So far as its appearance goes it would nourish us like any other food. But if there is really no 'substance of bread and only the substance of bread feeds the body then how, without the substance of bread, does this nourish the body ? — At the consecration of the body of our Lord the bread loses its nature while it retains its form, its mass, its smell and its feeling of bread, so that it does not disappear. Nothing we can taste and feel, nothing, in short, which is apparent to the outward senses, is God’s body. The outward senses do not lose what pertains to them. They derive their nourishment from such things as remain. In bread the solid part is all that nourishes. The solidity of the body of Christ is not his body : the solid of the bread remains and that feeds the outward man. This is the explanation of how the sacrament nourishes like any other food. But it really has none of the nature of bread.

158. — ^When Christ consecrated his body on that Sabbath day and gave it to his disciples, supposing some to have been left and hidden in a bush, would this have died when Christ died on the cross ? — If the consecrated body had been maltreated by scourging or in any other way, that would not have hurt it. Christ suffered no hurt by eating in the sacrament for he gave his body in another form than that of himself. Christ suffered not at all in the form he gave. But mark. When Christ died upon the cross since there lay under consecration the body of the soul that died upon the cross therefore all the pain Christ suffered in his human form was suffered by his body under consecration. When Christ died to his manhood there died his body dying under consecration, for there was no more than a single body. This death of Christ was the parting of the soul from body ; and since she is impartible therefore wherever she is she is altogether. When she was in the precincts of hell she was not in the body. Neither could she be ^ in his consecrated body. We speak here of two bodies, but there is only one, that which rose from the dead on the third day.

154. Did the consecrated body rise too ? — Oh yes, it rose up glorified for it was the Christ. 155. Then it was questioned, can the soul while in this body get to the point of receiving without means ? — The answer is both no and yes. In the first sense I declare that anything the soul receives must be by light and grace. Light and grace are her means for she is creature. Soul cannot do without these means as long as she is in the body. On the other hand the affirmative reply, that the soul is able to receive direct while in the body, is argued thus. The soul has within her a likeness of the sovran good. In this likeness she receives like. Here like is being received direct by like. Mark how. In receiving thus without means we have to abide by this likeness. — Wherein does this likeness consist ? — Likeness to the sovran good consists in motionlessness of the inner and the outer man : in imperturbability towards all nether things, the outward man not being moved by them nor the inward man disturbed by any mental agitation ; he remains firm and unshaken in the here and now. Be so always.

156. One other question. How have all things been in God ? — In his impartible essence all things subsist impartibly, no one more noble than another. But in the essential Word where all things are distinct one thing is nobler than another. 157. Once the spirit is one with God is it at all enriched by virtues ? — Virtues are products of necessity and necessity enriches not the spirit. It is not virtues that enrich the spirit but the fniit of virtues. 158. It may be asked, are we to take the impartible image of all things as Person or essence ? — There are three distinct Persons but not three images to correspond. We may therefore look at the image in the light of impartible essence. But since essence in the Persons is possessed impartibly as essence and partibly as speech (one utterance in the Father and another in the Son and another in the Holy Ghost), therefore we may take the image of the Trinity also as a speaking in the Persons as well as simple essence, for the essence is simple in the Persons no less than in its own particular nature. 159. It may be asked, has the one essence no form to correspond with its essential nature ? — That which reveals another is its form. Essence cannot manifest itself in its essential nature : it is manifested by the Persons. Hence the Persons are the form of the

ssence so far as they reveal it. But Person is one thing, essence is another. Nothing that exists can be without its proper form. f essence exists it must wear its appropriate form. In its own essential form it is manifest to itself as well as to the Persons and none else. But the Persons reveal it to creatures. Here the Persons are its form by the fact of being Persons and making manifest the formless essence. The Persons are the form of the essence inasmuch as they reveal it and in its arcane nature it has its own form latent in itself. This form is none other than the immanent essence itself. Under this essential form the forms of all things arc formless for this essential form is the impartible form of all things : this universal form is essential God in its onefold nature and tlireefold as uttered in the Persons. 160. This is what the spirit clearly sees in a foretaste of delight. The best the spirit can hope for in this body is the perennial feeling of being without all and within all. Without all means in complete detachment, remote from self and things. In all means abiding in perpetual stillness : conscious life in its eternal exemplar wherein the universal image shines in impartibility. There the spirit dwells in all : it has attained to its ideal.

161. Doctors discuss that most abstruse and difficult of questions : What is that which is not caused and whicth, though neither essence nor yet Person, has might and power in the Father and makes the Father father and the essence essence ? — The answer needs your close attention. Nature cannot be without something whose nature it is and the Person of the Fatlier cannot be without someone whose Person it is. Neither can exist without the other so neither can originate the other. At the same time they have a dual character ; speech-silence. Where both alike vanish into their common ground they have the same character ; there speech detracts not from silence neither silence from speech. This lapse into their common ground applies to the eternal and eventful nature. Uneventful nature does not interfere : eventful nature goes on speaking while uneventful nature holds its peace. But this uneventful nature must have an hypostasis, the eternal and eventful nature which gives power and might to the objective Person. This makes the Father father and the nature nature ; not that the Father has an eventful nature : his is the eternal uneventfulness. This let none gainsay in the interests of eternal truth for it is the eternal truth. The ignorant, remember, are given to attacking the eternal verity.

162 . St Dionysius says the highest spirits are poured into the lower in succession, and the lowest are poured into the soul. Now the question is, can the soul receive at all without the aid or knowledge of superior angels ? I answer. Grant one spirit is more toward than the rest then anything received by the other spirits will be known beforehand to this spirit which is better placed than any of the others. Thus a Seraph is more open to divine inspiration than any single spirit in this life and for two reasons. One is that the angel being pure spirit cannot be poured into the soul. While sharing with the body she has no accommodation for the angel. Secondly, the angel is in the condition of ever beholding the divine light and that is not for any soul in this life. Hence Seraph is more apt to receive God’s inspiration and what all spirits receive that spirit knows who is more apt than all the rest. Seraph is not the means of its reception, but, flying as he does nearer to the source of the divine light, it is apparent to him what other spirits are getting of that light. In this sense souls get nothing without the angels knowing.

But let us sec, in the working of the soul, if we cannot find some secret way in which enlightened souls receive without the Seraph’s knowledge. Well, as you know, the soul animates the members of the body all unbeknownst to those same members. And though life runs so secretly into all the limbs that they are unaware of its mysterious flow, the work of life is none the less carried on in them. The fact is, God instils his life into the soul and into every spirit surreptitiously : no Seraph knows about this stealthy stream of life. Its reception by the soul is a clandestine act. How should Seraph know ? He knows nothing of himself or of the soul. That is one thing the soul receives without the higher angels knowing. The other she receives in the mysterious spark of her own nature, her undivided likeness. But w^hen like meets like there is no mean between them. Like gives like its likeness all unknown to its unlike, in unbroken union. But Seraph is unlike the soul. A Seraph, as you know, is spirit not embodied in any sort of body. But soul is spirit embodied in something of the kind. And secondly to Seraph in his created nature there came all at once and without addition what he this day possesses in his vision of the eternal light ; for he is constant in his likeness to God. Here the soul is different from the angels for in the reflection of her like

she receives a secret influx unknown to any angel. It has been said by John, a sage of Greece, that the likeness of the soul consists in perfect likeness to that which has no like. Dionysius calls the angels ‘divine minds.’ And St Bernard says of those who lead angelic lives while in the flesh that into them there flows the mind of God as it does into the angels. O thou God turned God in thy temporal unified mind, thou sjfirit inspired into the oneness of God, stand up and do thy crowning work ! You ask how the spirit stands up ? He stands on his two feet, understanding and love, and oversteps all perishable things lest he should foul his feet with matter of corruption. — And what is his crowning work ? — The clear and naked vision of the highest good, God yonder, wherein the highest good shall bathe the spirit in the light of exquisite consciousness. Then shall thou look and see ! — Do the light-streams of the highest good affect the spirit ? — — When the Sovran Good floods the spirit with light the spirit is borne up above its natural abode.

Meister Eckhart was besought by his good friends, ‘ Give us one last word before you go.’ He said, I will give you a rule which is the sum of all my arguments, the key to the whole theory and' praetiee of the tnith. '' It very often happens that a thing seems small us which is of greater moment in God’s sight than what looms large in ours. Wherefore it behoves us to take alike from God everytiiing he sends us without ever thinking or looking to see which is greatest or highest or best but following blindly God’s lead, that is to say, our own feeling, our strongest dictates, what we arc most prompted to do. Then God gives us the most in the least without fail. People often shirk the least and prevent themsel s getting the most in the least. They are wrong. God is every wise, the same in every guise to him who can see him the same. There is much searching of heart as to whether one’s promptings come from God or no ; but this we can soon tell for if we find ourselves aware of, privy to, God’s will above all when we follow our own impulse, our clearest intimations, then we may take it that they come from God.

Somejpeople make believe to find God as a light or savour ; they may find a light or a savour but that is not to find God. Aecording to one scripture, God shines in the dark where every now and then we may catch a glimpse of him. Where to us God shows least he is often most. So it behoves us to take God the same in every mode and in every thing. Someone may say, But if I do take God alike in every mode and every thing my mind refuses to abide in that mode or in this one as in that. — Then I say, he is wrong. For finding God in one way rather than another, I allow, due credit, but that is not the best. God is everywise, alike in every guise to one who can find him the same. Knowing one guise, such and such, is not knowing God. Finding this or that is not finding God. God is everywise, the same in every guise to one who can see him the same. Someone may "object, But to find God in every mode and in every thing do I not need some special way ? — In whatever way you find God best and are most aware of him that way pursue. Should another way appear quite different from the first you will