Sermons and Treatises of Meister Eckhart

Yet God comes and goes. But to resume my argument : God enjoys himself in all things. The sun sheds his light upon all creatures, and anything he sheds his beams upon absorbs them, yet he loses nothing of his brightness. All creatures sacrifice their life for being. Creatures all come into my mind and are rational in me. I alone prepare all creatures to return to God. Beware, all of you, what ye do. To return to my inner and my outer man. I see the lilies in the field, their gaiety, their colour, all their leaves. But I do not see their fragrance. Why ? Because what I give out is in me. What I am saying is in me and I speak it forth of me. My outward man relishes creatures as creatures, as wine and bread and meat. But my inner man relishes things not as creature but as the gift of God. And again to my innermost man they savour not of God’s gift but of ever and aye. I take a bowl of water and place a mirror in it and set it in the sun. The sun sends forth his light-rays both from his disc and also from the bottom of the bowl, suffering thereby no diminution. The reflection of the mirror in the sun is in the sun. The sun and it are thus what it is. And so with God. God is in the soul with his nature, his essence and his Godhood, but he is not on that account the soul. The soul’s reflection is in God. God and she are thus what she is. There God is all creatures. There God’s utterance is God.

While I subsisted in the ground, in the bottom, in the river and fount of Godhead, no one asked me where I was going or what I was doing : there was no one to ask me. When I was flowing all creatures spake God. If I am asked. Brother Eckhart, when went ye out of your house ? Then I must have been in. Even so do all creatures speak God. And why do they not speak the Godhead ? Everything in the Godhead is one, and of that there is nothing to be said. God works, the Godhead does no work, there is nothing to do ; in it is no activity. It never envisaged any work. God and Godhead are as different as active and inactive. On my return to God, where I am formless, my breaking through will be far nobler than my emanation. I alone take all creatures out of their sense into my mind and make them one in me. When I go back into the ground, into the depths, into the well-spring of the Godhead, no one will ask me whence I came or whither I went. No one missed me : God passes away.

All happiness to those who have listened to this sermon. Had there been no one here I must have preached it to the poor-box. Some poor souls will go back home and say, I shall settle down and eat my bread and serve God. Verily I say, they persist in error, and will never have the power to strive for or to win what those others do who follow Christ in poverty and exile. Amen.

A master cries, Dear God, how well for me did my love bear fruit ! Our Lord says to every loving soul, ‘ I was made man for you, and if ye are not God for me ye wrong me. I in my God-nature did dwell in your man’s nature, so that none guessed my godly might seeing me walk like any other man. And even so shall ye in your humanity hide you in my divinity, and none shall guess your human weakness : your life being all divine they shall see naught in you but God.’ This does not mean soft words or pious mien or much parade of holiness, so that our name borne far and and wide is highly honoured by the friends of God ; nor that as cherished and elect of God we fondly think God has forgot all creatures but ourselves and anything we ask of God is straightway done. No, not by any means ! That is not what God wants of us : all the other way. He would have us found wholly unmoved wheri people call us cheats and liars or whatever it may be whcrcl^y we are bereft of our fair name ; and not only evil speaking but evil deeds as well : denying us our animal necessities ; and not only temporal needs but bodily hurt. (He would that) our sickness, or whatever ill it be, should help us in our bodily work ; that we should always do our best despite that people turn it to the worst account ; further, that we should suffer in this sense not alone from people but from God as well, who, withholding from us his present consolation, builds as it were a wall between us and when we bring our work to him seeking his help and comfort, he behaves towards us as if he shut his eyes and refused to sec or hear : he leaves us in our need to stand and fight alone, like Christ forsaken by his Father. Then hiding us in his divinity, behold us unbowed down by woe and with no other help than the words Christ uttered,

‘ Father, they will be done.’ Such is the nature of God that we know it by nothing better than naught. — How, by naught ? — By getting rid of all means, not merely by spurning the world and the possession of virtue ; I must let virtue go if I would see God face to face ; not that I should flout virtue, but virtue being innate in me I transcend virtue. When a man’s mind has lost touch with every thing then, not till then, it comes in touch with God. A heathen philosopher has said, nature cannot transcend nature. Ergo, no creature can see God. If he is seen it must be in light that is supernatural. Theologians have a question, When God uplifts the soul above himself and above all creatures and leads her home into himself, why does he not raise up the body too so that it has no earthly needs ? One of the masters — I think St Augustine — answers this as follows. When the soul attains to union with God then at last the body enjoys all things to God’s glory. Through man all creatures have flowed forth and the body’s rational use of creatures is not a drawback to the soul : it is an added dignity, for creatures can find no better way of returning to their source than in the righteous man who of his soul can say that even for an instant it has been absorbed in union with God. For then there is no obstacle between God and the soul, and as far as the soul follows God into the desert of his Godhead so far the body follows the bodily Christ into the desert of his willing poverty : as the soul is united with his deity so the body is atoned in Christ by the operation of true virtue. Well, then may the heavenly Father say, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,’ for not only has he gotten in the soul his only Son : he has begotten her his only Son.

From the very bottom of my heart I say, Man, how can aught afflict thee or be hard to bear when thou considerest that he who yonder subsisted in the form of God and in the day of his eternity and in the glory of the saints, and who before was born the splendour and substance of God, did enter the prison, the trap of thy sensenature which is so unclean that aught, however pure, is besmirched and fouled by coming near it, yet notwithstanding this he abode there for thy sake ? What is there thou wouldst not gladly suffer, reading of the bitterness of thy Lord and God, pondering the afflictions, all the woes, that did befall him ? The scorn and contumely he bore from king and soldier, from knaves and passers by his cross ? How the glory of the eternal light was mocked and scorned and tortured ? Behold, what innocence, compassion and true love, and nowhere shown to me more clearly than where the love-power pierced his heart. Make thee then a bundle of the woes of thy Lord God and let it lie between thy breasts. Regard and realize his virtues, how all his works make for thy weal, and see thou pay him back in his own coin his infamous and shameful death and his pain-bearing nature wherein he, sinless, suffered for thy sin as if it had been his ; as he says in the Prophets concerning his afflictions, ‘ Lo, I suffer for my sins,’ and speaking of *the fruits of all his labours, ‘ By your works shall ye possess this kingdom I ’ calling our sins his sins and his works our works ; and he has answered for our sins as though he had committed them, whereas we profit by his works as though they were our own. And this should make our labour light, for the good knight laments not his own. wounds, seeing his king who is wounded with

him. He offers us the drink he drank himself. He asks nothing of us but what he has already done or suffered. We ought to suffer gladly, for God did nothing else while he sojourned upon earth. May we in God’s nature so transcend and lose our human nature, all our weakness, that nothing should be found in us but good alone. So help us God. Amen. Lord God Almighty, all things are in thy power. Power and lordship lie in two things, in freedom and in the possession of many good things in peace. What is freedom ? A heathen philosopher says, ‘ That thing is free which cleaves to naught and to which naught cleaves.’ So there is nothing free but the first cause, that is, the cause of all things. To lordship belongs the ])ossession of many good things and beautiful. God is all good in all ; hence he possesses himself in all. What God has, that is he in all. The love and will, the wisdom, the goodness we say that he has, these he is. If God is this, he is not naught, for God was prior to naught. God has no before nor after : but naught has a sequel ; its sequel is aught. Naught’s foregocr was God, for lie was prior to naught. Naught’s issue is aught. God then has no before nor after. Lo, the cause of all things, self-subsistcnt, discriminate light which is himself ! God is a light shining in itself in silent stillness. The one light, the one essence itself, which knows and understands itself. The understanding of this unique light is the light from the light, it is the eternal Person of the Son from the eternal Person of the Father. The Father spoke one Word, namely, his Son. In this only AVord he spoke all things. The Word of the Father is none other than his understanding of himself. The understanding of the Father understands that he understands, and that his understanding understands is the same as that he is who is understanding. That is, the light from the light.

Job says, God spake one Word ; this was his own conception of himself : it was his Son. In this one conception he conceives all things ; he sees them as issuing from nothing. They are that in themselves. But as subsisting eternally in him, they are without themselves. What they were (without) themselves, was he himself : God is nothing but God, for God is without other. All creatures are a light, for they are conceived in the light of unity ' See Pfeiffer, Zt.J. dtsch. Alt., Bd. 8 (2), 1850. For authorship see Preger’? Qeachichte, p. 319. and eternity. Creatures flowing forth as light reveal the hidden light. As St James says, ‘ Every good gift and every perfeet gift come down from above from the Father of lights.’ We may deduce from this that all things are one light radiated by the Father for the purpose of revealing his own hidden light. And as all things have been one liglit proceeding forth, so also they are all one light which is flowing back, if they turn not away therefrom of their own free will. Those who are steadfast in the face of multiplicity, behold wliat light and grace are revealed to them ! For the sovran good is so ordered towards the soul that she receives it not except by means. As St Dionysius says, ‘ The means is light : grace that illumines understanding.’ What is understanding ? Understanding means seeing a thing quite clearly and without mistake. St Dionysius says, ‘ Disengage thyself entirely from things if thou wouldst understand the highest good, God namely.’ VVliat are wc to understand by God ? That he is the one power. Let us therefore unify ourselves so that this one power may energise in us. He is also the good which moves things towards their good, namely himself, albeit he himself remains unmoved. And lie is perfect simplicity ; and the simpler the soul is the better she understands his simplicity. How can we be perfectly simple ? By departing from things and from ourselves, and knowing our own mind and all the working of the powers of the soul, except the chief one, understanding : leave that to God alone. The passive soul stands to lose all this and leave God to work without hindrance ; then he begets his perfect likeness in her and conforms her to himself. Then she understands with him and loves with him. This is perfection. It is sometimes asked. Do we love God with the love wherewith the Father and the Son love one another ? Let us consider.

Two kinds of love belong to us. One is the virtue. In this love we go on growing and any good we do in this love wins us eternal merit. But the love of the Father and the Son knows no increase for it is the Holy Ghost. Thus our love is as nothing compared with the love of the Father and the Son : it is the virtue that we grow with. The other love which is in us is the love of the Father and the Son. As St Paul says, ‘ God’s love is poured into our heart.’ In giving us his love God has given us his Holy Ghost so that wc can love him with the love wherewith he loves himself. We love God with his own love ; awareness of it deifies us. Intuition of the Sovran Good, that is God ! To have that is to have the life most worth of any creature. God is willing his own clear conception and his own delight. What is willing in the Godhead ? It is the Father watching the play of his own nature. What is this play ? It is his eternal Son. There has always been this play going on in the Father-nature. Play and audience are the same. The Father’s view of his own nature is his Son. The Father embraces his own nature in the quiet darkness of his eternal essence which is known to none except himself. The glance returned by his own nature is his eternal Son. So the Son embraces the Father in his nature for he is the same as his Father in his nature. Thus from the Father’s embrace of his own nature there comes this eternal playing of the Son. This play was played eternally before all creatures. As it is written in the Book of Wisdom, ‘ Prior to creatures, in the eternal now, I have played before the Father in his eternal stillness.’ The Son has eternally been playing before the Father as the Father has before his Son. The playing of the twain is the Holy Ghost in whom they both disport themselves and he disports himself in both. Sport and players are the same. Their nature proceeding in itself. ‘ God is a fountain flowing into itself,’ as St Dionysius says. The Father has eternally been loving himself in his Son just as the Son has been loving himself in the Father eternally. Their mutual love is the Holy Ghost : the third Person, who proceeds from the other two as love. The essence of the Godhead begets not. The Father’s Person begets the Person of the Son eternally and together they pour forth their Holy Ghost : their mutual love. Father and Son are the pouring-in and the Holy Breath is the thing inpoured, identical in nature Avith them both. Did the essence of the Deity beget there would be more than one essence ; but there is not. There is one essence which gives all things life and being, for the Son is born out of the heart of the Father eternally and shall bring back into it again all things which issued forth therefrom in him. As (Christ declares, ‘ When I am exalted I will draw all things to me.’ The Floly Ghost proceeded forth as love to make our spirits one with him. The Son takes back with him all the things that issued forth in him and the Holy Ghost returns with all that he expired. St Dionysius says, ‘ Son and Holy Spirit are the light of the God-bearing Godhead.’ St Philip cried, ‘ Lord, show us the Father and wc shall be satisfied.’ Our Lord answered and said, ‘ Philip, he who seeth me seeth my lather.’ The Son revealed the mysteries of the Father for he was like him in all things and of one nature with him. Nothing satisfies the soul except the Father who is altogether good and absolutely simple. The more simple the soul the more like God she is. God spake never a word but one : his simple understanding. If the soul is to be simple she must withdraAv from multiplicity into his one conception. That can happen here only noAV and then.

The soul has three understandings. First, the understanding of things that are above her. Next, the understanding of herself. From this knowledge she passes to the third : the one alone. Therein she loses herself speaking never a word but possessing herself in silence for God has rapt ht^r up above herself to him ; she is not and knows not by herself. What she understands she understands with him and even this she must forgo, must leave to that wherewith she understands it. As St Dionysius says, ‘ Make thyself passive, void of definition. One single glimpse of the abstraetion that God is, more unifies the soul with God than all the works of holy Christendom.’ Try diligently, therefore, to get some grasp of truth : in the conception of it thine own wont is altogetlier lost and thou dost live in truth. Those exalted ones who stand therein can never be disjoined from God. They are the blessed who know God in himself eternally. God is unchangeable, so these can never more be separated from him. It behoves us therefore to depart from all unlikencss to our highest good.

Justua in perpetuum vivet apud dominum est mersce cjus {Sap, Sie). We read to-day in the epistle the wise man’s words, ‘ The just lives in eternity.’ I have defined elsewhere what a just man is, but here I say in another sense, that man is just {i.e, righteous) who is informed with and transformed into justice (righteousness). The just lives in God and God in him, for God is born in the just and the just in God : at every virtue of the just God is born and is rejoiced, and not only every virtue but every action of the just wrought out of the virtue of the just and in justice ; thereat God is glad, aye, thrilled with joy, there is nothing in his ground that docs not dance for joy. To unenlightened people this is matter for belief but the illumined know The just seeks nothing in his work ; only thralls and hirelings ask anything for work, or work for any why. If thou wouldst be informed with, transformed into, righteousness, have no ulterior purpose in thy work ; form no idea in thee in time or in eternity, not reward nor happiness nor this nor that, for verily all such w^orks are dead. Believe me, the idea of God in thee, if thou dost work with that in view, means death to all thy works ; they are good works spoilt and thou dost sin to boot, for thou doest like the gardener who first plants the garden and then roots up the trees but still expects a crop. So thou dost

throw away good work. If thou wouldst live and have thy work live also thou must be dead to all things and reduced to naught. It belongs to creature to make aught from aught, but God’s idiosyncrasy is making aught from naught, wherefore, if God is to make aught of thee or in thee, thou must first come to naught ; so enter thou into thine own ground and work ; works wrought by thee there arc all living. He says, ‘ his reward is with the Lord.’ lie says with, meaning that the reward of the just is where God is himself ; that the happiness of the just and God’s happiness arc one ; the righteous are in bliss where God is in bliss. St John says, ‘ The Word was with God.’ He says xmth because God is righteousness and the righteous are like him. Whoever is in righteousness is in God and is God. Further, with regard to tlie word, just. lie does not say, the just man or just angel, he simply says, the just. The Father begets his Son the just and the just his Son ; every virtue of the just, every act done by the just, is nothing but the Son being begotten by the Father. The Father never stops, he is always trying to beget his Son in me, according to the scriptures : ‘ For Sion’s sake will I not hold my peaee and for Jerusalem I will not rest till the righteous is revealed and shincth like the lightning.’ Sion is the height of living, the contemplative life, and Jerusalem the profoundest calm. Not for the most exalted life nor for the deepest peace will God desist until the riglitcous is revealed. God and God alone works in the just. If thy works are prompted by anything external, then thy works are dead. For thy works to be living it must be God that prompts them in the innermost recesses of thy soul : that is thy life and that alone.

Further I declare : if it seems to thee that one virtue is greater than another, if thou dost cultivate it more and value it above the rest, then thou art not loving it as it is in righteousness nor is it God who is working in thee. As long as a man prizes or leans to one virtue more than to another he neither takes nor feels it as it is by rights, and he is not righteous. The just man loves and practises virtue as a whole, in righteousness, as righteousness itself. It says in holy writ : ‘ Before the fabricated world, I am.’ He says, I am before, above. Meaning that in eternity, exalted above time, man does one work with God. People sometimes ask how man can do the work that God was doing a thousand years ago and in a thousand years will be doing still. They cannot understand it. But in eternity is no before nor after ; the happenings of the past milleimium and the future one and now, in eternity arc all the same. God’s doings of a thousand years ago and now and a thousand years to come are but one single act. It follows that

the man who is exalted above time into eternity will do with God what he did in the past and also what he does in the next thousand years. This is matter of knowledge to the wise and of belief to fools. St Paul says, ‘ We are eternally chosen in the Son and we should never rest until we get to be what wc have been in him eternally.’ The Father ceaselessly endeavours to get us born in his Son so that we may be the same as his Son is. The Father is begetting his Son, and in his begetting the Father finds so much peace and pleasure that his entire nature is expended in it. That which is in God moves him to beget ; by his ground, his nature and his essence the Father is moved to generation. And you must know, God is born in us as soon as all our soul-powers, which hitherto have been tied and bound, are absolutely free (and passive) and when the mind is stilled and sense troubles us no longer. Then the Father begets in us his Son. Then wc keep as free from forms and images as God, and find ourselves as free from likeness as God is void and free in his very self. When the Father bears his Son in us we shall know the Father with the Son and the Holy Ghost in both of them and the holy Trinity, and therein all things as a mere naught in God. Then time and number are no more. God’s essence neither does nor suffers, nor does his nature suffer, but it works.

Sometimes a light is apparent in the soul and she fondly thinks it is the Son, whereas it is nothing but a light. When the Son reveals himself within the soul the love of the Holy Ghost is revealed at the same time. It is the nature of the Father to beget his Son, and it is of the nature of the Son for me to be begotten in him and in his nature ; it is of the nature of the Holy Breath for me to be consumed therein and melted and reduced entirely to love. One who is thus in love and altogether love, will think that God loves none but him and knows no love for anyone nor yet from anyone but him alone. Some doctors hold that the spirit finds its beatitude in love. Some make him find it in behohling God. I say he finds it not in love nor in gnosis nor in vision. But, it may be asked, has the spirit in eternal life no vision of God ? Yes and no. Once born he neither sees nor pays heed to God. But in being born he does see God. The spirit is in bliss then, not in its begetting but as being begotten, for then it lives as the Father lives, impartible, in its abstract and essential nature. Wherefore do thou turn from things and realize thyself in thy naked essence, for outside essence all is accident and the accidental makes for why. Let us live in the eternal, So help us God. Amen.

Meister Eckhart says, Likes love and unite with one another ; unlikes hate and shun each other. According to one master, no two things arc so unlike as earth and heaven. Earth knew itself by nature alien and unlike to heaven. Wherefore it fled from heaven to the lowest place and there bides still lest haply it draw night at all to heaven. And the celestial nature grew aware that earth had fled and had possessed itself of the lowest place. And that is how the heavens came to empty themselves out into the earth in fruitful wise, indeed the masters say the broad expanse of heaven does not withhold a needle-point in size, it brings itself forth every whit as fruitfulness on earth. So earth is the most fruitful of all mortal creatures. Likewise I say about the man who has brought himself to naught in himself, in God and in all creatures. That man assumes the lowest place and God is bound to empty himself whole into his soul, else would he not be God. I warrant you by God’s eternal truth, that into any man who is brought low God pours out his whole self in all his might, so utterly that neither of his life, his being, nor his nature, nay, nor of his perfect Godhead, docs he keep aught back, he empties out the whole thereof as fruits into that wight who in abandonment to God assumes the lowest place.

To-day as I pursued my way pondering my discourse and wondering how to make you understand, I hit on an analogy. If yc can follow this my meaning W'^ill be plain and eke the drift of all my teaching. The analogy is with my eye and wood. My eye when it is open is an eye. It is the same eye, shut ; and the wood is neither more or less by reason of its seeing. Now mark me well. Suppose my eye, being one and single in itself, falls on the w^ood in seeing, then though each thing stops as it is, yet in the actual seeing they are so far the same that we can argue : my eye is the wood and the wood my eye. Now if the wood were free from matter and wholly immaterial, as my eyesight is, then we could truly say that in my actual vision wood and eye are essentially the same. If this is so with corporal things, then how much more with ghostly. Remember, my eye is far more one with some transoceanic sheep’s that I have never seen than with my ear, albeit with this it has organic union. The sheep’s eye works like mine, and therefore I impute to it more unity of action than I can do to eye and ear which have their different functions.

I have often spoken of the light within the soul, which is uncreated and eke uncreaturely. It is this light I am so often hinting at in my discourses, it is the light which lays straight hold of God, bare and unveiled, as he is in himself ; that is to say, it catches him in the act of self-begetting. Hence I can truly say this light is rather one with God than with any of my powers wherewith it has organic union. For know, this light within my soul i^; no better in its essence than the humblest, the grossest of my powers ; my sight or my hearing, for example, or any other sense which is the sport of heat and cold, hunger or thirst, seeing that essence is impartible. Now I maintain, if thou dost turn from thine own self and from created things, then in what measure thou dost this thou dost attain to unity and happiness in thy soul-spark ; a thing which is immune from time and space. This spark is opposed to creatures. It has no want but just God, God as he is in himself. Not enough for it the Father or the Son or Holy Ghost, nor even all three Persons, so far as they preserve their several properties. I trow this light would not be satisfied with the alone-begotten fruit of Deity. Nay, more, and even stranger to relate, I warrant you this light is not content with the changeless impartible essence of God, which neither gives nor takes, but wants to find its source ; it wants to get into its simple ground, into the silent desert whcrcinto no distinct thing ever pryecl, not Father, Son nor Holy Ghost. At the centre, where no one abides, there this light is quenched in still stronger light, wherein it is more one than in itself, for this ground is the im[)artible stillness, motionless in itself, and by this immobility all things are moved and all those have their life who, rceollceted in themselves, do live the life of mind. May we too live this intellectual life, So help us God. Amen.

THERE COMES FORTH A ROD OUT OF THE ROOT OF JESSE Egredietur virga de radice Jesse et jlos de radice ejus ascendet et requiescet super eum spiritus domini {Isaias Hi, g)- read to-day in the Mass that there comes forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and out of the root conies forth a flower, and on this flower there rests, reposes, the spirit of the Lord. Jesse means a brand, which is burning ; it signifies love in the abstract, where it is no more called love, where nothing adventitious exists, and in this ground where as yet nothing grows, it germinates just like, within the root, the coming shoot. The offshoot has three properties : likeness to what it shoots from, the nature of the same, and it is of exactly the same species ; thirdly, it is free from all attachments, simply an emanation. Thus the Son proceeded from the Father, as another Person with the Father, albeit in the Father essentially the same. Accordingly he says, ‘ Out of the root came a rod and on the rod came a llower.’ My loving is a heavenly matter, for likes all end in same and the same is in the ground, and a thing that grows out of another is in every respect the same kind. An apple grafted on a pear-tree has the taste of both. It is not so here : this has the llavour of the one alone ; itself is not therein and yet it is therein. It could never come out were it not first within in the abstract, in brooding essence. The wine is in the vine : it is and it is not.

I say concerning God’s freedom that it yields no nature save one. God starts with the Son, and the Son is another than the Father who is power, and from them twain there blossoms forth the Holy Ghost. Our philosophers teach that the sun draws the flow’^ers out of the roots through the stem, tirnelcssly wellnigh and too subtly for any eye to follow. The soul, which lias no nature in her ground, the ground of love, where slie is love, emerges from this nature where she is stoied in God. VVhatcviH' enters this being has much the same being. At the coming of the bride he devotes himself to her and works with all his might within his ground, in his innermost, where naught exists, where activity stops altogether. The tree of the Godhead grows in this ground and the Holy Ghost sprouts from its root. The flower that blossoms, love, is the Holy Ghost. In this Holy Ghost the soul flowers with the Father and the Son, and on this flower there rests and reposes the spirit of the Lord. He could not repose had he not rested first upon the Spirit. The Father and the Son rest on the Spirit, and the Spirit reposes upon them as on its cause. What is rest ? St Augustine says, rest is complete lack of motion ; body and soul bereft of their own nature. One philosopher says, God’s idiosyncrasy is immutability. That is, all creatures. Man as trans(;ending motion. Jesse means a fire and a burning ; it signifies the ground of divine love and also the ground of the soul. Out of this ground the rod grows, i,e, in the purest and highest ; it shoots up out of this virgin soil at the breaking forth of the Son. Upon the rod opens a flower, the flower of the Holy Ghost. We beseech the Lord our God that we may rest in him and he in us to his glory. So help us God. Amen.

Puis puer isle erit ? Etenim manu^ domini erat cum illo {Luc, l^g). ‘ What manner of child shall this be ? The hand of the Lord is with him.’ The hand of the Lord means the Holy Ghost, for two reasons. First, because work is wrought with the hand ; and next, because it is one with the arm and with the body. All human actions start in the heart, extend to the limbs, and are done by the hand ; so the seat of the soul being chiefly in the heart, in the heart is the mainspring of licr energies. Likewise it is the Father who is the fount and oi’igin of all divine activity, and the Son is represented by his arm ; as it says in the Magnificat, ‘ he hath shewed strength with his arm.’ Divine power proceeds from the body via the arm to the hand, whereby is signified the Holy Ghost, even as the soul which courses through the body and in material things proelaims her ghostly properties. Wherefore we argue that the Holy Ghost is meant by the hand which wrought in this child. Now mark the state of the soul wherein God is apt to work. He speaks of a ehild, suggCvsting pure joy, an unblemished state. The soul God works in must be pure and clean. A master says, ‘ The eternal wisdom tarries in Zion, her rest is in that pure city ’ ; Zion meaning a height and a watch-tower (or resting-place). Again, she must be withdrawn (rom mortal, impermanent things. And thirdly, she must be on the watch for coming hindrances. God comes out of kindness because of the love he bears to the soul. He has endowed her with a godly light, the reflection of himself, so that he may be able fri'cly to energise in her in his own likeness. Love cannot be without finding or making alike. Suppose I have bidden a man, unless he have gotten some liking for me, he will never willingly follow me. And so with the soul which follows God ; God’s members must all do his bidding whether they want to or no. If they do it reluctantly, then it is painful to him ; no work is ever pleasant that is done without liking.

No creature can do more than in her lies. The soul makes headway solely by the light that God has given her, that being her own, presented her by God as a bridal gift. God comes in love with intent that the soul may arise, that in love she may energise above herself. For love cannot be without finding her like or making alike, except in as far as God works in love passing soul. Soul does not ply the work of grace (since that is not her nature) till she is gotten yonder, where God is plying himself, where the work is as noble as the worker, his own nature, to wit. As with light, for example. In wood it produces its like : heat and fire, and the harder the wind blows the fiercer the flame. Now put love for the fire and the Holy Ghost for the wind : the stronger breathes the Holy Ghost the more all-consuming its fire, albeit not sudden ; it keeps pace with the growth of the soul. If the whole man were consumed at once it would not be well, for one niight live a thousand years and still go on waxing in love. Light

acts upon flowers, making them grow and bear fruit ; in living creatures it makes for life ; in man it makes for happiness. This comes by the grace of God which raises the soul to a higher power ; for if the soul is to be like God she must transcend herself. Amen.

Manete in me {Joh. 15^); beatxis vir^ qui in sapientia morahitur (EccL 1422)* ‘ Abide in me,’ says our Lord Jesus Christ in the gospel ; and the other text from the epistle says, ‘ Blessed is the man that shall continue in wisdom.’ Both mean exactly the same thing. Mark then what is required of a man to dwell in him, i.e, in God. He requires three things. First, to renounce himself and all things, not cleaving to aught that is grasped by the senses within nor abiding in any creature existing in time or in eternity. Again, he must love neither this good nor that good : he must love good for good’s sake, since nothing is good or desirable except in so far as God is therein. Wc ought to love things no whit more than just as much as wc love God in them ; nor is it right to love God for his heaven’s sake nor for the sake of anything at all except the good he is in his own self. Whoso loves him for aught abides not in him, but abides in the thing he is loving him for. If then ye desire to dwell in him, ye must love him for naught but himself. Thirdly, he must take God not as good nor as right, but he must apprehend him in his pure and virgin substance where he is apprehending himself. Goodness and right are the garment of God which is covering him. Do thou then strip God of all coverings : discover him in his vestibule bare, just in his naked self. So shall ye abide in him.

Whoso abides in him thus has live things. First, betwixt him and God there is no difference at all, they are one. Angels arc many, beyond number, they can do nothing without number ; they arc numberless because of their simplicity. The three Persons in God, who counts as three, they, again, have number. But betwixt man and God is not alone no difference but no multiplicity : nothing but one. The second is, that he is conceiving his happiness in that same virgin nature where God is conceiving himself and conserving himself. Thirdly, his knowledge is one with God-knowledge, and this knowing consists in co-operation and con-sciencc in God’s operation and science, to wit, the actual energy and gnosis at work towards the end that God may be ever being born in man. How is God ever being born in man ? Look you. Suppose a man hews out and brings to light the divine form which God has wrought into his nature, then God’s image in him stands revealed. Birth must be taken in the sense of revelation, the Son being said to be born of the Father because he reveals the Father as father. So the more and the more clearly God’s image shows in man the more evidently God is born in him. And by God’s eternal birth in him we understand that his image stands fully revealed. The fifth thing is that this man is ever being born in God. How can a man be ever being born in God ? Lo ! by revealing this form in a man the man grows like unto God, for the form of man is the same as the image of God whieh is God in every respect. The more he is like God the more he is one. So man’s eternal birth in God we understand to mean ideal man refulgent in God’s image, which is God in form and matter, wherewith man is the same. This oneness of man and God is a matter of likeness of form, man being Godlike in form. So when we talk of man being one with God and take him to be one with God by nature, we refer to the exemplary element in him which is on a par with God, and not to his created nature. When we look at him as God we are blind to him as creature ; remembering his deity we forget his creature-nature ; withal this same oblivion must not be construed to mean the negation of his created nature, rather the affirmation of God in him whom we are regarding as God. Christ, for example, who is both God and man : what time we arc considering his manhood we disregard his Godhead ; not that we are denying him his Godhood, we simply ignore it for the nonce. And hence the explanation of St Augustine’s dictum, ‘ What a man loves a man is.’ If he loves a stone he is that stone, if he loves a man he is that man, if he loves God — nay, I durst not say more ; were I to say, he is God, ye might stone me. I do but teach you the scriptures. Man being all meet for God is conformed to, informed with and transformed into, the divine uniformity wherein he is one with God. All this man gets by abiding within.

Now mark the fruits borne by a man when he is one with God : together with God he is V)earing all creatures and big with beatitude for every creature in virtue of being one with him. The other text from the epistle says, ‘ Blessed is the man that continues in wisdom.’ He says, ‘in wisdom,’ wisdom being a feminine noun and feminine nouns denote passivity. Now in God we posit both action and passion, for the Father is doing and the Son is suffering, this being characteristic of born natures. Eternal born wisdom, wherein all things stand distinct, is the Son, and that is why he says, ‘ Blessed is the man that continues in wisdom.’ ‘ Blessed is the man,’ he says. Now as I have often told you, there are two powers in the soul : one is the man and the other is the woman. He says, ‘ Blessed is the man.’ The faculty of soul we call the man is the chief power of the soul, wherein God is a naked light ; for nothing but God enters into this power and this power is ever in God : the man who has gotten all things in this power has gotten them not as being things, he has them as being in God. We ought to abide all the time in this power because in this power all things arc the same. Thus abiding in all things alike and knowing them all in God as the same, man possesses all things ; he has discarded their grossest part and has gotten them now in their good and desirable nature. In this wise he possesses them yonder for God in his own nature is unable to forbear, he is obliged to give thee everything he ever made and his own self to boot. Blessed is the man who abides all the time in this power, he is ever-abiding in God. May we abide at all times in God, So help us our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Fluminis impetus Iwtificat civitatern del : sanctijicavit tabernacuturn suurn altissimus {Psalm 455). ‘ The sudden or swift river makes glad the city of God.’ Here we must note three things. First, the swift stream ; next, the city it serves ; thirdly, the benefit it brings. The prophet knows not how to stem the torrent of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost flows into the soul as fast as she is poured forth in humility and so far as she has gotten the capacity. He fills all the room he can find. Consider, next, what city it is it flows through. It is really the soul. A city is something enclosed and centred within. And so must the soul be whereinto God flows. She must be safe from outside alarms, her forces assembled within. According to St John, the twelve apostles were gathered together when they received the Holy Ghost. Even so the soul must be gathered and brought to herself in order to welcome this divine stream which fills to the full her cup of delight. I sometimes say, beginners of the virtuous life shoiild do as he does who describes a circle : the starting-point once fixed, he keeps it so and then the trace is good. In other words, learn first to fix the heart on God, on good and on good works. Great deeds performed with shifting heart profit but little if at all. There were once two doctors. One of them declared that the good man cannot be moved. The other disagreed. What I say is, the good man may forsooth be moved, but he cannot be

changed for the worse. I trow the good man is not easily hindered. But if aught can worsen him he is not perfect. Thirdly, the good of it. Which is, the prophet says, that ‘ God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.’ It is the soul he means. Soul would not that God wrought with her aught that is mixed with creature. Some things God does with help of creature and some unaided. If the grace which is a help and which is coming through my words could enter your heart without means, as though spoken by God, your soul would forthwith be converted and she could not help it. By pronouncing God’s word I become a co-worker with God and grace is mingled in me, God speaking it through me, and since I am to you as the means, it is not received intact in your soul. But the grace which is uttered by the Holy Ghost itself is received direct and imprinted unaltered in the soul what time the soul is recollected into the single power which has intuition of God. Grace springs up in the heart of the Father and flows into his Son, and in their mutual love it proceeds from the wisdom of the Son into the gift of the Holy Ghost and in the Holy Ghost is sent into the soul ; and this grace is the face of God and is sealed in the soul by the Spirit of God, without means and unchanged, making the soul like God. This God does by himself unaided by creature.

No creature is noble enough to help in this work ; God has not graced their nature with such excellence. But he can do it easily enough in his own perfect nature. God will not let a creature assist him in this work, so for the nonce he elevates the soul to a much higher level than lier natural habitat, where she is out of reach of any creature. It were well within the compass of an angel’s noble nature, provided God would let an angel serve. But that would offend the soul for in that hour she disdains the slightest taint of creature ; even the light of grace wherein she is atoned would be flouted by the soul did she not know she cannot pass it by. After all, it is not natural to her, it is quite supernatural, her flouting at that moment everything that is not God, for God leads forth his bride out of creaturely values into hiinself and speaks with her in her heart, that is, he makes her like himself in grace. For this exalted act the soul must recollect herself. The powers of the soul arc filled full of delight by this pure infusion of grace. Grace is to God as the shine to the sun ; it is one with him and it carries the soul into God and makes her exactly the same as God and as such she enjoys God’s perfection. I’o the soul that has gotten and enjoyed divine perfection all that is not God has a bitter, nauseous savour. Then again, the soul wants the highest of all, so she cannot abide aught above her. I say, aye, and I durst maintain, she cannot even bear God being

above her and I can prove it thus. For if the soul were spirited away far beyond things to perfect freedom from them and came in touch with God in his abstract divinity, natheless she would never rest till, thrusting into that, he shall have drowned her in himself and drowned himself in her alone. What though God be far above her in nobility of nature, she cannot rest till she has gotten God, so far as it is possible to creature to conceive him. The greatest happiness in earth or heaven lies in likeness to God, which divine nature makes in the highest degree : to wit, the image of itself. And this is what the soul is striving for seeing no so^il can throughly follow God without having in her the image of God. It is for us to sec whether the grace we have received is every whit divine, whether it smacks of God’s perfection, whether it is in common with and is emanating in his grace into whatever can receive it. Even so ought man to be flowing out into whatever can receive him. So help us God. Amen.

Jicsti autem in perpetuum vivent et apud dorninwn est merces eorum {Sap, 5 ^q), ‘ The just (or righteous) live for ever and their reward is with God.’ Let us look at this carefully. It sounds quite trite and commonplace, whereas it is, in fact, a most remarkable and precious dictum. ‘ The just live.’ Who arc the just ? One scripture says. That man is just who gives to each his own. So the just are they that give to God his due and to the saints and angels theirs and to his fellow what is his. God’s is glory. Who are they that glorify God ? Those who having gone out of themselves seek not their own in anything whatever it may be, or great or small ; who look for nothing over them nor under them nor yet beside them ; not mindful of possessions, of honours, comfort, pleasure, nor inwardness nor holiness nor of reward nor heaven. They have finished with all that is theirs. God glorifies them and they truly glorify God and render him what is his due. We ought to give the saints and angels joy. Wonder of wonders ! Can a man in this life give joy to those in life eternal ? Aye, surely. Marvellous, incredible to tell, every saint rejoices, takes ineffable delight in each virtuous deed, each good desire or intention ; their joy no tongue is able to express nor any heart conceive, as I have said. And why ? Because their love to God is so immeasurably great, they hold him so right dear, that his glory is to them more than their happiness. Not alone the saints and angels, but very God himself is as much pleased thereat as though

it touched his^pwn felicity and was vital to him, to his own delight and satisfaction. Remember then, even if we serve God for no other reason than for the exceeding joy of those in life eternal and of God himself, yet we ought to do so gladly and with all diligence. Also, we ought to help those that are in hell and succour those still living. A man of this sort is in one way just, but in another sense the just are they that take everything alike from God no matter what it is, big and little, good and bad, all the same, no more nor less, but one thing like another. If one thing is to thee of more moment than another then thou art unjust. Thou must be rid of own-will altogether. I was thinking just now : if God does not will what I do then I must will what he docs. Some folks always want their own way ; that is bad, that way lies sin. Those others are a trifle better who would like to do God’s will and have no mind to go against it, yet when they are sick they wish God would choose to make them well. These people would have God, then, conforming to their will rather than they to his. We condone this although it is wrong. The just have no will at all ; whatever God wills, it is all one to them, regardless of the hardship.

The just are so set on justice that were God not just they would not care a fig for God ; they are so stauneh to right, so perfectly indifferent to self, they reck not of the pains of hell nor of the joys of heaven nor anything whatever. Were all the pangs of those in hell and all the pain borne or to bear on earth to be the fruits of justice, they would not mind one jot, so true they are to God and right. To the just man nothing gives more pain, there is no greater hardship, than what is contrary to justness, equipoise. — How so ? —If one thing can cheer and another can depress, you are not equable ; to be cheerful one moment and less or not at all so in the next is uneven-tempered. But the devotee of right is so stable that what he loves is his very life, nothing can upset him, nor docs he care for aught beside. St Augustine says, Where the soul loves there she is, rather than where she gives life. — Our text sounds plain and commonplace enough, but there are few who realize the actual meaning of it. One who grasps the import of justice and the just will understand all I have to say.

‘ The just live.’ There is nothing in the world so dear as life or so desirable. No life so bad or hard but man would go on living. It is written, the nearer to death the greater the pain. But however distressful life is there is still the desire to live. Why dost thou eat ? Why sleep ? To live. Why long for good or glory ? That knowest thou right well. But wherefore live ? For the sake of living, albeit thou ignorest for what reason thou dost live. Life is so desirable in itself, we want it for its own sake. Those who are in hell in eternal pain have no desire to lose their life, whether fiend or soul ; their life is such a noble thing, llowing as it does straight from God to them. That is the reason why they want to live. What is life ? God’s existence is my life. If my life is God’s existence then God’s being is my being and God’s is-ness is my is-ness, neither more nor less. They live eternally with God, on a par with him, not below him nor above. All their works are wrought with God and God’s with them. St John says, ‘ the Word was with God.’ It was exactly like and side by side with him, neither under nor over but equal.

When God created man he took the woman out of the man’s side that she might be his equal. Not out of his head nor out of his feet did he make her, ix, neither man nor woman, but his peer. So the just soul is like to God, by the side of God, on a level with him, not under nor yet over. Who are they that are his like ? They that are nothing like, they alone are Godlike. God’s essence nothing is like, therein is no image nor form. Those souls who are his equals, to them the Father gives as equals withholding nothing from them. All the Father has to give he bestows upon this soul, provided she is just and no more to herself than to another. Her own honour, her own profit, aught of hers, she neither wants nor thinks of more than any stranger’s. Personal belongings are repugnant to her, alien and remote, be they bad or good. All love of this world is based on love of self. Leave this and thou hast left the world. In eternity the Father is bringing forth his Son just like himself. ‘ The Word was with God and the Word was God ’ : the same in the same nature. I say, moreover : he has brought him forth in my soul. Not merely is she with him and he equally with her but he is in her : the Father gives birth to his Son in the soul in the very same way as he gives him birth in eternity, and in none other. He must do, willy-nilly. The Father is begetting his Son unceasingly, and furthermore, I say, he begets me his Son, as his very own Son. Moreover I declare, not only does he beget me his Son, he begets me himself and himself me : me his essence and his nature. In his nethermost deep I come welling up in his holy Breath, where there is one life, one being and one act. God’s activity is one ; he begets me his Son then without difference. My bodily father is not my real father except for one small portion of his nature and I am different from him : he may be dead and I alive. My heavenly Father is my real father ; I am his and all I have I get from him ; I airi the son of him and of none other. Since the Father performs a single act therefore he

makes me his Son without any distinction. As St Paul says, ‘We are wholly transformed into God and changed.’ Take an illustration. In the sacrament the bread is changed into the body of our Lord, and however much bread there is it becomes no more than the one body. Likewise were the bread to be changed into my finger it would make no more than the one finger. But suppose my finger is changed back to the bread, then the one is as much as the other ; for when one thing changes to another it is identical therewith. Even so if I be changed into him and he makes me one and the same with himself, then by the living God it is also true that there is no distinction. The Father gives birth to his Son without ceasing. Once the Son is born he takes nothing from the Father, for he has it all ; but while in the act of being born he is receiving from the Father. The moral of this is that it is not right of us to ask from God as from a stranger. ‘ I call you not servants but friends,’ said our Lord. The servant asks, tlie master pays. I was wondering lately whether I am willing to ask or to accept anything from God. I must take earnest counsel with myself, for by accepting anything from God I make myself inferior to God, like a servant to his master, in respect of giving. That is not the case with us in eternal life,

I once said here, and it is very true : When a man goes out of himself to find or fetch God, he is wrong. I do not find God outside myself nor conceive him excepting as my own and in me. A man ought not to work for any why, not for God nor for his glory nor for anything at all that is outside him, but only for that which is his being, his very life within him. Some simple folk fondly imagine they are going to see God as it were standing there and they here. Not so. God and I are one in knowing. When I take God into me in loving I am going into God. Some say that happiness does not lie in knowledge but in will alone. They are wrong ; if it were merely a matter of will it would not be one. Working and becoming are the same. When the carpenter stops working the house will stop becoming. Still the axe and stoj) the growth. God and I are one in operation : he works and I become. Fire changes to itself the fuel cast upon it, which is converted to its nature. The wood does not assimilate the fire, the fire assimilates the wood. ‘ We shall be changed into God so that we shall know him as he is,’ says St Paul. And the manner of our knowing shall be this, I him as he me, not more or less : just the same. ‘ The just live eternally, and their reward is with God ’ : identity with him, as I have said. Let us love justice for its own sake and God without a why, So help us God. Amen.

Prccdica verhum (2 Tim. 42 ). St Dominic says, translating the words of St Paul, ‘ Publish, proclaim, bring forth and propagate the Word.’ It is remarkable that anything should come forth and at the same time stay within. That the Word should come forth and still remain within is very wonderful ; that all creatures should come forth and remain within is very wonderful ; what God gives and promises to give is most wonderful, it is incomprehensible, incredible. That is as it should be ; if it were comprehensible and credible it would not be appropriate to him. God is in all things. The more he is in things the more he is out of things : the more he is within the more he is without. I have often said, God is creating the whole world now this instant. Everything God made six thousand years ago and more when he made the world, God makes now all at once. God is in all things ; but as God is divine and intelligible, therefore God is nowhere so much as in the soul, and the angels if you will, in tlie innermost soul, in the summit of the soul. And when I say the innermost 1 mean the highest and when I say the highest I mean the innermost. In the depths, at the summit of the soul, they arc both the same. Where time has never entered and no form was ever seen, at the centre, the summit, of the soul, there God is creating the whole world. All God’s creation of six thousand years ago, all his creation of a thousand years to come, if the world lasts so long, is wrought by God in the innem\ost recesses, at the apex of the soul. All the past and future is contrived by God at the summit of the soul. The Father bears his Son in the innermost recesses of the soul and begets thee with his only Son, no less. But if I am Son then I must be Son the same as he is Son, and in no other way. If I am a man I am a man manfashion. If I am the Man I am the Man Man-fashion. As St John says, ‘ Ye are God’s sons,’

‘ Speak the Word, tell it abroad, pronounce it, bring forth and propagate the Word.’ ‘ Tell it forth ! ’ What is spoken in from without is a gross, objective thing. ‘ Tell it forth ! ’ That implies that thou hast it in thee. The prophet says, ‘ God spake one and I heard two.’ True, God did speak but once. His utterance is but one. In his Word he speaks his Son and the Holy Ghost and the whole of creatures, all of which are but one utterance in God. But, ‘ I heard two,’ the prophet says. Meaning, I understood it to be God and creature. Yonder where God speaks it it is God ; but here it is creature. People fondly think that God became man yonder. No ; Gk)d was made man here as well as there, and he was made man for one purpose only : to beget thee his one-begotten Son. Yesterday I quoted from the Paternoster the words, ‘ thy will be done.’ Better his will than mine. That I should do it, is what the Paternoster means. First, by being (oblivious or) asleep to things, ignoring time and images and ereaiurcs. Philosophers will tell you that being in deep sleep a man might pass a hundred years oblivious of creatures, time and images and yet aware of God at work within him. As the soul says in the Book of Love, ‘ I sleep, but my heart waketh.’ So when all creatures are asleep in thee thou durst be awake to God’s doings in thee.

‘ Labour in all things ’ says our text, and this is open to three interpretations. It means, turn all to good account, or, see God in everything, for God is everywhere. St Augustine says, God created all things not that he might leave them and go on his own way : no, he is still in them. People imagine they have more if they have' things plus God than if they have God without the things. They are mistaken. All things plus God amount to nothing more than God alone ; and he who fondly weens that if he has the Son and tJie Father wdth him he has more than if he had the Son without the Father, is mistaken too. The Father plus the Son is no more than the Son is by himself and the Son plus the Father is no more than the Father by himself. To find God in all things is a sign that he has begotten thee his only Son, no less. Again, turn everything to good account, means, love God the same in poverty as wealth, hold him as dear in sickness as in health ; as dear in trials and in sufferings as in immunity from sufferings. The heavier to bear the lighter to bear : like two buckets, the heavier the one the lighter tlie otJier, and so the more one gets rid the easier the riddance. The God-lovcr parts with the world as cheerfully as with an egg. The more he gives up the easier it grows.

Thirdly, ‘ labour in all things ’ means : where thou findest thyself about manifold things, at variance wdth pure and simple essence, let that be thy work : ‘ work in all things ’ and ‘ fulfil thy destiny.’ It also means, lift up thy head, and this is twofold in its implication. The first meaning is : part with all that is thine and appropriate God ; then God will be thine as he is his own ; he will be God to thee as he is God to his very self, no less. What is mine I get from no one. If 1 get it from another it is not mine hut his from whom I got it. The other meaning is, dedicate all fhy acts to God. Many people cannot understand this, and I am not surprised ; to know the meaning of it the soul must be in great detachment and uplifted over all these things. May we attain to this perfection. So help us God. Amen. Virtutes cadorum movebantur {Luc, 21 20 ). This is a gospelsaying of our Lord, and the translation runs, ‘ The powers of heaven shall be moved.’ Heaven is suggestive of some mysterious or hidden thing, God being so mysteriously coneealed by the light of his divine splendour that no man may by dint of his own intellect attain to the beatific vision of his godly countenance. As Job exclaims, ‘ Who can by searching find out the things in heaven ? ’ As though to say, no one in the world. The sage laments this, crying, ‘ Alas ! O Lord, thou art a hidden God ! ’ According to St Augustine, ‘ God hides in the recesses of the soul, disguised in the workings of grace wherein he shows himself to the soul covertly, so that none may know except the soul wherein he is thus privily concealed.’ And St Paul says, ‘ Everything, which is in the soul, is hidden.’ The soul then is the godly heaven '^and ghostly where in unbroken stillness God does his perfect work. As God spake by the prophets, ‘ Behold, I create in you a new heaven.’

It is the stirring of the powers of these incarnate heavens by the light of God’s glory shining on them which Christ refers to when he says, ‘ The powers of heaven arc shaken.’ These words betoken to us the good works of the soul whereto she is wont what time God being hid in her makes her the heaven of his incomprehensible divinity. For every act proceeds from power and power proceeds from essence. So from these words we learn three things about the noble nature of the soul. First, her transcendent being. |, (Thus he speaks of heaven,) Next, her powerful faculties. (Hence i j the word powers,) Thirdly, her fruitful operation. (Hence the ' word moved,) Now to begin with let us note that if the soul has got a heavenly being she must possess three heavenly properties. First, the innate eternity of heaven. Secondly, its motion in a circle... Thirdly, its overflowing into creatures underneath. These three! things I demonstrate as follows : The first, that heaven is eternal, I explain in this way. The heavens have an incorporeal, immaterial nature in corporeal guise. No outside semblance is admitted. Colour is excluded, and no variable force can ply therein, hence its state is one of fixed abiding. Then the circular motion of the ^ See also Spamer’s Texte^ A. 6, for a longer version.

heavens is argued thus. Anything that travels in a circle comes back to its start ; and anything that comes back to its start travels in a circle. Now the philosopher says the mover of the heavens is in the East where the sun rises. We see with our own eyes that every day the sun dawns in the East and sets into the West to rise again next day at the place where, the philosopher says, the mover resides. It returns each day to its start. Ergo, the sun goes round. This is not to be confused with the sun’s own period of revolution. The starting-point of its own path is not reached in one day : it takes it a whole year, three hundred and sixty-five days, that is to say. Rather we must take this as referring to the heavens altogether, with the sun in their train. The sun doing yearly what they accomplish daily. Thirdly, the heavenly downpour into creatures I argue from the fact that everything subject to birth and decay is unstable and lacking in celestial power. As the philosopher observes in the book of The Celestial Nature, ‘ Heaven is to all inferior things the influx of being and of life.’

Now for the soul to be this ghostly heaven she must return to her eternal being, to the circular motion of her cause and to her highest nature streaming down into her lower powers. First and foremost let me say that as she goes it does behove the soul to turn to her eternal being and diligently note how by God’s grace she is immortal in her nature which he has rendered meet to share in his eternal bliss. She is an incorporeal nature in corporeal ' guise, spirit not following body in its fleshly birth, so no extraneous semblance can invade her, provided she is ever on her guard against the fading of her own exemplar wherein she is reflecting and manifesting God in his own proper nature. Nor may she brook the entrance of any naughtiness to oust her from her heavenly perfection and cast her into suffering, for she suffers without suffering in the power of God whereby she is fortified in suffering. Withal no other power can ply in her ; she is so secure in God who is immutable stability that neither death nor life nor depth nor height nor any creature can part her from his fixed and changeless deity. So with King David she may say, ‘ In cleaving to God lies the gift of immortal felicity.’

Secondly, the soul progresses in a circle, for she rises with the rising sun, in her eternal nature, to wit, in her heavenly Father’s heart, where there is ever dawning the true Son, his self-begotten Son, the light and shine of his eternal sufficiency. And she returns into the Father’s mind where she is spoken in celestial wise, as the prophet hath it, ‘ God fashioned the heavens in his understanding.’ This intelligible heaven means the soul returned intact to God as to her source. For he speaks into her his eternal Word, and confirms her in all heavenly perfection ; as the prophet cries on becoming the heaven of the Deity, ‘ By God’s Word are the heavens, fixed and established.’ Thirdly, this spiritual heaven of the soul drips divine grace and consolation. Just as the angel-mover rolls the heavens round and gives them energy, furnishing the heavens with the power of his might for heaven to pass on and thus supply all things with their being and activity and life, even so God dispenses to the soul his godly power with all its grace, which wells up in the Father’s heart, so giving her the means of growing vigorous and strong in his own proper motion wherein she gives her being and activity and life to all her lower powers, to the members of her body and to all their operations, till they, grown living in God’s eyes, do bring forth fruit of life eternal. This was the draught the prophet craved when, mindful that the Holy Ghost was troubling the deep waters of his heart and that his highest power was receiving and conceiving the dearest power of divinity, Isaias cried, ‘ Drop dew, ye heavens from above,’ meaning to say, pour into all my powers, all my members, all my works, the sweet celestial dew which ye have gotten into you from God.’

Further we must note how he has decked the natural heavens with seven planets, seven noble stars which arc nearer tq^ than the rest. I’lie first is SaMrn, then comes .Jiipiter, tfien Mars and then the Siiif ; after that comes Venus and then Mercury and then the Moon. Now when th<i soul becomes a spiritual heaven our Lord will deck her with these same stars ghostly, as .John saw in his apocalypse when he espied the King of Kings seated upon the throne of the majesty of (Jod and hav ing seven stars in his hand. Know that the first star, Saturn, is the purger ; Jupiter, the second, the well-wisher ; the third one. Mars, is him of wrath ; the fourth, the Sun, the light-giver ; the lifth one, Venus, is the lover ; the sixth one. Mercury, the winner ; the seventh is the . Moon, the runner. In the heaven of the soul Saturn becomes angelic purity, bringing as reward the vision of God, as our Lord says, ‘ Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall sec God.^ After him comes Jupiter, the gracious, whose reward is the possession of the earth ; not the one we wear by way of body, nor that we tread on with our feet ; but the one we are in eager search of : that earth which ^is flowing with the milk of humanity and the honey of divinity. ^ Ht is of this our Lord declares, ‘ Blessed are the meek in heart for they shall inherit the earth.’ Next follows Mars, of grim, determined nature and passionate suffering for God, bringing reward of the kingdom of heaven, as our Lord says, ‘ Blessed are they that suffer persecution for God’s sake for the heavenly

kingdom is theirs.’ And after him the sun of light bringing as its guerdon to the soul, with knowledge of the truth the habit of right-doing and of giving unto everyone his own ; and she being God’s by creation and adoption docs therefore give herself to God withal. According to the words of our Lord, ‘ Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.’ Then comes Venus, the lover, bringing reward of union with God ; as our Lord said, ‘ He that loveth me is beloved of my Father ; such conic unto him and abide with him.’ From her, too, comes reward of consolation, since love sets the loving heart lamenting and mourning for her love. As our Lord says, ‘ Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.’ After her comes Mercury, the winner, directly the soul forgoes everything for God, bearing as his prize the palm of deity, including the kingdom of heaven. According to the words of our Lord, ‘ Blessed are the spiritual poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Last comes the Moon, the runner, with her meed of happiness attained, as St Paul says, ‘ So run that ye may obtain.’ Now the soul attains God best by running to him with a tranquil heart, for his abode is in peace. Our God chooses peace for his children, and his child is lieir to his eternal bliss, as our Lord says, ‘ Blessed are the peaceful for they shall be called the children of God.’

Beyond these planetary stars there is the heaven where the fixed stars are which shine by night, the signals of the works wrought by the soul. In the night of the shadow of this world these shine before men, according to the words of our Lord, ‘ Let your light so shine before men that they may sec your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.’ The other stars all get their light from the radiance of the sun. Venus as well, the love-star, which shines brightest of them all. Accordingly, the works we do arc pregnant most with power and brightest light when we have wholly gotten us the nalurc of the amiable Venus, star of love, whose nature is receptive to the sunshine of the true and intelligible Deity. Igitur perfecti stmt cceli et terra et ornnis ornatus eorurn (Gen. 2^). ‘ Thus the heavens and the earth were linished and all the adornment of them.’ Even so the heavens of the innef man are finished and all the ornaments thereof. In the passage where Christ speaks of ‘ the powers,’ wc construe these to mean the sovran powers of the soul. For the soul has got three powers ip her spiritual mind ^ No. 07 (2) in Pfoifler’s text.

which are heavenly inasmuch as they are capable of doing heavenly work, for every heavenly power is of the breath of the mouth of our God. ^ ^ ^ The first power receives, the second sees, the third love s. What time the soul is occupied in entertaining God, in seTfrecollection and intellectual contemplation, the love of her will transports her right into God. Then occurs that movement of the heavens, in the act of fecundation, which is latent in eternity. For the end of all motion is rest. As saith Isaiah the prophet, ‘ The heavens are moved and the earth withal and after the motion comes rest.’ Now there is not perfect rest in intellectual vision, for in mental operations there is a certain motion of external things towards the soul, in virtue of which movement the forms of these same things are drawn into and pictured in the soul, starting a psychic motion in the isness of the soul and the real being of the things appearing in the picture ; and this motion extends to the will which is not at rest any more. Hence we see that in the starry heavens, the revolving heavens, God is none other than the mover, the starter, the source of energy whence the heavens get their power and their spin. And so too in this life he is present in the soul as the mover of our free will towards himself and towards good works, he being the fount of grace, which, from his godly heart, flows down into the soul.

Beyond this heaven there is the motionless heaven, and this firmament is the abode of th(^ blest. In this heaven God is in all his felicity, engaged in the personal act of his eternal divinity. For the Father goes on begetting his Son in himself without ceasing, and Father and Son breathe forth with equal power their holy Breath, both Son and Holy Ghost abiding with the Father in the essence, and in the vision of this Trinity of Persons lies the whole happiness of creatures which are able to participate in his divine felicity. So the soul, having conquered the multiple heavens and possessed herself of their mysterious power, is plunged into the unity of the motionless heaven, called fire or the empyrean, not because it is burning but because it is enlightening, all who are in this heaven being ablaze with the cherubic light of divine love. The soul becomes the heavenly habitation of the eternal Deity, and he performs his godly work in her, whence she receives the nectar which is denied to such as have not reached this fiery celestial mind. For her heavenly Sire begets in her his Son whom she lures out of bis Father’s heart, and Father and Son breathe into her their holy Breath, the Son never leaving his Father’s heart but proceeding forth from his Father in such fashion that he ever abides in i^is Father’s heart. Thus the Father dwells in the soul ; he clasps the soul to his breast, and in this embrace of

the Father she conceives within her his Son as a proceeding Person and at the same time is aware of his presence with the Father in his essence. For thus saith the Father, ‘ I will lead her into the wilderness, into the solitude, and will speak into her heart.’ His leading her into the desert, into the solitude, means making her void, deserted of creatures ; he empties her of corruptible things and says all he can to her heart. He can speak but one word, and that Word is eternal : it is his only-begotten Son. That is the Word he speaks to the soul, giving birth to his Son in her, and in this birth the Father and Son inspire her with their Holy Ghost which teaches her all things. Thus the soul gets all things from the Father and has gotten all things in the Son and knows all things in the Holy Ghost and so, possessed of all things, she is resting in God without end.

Sciiate, quia prope est regnum dei {Luc, ‘ily^). Our Lord says. The kingdom of God is at hand. Yes, the kingdom of God is within us, and according to St Paul our salvation is nearer than we think. In what sense is the kingdom of God near at hand ? Let us consider this carefully. Supposing 1 were king all unbeknowest to me, then I should be no king. But suppose I have the firm conviction that I am the king and everyone maintains and insists upon it with me and I know for certain that all the world is of the same opinion, in that case I am king and all the king’s treasure is mine. Failing any one of these three things I can be no king. Even so our happiness depends on our knowledge, our awareness of the sovran good, which is God himself. I have one power in my soul fully sensible of God. I am as certain as I live that nothing is so close to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to my own self ; my life depends upon God’s being near me, present in me. So is he also in a stone, a log of wood, only they do not know it. If the wood knew of God and realized his nearness like the highest angel does, then the log would be as blessed as the chief of all the angels. Man is more happy than a log of wood in that he knows and is aware of God, how near at hand God is. The better he knows it the happier he is and the worse he knows it the more unhappy he is. He is not happy because of God’s being in him and so near him or because of having God, but because he is aware of God, of his nearness to him ; because he is God-knowing and God-loving, and such an one knows that God’s kingdom is at hand.

Thinking upon God’s kingdom, often I am dumbfounded at. its grandeur ; for God’s kingdom is God’s self in all his fullness. God’s kingdom is no little thing : all imaginable worlds God might create, these make not up his kingdom. The soul God’s kingdom dawns in, who is conscious of God’s fullness, her none durst counsel nor instruct : she is by it instructed and assured of life eternal. He who knows, who is aware, how near God’s kingdom is can say with Jacob, God is in this place and I knew it not. God is just as near in creatures. The wise man says, God has spread his nets and lines all over creatures, and we can find and know him in any one of them if only we will look. A philosopher says, ‘ That man knows God aright who is equally aware of him in all things ’ ; and, ‘ To serve God in fear is good ; to serve him in love is better, but he who is apt to behold love in f( ar does best of all.’ A life of rest and peace in God is good ; a life of pain in patience is still better ; but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all. One may go in the fields and say one’s prayers and be conscious of God or go to church and be conscious of God ; if we arc more eonseious of God by being in a quiet place, that comes of our own imperfection and is not due to God, for God is the same in all things and all places and just as ready to vouchsafe himself so far as in him lies ; and that man knows God aright who ever finds him the same.

St Bernard says, ‘ Why does my eye see sky, and not my foot ? Because my eye is like the sky, more than my foot.’ For rny soul to see God then, she must be heavenly. What makes the soul alive to (lod in her, aware how close to her he is ? I answer : Heaven permits no alien intrusion, no mortal lack can penetrate therein to do it outrage. And the soul that knows God is so firmly established in God that nothing can reach her, not hope nor fear nor joy nor grief nor good nor ill nor nothing that would bring her down to earth. Heaven is at all points equidistant from the earth. And likewise it behoves the soul to be equally remote from every earthly thing and no nearer to one than to another but equable i^y> hi grief, in having and in wanting ; whatever it be she mUwSt be dead, dispassionate, superior to it. Heaven is clear and unsullied in its brightness, free from any taint of time and place. No corporal thing finds room therein. Not itself in time, incredible in swiftness is its revolution, its actual course being timeless though from its course comes time. Nothing hinders the soul from knowing God so much as time and place. Time and place are fractions, God is an integer. So if the soul knows God at all she must know him above time and space, for God is neither this nor that as these manifold things are : God is one.

If the soul would see God she must not look at anything in time. While the soul is regarding time and place or any such idea she can never recognise God. Before the eye can see colour it has to be rid of all colour. Before the soul can see God it must have nothing in common with naught. The seer of God knows that creatures are naught. Comparing one with another, creature looks fair and is aught, but compare it with God, it is naught. Further I declare : any soul that sees God must have forgotten herself and have lost her own self ; while she secs and remembers herself she nor sees nor is conscious of God. But when for God’s sake she loses herself and abandons all things then in God does she re-find herself, for knowing God she is knowing herself and all things (which she rid herself of) in God in perfection. To know the sovran good and the eternal goodness, really, 1 must know them in the good itself, not in partial goodness. To know real being I must know it as subsisting in itself, that is, in God, not parcelled out in creatures.

In God alone exists the whole of godhood. Not in one man exists the whole of manhood, for in a single man exists not all mankind. But in God the soul finds perfect manhood and all things in their prime, for she knows them in their essential nature. The dweller in a richly furnished house must know far more about it than another person who, though full of information, has never been within. And by this same token I am as certain as I live, and as God lives, that the soul who knows God knows him above time and place. In this God -conscious state the soul perceives how near God’s kingdom is, namely, God in all his fullness. There is much discussion among doctors at the School as to the possibility of the soul knowing God. Not by reason of his harshness docs God exact so much from man but out of his great kindness, wanting the soul to be more capacious, big enough to hold the largesse he is anxious to bestow. Let no one deem it difficult to arrive at this however hard may seem, and be, indeed, to start with, the parting from and dying to all things. Having once got into it no life is more easy, more delightful or more lovely. God is so very careful to be always with a man to guide him to himself in case of his taking the wrong way. No man ever wanted anything so much as God wants to make the soul aware of him. God is ever ready, but we are so unready. God is near to us, but we are far from him. God is in, we are out ; God is at home, we are strangers. The prophet says, ‘ God leads the just by a narrow path to the high road out into the open,’ that is, to the true freedom of the spirit become one spirit with God. Ours to follow his lead and let him bring us to himself. So help us God. Amen.

This is a sermon on our Lord’s body by Brother Eckhart. He says that the bread of our Lord’s body has many names, but three special ones are ^iven it in holy writ. In the first place it is called the heavenly bread, in the second it is called the bread of anprels, and thirdly the bread of lamentation. And whoso would worthily receive this bread of our Lord’s body must have these three things. First, none can enjoy the heavenly bread who is not a heavenly man. This means that as the heavens with the sun and moon and the entire system arc above all earthly, temy)oral things, so man iti his desires, his senses and his thoughts must be lifted up to celestial things. Secondly, no man can enjoy the bread of heaven except he be an angelic man, for no creature was ever so perfect as an angel. This man must be at all times perfectly pure in heart and body. Thirdly, it is called the bread of lamentation ; this no man enjoys except he be a man of sorrow, one, that is to say, who pondering our Lord’s martyrdom shall rue the treatment meted out to our Lord on earth. Whoso has not this rue shall not enjoy the bread of sorrow. So, then, a man must have three things before he can approach this bread. First, having gotten to the excellent condition of knowing good and ill, he must choose the good and worthy and reject the foul and evil. Next, with his heart divorced from worldly loves, this man must go in godly love and all godly things. Thirdly, he must order all his activities.

Boethius says, ‘ He who wants to see true in this light I speak of let him relinquish four things,’ which are set down. He must relinquish the joys of ^ the- world and care. .iuad>^wajit-iuij^ while these are in thee^ it is dark and clouded therein. St Paul says God dwells in light inaccessible. Anything approaching this light the light consumes and turns to its own divine nature, even as I said of the divine essence ; what is taken into the essence is changed into essence. Speaking of understanding : as it is characteristic of God to subsist unmoved in his pure and virgin essence, his own being, so is this property imputed to understandJ^ing, which is so noble as to be selLsubsistent. ^ For No. 71 (1) see Jostes, No. 16, of which it forms a part. I have told how understanding has to break through the image of the Son ; as he himself declares, ‘ I am the light of the world ; no man cometh to the Father but through me.’ As the wise man explains in the Book of Wisdom, when the soul is borne into God by his divine wisdom, she is clarified and sublimed in light and in grace, all that is foreign to the soul being detached and shelled away together with a portion of herself. Further, I related how the soul, now throughly purged of soul accretions, is carried up and flows back into the Son as pure as she flowed out in him. The Father created the soul in the Son, so if wc are ever to get into the ground of God, into his innermost heart, we must take the lowest place in our own ground, in our own innermost self, in abject lowliness. When the soul enters into her ground, into the innej;: most recesses of her being, divine power suddenly pours into her, producing much activity, both' manifest and secret, and the soul s grows big and high in fiiydur with God. This is and must be in the soul who, rightly disposed in the ground of humility, ascends, borne aloft in the divine power : she never stops until she gets right into God and coming to absolute rest in him, abides wholly within without looking out, subsistent in his pure essence ; for even therein is the soul. God is pure being. The philosopher says that nothing at all can get into God, who is pure being, but what is also pure being. Ergo, the soul is pure being who has gotten therein, soaring right up into God. Amen.

The prophet said, ‘ Lord be merciful to the people that is in thee.’ The Lord replied, ‘ All that enter in will I make whole and love much.’ I take the words of the Pharisee who besought our Lord to dine with him and our Lord’s injunction to the woman, vade in pace ! It is good to pass from restlessness to calm : praiseworthy but imperfect. ‘ Go in peace,’ be not disquieted : God implies that we ought to enter into peace and continue in peace and end in peace. God said, ‘ In me ye have peace.’ So far in God so far in peace. Is aught in God, it is in peace ; is aught out of God, it is without peace. St John says, ‘ Whatever is born of God overcometh the world.’ What is born of God seeks peace and ensues it. He that pursues the even tenor of his way and is at peace is a heavenly man. Heaven constantly rotates, in its motion seeking rest. 1 See also Jostes, No. 10. The Pharisee besought our Lord that he would dine with him. The food a man eats is changed in him into his body, like the body by the soul. Body and soul are one in being, not in act, thus my soul is united with my eye in one mode, that of seeing. Even so the food a man consumes mingles with his nature as regards its essence but not its activity ; and the great atonement we are destined to with God shall be of essence not of operation. Hence the Pharisee’s request that God would eat with him.

Pharisee signifies a solitary, one who knows no end to detachment of soul. The more noble the powers the more they liberate. Some powers are far higher than the body and sufficiently aloof to shell off and detach completely. As the philosopher well says, What once moves mortal things never enters into them. Again, by being free and unattached the unlettered man may in love and longing receive wisdom and impart it. And thirdly, having no end means having no finality, no ultimate security until one is at rest and all unwitting of disquiet : until the soul-powers being fixed on God are wholly unattached. As the prophet cries, ‘ Lord be merciful to the people that are in thee.’ One master says, ‘ Of all the exalted works God has ever wrought in creatures mercy is the most familiar and the most mysterious, his work in the angels not excepted.’ In it the work of mercy is exalted to mercy as it is in itself and as it is in God. Of God’s activity the first outcome is mercy ; not in the sense of his forgiving man’s sins nor of one man’s forgiving another ; his highest work is mercy in the sense that he initiates the soul into the highest and most perfect thing she can conceive in this world. In his bottomless ocean God is productive of mercy.

The prophet said, ‘ Lord be merciful to the people that is in thee.’ What people is in God ? St John says, ' He that dwellcth in love dwellcth in God and God in him.’ St John says, ‘ Love unites, love initiates into God.’ Haply it is accessory. Love does not unite, not in any wise. Satisfaction (or, enough) is not what holds together, binds together. Love unites iq act uud^not in es§<?n.Qe.. The best authorities aver that intellect strips everything off and grasps God bare as pure being in itself. Intellect penetrates goodness and truth, and, lighting 6n virgin essence, it seizes God in the abstract as,. being..>.without n^^ Neither •'knowledge nor love unites aught. Love takes God only as being good and God escapes from name. Good, love goes no further than that. Love takes God under a veil, under a garment. Not so understanding : understanding takes God as he is known in itself; it can never comprehend him in the sea of his own unfathomable nature, Above biQtb jWiese pereeptwns^ ia^f^^ God energises as mercy at the summit and perfection of his activity. A philosopher says, There is something in the soul, intimate, mysterious, far higher than tiie soul herself, whence emanate her / powers of intellect and will. St Augustine says : Just as that is ineffable out of which the Son leaps from the Father in the first p'f6cessi5n,'^'scrthefe exists some occiiTt thing behind the first procession of . intellect and will. According to the philosopher who is our chief authority upon the soul, no human wisdom ever can attain to what the soul is. That requires supernatural wisdom. What the powers of the soul issue from into act, we do not know : about it haply wc do know a little, but what the soul is in her ground no man knows. Any knowledge thereof that may be permitted to us must be supernatural ; it must be by grace : God’s agent of mercy.

IHlectus deo et hominibus etc. ( Eccl. 45i). In this passage from the Book of Wisdom the wise man speaks of (Moses), ‘ the beloved of God and men, whose memory is in benediction. God made him like the saints in glory.’ And this may well be said of the saint whose festival wc keep to-day. Ilis name is Benedictus, blessed, so that to him are especially appropriate the words used here, cujus rnemoria in benedictione esty i.e. whose memory is in benediction, the more so as of him also we read that a glory was revealed to him wherein he saw the whole world gathered up as it were into a ball, and our text says, ‘ God made him like the saints in glory.’ As to this glory. St Gregory says that to a soul who is in this glory all things seem small and narrow. The natural light that God has poured into the soul is so splendid and so strong that God’s bodily creation is all poor and meagre to it. This light is more glorious than any corporal thing God ever made, withal the meanest, vilest corporal thing illumined by this light, which is intelligence, becomes exalted above mortal things. It is clearer and brighter than the sun and purifies things from both time and matter. This light' is so far-flung it vaults the boundaries of space. Wider than space, it transcends the great and good as God transcends wisdom and goodness ; for God is not either wisdom or good, but from God come wisdom and goodness. Intellect comes not of wisdom, nor intellect is not the outcome of truth nor is not gotten thereof as will is of goodness. Will wants what is good and is engendered thereby an(d (truth) is the issue of intellect not intellect of the truth. This light which flows out of the intellect is intelligence, which is like an outburst, an outflow

or a stream as compared to what intellect is in itself. And this outburst is as far removed therefrom as heaven is from earth. There is another light, the light of grace, compared to which this natural light illumines a mere pin-point of the earth, nay rather a mere pin-point compared with the whole heavens which are incredibly more vast than all the earth. God’s presence in the soul by grace is instinct with more light than any intellect can give : the light of intellect is but a drop in the ocean of this light, nay less a thousandfold. Hence to the soul who is in God’s grace all things, and whatever her mind can grasp, will appear small and mean. I was asked the reason why virtuous folk who are in the good graces of God are so zealous to serve him. I said it was because they had tasted God, and it were strange indeed if, onee tasting and enjoying God, the soul could stomach aught beside. As the saint hath it. Once the soul tries God she finds the things that are not God repugnant and distasteful. Take the wise man’s words in another sense : ‘ Beloved of God and men.’ The verb is does not appear. He does not say : he is beloved of God and men, for he is not thinking of his changing and unstable temporal nature which the essence so far transcends. Essence is all-embracing and withal too transcendent ever to be touched by anything created. They that fondly think to have some knowledge of it know nothing whatsoever. As St Dionysius says, anything we know that we are able to impart or that we can define, that is not God ; for in God is neither this nor that which we can abstract nor has he limitation. In him there is only one thing and that is himself. Hence for theologians there is the burning question : how comes this motionless, this intangible, solitary essence to be common to the soul, to be within the purview of the soul ? and they are greatly exercised as to how the soul receives it. I can only say that his divinity consists in the communication of himself to whatever is receptive of his goodness, and did he not communicate himself he would not be God.

The soul God loves and to whom he does communicate himself must be so wholly free from time and from all taint of creature that God in her smacks only of himself. ‘ In the middle of the night, when all things were asleep,’ the Scriptures say, ‘ thy word, O Lord, came down from thy royal throne.’ ‘ In the night ’ means when no creature peers into, appears in, the soul, and it is in this quiet, this inarticulateness of the soul that the word is spoken in her intellectual nature. This word is that of her own understanding : the expression of the Word as it is and abides in the intellect. Often I feel afraid, in discoursing about God, at how utterly detached the soul must be to attain to union with him. We durst not deem this unattainable : nothing is unattainable to the soul that possesses God’s grace. To none were things ever more easy to leave : to the soul that has gotten God’s grace things are all (easy) to eschew. Further I say, none ever had pleasanter task to perform : to the soul with God’s grace all things are (pleasant) to leave because creature can cause her no pain. St Paul says, ‘ I am persuaded that no creature can separate us from God ; not fate nor life nor death.’

Look you. Nowhere is God so really God as in the soul. In every creature is somewhat of God, but in the soul God is divine, for she is his rest. According to one master, God loves nothing but himself : all his love is lavished on himself. Marry, a fool were he only to take a penny who at one stroke could seize an hundred pounds ! God’s love in us is the blossoming forth of the Holy Ghost. One word more of this : God loves nothing in us but the good he does in us himself. In the words of the saint, ‘ Nothing is crowned by God excepting his own work that is wrought by him in us.’ Let no one be affrighted at my saying that God loves none beside himself ; it is all to our advantage, for therein he has in view our highest happiness. He purposes to lure us to himself, to get us purged and take us to himself, so that with himself he may love himself in us and us in him. So he must needs, so far as our love goes, attract us to himself by every means he can, pleasant or disagreeable. God, despite himself, is ever hanging over us some bait to lure us into him. I never give God thanks for loving me, because he cannot help it ; whether he would or no it is his nature to. What I do thank him for is for not being able of his goodness to leave off loving me. To know ourselves, to be installed in God, this is not hard, seeing that God himself must be working in us ; for it is godly work, man acquiescing and making no resistance : he is passive while allowing God to act in him. Let us, waiting upon God, enable him to take us into him, so that becoming one with him he may be able to love us with himself. So help us God. Amen.

Convescens prcecepit eisah Jerosolymis ne discederent etc. (Act. I4). This passage which I have quoted in Latin comes in the Mass for to-day. St Luke records how our Lord being about to depart to heaven was in company with his disciples whom he ‘ commanded that they should not leave Jerusalem but should wait for the promise of the Father which they had heard from his mouth for they should be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.’ He speaks of the promise or pledge of the Father. To us as well was given this pledge of baptism in the Holy Ghost and of being received thereby to dwell above time in eternity. Not in the things of time is the Holy Ghost bestowed. When a man turns from temporal things and goes into himself he notices a heavenly light, a light that comes from heaven. Though heavendescended it is under heaven. There is no satisfaction in this light, for it is mortal, they say that it is matter. Now iron, which by nature falls, will rise, against its nature, and hang suspended to a loadstone in virtue of the master-force the stone receives from heaven. Wherever the stone turns there the iron goes with it. Even so the mind, unsatisfied witli this infernal light, will scale the firmament and search the heavens to find the breath that spins them, the heavens by their revolution causing all things on earth to grow and flourish. Its spirit never rests content until it pierces to the coil, into the primal origin where the breath has its source. This spirit knows no time nor number : number does not exist apart from the malady of time. Other root has none save in eternity, where there is no number except one. This spirit, transcending number, breaks through multiplicity and is transfixed by God, and by the fact of his piercing me I pierce him in return : God leads this spirit into the desert, into the solitude of its own self, where it is simply one and is welling up in itself. This spirit has no why, for if it had a why the unity would also have its why. This spirit is in unity and freedom.

Doctors declare this will is free in the sense that none can bind it excepting God alone. God docs not bind the will, he sets it free, free to choose naught but God himself, and this is real freedom. For the spirit to be incapable of willing aught other than God’s will is not its bondage but its true liberation. Some people say. If I have God and tlie love of God then I am at liberty to follow my own will. They labour under a mistake. So long as thou art capable of anything against the will of God and against his law thou hast no love of God though thou cozen the world that thou hast it. One who is in God’s will and in God’s love is fain to do the things God likes and leave undone the things God hates, and he can no more leave undone a thing that God wants done than he can do a thing that God abhors ; just like a man whose legs are tied together, he cannot stray and neither can he err who is in the will of God. Someone once said, ‘ God may command me to do evil and shun virtue, but I am incapable of sin.’ No one loves virtue without being virtue. He who abandons himself and everything, who seeks not his own in any wise but does all he does

for love and without why, that man being dead to all the world is alive in God and God in him. Here someone may object, It is all very well for you to tell us these things, but we ourselves know nothing of them. — That I also rue. This knowledge is so noble and so common, it is not to be purchased . for a farthing or a penny. A just mind and a free will, have but these, and it is thine. To abandon all things on this lower plane where they exist in mortal guise is to recapture them in God where they are reality. Everything that is dead here is life yonder and all that is dense matter here is spirit there in God. If you pour fresh water into a clean basin and, all being clear and bright, stand it in a quiet place, then, holding your face over it you see it at the bottom as it really is. That is V>ecause the water is free from impurity and still. It is the same with people who in a state of freedom and interior calm envisage God in peace and quiet, and when they are able to see him just as well in turmoil and disquiet there is perfect equanimity ; but if a man enjoys him less in trouble and unrest, that argues him not equable (unjust). St Augustine says, ‘ When the days arc weary and the time is long a man should turn to God, where no such thing as long exists and things are all at rest.’ The lover of justice is possessed with justice, and he is this virtue.

Our Lord said, ‘ I have called you not servants, I liave called you friends, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth.’ And so may my friend know something that I ignore, yet have no mind to tell me. But our Lord says, ‘ All that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.’ I marvel how some priests, and these with pretensions to eminence and learning, allow themselves to be misled into interpreting these words to mean that he shows us of the path only the bare minimum needful to our happiness. That is not what 1 hold ; there is no truth in it. Why was God born man ? That I might be born God himself. God died that I might die to the whole world and all created things. And it is in this sense that w^e must understand the saying of our Lord, ‘ All that I have heard of my Father I have revealed unto you.’ What does the Son hear of his Father ? The Father can only beget ; the Son can only be gotten. All the Father has and that he is, the whole basis of God’s essence and God’s nature, he brings forth once for all in his one-begotten Son. This the Son hears from his Father, this he makes known unto us, we being this same Son. All the Son has he has from his Father : essence and nature, we are this only Son. No one has the Holy Ghost except he be the only Son. Father and Son expire their holy Breath, and once this sacred breath inspires a man it remains iiv him, for he is essential and pneumatic.

True, thou mayst receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, the likeness of the Holy Ghost, but it abides not with thee ; it is impermanent. Just as a man may blush for shame, or blench, it is an accident and passes. But one by nature fair and ruddy is so always. So with this man, as being the only Son his holy Breath is of the nature of him. As it is written in the Book of Wisdom, ‘ This day have I begotten thee in the reflection of my eternal light, in the fullness of the Godhead and the glory of all saints.’ He is begetting him now, to-day. There is childbed in the Godhead, there are they baptized in the Holy Ghost according to the promise of the Father. ‘ After these days which are not many,’ or a few, then comes the ‘ fullness of the Godhead,’ where there is neither day nor night ; where things a thousand leagues away are as near me as the ground whereon I stand ; that is the fulfilment, the full enjoyment of Godhood ; that is oneness. While the soul secs any difference she is unjust ; as long as aught looks out, looks in, there is no unanimity. Mary Magdalene sought our Lord within the tomb ; seeking one dead man she found two living angels, but still was unconsolcd. Said the angel, ‘ Why art thou cast down ? Whom seekest thou, woman ? ’ As though to say, ‘ Thou dost seek one dead and hast found two living.’ Whereto she might have answered, ‘ That is the burden of my discontent, that I find two where 1 sought one alone.’

While anything created can make a clear impression on the soul she is disconsolate. I say, as I have often said before, so far as the soul’s created nature goes there is no such thing as truth. I declare that there is something beyond the soul’s created nature. But certain priests cannot understand how there can be anything so nearly kin to God, so much the same as he is. It has naught in common with naught. Anything made or created is naught, but this is alien and remote from the made and the created. It is something self-contained, taking nothing from outside. Our Lord departed to heaven, beyond all light, beyond all understanding, beyond all human ken. He who is thus translated beyond light of any kind dwells in the unity. As St Paul says, ‘ God dwells in the light that no man can approach unto,’ which is in itself the perfect one. A man then must be dead, must be dead indeed, devoid of any being of his own, wholly without likeness, like to none, to be really Godlike. For it is God’s character, his nature, to be peerless, incomparable. May we be the same in the oneness of God himself. So help us God. Amen.

Expedit vobis etc. vado parare vobis locum etc. (Joh. I67, 142). When he was about to depart from this world to his heavenly Father, Christ said to his disciples, ‘ It is expedient for you, it is for your good, that I should go, for while I am with you the Holy Ghost the Comforter will not come unto you.’ With these words our Lord consoled his disciples knowing full well that they were troubled because he had warned them of his ascension. Our Lord will not suffer his lovers to be troubled, for fear is painful. And St John says, ‘ Love casteth out fear.’ Love is incompatible with fear and pain, for the waxing of love is the waning of fear, and when love is perfect all fear is gone. But at the beginning of the virtuous life fear is of use to man, providing him a thoroughfare for love. As the bodkin or the awl makes a passage for the thread and the shoe is stitched with thread, not with the iron ; and as the bristle’s part towards the thread is to put it in as fastening while the bristle is withdrawn ; so, to begin with, fear makes room for love and love binds to God, whereas fear passes out.

Leaving now this argument we turn to the words of my Latin quotation, the words of our Lord, ‘ I go to prepare a place for you.’ Here we notice two things taught and proved by our Lord in his ascension. The first one is that the soul is by nature heir to heaven. God is her lawful heritage, for no one generates the soul but God. God made her without any intervention. Some doctors will maintain, perhaps, that the divine light pouring into the angels, the whole creaturely idea that God reflects into the angels before it is exemplified in divers creatures, that this divine light, this image in the angels, is what makes the soul. Not so. The soul does not permit of any meddling, any interference in God’s activity towards her, but fresh and pure as this flows out of God in one unbroken stream, so docs the soul proceed from God. Most privily has God embarked and launched forth the soul, so that no one knows for certain what she is. One philosopher calls her a light, and that is well said ; for like the light streaming out of the sun and shining into all creatures so is the soul sent straight from God. St Augustine says, Since the soul is emitted from God she is nowhere at rest except in God. Another master says she is a spirit, and this is true in a certain sense ; God is a spirit, and the soul is made like to God, so she may well be called spirit, being to God as spirit to spirit. A third master dubs her a fire, speaking the truth in symbol, for fire is most lofty in its nature, ^ See also Wackemagel, No. 65.

most theurgic in its operation, and it never rests until it licks the heavens. It envelops all the elements for being much wider and higher than the air, or than water or the earth, it must be surrounding all the rest. It comes next of all to heaven and revolves therewith. The air goes with it, partially, because of being dense, while water, which is altogether grosser, is unable to keep pace and runs behind. The soul is called a fire because, in her desire, she does keep pace with God, like fire with the heavens, for the soul cannot rest except in God. Some souls which are rather dense follow haltingly, as air lags after fire. And some, again, being downright gross, are, like water, earth-bound and incapable ojf keeping up with God but run behind ; for seeing or hearing something good will stir them with desire to be good, so they do follow after ; like water drifting to and fro without a change of level, so are these people moved while abiding of the same mind as before. A fourth doctor calls her a spark of God’s celestial nature, and this jumps with our theory of her heavenly origin. Where one clod falls, there, generally speaking, all earth would fall as well ; a single clod reveals the ground to be its rcsting-placc. And whither one spark flics to from the fire, that place is revealed as the resting-place of fire.

Now we have sent one spark to heaven, the soul to wit of our Lord Jesus Christ, which shows the common resting-place of souls is nowhere but in heaven ; and herein we have proof of the entire soul being heavenly. The body, on the other hand, is made of the four elements, so its habitat is naturally earth. But the soul is in intimate union with the body, and they must ever stay together despite that the body is of earth and the soul a denizen of heaven. God found a wise solution of this problem, himself becoming man and going in his proper power to heaven, so that in him wc have already sent one clod of earth to heaven. And the whole earth likewise must belong to heaven, for Christ’s restingplace is nowhere but in union with his Father ; and as God is three in Person so is he one in nature, they having one being and one life. Thus our Lord Christ shows us that our being and our life are eternal in divine union. The second thing oUr Lord has taught and proved by his ascension is how we must prepare ourselves to follow after him in pursuance of his words, ‘ I go to prepare a place for you.’ Just as, on those four grounds, the soul is called light, spirit, fire or a spark of God’s celestial nature, even so man is lifted up or gotten ready also by four things finely symbolised of old in the prophet Moses, of whom we read that he gathered his flock together and drove it into the wilderness, ‘ into the backside of the desert,’ and there upon the mount of God he saw a bush burning but unconsumed.

Moses wished to turn aside and see this wonder, the burning bush which would not burn away. But the Lord called to him out of the bush, and said, ‘ Draw not nigh ; put off thy shoes,’ under which figure we are taught four precious lessons. First, in the name Moses, for Moses being interpreted means, one taken from the water. So shall a man be rescued from instability, from out the tempests of this world. Next, that man’s animal passions and desires must all be herded up into the highest power of his soul. Unless the soul is gathered up and lifted out of created things the Holy Ghost cannot enter in nor energise in her. All divine work done by God is wrought by him in spirit, above time and place, for mortal things arc fatal to the flow of God. Divine light shed on spiritual creature will engender life, but if it falls on mortal things it fades, either dimmed or extinguished altogether. That is why our Lord declared, ‘ It is expedient for you, it is for your good, that I should go away.’ For his disciples loved him as a man and mortal. Now there can be no doubt that our Lord was nobler than anything God ever made. If he then was a hindrance to his followers it is unquestionably true that other things we love, which are inferior to God, will hinder us much more. Ergo, the soul must transcend the world if she wants God to ply his godly work in her. And St Augustine says explicitly, we can transcend the world in love and knowledge, and that lacking love and knowledge we are nothing, i.e, in the world.

In the third place we learn, that man can see and know God’s work, but that while in this body he must needs stop short of actual attainment, just as Moses saw the burning bush but could not go right up to it ; he wanted to, however : a case of the love which docs not consume the body and has no spiritual potency. Fourthly, putting off the shoes signifies the freeing of the soul’s desire, its withdrawal from all mortal and perishable things. To this and things still higher, O God help us. Amen.

Expedit vobis ut ego vordam etc. {Joh. I67). We read in the gospel how our Lord said to his disciples, ‘ It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away ye cannot receive the Holy Ghost.’ And this by reason of three hindrances which beset three kinds of people. First, sinners who let creatures hinder them, using them ungodly for their pleasure. These people are wandering in God’s way, for creatures are a way of God. Hence St Augustine’s dictum, ‘ Cursed be they that wander in the way of God.’ I will say no more of these ; following their animal passions they are divorced from God. Also, there are good people who are overbusy with their material wants and take too much pleasure in externals. Concerning them God said, ‘ He that loveth his soul shall lose it ’ (loveth carnally, that is : over-fondness, for it will lose a man his soul) ‘ and he that hateth his soul shall keep it unto life eternal.’ Meaning those that follow not their inordinate pleasures and desires. A second hindrance blocks the path of other good and truly pious people. Namely, the seven sacraments. Sacr amentum means a sign. That man never gets to the underlying truth who stops at the enjoyment of its symbol ; and the seven sacraments all point us to the same reality. Marriage (for example) is a symbol of divine and human nature and also of the union of the soul with God. To rest in the illusion means delay in the attainment of real oneness. Ye durst not think of marriage as the mating of a man and a woman with each other for the indulgence of their outward passions and for the leading of a life of pleasure. That is not real marriage. Marriage means obedience to the marriage rule with its seven times and its works of mercy. Again, some pious souls are hampered with scrupulosity in the matter of repentance and confession ; they boggle at the symbol and neglect the thing itself. Our Lord says of these, ‘ He that has bathed needs but to wash his feet.’ Which is as good as saying, Once purged by heartfelt rue and throughly shriven, a man needs not to re-confess old sins though he must ‘ wash his feet,’ that is, his will and conscience : them let him cleanse by confessing daily faults.

Also, some of the devout hinder themselves by over-occupation, outwardly, with the blessed sacrament of God’s body, to the detriment of their receiving it ; these cultivate the rites at the cost of the reality, for the thing itself is inside not in its outward show. Wherefore they receive not God’s body worthily. The sacraments all point us to the one and only truth, so we ought not to dally with the symbols but penetrate to the actuality. Those who follow the spirit of God’s truth will worship him in spirit and in truth. So said Christ himself to the woman drawing at the well at Samaria when she asked him where to pray, whether on the mountains where her fathers used to pray or where the Jews then worshipped. Quoth our Lord, ‘ The hour cometh and is now, when true worshippers shall worship not only on the mountains and in the Temple but in spirit, in the place of God.’ The moral of which is that we ought to pray to God not only on the hill-tops and in churches, but we ought always to be praying, at all times and everywhere. St Paul says, ‘ Rejoice evermore ; in everything give thanks ; pray without ceasing.’ Even so pray they whose every deed is done like-mindedly for the love of God ; who, careless of their personal pleasure, bow themselves humbly before God and leave him alone to act. The prayer of the lips was enjoined by holy Christendom for the recalling of the soul from her outward senses wherein she dissipates herself in a multiplicity of perishable things. Being recollected thence into her highest power {i.e, knowledge and memory and will) she is turned to spirit, and when the spirit is joined to God in perfect unity of will, it is turned to God. Then, not till then, he is in true prayer, when he has reached the goal of his creation ; for wc were created solely to be God, and that is the reason why we were fashioned like him. Whoso does not attain to being one with God in spirit is not a really spiritual man.

Good, pious souls are hindered too from their proper object by lingering with holy joy over the human form of our Lord Jesus Christ ; and by the same token, over-reliance upon visions is a pitfall to some people ; they see things pictured in the mind, it may be man or angel or the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and give credence to their ghostly messages. They hear, perhaps, that they are best-beloved or about the faults or virtues of another ; or they may hear that God is doing something for them. In this they are deceived. God never does a single thing for creature but only by reason of his kindness, for he is the end of every Christian prayer: ‘Do this, O Lord, for the sake of thy only Son Christ Jesus.’ He himself said to his disciples, ‘ It is expedient for you that I should go away.’ Here he was addressing not alone his then disciples but all his disciples of the future who purpose to follow him to high achievement. To them his manhood is a hindrance so long as they still cling to it with mortal pleasure ; they ought to follow God in all his ways and not keep solely to his way of manhood who reveals to us the way of Godhood ; for verily Christ said, ‘ I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by me, and he who would enter by any other door the same is a murderer and deserves eternal death.’ Such are those who claim that they themselves arc capable of good or that God docs things for them, whereas Christ even, stated he was not from himself : the Eternal Wisdom said about itself, ‘ He that created me reposes in my tent,’ who withal is uncreated for God is unborn wisdom. We may take this as referring to eternal wisdom’s birth, for the Son proceeded forth by way of birth, where birth is the same thing as creation. The eternal wisdom was born of the power of the Father. He and the

Son, his wisdom, and the Holy Ghost, his goodness and their mutual love, these (three) are one in nature and distinct in Person. And what is this tent that Wisdom talks of ? That is the manhood of Christ Jesus, wherein the Father reposes with his Son, they being of one nature, God in their Person as well as God by nature. This tent of humanity let us adore only in its oneness with the Godhead : for man is truly God and God is truly man. Let us not encumber ourselves with any creature excepting Jesus Christ, who only is our help and the way to his Father. When, taking leave of creatures, we enter the true path, which is .Jesus Christ, we are not wholly blest albeit within sight of the divine reality ; for while we are in sight of, we are not yet one with, what we see. While we notice any thing we are not one with it. Where there is no more than one no more than one is seen : God is not seen except by blindness, nor known except by ignorance, nor understood except by fools. According to St Augustine, no soul can get to God who goes not without creature and seeks not God without likeness. And that is the meaning of Christ’s words, ‘ Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye and then wash the mote out of another’s eye.’ For you must understand that anything created is likened to a beam in the eye of the soul, preventing divine oneness by the fact of being creature. And because the soul is creature she has to cast herself out of herself; she must east out all the saints and eke our Lady, for all of them are creatures. She must be quite naked and wholly unnecessitous. Thus the soul enters the union of the Holy Trinity. She is further blest by becoming one with the naked Godhead whereof the blessed Trinity is the self-revelation. In the abstract Godhead there is no activity : the soul is not perfectly beatified until she casts herself into the desolate Deity where neither act nor form exists and there, merged in the void, loses herself : as self she perishes, and has no more to do with things than she had when she was not. Now, dead to self, she is alive in God and the dead perish (in the tomb). Even so is naughted the soul entombed in God.

Some people fondly ween that they have gotten into the Holy Trinity who have never got beyond themselves. Loath to leave themselves, they keep their selfish interests and pleasures and interior sweetness, all of which they have forsworn, just the same in thought and will. These are no disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ who never looked for sweetness in anything he did ; on the contrary, he said, ‘My soul is sorrowful even unto death.’ Meaning his most -lofty soul, and he was thinking also of his bodily life. This was ‘ sorrowful even unto death,’ until a term was put to the conditions of our exile, until our death was dead. And our soul too is ‘ troubled even unto death,’ until there dies within us whatever is alive there of own will, own interests and multitudinous will. When the soul is dead as to the life of her desires and selfish interests and is buried in God, then, hidden and unknown to any creature, she can never be troubled any more. Now mark the signs whereby a soul is known to have been taken into the Holy Trinity. First, it is vouchsafed to her that at the sight of the Holy Ghost her sins are blotted out and she forgets herself and things. In the next place, she has gotten a conception of the Godhead, namely the eternal wisdom of the Father, the knowledge and discernment of all things ; and she is bereft of opinion, hypothesis, belief, for now she knows the truth ; and whereas hitherto she has taken things on trust and learnt by wordy arguments and hearsay, now things presented to her, whether by men or angels, she need ask none about, like those with no notion of reality, who, when an abstract truth is revealed to them, will try to grasp it with their finite mind : a thing that is beyond angelic understanding. Whereupon they question others on the subject, propounding it in the material form in which they have conceived it, and these take it as they hear it, in a concrete sense, and so pronounce it wrong and contrary to the Christian faith. It is false to them, because they accept it at face-value, which they arc unable to see through. In this they are mistaken. Furthermore, the soul who is in truth translated into the Holy Trinity is immediately endowed by the Father’s power and strength with the ability to do all things. As St Paul says, ‘ I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.’ Now the soul works not, knows not, loves not ; but God is working in her, perceiving himself in her. According to the words of Jeremiah, ‘ Verily ye are God’s in divine knowing and loving.’ God help us to this truth. Amen.

Vado ad eum qui misit me {J oh, IG^). ‘ I go to him that sent me.’ These words have a threefold meaning. In the first place, Christ went to his Father in his manhood. In the second place, the soul of Christ went in the light of grace. In the third place, the soul of Christ went in his Godhead. About this saying, Thomas, Origen, Damascenus and Richardus hold the same opinion, and I hold it with them. What we say is, that Christ in his manhood went first through our manhood ; he has known all the wants that flesh is heir to, for he has been through every creature and set creature lower than mankind : the humanity of Christ has carried our humanity beyond the realm of creature, exalting our nature above the angelic nature in the unity of God and man. The manhood of Christ went also by itself without impediment of creature, for he alone was ever perfect in virtue at every point of time. In the second place, the soul of Christ went without means in the light of grace. In the light of grace the soul of Christ received four gifts which Mary his mother never did receive nor did any of the saints. The first gift of Christ’s soul was wisdom, the knowledge of his end. The second gift was understanding, which his soul received on achieving virtue as distinct from means. The third gift Christ’s soul received was that in all she did she remained unchanged. The fourth gift was that of doing nothing except in virtue of the love of God.

In the third place, the soul of Christ went in his godhood ; he went, that is to say, in the personality of the eternal Word, for this eternal Person is essentially the vehicle of human nature. He also went the way of the three Persons of whom he is one Person. He went in his own nature to the Father-nature in the understanding of them both. And he went in the work of the Person of the Holy Ghost, who effects the union of human nature and divine Person. Touching Christ’s words, ‘ I go to him that sent me,’ Lincolniensis and Master Henry Augustiniensis tell us what he means by ‘ go.’ I hold with Thomas and Gilbertus that by this word he meant to say, ‘ I go to release you from the straits whereto ye have been brought by Adam’s transgression ; I go to set you free from the bonds of creature ; I go to him that sent me, in my understanding wherein I take you straight to him ; I go the way of my own nature, the way of my lordship, wherein alone I keep unto myself what creature has no part nor lot in. He went in essence and in nature ; he went to reveal in his own Person the essence and the life to creatures in separation ; for the Persons are God in their personal divinity according to their nature’s unity.

Here arises the question. Is the Person of the nature or the nature of the Person ? In answering this it must be borne in mind that it is the nature of the Persons to manifest the fruits of their own nature. The soul too goes to the Father. First, in the fixed intention to cumber herself no more with creature unless with the objective form of Christ. Secondly, she goes in responding to whatever calls God may make upon her. Thirdly, she goes in the sweet savour of divine love wherein suffering is no suffering to her. Christ ascended into heaven ; he ennobled his humanity by withdrawing it from time and establishing it in eternity. Lifting up his soul he gave her his essential self, the essence he is ever making manifest in his personal works. Further, the soul ascends flying with the feathers of the virtues, wisdom, prudence, strength and justice namely, for on these four virtues the soul is able to wing her way past time and past all creatures which exist in time. And she flies as well in the three godly virtues of faith, hope and charity, resting in the love that is God, wherein we behold the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Now it must be remembered that three kinds of men see God. The first see him in faith ; they know no more of him than what they can make out through a partition. The second behold God in the light of grace but only as the answer to their longings, as giving them sweetness, devotion, inwardness and other such-like things which are issuing from his gift. The third kind see him in the divine light. Christ’s disciples beheld God as the satisfaction of their longings, but they did not see him as one who longs to love. Philip said to Jesus, ‘ Lord, show us the Father and satisfy us,’ as though to say. Lord, show us thyself as transcending creature, as the immediate entry to the soul which thou dost nature in her proper nature. Jesus answered, ‘ He that seeth me seeth my Father,’ as though to say, Whoso seeth me unchanging, as well disposed towards them that would wound as towards them that show the wish to please me ; whoso seeth me apart from my humanity as the door into the soul, the same beholds my Father as energising in his personal power and I in personal wisdom and the Holy Ghost in personal goodness : having God means having all these three in the one essence of their nature.

THE soul’s place * Our Lord said to his disciples, ‘ It is expedient for you that I should go away, for while I am with you the Holy Ghost will not come unto you.’ With these words our I^ord comforted his disciples after supper on the eve of his departure, knowing full well that they were sorrowful at finding he was going to leave them. Our Lord will not long suffer his lovers to be troubled. Fear is cruel and therefore incompatible with love. As a man gains in love he loses his fear. But at the beginning of conversion fear goes through the soul as the awl goes through the shoe in making a passage for the thread ; and even so the heart is pierced with fear of sin which is then followed and chased out by love. Our Lord’s words to his disciples, ‘ I go to prepare a place for you,’ teach us two valuable lessons of which we have the proofs in his ascension. The first one is, that the soul is by nature made for heaven and God is her lawful heritage. For God brought forth the soul ' A variant of LXXV. In PfoifEer’s text it is part of (2).

alone in lineal descent and no man knoweth what she is. They say she is a light, for as the sunlight is poured forth in beams upon all creatures, even so the soul is the immediate product of the light of God. St Augustine says, the soul proceeds from God and returns to God, so she is not at rest except in him. The soul is a spirit formed in the likeness of God and agreeable to him as one spirit is to another. Philosophers, again, compare the soul with fire, a thing most lofty in its nature, most theurgic in its operation, which never stops until it licks the heavens. Fire encircles all the elements ; spreading much wider and higher than the air or than water or the earth it envelops all of them. It comes next to heaven and revolves therewith ; the air goes rather slower because it is more dense, and water being denser still is unable to keep pace and runs behind. The soul is called a fire because in her desire she can keep up with God like fire with the heavens, nor has she any rest except in him. Also, the soul is called a spark of God’s celestial nature, and this jumps with our theory that the soul is intrinsically heavenly. For where one clod falls there earth in general would fall as well ; and thus a single clod of earth will betray the resting-place of the earth itself ; so too the spark which shoots out of the fire will indicate the resting-place of fire. Now we have scut a spark to heaven, namely the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ, which shows the resting-place of souls is nowhere else than heaven ; yonder they belong. But the resting-place of body, made up as it is of the four elements, is by nature upon earth, and yet God joins these twain to one another and fates them to remain together : soul and body for their mutual uses. Of this God found a wise solution, himself becoming man and going in his proper power to heaven, the resting-place of Jesus Christ being in union with his Father. And since God is threefold in his Persons and simple in his nature, they having one common life and being, it follows that the place our Lord Jesus Christ prepares for our life and being is that of eternal union with God.

The other thing Christ taught by his ascension is what preparations we must make for following him, pursuant to his words, ‘ I go to prepare a place for you.’ Just as it is upon four grounds that soul is called light, spirit, fire and a spark of God’s celestial nature, so wc must be prepared in four particulars. When Moses would have gone and looked at the burning bush upon Mt. Sinai God told him to put off his shoes, which teaches us four lessons. The first is in the name Moses, which means, taken from the water, and so shall we be taken out of instability, rescued from the storm of the world-flow. Next, all our animal passions, with their agitations, must be herded up into the very topmost, the ghostly power of the soul. Unless the soul is raised to a higher power, from temporal to celestial things, the Holy Ghost cannot enter in to do its work in her. The work God docs is wrought by him in spirit, and any temporal or mundane thing obstniets the flow of God. On this account Christ said to his disciples, ‘ It is expedient for you that I should go away,’ for his discipic's loved him as a man and mortal, so that despite his being the most perfect good God ever sent or that could become, yet he was a hindrance to his followers by his bodily })resencc ; how much more then must gross temporal things be hindrances to us ? The soul must rise above herself and above this time if she wants God to do his work in her. However well we see and understand the act of divine love wc cannot in this body perfectly attain thereto any more than Moses could reach the burning bush. But wc must regulate our lives so as to get to Christ our Lord when time is done.

When the disciples knew their Lord was leaving them he said, ‘ It is expedient for you that I should go away, for unless I go away ye will not receive the Holy Ghost.’ Three kinds of pco))le are hindered from so doing. First, sinners who by using creatures at their godless pleasure hinder their soul’s beatitude. These are wanderers in the way of God. Concerning them St Augustine says, ‘ Accursed are they that wander in God’s way.’ I will not here discuss them further ; following their animal passions they turn their hack on God. Also, there are some who arc over- fond of ministering to their outward wants. Touching these our Lord .Jesus said, ‘ He that loveth his soul shall lose it ’ (or, in other words, to pander to the body is to lose the soul), ‘ and he that hateth his soul shall keep it ’ (meaning those that follow not their own inordinate desires). Secondly, a number of good people arc hindered by the seven sacraments. Sacramentum means a sign, and anyone who rests content merely with the sign will never get to the interior truth. But the seven sacred rites all point us to the unique reality. Marriage, for example, is a symbol of divine and human nature, an earnest of the union of the soul with God. And anyone who lingers in the mere illusion is kept from the eternal fact. It is no true marriage when a man and woman indulge their sensual passions and live according to their fleshly lusts ; married life involves keeping the marriage rule with its seven times and its works of mercy.