Sermons and Treatises of Meister Eckhart

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

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 : stopping 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

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. 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.

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, selfrevealed, God manifests in light that no man can attain to. As St Paul says, ‘ God dwells in light unapproachable.’

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 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 goodness 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 knowledge : 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,

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 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.

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 : encompassed 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 fainthearted, 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 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 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.

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, understanding 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

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. Intuition 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 understandby 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 heretofore 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

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 imperfection, 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.

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 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 Godhead 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 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 instance, 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 knowledge 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.

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 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 goodwill. 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

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 beingand-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;

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.

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.

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

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 '

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 begetting 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.

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. 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

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

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.

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. 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. 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 connection, an end of time. Small though it be it must go ; everything 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 fundamentally 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 intermingling 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.*

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.

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. 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 understanding 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 reflection : 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 confused. 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 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. Understanding goes in deep enough to lay hold of being simply as beingin-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. In omnibus requiem queesivi (EccL 24iji). things I

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. 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 established 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.

In omnibus requiem queesivi {Eccl, 24^]^). We find this in the Book of Wisdom. We may imagine Wisdom in friendly 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 somewhere 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 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^ 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 attractive 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 unmoved. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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,

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 loveliness 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.’

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 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.

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 omnipresent, 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 temporalities.

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 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 thyself 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. 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.

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.’ According 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, 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 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 lightworld 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 someone 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 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. . . .’

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

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. Moreover, I now say that the whole world is powerless to conceive it 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.

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 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 household 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 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 transcended 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.

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 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.

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 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

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 inadmissible ? 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. 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.

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 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 humiliation 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.

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 himself. 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. Moreover I declare : the outward and the inward man are as different, too, as earth and heaven. God is higher, many thousand miles.