Sermons and Treatises of Meister Eckhart

St Augustine teaches about three kinds of knowledge. The first is bodily : the eye, for instance, is sensible of images. The second is mental but still admits of images of bodily things. The third is in the interior mind, which knows without image or likeness, and this knowledge is like unto the angels. The higher angels are divided into three. One philosopher says ; ‘ The soul knows only in effigy. Things are all known in image and likeness, but angels know themselves without likeness, and God.’ What he means to say is : God imparts himself to the soul at her summit without image or likeness. He went up into the mountain and was transfigured before them. The soul must be transfigured or re-formed and sealed and re-cast in his form. I maintain that the soul transcends form, she being east in the form of God’s Son. According to the masters, the Son is the image of God and the soul is formed in his image. I agree. But the Son is the image of God above form : the form of his concealed Godhead : the Son as the idea, as the conception of God, that is the form of the soul. By the fact that the Son loves the soul loves also. Where the Son is proceeding is not where the soul is suspended : she is above form. I'^ire and heat are one and yet far from the same. Taste and hue in an apple are one but by no means identical. The tongue can

taste things which are lost on the eye ; the eye perceives colours the tongue knows not of. The soul knows one only ; she is above form. The prophet says : ‘ God will lead his sheep into green pastures. Sheep is in the singular ; and so are they singular who are simplified to one. A philosopher says, that nowhere is the heavenly course so plain as in the simple hearts who guilelessly accept the heavenly influence and in children with no mind of their own. The clever and active-minded people are carried away into multitudinous things. Our Lord promises to feed his sheep in the primitive mountain pastures, on green grass. In God all creatures are in embryo. First, all creatures sally forth from God and then the angels. To have the nature of one particular creature is to bear the stamp of creatures as a whole. An angel’s nature bears the impress of all creatures.. All that angelic nature can receive is summed up in him. Whatever God chooses to create his angels entertain on penalty of missing the perfection which belongs to other creatures. St Augustine says : What God creates has a channel through the angels on high, where on the hill -tops everything is flourishing, where creatures are all fresh and green. Falling into time they droop and fade. Among the young green of all creatures there our Lord pastures his sheep. Creatures which flourish on these verdant heights are, as existing in the angels, more grateful to che soul than all the things of this world. The vilest of creatures as it is there, is to this world as day to night.

Whoever would be taught by God has to ascend this mountain ; there God will perfect them in the day of eternity when the light is full. What I perceive in God is light ; what touches creatures is darkness. The true light has no contact with creatures. Spiritual perception is light. St John says, ‘ God is the true light that shineth in the darkness.’ What is the darkness ? In the first place ; independence, detachment : being blind and unaware of creatures. As I have frequently said ; to see God we have to be blind. Again, God is the light which shines in the darkness. He is the blinding light. That is, light incomprehensible, illimitable, that knows no end. Its blinding the soul means that she knows nothing, is aware of nothing. The third darkness is best^ of all : there is no light. A master says, ‘ Heaven has no light, it is too high up for that ; it does not shine and in itself is neither hot nor cold.’ In this darkness the soul has lost all light, she has outgrown what we call light and colour. A philosopher says : ‘ Light is the Supreme, God’s promised land.’ A philosopher says ; ‘ The realization of every desire is brought to the soul in this light.’ A philosopher says : ‘ There never was anything subtile enough to enter the ground of the soul

but God only.’ Meaning to say : God shines in that darkness where the soul transcends all light. For what though her powers are open to sweetness and light and grace yet into the ground of the soul she lets nothing but absolute God. Whatever besides of sweetness and light proceeds from him she receives merely into her powers. According to our best authorities the powers of the soul and she herself are one : fire and fire-light arc one, and where it (light) changes to reason it changes to anotlier nature. Where intellect issues from the soul it invents another nature. Thirdly, the light of lights where soul transcends all light is on the mountain summit where no light exists. Where Gotl breaks out into his Son is not where the soul hangs from. Where God is proceeding, we knowing God somewhat, is not where the soul is suspended, it is infinitely higher up than that ; she transcends light and knowledge completely. He says, ‘ I will deliver them and will gather them together and bring them into their own land where I will lead them into green pastures (upon the mountain of Israel).’ Upon this mountain he opened his mouth. One doctor says : ‘ Our Lord opens his mouth here below leading us by the scriptures and by means of creatures.’ But St Paul says, ‘Now hath God spoken to us in his only-begotten Son in whom 1 know from the least to the greatest all at once in God.’ May we out-grow whatever is not God, So help us God. Amen.

BE YE RENEWED IN THE SPIRIT OF YOUR MIND Renovamini spiriiu mentis vestree (Kphes- 423 ). ‘ Be ye renewed in the spirit,’ here called mens or mind. Thus speaks St Paul. Now St Augustine says that in the highest part of the soul, there known as mem or the mind, there was created along with the soul a capacity called by philosophers the casket or shrine of niind-forrns or formless images. This power makes the Father comparable with the soul in his emanating deity whereof he has poured forth the whole hoard of divine being into the Son and into the Holy Ghost in distinction of Persons, just as the memory of the soul pours out treasure of ideas into the soul -powers. Now if with this faculty the soul sees form, whether she sec the form of an angel or her own form, it is an imperfection in her. But when all forms are detached from the soul and she sees nothing but the one alone, then the naked essence of the soul finds the naked, formless essence of the divine unity, the superessential being, passive, reposing in itself. O surpassing wonder, what lofty suffering is that, when the soul suffers nothing but the absolute unity of Gk)d !

Ye shall be renewed in the spirit, says St Paul. Renewal befalls all creatures under God ; but for God there is no renewal, only all eternity. What is eternity ? — It is characteristic of eternity that in it youth and being are the same, for eternity would not be eternal could it newly become and were not always. Now I maintain that renewal befalls the angels, that is, in their knowledge of the future, for an angel knows of future things only so much as God reveals to him. And renewal befalls the soul in so far as she is soul, and she is soul in so far as she gives life to the body and is the form of the body. And renewal befalls her too inasmuch as she is spirit. She is spirit in so far as she is detached from here and now and from cv^cry thing that belongs to matter. But so far as she is the image of God and nameless as God is, no renewal befalls her but only eternity, as in God. Now mark ! God is nameless ; no one can know or say anything of him. A heathen philosopher says that what we know or predicate about the first cause is what we are ourselves rather than what the first cause is, for this transcends speech and knowledge. If I say God is good, it is not true : I am good, God is not good. I say more : I am better than God is, for what is good can be better and what is better can be best. But God is not good, therefore he cannot be better ; and since he cannot be better therefore he cannot be best. These three : good, better, best are remote from God who is above all. And if, again, I say that God is wise, it is not tme : I am wiser than he. Or if I say, God is a being, it is not true : he is a transcendental essence, a superessential nothing. St Augustine says, ‘ The finest thing a man can say of God is that he is silent from consciousness of interior fullness.’ Wherefore hold thy peace and prate not about God, for prating of him thou dost lie, committing sin. If thou wouldst be free from sin and perfect, babble not of God. Neither know anything of God, for God is beyond knowing. One' philosopher says. Had I a God that I could know I would have him for my God no longer. Know’st thou of him anything ? He is no such thing, and in that thou dost know of him anything at all thou arc in ignorance, and ignorance leads to the condition of the brute ; for in creatures what is ignorant is brutish. If thou wouldst not be brutish then, know nothing of the unuttered God. — ‘ What then shall I do ? ’ — Thou shalt lose thy thy-ness and dissolve in his his-ness ; thy thine shall be his mine, so utterly one mine that thou in him shalt know eternalwise his is-ncss, free from becoming : his nameless nothingness.

‘ Be ye renewed in the spirit,’ says St Paul. If we have a mind to be renewed in spirit, then those six powers of the soul, the higher and the lower, must each wear a golden finger-ring all gilded over with the gold of divine love. Consider the lower powers, which are three. The first is called reason, rationale ; on this thou shalt wear a golden finger-ring : light, so that thy reason may be all the time timclessly irradiated with divine light. The second power is rage, irascihilis ; on it thou shalt wear the finger-ring, thy peace. And why ? Because, in peace, in God ; without peace, out of God. The third power is desire, concupis’ cihilis ; and on it thou shalt wear, enough, so that thou mayst have done with all creatures under God ; but with God thou shalt never have done, for of God thou eanst never have enough : the more thou hast of God the more thou wantest of him couldst thou have enough of him, could enough ever be applied to God, God were not God. Also on each higher power thou shalt wear a golden fingerring. Of these higher powers there are likewise three. The first is the retentive faculty, memoria. This power is likened to the Father in the Trinity. On it thou shalt wear the golden fmgerring, remembrance, that all eternal things may be stored up in thee. The second one is understanding, intellectns. This power is likened to the Sou. On this, too, thou shalt wear a golden finger-ring, perception, that thou mayst be ever apprehending

God. ‘ In what way ? ’ — Thou shalt know him witliout image, without semblance and without means. ‘ But for me to know God thus, with nothing between, I must be all but he, he all but me.’ - I say, God must be very I, 1 very (iod, so consummately one that this he and this I arc one is, in this is -ness working one work eternally ; but so long as this he and this I, to wit, God and the soul, are not one single here, one single now, the I cannot work with nor be one with that he. The third power is will, voluntas. This power is likened to the Holy Ghost. On it thou shalt wear the golden finger-ring, love, that thou mayst love God. But thou shalt love God apart from loveworthiness : not because he is worthy of love, for God is unloveworthy : he is superior to love and loveworthincss. — ‘ How then shall I love him ? ’ — Thou shalt love God non-spiritually, thy soul must be de-spiritualised : stripped of spirituality. For while thy soul is specifically spirit, she has form ; the while she has form she has neither unity nor union ; the while she lacks union she has never really loved God, for actual love lies in union. Wherefore let thy soul be de-spirited of all spirit ; let it be spiritless ; if thou lovest God as God, as spirit, as Person or as image, that must all go. — ‘ Then how shall I love him ? ’ — Love him as he is ; a not-God, a not-spirit, a notFerson, a not-image ; as sheer, pure, limpid unity, alien from all

duality. And in this one let us sink down eternally from nothingness to nothingness. So help us God. Amen. Unus deus et pater omnium^ qui est super omnes et per omnia et in omnibus nobis {Ephes, 4g). I am quoting St Paul’s words, ‘ One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in us all.’ From the gospel I will take another saying, the saying of our Lord, ‘ Friend, go up higher.’ To begin with, when St Paul speaks of ‘ one God and Father of all ’ the omission of the particle suggests some variation from his ‘ one God.’ God is one in himself and apart from all. God belongs to none and none belongs to him, God is one. Boethius says, God is one and changes not. God’s whole creation he created without changing. All things, once created, progress in changing. The moral of which is that we ought to be one in ourselves and wholly free from attachment. Firm and unshaken in God does it behove us to be. Out of God there is notliing but naught. No change nor movement can get into God. What seeks another place outside him, that changes. God has all things in him in one omnipotentiality ; God seeks not anything outside himself, for he has got it in him in its perfection. No creature can conceive it as it is in God.

Another teacher says, ‘ Father of all, blessed art thou.’ This too is big with change, for calling him Father he makes us his children. And if he is our Father then we as his children shall have his honour at heart. Our Lord says, ‘ Blessed arc the pure in heart for they shall see God.’ Purity of heart means separation, cleansing, from all bodily things, the isolation of the self and in this abstraction the plunging into God and being atoned with him. David says, ‘ Those works are pure and guileless which arc pursued and perfected in the light of the soul ’ ; and those are yet more guileless which abide therein in the depths of the spirit and proceed not forth. ‘ One God and Father of all.’ The other saying, ‘ Friend, come up higher, take the higher seat.’ I will make of twain one. ‘ Friend, come up higher, draw up,’ is the friendly conversation of the soul with God. He says, ‘ Friend, draw up, come up higher,’ and, answering her : one God and Father of all. A certain philosopher says. Friendship resides in the will. But so far as friendship resides in the will it does not unify. Love does not unify ; true, it unites in act but not in essence. It merely says, ‘ One God, come up higher.

draw nigh.’ Into the ground of the soul nothing enters but God himself. Even the highest angel, although he is so nigh to God and is endowed so largely with God’s love (his works are established in God in one essence not one operation ; he has in God an immanence, a settled habitation), this angel, strange to say, exalted though he be, is not allowed into the soul. One master lays it down that all creatures individually merit that God himself should work in them. Soul as transcending body is too virginexquisite to set her heart on aught save pure Deity himself. But nothing enters there until it has been shorn of all additions. That is why she was answered, ‘ one God.’ St Paul says, ‘ one God.’ One is something more simple than goodness and truth. Goodness and truth are constants, they are added to (only) in thought ; thinking attributes things to them. There is no addition to the one as proceeding in himself into the Son and into the Holy (ihost. He said, ‘ F riend, go up higluir.’ A master says. One is the denial of denials. If I say God is good, that is an anirmation. One is tlie denial of denials, t he grave of expectations. What does one mean ? That to which nothing is added. The soul receives Godhead as told forth in her, unadded to, unthought. One is the denial of denials. Every creature makes innate denial ; the one denies it is the othi‘r ; an angel denies being any other creature. But (iod makes the denial of denials ; he is one and denies all other, for th(‘r(‘ is notliing without God. All creatures are in God ; they are his very Godhead, that is to say, the fullness. He is the Father of all deity. One God, not proceeding, unmoved, unmindful of the Word. By the fact of denying God something — and by denying God goodness I am not denying God, — (I say), by denying God something 1 conceive something about him, that he is not ; even this has to go. God is one, he is the negation of negations. According to one master, the angelic nature secretes no power nor work, it has no knowledge save of God alone. Everything else it ignores. As he says, ‘ one God and Father of all.’

Some of the powers of the soul take in from without, as, for example, the eye. Though it lets in but little, rejecting the great bulk, yet it is dependent on and does receive something from outside in the mode of here and now. But intelligence and intellect, paring to the core, seize what is neither here nor now. In her unconditioned state she is right in touch with nature, but she still receives from the senses ; what the senses bring in from outside the intellect uses. Not so the will ; in this respect will ranks above the intellect. Will accepts nothing save in abstract understanding, where there is neither here nor now. God intends to convey what a pure and exalted thing will is. It rises to familiar colloquy with God, and God says, ‘ Friend, come up higher, honour waits thee.’ The will wills happiness. It has been asked, what is the difference between grace and happiness. Grace, as we are now in this life, and happiness as ours to be hereafter in eternal life, are to one another as the flower to its fruit. When the soul is brimming with grace and nothing is left her, then grace works to perfect all that exists in the soul ; not that it comes to actual work, but by its mere presence in the soul what the soul does grace makes perfect. Grace docs no work but, all-pouring, pours all at once into the soul. The third grace atones the soul with God. Its consummation, its effect, is to bring back the soul to God ; hers, after the blossom, the fruit. Will, as the will to happiness, as the will to be with God and the actual ascent, in this singleness (of heart) God slips into the will, and the single mind seeing God as the truth, God slips into the intellect, llut his entering into the will raises it up. As he says, ‘one God. Friend, come up higher.’ One God : God’s unity is the crown of God’s divinity. God could never bear his one- begotten Son were he not one. The fact of being one determines all he docs crcaturcly and godly. Oneness belongs to God alone ; God’s idiosyiu^rasy is oneness ; God must be one God or not be God at all. llivinc riches or wisdom or truth, it is all the same thing in God ; it is not one, it is unity. God has all he has in him ; it is one with him. Theologians say that heaven revolves with the object of gathering all things in ; hence its rapid motion. lie said, ‘ Friend, come up higher, thou art honoured.’ It is the honour and adornment of the soul that God is one. God behaves as though he existed for no purpose but to please the soul ; as though he did adorn himself solely in order to attract the soul. And man desires now one thing now another ; he cultivates now wisdom and now art. If she has nothing of the one she will never rest ; (she will never rest) till she is all the same in God. God is one ; that is the soul’s beatitude, her ornament, her rest. A philosopher says, God orders all things in his operation. The soul is all things, and in all respects the noblest and highest and God pours in all at once ; God is one.

IN ALL THINGS I SEEK REST Part I In omnibus requiem quwsivi {Eccles, 24^^). St Augustine says, ‘ My soul was created by thee and for thee wherefore she is ever restless till she finds thee. In all created things, which I search in understanding, there is no refuge for my soul, but in thee, God, alone. In the love-spring of thy substance are gathered up to one the perfections of all creatures, which in them are scattered and divided.’ Were there any single creature with all creaturely perfections both in quality and number then God would not have made more than that one alone, as I have pointed out in my discourse, ‘ Whosoever would follow me let him take up his cross.’ Now the whole happiness of creatures depends on resting in the sovran good which is the fount of all good things, and hence our Lady Mary says these words about herself wherein she counsels our interior man to cultivate in lowliness the habit of divine repose in which the soul is most of all united, and without it not. She says, ‘ In all things have I sought rest for my inner man.’ In this connection mark how the divine esseiu^c carries pent up in itself all creaturely perfection, creaturely existence being the reflection of God’s essence. St .John says, Quod factum esty in ijjso vita erat : that which was made, in God was life. Creatures in their pre-existing form in God have been divine life for ever. Hence the opening words of our quotation from the Book of Wisdom, ‘ all things,’ mean that our Lady sf)ught [)eaee for her inner man iu the eternal good of the divine nature wherein as in a magic mirror creature-nature as a whole is one in God eternally. Referring to the paradigm of all things in God, they being one divinity.

Theologians put three fundamental questions about these preexisting forms in God, whereto attach some admirable doctrines and stimulating facts. The first question is, whether ideas of all the creatures exist in God eternally or not ? The second question is, whether these ideas arc one or more in number ? The third question is, whether the divine mind has ideas of all the things it knows or does it know at all without ideas ? To the first question Doctor Thomas answers that, it is necessary to suppose in the divine being ideas of all the creatures. And his argument is this. The three terms, form, idea and semblance are identical in meaning. Now the form, idea or semblance of a thing, a rose for instance, is present in my soul and must be for two reasons. One is, because from the appearance of its mental form I can paint the rose in corporal matter, so there must be an image of the rose-form in my soul. The second reason is, because from the subjective rose-idea I recognise the objective rose although I do not copy it. Just as I can carry in my head the notion of a house I never mean to build. In both these ways [Le. as types and principles of knowledge] ideas exist in God, for with all natural things it is the rule for the natural form or character of the progeny or fruit to exemplify the type belonging to

its species ; as with mankind, for instance, the generative power of the father’s manhood is repeated in the son’s born manhood so that a man breeds men, a lion lions and a falcon falcons. The rose grows on a rose-bush not a cabbage-stalk ; fire engenders fire. And sometimes the idea of the work is in the practical power not as a natural species but theoretically, as the house of wood and stone is designed in the architect’s practical mind, who makes the outward house as much like his ideal as he can. Now since God created this whole world (not that all creatures are by natural birth descended from God’s nature like the eternal Word of the Father, for in that case all creatures would be God, which no sane mind allows : creature-nature rejects it as an impossible, false thing), therefore God created all creatures by practical understanding of divine nature. So there must be eternally in the divine understanding the pre-existing form or idea to the likeness of which God created this creature and not another whereof God had no pattern in his mind. The second question is, whether the idea is one or more in number ? To this the Doctor answers that, the ultimate end of the work is ever the real intention of the work’s first cause. Now the ultimate end of the world is its good, i.e. the divine ordering of all creatures, as Aristotle says. Hence this ordering of the world must be eternally foreknown and foreordained in God, who is its first cause. Ergo, he has in him the particular ideas appropriate to that order, whence it follows that he must carry in him ideas of individual creatures. For just as no architect can carry in his head the plan of a whole house without the plans of all its details, so there must be in God as many forms as there are natural grades of created things emanating from him ; the rose, for instance, has one special form, the violet another; man has one distinctive type, an angel has another, and so with other things.

The astonishing thing is that this multiplicity of forms should consist with the simplicity of God in whom all essential things arc one. We can explain it thus. The idea of the work exists in the worker’s practical mind as an object of his understanding which regards it as expressing his idea to which he forms the material work, and is not in the mind of the worker as a form of understanding informing his mind and setting up active intellection. The plan of the house in the architect’s mind is (something understood by him). It is not repugnant to the simplicity of divine understanding to see and understand more than one thing as object. But it would be repugnant to his simple nature if by a plurality of objective forms it were stimulated and reduced to the subjective act of understanding as opposed to the mirror of God’s essence. Countless ideas exist in God in the sense that he sees and understands them, not in the sense that his intellect sees in them. To resume. God knows his essence perfectly so far as it is knowable both in itself and so far as all creatures in their natural mode are exemplified in divine essence ; and this express image of all creatures in the divine essence is their prototype, their idea. It follows that there are as many types as there are grades of nature to be typified.

With regard to this question of how the countless forms in the divine essence consist with their being the essence of God, they being many in number and the essence of God only one, it may be looked at in this way. We call these ideas the essence of God, not as such but inasmuch as the essence of God is a mirror reflecting all creatures. And since in the impartible essence of God we have the exemplar of all things, which we call their idea, therefore the form is many and the essence only one. Even as in a mirror there are many forms reflected, but an eye placed in the mirror would see all these forms as one object of its vision ; they would not be innate in it nor would they form the eye’s intrinsic faculty of active present or passive and potential sight, for in that case the image would be no more than one. The third question was, whether God has in him ideas of all the things he knows or does he know at all without ideas ? Doctor Thomas answers this as follows : These pre-existing forms are the origin or principle of the creation of all creatures, and in this sense they are types and pertain to practical knowledge. These forms, again, are the principle of all knowledge of creatures and as such they are really essential images of creatures ; wherefore of everything he knows and his conception of it he must have ideas.

This fact prompts the question. How does God know evil, which has no being in itself but is a privation of being ? The answer is this. As I said above, all creaturely existence has its idea in God, but since evil or sin has no being that is aught (as Dionysius says), but deprives good of good or virtuous being, as blindness of eye has no positive existence but it deprives the eye of sight, even so God’s mind perceives all sin and evil in the idea of the corresponding good, not in the form of sin ; for instance, he knows lying in the idea of truth. Consider next how God knows virtue. In the eternal mirror of his works God knows all creaturely perfections both natural and ghostly, perceiving in their pre-existing forms all accidents as substantial being. But accidents are various. Basic characteristics of the abiding nature of their subject God has no ideas of apart from the ideas which are proper to their subject : the whiteness of the daisy, for example, not its whiteness as a separate idea. But accidents subsequently added to the abiding nature he knows in particular ideas apart from the idea of any host. Whence it follows that all noble human attributes like acquired virtues and spiritual wisdom, God knows in separate eternal forms reflecting the wisdom and virtue of souls in general.

Moreover, since grace is not natural to creature therefore grace is communicated to the soul in the guise of accident, and by the same token, faith and other godly virtues are inspired supernaturally in the soul, and love and sometimes divine wisdom as with the prophets and apostles. Again, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost are supernaturally instilled into the soul. And spiritual sweetness too is an inspired accident. Wherefore of all the graces in mere creatures God has ideas wherein he knows the contingencies of grace. In the divine essence there exist then also particular ideas reflecting the certainty or hope and divine charity of the soul, albeit she is but a creature. In their own ideas there exist as well all the gifts of the Holy Ghost, which have an adventitious character. This I affirm because the prime gift of love wherein he gives all gifts, this love he is himself in Person and in essence. And because, again, all the sacred rites of the seven sacraments, wherein the soul is sanctified and initiated into godly life, because all these were instituted to show forth the workings of grace in the soul, therefore God must know all the seven sacraments in eternal pre-existing forms and each in a distinct one. The cathartic virtue of baptism by natural water comes springing out of the eternal formal baptism of the mirror of God’s nature. So, too, the primordial perfect conception of that nature survives in marriage, wherein the mutable nature of the father is reborn into the immortal and impersonal nature of the soul of his child, where nature, no longer ridden by the race-instinct governing creatures, is in that sense performing the work of all creation. Marriage is true to its exemplar as long as we preserve it in its natural purity and free from animal intention which is all opposed to its divine ideal. And the same I say about the other sacraments. God then has ideas of every longing, love and godly intuition, whether of sweetness or of inwardness, wherein he feels and knows at once all thy desires when thou dost call on him in prayer ; and in these same ideas the soul of any saint whom we invoke sees all our prayerful longings from the beginning of the world down to the very end in one flash of God’s essence, just as an angel sees creatures and their prototype in God all at once in the vision of God, in the dawn, not in the evening light, or else they would not know our longing for them. Here ends the first part of this sermon.

Now it must be remembered that this rest of the inner man in the divine wonder born of vision and divine love, transcends in its perfection and its sweetness any activity of the outward man, and for nine reasons. The first reason is, because in this passivity of the interior man, which is one of knowing and loving, the highest of the faculties in man are engaged in their noblest and most proper occupation and are thus detached and free from everything temporal and mortal, and these powers are knowledge and love. The life of the exterior man, on the other hand, is one of varying sensation. St Gregory says that Rachel, meaning the interior life, signifies a vision of the source, but Leah, the other sister, means the life of the exterior man, for she had weak eyes. The second reason is, that man’s interior wont of love and contemplation is more lasting, though not at the culminating point of actual vision, for the moment of supreme illumination is shortlived, and passes like a flash of lightning. According to St Augustine, the common use of love and knowledge lasts longer with the inner man than with the outer. The third reason is, because man’s inner life of rest and spiritual leisure is somewhat like the peace of the divine eternal essence ; for albeit the Father is ever in the act of engendering his Word that does not disturb his rest ; as our Lord says, ‘ My Father worketh until now.’ The life of outward man, on the other hand, is one of perpetual physical unrest. Mary sat still and Martha kept about the house.

The fourth reason is, that the interior life is more self-sufficient than that of outward man. The inner man needs nothing for his work but the freedom from bodily affairs which comes with detachment of the soul-powers, together with knowledge and love. The freer and less occupied with mortal tilings the better adapted to God is the life of the inner man. But the life of outward man has need of many things which are disturbing : of working and talking and giving and taking and eating and drinking. St Luke tells us how Martha, meaning the outward man, was cumbered with overmuch serving ; aye, though it be all on God’s account, like works of mercy, natheless it entails a deal of trouble. The fifth reason is, that the interior life is infinitely more enjoyable than that of outward man. As the philosopher says, Intellectual delights are free from drawbacks, but every mortal ^ This is not numbered separately in Pfeiffer’s text. pleasure has its other side. St Augustine says that while Martha was distraught Mary was in company with her interior man. Hence the comment of one teacher, ‘ Mary taxed Martha before the eternal Word Christ Jesus.’ Why did not Mary answer ? She did not hear, because she was not at home by herself. Where was she then ? She was with her inner man in the Word whose word she was attending to. For the soul is where she loves rather than where she is giving natural life.

The sixth reason is, because the interior life, apart from knowledge and apart from love, is desirable in itself. But the outward life is desirable only in so far as it makes for the greater good of the soul. The prophet cries, ‘ One thing have I desired of the Lord and that same will I seek : to see God’s will and behold his godly habitation.’ The seventh reason is, because the inner life is concerned with things divine and the outer with things human. St Augustine says, Mary heard the Word in the beginning, whereas it was the human word that Martha served. The eighth reason is, because the inner life is that of the powers most proper to the soul. But the powers used for outward purposes we have in common with the brutes, the senses, namely. David says, ‘ Lord thou dost nourish man and beast.’ And later on he adds, ‘ but I^ord, we men shall sec thy light in the light of thine own self,’ that is, in the light of understanding whereby man is distinguished from the brutes. The ninth reason is given by our Lord himself, who says, ‘ Mary has chosen the better part.’ St Augustine says, ‘ Martha had no bad one ; hers was a good one too, though Mary had the best.’ Hers the uses of the inner man, which starting here go on eternally. But the outward life of works of mercy ends where there is no poverty nor woe, that is, in eternity. Now though the inner life is intrinsically best, the outward life is sometimes better, as in cases of bodily necessity ; to feed the hungry, for example, were better than to spend the time in contemplation. According to one teacher, to see a man in any need and fail to help would make me guilty towards him, and St Augustine says I ought to lend him aid. In cases then of real necessity, to use the works of the outward man for the relief of one’s own self or neighbour is better than to settle down to the interior man’s spiritual idleness of mind and will. — It is now explained how our Lady rested in the eternal good. Let us too seek rest for the inner man as well as for the outer. So help us God. Amen.

Hcec dicit dominus : honora patrem tuum etc, {Matt I54). This Latin quotation is taken from the gospel. The words were spoken by our Lord, and the translation runs, ‘ Honour thy father and mother.’ And another commandment is given by God our Lord, ‘ Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods nor his house nor anything that is his.’ The third point is that the people went to Moses and said, ‘ Do thou speak to us, for we cannot hear God.* The fourth, that God said to Moses, ‘ An altar of earth and in earth shalt thou make unto me and all that is offered thereon thou shalt burn away.’ The fifth is that Moses went into the cloud and ascending into the mountain there he found God : it was in the darkness that he found the true light. There is a saying of St Augustine’s, ‘ Where the lamb sinks there swims the ox and the cow and where the cow swims the elephant runs and forges ahead.’ Which is a pretty parable to draw a moral from. The scriptures arc the deep sea, St Augustine says, and the little lamb the humble, simple soul which is able to fathom Holy Writ. By the ox that swims we understand illtutored folk : each choosing out of them the things that suit himself. But in the elephant that goes ahead we recognise wise souls searching the scriptures and making progress in them. I am amazed how full the scriptures are withal the masters say they are not to be taken merely as they stand ; the material things in them, they say, must be translated to a higher plane, for which we must have symbols. — First it reached to the ankles, next it came up to the knee, thirdly it rose to the girdle, and fourthly it covered his head and he was submerged altogether.

Now what does this mean ? St Augustine says, at first the scriptures will amuse and attract the child, and in the end, when he tries to understand them, they make fools of the wise, for none is so simple-minded but can find his level there nor none so wise but when he tries to fathom them will find they are beyond his depth and discover more therein. All the stories and quotations taken from them have another, esoteric, meaning. Our understanding of them is as totally unlike the thing as it is in itself and as it is in God, as though it did not exist. To return to our text. ‘ Honour thy father and mother,’ and in a general sense it does mean father and mother, that we ought to honour them, and all who have spiritual power are to be honoured and preferred as well as the authors of thy temporal weal. Herein we wade, herein do we touch bottom ; but it is precious little we get out of it. It is a woman who says, ‘ If we ought to honour the authors of our outward good much more are we behoven to magnify the author of it all.’ What we have here outwardly in multiplicity is all within and one. Yours to make this likeness like unto the Father. I was thinking this evening that all likeness ends in sameness with the Father. In the second place, thou oughtest to honour thy father, meaning thy heavenly Father, the source of thy being. Who honours the Father ? None but the Son : he alone does him honour. And none honours the Son save only the Father. The Father’s whole love, his fondness, his favours, are for the Son and him only. The Father knows nothing at all but the Son. Such delight does he take in his Son that he wants nothing else but to be getting his Son, for he is his exact likeness, the perfect image of his Father.

The teaching of our school is that anything known or born is an image. They say that in begetting his only-begotten Son the Father is producing his own image abiding in himself, in the ground of the image, as it has ever been in him, {formce illius) ix, his immanent form. It is contrary to nature and seems to me irrational, the doctrine that God is known by likeness, by this thing or by that. For he, after all, is neither this nor that, and father is not satisfied till he returns to his first nature, to the innermost, to the ground and core of fatherhood, where he has been for ever in himself, in his father-nature : to where he enjoys himself in the Father as the Father does himself in the one alone. Here wood, stone, grass-blades, all things are the same. This is the best of all, and I have fooled myself therein. All the natural powers being gathered to a head are plunged into the Fathernature, so that they are one, one Son, transcending all the rest and subsisting alone in the paternal nature, or if not the one they are at least the image of the one. This nature, being of God, seeks not what is outside her, nay, this nature, existing in itself, has naught to do with ornament : nature which is of God seeks none other than God’s likeness.

I was thinking this evening that a likeness is an outwork (preamble). I cannot see a thing unless it has some likeness, some relation to me, neither can I know a thing excepting it is like me. God has all things hidden in himself ; not this and that distinct but one in the same nature. The eye is coloured and also receives colour, the ear not. The ear senses tone and the tongue has taste. It is a case of like to like. The form of the soul and God’s image have the same nature : we being sons. If I had neither eyes nor ears still I might have being. Who robs me of my eyes robs me not therefore of my being nor yet of my life, for my life is seated in the heart. A blow aimed at my eye I parry by a lifting of the hand. A blow at my heart I should stop with any portion of my body. But if someone attempted to cut off my head I should hit out straight from the shoulder in order to preserve my life and being. I am fond of saying, You must break the outside to let out the inside : to get at the kernel means breaking the shell. Even so to find nature herself all her likenesses have to be shattered and the further in the nearer the actual thing. On coming to one, where it is all one, she is the same. Who honours God ? He who is ever seeking God’s glory.

Many years ago I was not ; not long after that my father and my mother eating bread and meat and the vegetables growing in the garden, I became a man. In this my father and my mother were unable to assist, but God made my body without aid and created my soul after the supreme. Thus I became possessed of life {possecli me). This grain of rye has it in its nature to develop into wheat, and it never rests until it has that nature. This corn seed has it in its nature to be all things and pays the penalty of death in order to be all things. And this metal, copper, has it in its nature to be gold, and it will never rest till it has gotten that same nature. Aye, this wood has in its nature the power of turning into stone ; I say more than that : it may indeed become all things if put into the fire and allowed to burn away and be transmuted to the firc-nature ; then same comes to same and has eternally one being. I trow that wood and stone and bone and all the grasses have collectively one being in the first nature. And if so with this nature then how about the nature which is so intrinsically pure that it seeks not either this or that but transcending all the others is simply making for its primitive perfection ?

I was thinking this evening, there arc many heavens. There are some incredulous who will not believe that this bread upon the altar may be changed, that God can do it. (How unworthy, to deny that God is capable of this.) If God has given to nature the power to be all things, how much easier to him must be the changing to his body of this altar bread. If this frail nature from a drop of blood can contrive a man, how much more possible for God to make his body from a bit of bread. Who honours God ? He who is ever seeking God’s glory. This meaning is more obvious albeit the former is the better one. The fourth point (is), ‘ they stood afar off and said unto Moses : Moses speak thou to us for we cannot hear God.’ They were standing at a distance, that is the reason they could not hear God, ‘ Moses went into the cloud and ascended into the mountain and there he beheld the divine light.’ We see this light best in the dark : in suffering and travail this light is nearest to us, Let God do his best or his worst he is bound to give himself to us whether in travail or distress. There was once a pious dame with many sons, whom they sought to slay. Smiling she said, * Grieve not, be of good cheer and remember your heavenly Father, for from me ye have gotten nothing whatsoever.* As though to say, Ye have your being straight from God. This applies to us. Our Lord said, ‘ Thy darkness {ix. thy suffering) shall be turned into bright light.’ But I must not love nor covet it. It was said by a master in another place, ‘ The mysterious darkness of the invisible light of the eternal Deity is unknown and never shall be known.* And the light of the eternal Father has ever ^been shining in this darkness and the darkness comprehends not the light. May we arrive at this eternal light. So help us God. Amen.

Ex oro altissimi prodivi (EccL 24^). These words, which I have quoted in Latin, we may speak in the Person of the eternal Word. He says, ‘ I proceeded forth out of the mouth of the Most High.’ This is the exalted source which uttered from the Father’s heart the eternal Word which took on human nature in our Lady’s womb. Not of this carnal birth am I going to tell, for much is told you of it. It is on the eternal birth that I propose to speak, and I will broach the subject by answering two questions. The first one is. Whether the eternal Word can be called the perfect Word seeing it is still in the throes of birth ? — Yes, for the eternal Word is gotten in the essential light and abides therein, untold to anything outside it, and is withal infallibly uttered by the Father. Hence it may well be called the perfect Word. The second question is. Whether our intelligence can at all conceive the perfect Word ? for it is proper to every understanding that it should understand. Is it not the same as our understanding in itself? — I say no, because our word is gotten in a fitful light. Our understanding is a changing thing, so it cannot conceive a perfect word. The word you hear from me is not infallible, it is a sign of the Word within me.

Now mark the way of the eternal birth. The Personal understanding as confined to its unity of nature is one with the understanding whereby the Father understands himself in his characteristic nature. Were this not the case there would be two intelligible essences. But there are not : there is but one intelligible essence wherein the Father sees himself in his characteristic nature. The object of his thought is the eternal Word. Where this is confined to the natural understanding of the Father it is none other than the Father- nature. Where this same Word is directed to itself there is ever distinction of Person and withal one simple essence divine in nature. Here I will put four questions the better for you to understand the mode of the eternal birth, though, let me say at once, that this is inconceivable to the multitudinous mind. However, I will tell you as much as it is possible for your minds to grasp. The first question is, Why is the Person of the Son called born and the Person of the Father not ? The answer is, that it is the personal understanding of the Father wherewith he understands himself in his characteristic nature, but the product of this conception is the eternal Word. Hence the eternal Word is said to be begotten and the Person of the Father not. — Question two : Is the work of the eternal birth wrought by his personal power or by his natural power ? Some theologians say it is due to the personal power of the Father since it is proper to all begotten things to receive the same nature they arc gotten by. Where saw ye the father that imparted not his own nature to his son ? So runs the argument for the eternal birth being due to personal power. This is not my view. Where the personal understanding keeps to its unity of nature there is this nature Person. Now the eternal Word originates in the essential thought wherein the Father understands himself in his characteristic nature. It follows that the work of the eternal birth must be due to his natural power, for if the eternal Word sprang from the personal understanding of the Father then this eternal Word would be the cause of its own self, for this conception is the Word.

The third question is. Where does the Father-nature have maternal names ? Where it does maternal work. Where personal understanding keeps to its unity of nature and has intercourse therewith, there the Father-nature has maternal names and is doing mother’s work, for it is exclusively a mother’s work to receive the seed of the eternal Word. In essential thought the mothernature has paternal names and docs paternal work. The fourth question is. Whether this work is essential or does the Father play a casual part therein ? I say, no. If he stopped a single instant he would negate himself. For the eternal Word is the image of the Father as he conceives himself in his character of Person, with the added dignity which the eternal Word receives in its own Person, all the perfection which the Father has and all the omnipotence peculiar to his nature. The heretical doctor Arius observes concerning this ; It appears to me to be untrue that the eternal Word receives all the perfection that the Father has and all the omnipotence peculiar to his nature, for it cannot do what the Father does ; he cannot beget another Son. But as St Augustine says, That he does not beget another Son is not due to impotence, but it behoves him not to. A statement which some doctors misconstrue, giving to understand that the Son an he would could beget another Son. Which is erroneous, for in that case the Person of the Son would be the Person of the Father. The reason for not doing it is this. Each Person receives the same nature albeit variously : the Father as fatherhood, the Son as sonship and the Holy Ghost as the common product of them both. Here the Persons are an hypostasis of the nature, each Person receiving the one nature all at once as essence. Where (the Word) receives its dignity the three shine with one light, they having this light as their common being. The dignity the eternal Word receives by birth is that of being equal with the Father, for it springs from the essential conception of the Father. As confined to this conception it is none other than divine nature ; in its aspect of the Word it is distinct in Person and withal in nature one impartible essence.

Here arises the question. How can the eternal Word be at once discrete and one simple essence divine in nature ? The best answer theologians have to this is that it is due to the impartibility and simplicity of that nature. The entire content of divine nature is one impartible essence which operates by divine nature. May we attain this oneness so far as it is possible to us. So help us God. Amen. I say that next to God there is no nobler thing than suffering. Were there anything more noble than suffering the heavenly Father would have given it to his Son Jesus Christ, in exemplary fashion, for all things. We find in Christ, as regards his manhood, nothing so much as suffering. Suffering was with him at his birth, and it never left him while he was here on earth. I say, moreover, that had Christ been a man upon this earth without his deity, yet would he have been noble beyond all human ken by reason of his suffering; for granting that suffering is noble, he who has most suffering is the noblest. But no human suffering was equal to Christ’s passion. And he is the more noble in proportion to it. Again I hold, if anything were nobler than suffering, God would have saved mankind therewith, for we might well accuse him of being unfriendly to his Son if he knew of something superior to suffering. And I say, were not suffering

always noble, the heavenly Father would have left his Son some few hours on earth that were free from suffering. But we do not find that Christ on earth spent one single hour without suffering. Suffering then must be superior to all else. I ween that our Lady, God’s mother, rather than that she should be deprived of the reward attached to the least instant of her suffering at sight of her child’s martyrdom, would choose to have remained here upon earth and not behold God till the judgment day, provided that would win back this reward. So great the guerdon won in that short hour. I declare, all the humility and virtue we attribute to our Lady brought her no such great reward or love of God as the least of all the sufferings that God sent her. I say that if our Lady, God’s mother, and suffering stood together in the street and with our Lady all her earned reward for chastity, humility and her other virtues except suffering : to our Lady suffering would appear as lovely as sunshine in a burrow, for in that case she would be outside God. And again, I say : suppose a man committed a sin beyond all sins, it might involve a suffering wherein by virtuous conduct he could cancel all his sin and win greater merit in God’s eyes than any of his saints. Further, I maintain, no man apart from God has ever been so holy or so good as to deserve the least nobility such as the smallest suffering would give. Given one man endowed with the collective humility and virtues of all the people who have lived since God created the first man, he, for all his virtues, would not merit the reward a man wins by a little suffering. I tell you, right suffering is the mother of all virtues, for right suffering so subdues the heart, it cannot rise to pride but perforce is lowly. And suffering makes for chastity ; for in right suffering vice is burnt away. And to one who has mastered all the virtues, suffering is the mother of virtue as a whole. Nothing makes a man so like God as suffering. For he who has least vices is the most like God. But nothing is like suffering for killing a man’s vices. Ergo, it makes man Godlike. Finally I say, not all the theologists together could describe what profit, what glory lies in suffering. Suffering alone is sufficient preparation for God’s dwelling in man’s heart. God dwells only with the sinless. But suffering exorcises sin. Hence God is always with a man in suffering ; as he himself declared by the mouth of the prophet, ‘ Whosoever is sorrowful, I will myself be with him.’

[Peradventure thou wilt say, ‘ If it be a fact that suffering is so noble and profits one so much, why are not the Jews and heathens saved ? I see and hear a great deal of their sufferings, for as captives they are ever subject to the Christians and that causes them much suffering.’ I answer. Baptism is the basis of the welfare, the salvation, of mankind. In the absence of it, virtues and good works are not rewarded with eternal grace. And since the Jews are not baptized, they have no guerdon of eternal grace, but are accursed on earth as well as in the other world.] ^ But thou mayst object, Why is it that all Christians are not saved ; they are all God’s, and there is nobody on earth but is bound to suffer in some fashion ? My answer is, There are two kinds of sufferers. Some, when suffering befalls, take it not as if it came from God ; they resist it to the utmost, saying in their hearts. What have I done to God that he should visit me with such misfortune ? and are moved to tears. Not that in this thought they are to blame, but in other cases they chide God vehemently, whereas God sends the suffering to rid them of their sins and by not accepting it in the proper spirit they make it useless to them ; and to such as these there is no reward for suffering though they are always having it ; they scorn God’s gift and thrust it from them. And they chase away God too, albeit they fain would have him. On the other hand, some people take it as from God, when their suffering comes, and send it back to God. They take it from God, saying in their hearts ; God, T accept this suffering from no one else but thee, for my sins have thoroughly deserved it. And they send their suffering back to God, saying in their hearts. Lord God, I willingly contribute all the suffering thou hast suffered from the hour of thy birth down to the very end ; for thou wert a pure and sinless soul, yet wert in great affliction ; it is more fit that I should be afflicted, I who am a man in sin. Accepting suffering thus, a man will merit the eternal kingdom. God help us to attain it. Amen.

^ This is probably a gloss which has become incorporated in the text.

‘ Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all things shall be added unto you.’ Since Christ bids us seek the kingdom of God it is our duty to know what this kingdom is. Know then that God’s kingdom is himself and his perfect nature. Secondly, there is God’s kingdom in the soul. He himself says : ‘ The kingdom of God is within you.’ Consider this first kingdom. Thcologists say that God’s kingdom is unity of essence in a trinity of Persons. The question is, where is God happiest ? I answer that God’s happiness is all alike in him according to his unity but according to our understanding God is far happier in his unity of essence than in his trinity of Persons, as we will prove. According to some theologists there arc three kinds of distinctions in the Godhead. First, rational distinctions ; secondly, formal distinctions ; and thirdly real distinctions, to wit, the mutual relations of the Persons. Others say the Godhead has no more than two kinds of distinctions, rational and real. Take first the distinction of Persons. St John says ; ‘ In the beginning was the Word.’ This beginning or origin is the Father, as St Augustine says. The question is, has the Father a beginning ? The answer is ; yes, his beginning is primary not proceeding, as I will show. Thcologists teach that we must distinguish in the Godhead between essence and being (i.e, nature). Being in the Godhead is deity itself and is the first thing we apprehend about God. Deity is the whole basis of divine perfection. The Godhead in itself is motionless unity and balanced stillness and is the source of all emanations. Hence I assume a passive welling-up. We call this first utterance heing^ for the most intrinsic utterance, the first formal assumption in the Godhead is being : being as essential word. God is being, but being is not God.

Now the origin of the Father is necessarily involved in this assumption of a passive welling-up. In other words, the deity being in itself intelligence, therefore the divine nature steps forth ^ Jostes, No. 82. into relation of otherness : other but not another, for this distinction is rational not real. Thus the first Person arises in the Godhead passively, not from any active beginning. Hence its beginning is without property (or, Person). The question is, what is the Person of the Father ? I answer that it is being in the Godhead, not according to essence but according to paternity which is the formal notion specifically determining the Father. The Father is the beginning of the Godhead. Hence, some theologists assert that if there were neither Son nor Holy Ghost in the Godhead there would still be the Person of the Father. When, therefore, St John says ; ‘ In the beginning was the Word,’ we must not understand this beginning to be God’s essence or his nature, for the Father alone is the active origin of the Son. Mark how the Son is in the Father. Theologists say that the Father looking into himself actually conceives in himself his own impartible exuberant nature. There follows the characteristic of that nature. The same nature which in the Father is active is receptive in the Son, for they participate it according to their properties.

Ancnt this divine birth theologists teach that this word is to be taken in a two-fold sense : essential and j^ersonal. The first or essential word every Person possesses visually, but the Father possesses it both visually and really. And this same Word in Person is the Son. The same power which is active in the Father is passive in the Son, the Son receiving his divinity from the Father. Wc must understand the passivity begotten of passivity, divinity of divinity, as properties of the Persons by which the essence is determined. For saints and doctors teach that the Persons proceed from the essence as origin, the essence being determined by the Persons and the Persons by their properties. As paternity is the formal notion which specifically determines the Person of the Father, so filiation is the formal notion which distinguishes the Person of the Son. These formal notions signify the relationship of the Persons. And this property, this formal relationship of paternity and filiation, is the final attribute of divinity. Paternity and filiation are divine accidents and dependent properties. Mark how in this birth from the Father the Word remains within as essence and goes forth as Person. Philosophers teach that to every rational concept there succeeds an intelligible word. Now when the Father conceives himself in himself, his own nature is the object of his understanding. The Father observes himself and his nature has another property, that of being observed. Accordingly the Son remains within as essence and goes forth as

Person. Corresponding with the divided nature of this act the Son is born and proceeds out of the paternal heart. Thus saith the Eternal Wisdom : ‘ I proceeded out of the mouth of the Most High,’ to wit, out of the natural conception of the essential word of the divine Father. Not that there are in the Godhead two words really but only logically. ‘ The Word was with God.’ That means, as a Person distinct from the Father, as here demonstrated. Observe further concerning these two how they bring forth the Holy Ghost. Theologists teach that the Father, pouring himself out as love into the Son, there his love is as it were reflected, the Son pouring himself back into the Father. This mutual outpouring of love is the common spiration of the Father and the Son. It might be thought that this spiration is identical in the two Persons but it is not. For according to its formal origin this spirative force is different in Father and Son, the Father being formally something other than the Son. But taking it, this spiration, both formally and really, it is the formal notion and the property which distinguishes the Person of the Holy Ghost. Hence the Holy Ghost proceeds from two formal sources as from one active origin.

Then comes the question whether this property (Person) of the Holy Ghost results from the (divine) nature in the same way as the property of the Son does ? The answer is : no, for were that so the Holy Ghost must proceed by an act of nature, like the Son ; which is not the case, l^or then there would be two Sons in the Godhead. But the divine nature is posterior to the property of the Holy Ghost which proceeds by spiration of the free-will. Hence were it possible to separate the nature from the Person of the Holy Ghost in the Godhead, the Holy Ghost would nevertheless continue to subsist in itself apart from the nature. With the Son this would not be possible seeing that the Son emanates from the Father as an intelligible word proceeding from the act of the exuberant nature of the Father ; hence he could not exist apart from that nature. And as the nature is posterior to the Person of the Holy Ghost and as the Holy Ghost docs not subsist apart from that nature, so on the other hand it is true that the Person of the Son is posterior to the nature. The nature does not exist apart from the Son, for the Son is the image of the Father from whom he emanates naturally ; which the Holy Ghost does not, seeing that it emanates from his free-will. It follows that there is reciprocity only between paternity and flliation ; not the Holy Ghost. Howbeit the reciprocity of the spirative power common to the paternity and filiation is rational not real. Herein, noble soul, seek with understanding the kingdom of God.

St John says : * And God was the word,’ signifying unity of nature. Up, noble soul, arise in divine wonder at this exalted fellowship : the three Persons united in one impartible nature ! The prophet says : ‘ The Lord shall reign for ever and beyond.’ God reigns (for ever) in distinetion of Persons, but his reign in the beyond is in unity of nature. There God is the kingdom of himself, being super-essential. Then comes the question : Can the divine essence as essence, apart from those formal distinctions which philosophers call the eternal eternities, be God’s happiness or that of creatures ? We answer : No ! Essence as essence is the same in God and creatures, but God’s happiness and the soul’s also lies in the divine nature. For the divine nature subsists in itself with all its perfections, to wit, the eternal eternities which are intrinsic in it. Some teach that it is possible for the soul to attain happiness in the knowledge of one of these formal relations regardless of the rest. But that is not true ; if it were, each of these formal relations must be established in itself apart from the others and detached from its divine nature, which is impossible ; hence this opinion is false. But the soul’s beatitude consists in comprehending all together, in one property, these eternal eternities which are the formal expression of the divine nature. For here is no division ; God is the superessential one, his own beatitude and that of all creatures in the actuality of his Godhead. Be sure that in this unity God knows distinctions but as one impartible property.

In this unity God is idle. The Godhead effects neither this nor that ; it is God who effects all things. God in activity is manifold and knows multiplicity. God as one is absolutely free from activity. In this unity God knows nothing save that he superessentially is in his own self. Hence we understand : ‘ God was the word ’ to refer to the unity of the essence. ‘ The same was in the beginning with God,’ his equal in wisdom, in truth, in goodness and in all the essential perfections, to wit, the eternal eternities, the formal modes, the fullness of the divine essence. This superessential unity is what is meant by the divine kingdom which the spirit seeks with knowledge and with love. Secondly, by this kingdom of God we understand the soul, for the soul is of like nature with the Godhead. Hence all that has been said here about the kingdom of God, how God is himself the kingdom, may be said with equal truth about the soul. St John says : ‘ All things were made by him.’ This refers to the soul, for the soul is all things. The soul is all things in that she is an image of God and as such she is also the kingdom of

God ; as God is essentially in himself without beginning so in the kingdom of the soul he is, as essence, without end. ‘ God,’ says one philosopher, ‘ is in the soul in such a fashion that his whole Godhead hangs upon her.’ It is far better for God to be in the soul than for the soul to be in God. The soul is not happy because she is in God, she is happy because God is in her. Rely upon it, God himself is happy in the soul, for God, when he broke out and wrought the soul, so far maintained his ground in her as to conceal in her his divine treasure, his heavenly kingdom. Hence Christ says : ‘ The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hid in a field.’ This field is the soul, wherein lies hidden the treasure of the divine kingdom. Accordingly God and all creatures are happy in the soul. What we say of the soul applies to her as being an image of God. Let us sec therefore wherein this image lies. One theologist says it lies in her powers, and this is commonly held to be true. And it is true when rightly understood. If it is taken to mean that her powers are diverse there is no ultimate truth in it, but if the powers are understood to be one at the summit of her activity then it is true. In this divine activity the soul looks back immediately, intellectually, in the divine nature. In this divine act she conceives her own nature superessentially in God. In this act all is divine to the highest image, which in its proper activity it is very God and happy — formally, not objectively. For gazing into itself it simultaneously conceives God in himself, without means. Hence it is happy in him formally, and objectively owing to the divine nature. One doctor says that this supernal light flows immediately out of God and at the same instant by an act of intellection is gotten without means into God. Hence its going out of and persistence in God are one intellectual conception, the impartible nature of the same intelligent act. In God, be sure, the soul in its highest prototype has never known creature as creature nor has she ever therein possessed cither time or space. For in this image everything is God : sour and sweet, good and bad, small and great, all are one in this image. This image is no more changed by anything in time than the divine nature is changed by anything that is creature ; for it apprehends and uses all things according to the law of godhood.

Now it may be asked : If this kingdom is in us why is it unknown to us ? To which I answer that, owing to the soul’s natural disposition towards creatures, all her acts are bound to originate in creaturely images ; hence these acts are thought by some to be the seat of this image in the soul, though this is not the case. These persons little know the nobility of the soul, whose activity in her ordinary understanding originates in an intelligible image in highest thought (or, memory), begotten there as to form by phantasmal images and as to essence by the supernal, God-beholding image whence the soul receives power to understand all truth. In the train of this understanding comes the ordinary will, which is nothing but the bias of the mind. Now since the ordinary understanding takes things for true and the will takes them for good, things are the object of both these activities which are alien and remote from God. For God is neither good nor true. And as God is detached and free from all that creatures can understand, so also is the highest image of the Godhead. It is a question whether there is mutual regard between God and creatures ? I answer that, God has no regard to creatures, for God has no regard except towards himself ; but creatures have regard to God, for everything that ever issued from him is ever gazing back towards him. Apply this to the highest image. The instant it glanced out from God this highest image looked back again, with countenance unveiled conceiving the divine nature without means. From this act is gotten its whole existence. In this act this prototype is God and is called the image of God ; in its breaking forth it is a creature and is called the image of the soul.

Consider then thyself, O noble soul, and the nobility within thee, for thou are honoured above all creatures in that thou art an image of God ; and despise what is mean for thou art destined to greatness ! That is what is meant by the soul being the kingdom of God. ‘ Seek first the kingdom of God.’ It should be our only care, our only quest, to know the nobility of God and the nobility of the soul. Let us see then how to seek the kingdom of God. In the Book of Love it is written : ‘ Knowest thou not thyself, O fairest among women ? Then go forth and follow after the footsteps of thy flocks ! ’ These words refer to the soul ; she is the fairest of all creatures and she shall go forth in perceiving her own beauty. Now observe in the soul three sorts of going-forth out of three sorts of nature which she has. The first is her creaturely nature. The second is the nature she has in the personal Word of the Trinity. The third is that which belongs to her in the exuberant nature functioning in the Father, the beginning of all creatures.

Taking this first exodus, note how she has got to go out of her creaturely nature. Christ says ; ‘ If any man will come after me let him deny himself and follow me.’ As surely as God lives, no man will ever go forth into the negation of himself until he is as free from his own self as he was when he was not. Doctors declare that man is to be knoA?m in two ways : as outward man and as inward man. The outward whose works are bodily and the inward whose works are ghostly. By the inner man God is sought in the contemplative life, by the outer man God is sought in the active life. Now mark my words. I say again what I have said before : outward disciplines arc of little worth ; they are useful only in subduing natures that are still uncontrolled. Know that the discipline of outward acts, though it subdue nature, cannot kill it. Nature dies by ghostly acts. There are many to be found who, with the best intentions, cling on to themselves, not denying themselves. Verily I say, these persons are mistaken, for it is contrary to human reason, contrary to the habit of grace and against the nature of the Holy Ghost. As for those who see their salvation in outward practices, I do not say they will be lost, but they will get to God only through hot cleansing fires ; for they follow not God who quit not themselves ; keeping hold of themselves they follow their own darkness. God is no more to be found in any bodily exercise than in sin. Nevertheless those who make much practice of outward disciplines are greatly regarded by the eyes of the world ; which follows by analogy, for those who understand only that which is bodily esteem highly the life they can grasp with the senses. None but a fool would prize any other !

Secondly, the work of the inner man is vision in knowing and loving. In this work lies the beginning of the holy life. These two activities define the nature of the soul. Doctors declare that every nature exists for the sake of its proper activity. Now since this nature (the soul) can be apprehended only in these two activities, therefore they are the noblest activities in man. I have said before that virtue is a mean between vice and perfection ; now love is the form of virtue without which no virtue is virtue. Whensoever a person practises a virtue the works of the virtue are works of love, not of the person ; each work of virtue having power in love to bring the person to God. St Dionysius says, it is the nature of love to change a man into that which he loves. Wherefore we ought so to live that our whole life is love. In this disposition all practices are praiseworthy, outward or inward. David says : ‘ They shall go from virtue to virtue, then shall the God of Gods be seen in Sion.’ The vision of God transcends virtues. Virtue, as I said, is a mean between vice and perfection and the fruit of virtue — the end and object of virtue, that is to say — will never be obtained until the soul is caught up above the virtues. Be sure that as long as a man holds fast himself as thrall to virtue he will never taste the fruit of virtue, which is nothing else than seeing the God of Gods in Sion. God is not seen in Jacob, the practice of virtue, but God is seen in Sion. Sion

is as it were a polished mirror and stands for unveiled vision with the single eye of the divine nature. Rely upon it, virtue has never seen this sight. Now it may be asked, are we to abandon virtue altogether ? To which I answer : no, we are to practise virtue, not possess it. The perfection of virtue is freedom from virtues. Thus Christ says : ‘ When ye have done all that is possible to you, say : we are unprofitable servants.’ That is what is meant by the soul dying to her own works. The question we must now consider is how she loses her own nature. Doctors declare that everything made by God is ordered in such an excellent way that nothing can wish it did not exist. Yet the soul is to relinquish her existence. This means the death of the spirit. And in order to accomplish this death the soul must let go of herself and all things, retaining of herself and things no more than when she was not. Christ says : ‘ Except a corn of wheat die it abideth alone.’ To die is to be wholly deprived of life, so that while a man lives, as long as there is life in him, be sure that he knows nothing of this death. St Paul says : ‘ I no longer live.’ Some people interpret this death to mean that one must live neither in God nor in oneself nor yet in any creature. And so it does, for death is the loss of all life. But I say more : a man may be dead to everything, to God and creatures, yet if God still finds in his soul a place that he can live in, then the soul is not yet dead and gone out into that which follows created existence. For to die is, properly speaking, to lose everythfng. I do not say the soul is brought so utterly to naught as it was before it was created ; this naughting applies to holding and possessing. In this respect the soul suffers total loss — God as well as creatures.

It sounds strange to say the soul must lose her God, yet I affirm that in a way it is more necessary to perfection that the soul lose God than that she lose creatures. Everything must go. The soul must subsist in absolute nothingness. It is the full intention of God that the soul shall lose her God, for as long as the soul possesses God, is aware of God, knows God, she is aloof from God. God desires to annihilate himself in the soul in order that the soul may lose herself. For that God is God he gets from creatures. When the soul became a creature she obtained a God. When she lets slip her creaturehood, God remains to himself that he is, and the soul honours God most in being quit of God and leaving him to himself. This is the lowest death of the soul on her way to divinity. Such souls are hardly to be recognised for, as St Paul says : ‘ Ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.’ If it be ques- tioned whether the unique virtue of these souls finds no outward expression, I answer : Yes, just as Christ, the pattern of perfection, was unindigent and a shining light to all mankind, so these men are turned towards humanity by reason of their selfless wisdom and godlike frame of mind.

So much for the first exodus in which the soul goes out of her creaturely nature seeking the kingdom of God. Secondly, she must go out of the nature she has in her eternal prototype. Theologists teach that the prototype of the soul is the divine understanding. The divine understanding is the Person of the Son. Hence the Son is the exemplar of all creatures and the image of the Father in which image broods the nature of all creatures. Now when the soul strips off her created nature there flashes out its uncreated prototype wherein the soul discovers herself in uncreatedness, for things arc all one in this prototype according to the property of the (eternal) image. And now the soul fares forth out of this same prototype wherein she discovers her nature according to the uncreatedness of the image and this she does in the divine death. The soul is conscious that what she seeks is neither her exemplar nor its nature, wherein she perceives herself to be in multiplicity and separation. For this final attribute of divinity is multiplicity. And since the eternal nature wherein the soul now finds herself in her exemplar is characterised by multiplicity — the Persons being in separation — therefore the soul breaks through her eternal exemplar to get to where God is a kingdom in unity. One philosopher declares that the soul’s breaking-through is more noble than her emanation. Now Christ says : ‘ No man cometh to the Father but through me.’ Christ is the eternal exemplar. Though the soul’s abidingplace is not in him yet she must, as he says, go through him. This breaking-through is the second death of the soul and is far more momentous than the first. Of it St John says : ‘ Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord,’ that is, in God.

O surpassing wonder ! How can there be death in him who says of himself that he is the life ? To which we answer : In the birth of the Son all creatures went forth receiving life and being, hence all things are lively imaged in the Son. Now when the soul returns again within she loses the Son. Theologists declare that when the Son returns to unity of nature he is neither Person nor its property : the Son is lost in the unity of the essence. Likewise I say concerning the soul : when the soul breaks through and loses herself in her eternal prototype that is the death the soul dies in God. St Dionysius says ; ‘ When God exists not for the soul there exists not for her either the eternal prototype, her source.’ Equality belongs to the soul in her exemplar, for the Son is equal with the Father. But in that they are one in nature they are not equal, for equality resides in separation. Accordingly I say concerning the soul : if she is to enter the divine unity she must lose the equality she has in her eternal exemplar. Dionysius declares that the soul’s supreme delight is the nothingness of her prototype. And a heathen philosopher says : ‘ God’s naught fills everywhere and his aught is nowhere.’ God’s aught, then, is not discovered by the soul till she has come to naught as regards finding or being able to find herself, created or uncreated as we have shown her eternal prototype to be.

This is the second death and second exodus, the soul going forth out of the nature which is hers in her eternal prototype to seek the kingdom of God. ‘ He who desires to come to God,’ says one philosopher, ‘ let him come with naught.’ The third nature out of which the soul goes is the exuberant divine nature energising in the Father. According to some theologists the Father always perceived within himself tokens of emanation before he brought forth the Word. They all agree that God the Father conceived his own nature in originating the eternal Word and all creatures. Doctors distinguish between nature and essence. Essence, in as far as it is active in the Father, is nature. The distinction is therefore a logical one. From God in activity all creatures look forth potentially. But this is not the summit of divine union so it is not the soul’s abiding place. It must be clearly understood that the soul has got to die to all the activity connoted by the divine nature if she is to enter the divine essence where God is altogether idle ; this highest prototype of soul beholds without means the essence of the Godhead absolutely free from activity. This supernal image is the paradigm whereto the soul is brought by her dying.

Now mark ! The Godhead, self-poised, is self-sufiicient. God as Godhead transcends all that creature as creature ever comprehended or can ever comprehend. As St Paul says : ‘ God dwells in light inaccessible.’ Now when the soul has gone out of her created nature and out of her uncreated nature wherein she discovers herself in her eternal prototype and, entering into the divine nature, still fails to grasp the kingdom of God, then, recognising that thereinto no creature can ever get, she forfeits her very self and going her own way seeks God no more ; thus she dies her highest death. In this death the soul loses every desire and image and all understanding and form and is bereft of any nature. And as God lives it is true that the soul, being spiritually dead, can no more manifest to any man any mode or image than the dead can stir being bodily dead. This spirit is dead and buried in the Godhead and the Godhead lives for none other than itself. Ah, noble soul, prove thy nobility ! But while it is the case with thee that thou lettest not go thine own self altogether to drown in the bottomless sea of the Godhead, verily thou canst not know this divine death. The wise man says : ‘ The Lord possessed me in the beginning in his own way.’ God possesses all things in his Godhead’s way, not in the soul’s way, for God never received creature nor can creature ever get to him, as creature.

Now when the soul has lost herself in every way, as here set forth, she finds herself to be the very thing she vainly sought. Herself the soul finds in the supernal image wherein God really is in all his Godhead, where he is the kingdom in himself. There the soul recognises her own beauty. Thence she must go out to get into her very self and realise that she and God are one felicity ; the kingdom which, without seeking, she has found. As saith the prophet : ‘ I poured out my soul into myself.’ That is the meaning of : ‘ Knowest thou not thyself thou fairest among women ? Then go forth,’ The soul has to go forth, as we have seen, in order to enter into herself, where she finds, without seeking, the kingdom of God. St Paul says : ‘ I reckon as worthless temporal suffering in comparison with the future glory which shall be revealed to us.’ Look you. I said of old, and say again, that I have now all that I shall possess eternally, for God in his felicity and in the fullness of his Godhead is enjoyed by my supernal prototype though this is hidden from the soul. As the prophet says : ‘ Indeed Lord, thou art a hidden God ! ’ This treasure of God’s kingdom is hidden by time and multiplicity by the soul’s own activity and by her creaturehood. The more the soul departs from all this multiplicity the more God’s kingdom is revealed in her. But the soul is not able for this without the help of grace. An she find it,, it is grace that has aided her thereto, for grace is innate in her highest prototype. There the soul is God, using and enjoying all things God-fashion. There the soul no more receives either from God or creatures, for she is what she contains and takes all things from her own. Soul and Godhead are one : there the soul finds that she is the kingdom of God.

It may be asked what discipline best enables the soul to reach this end ? I answer : This, that the soul remain in death, not shrinking from death. St Paul says : ‘ Christ was obedient to the Father even unto the death of the cross. Therefore he hath exalted him and hath given him a name above every name.’ And I say about the soul : if she remain obedient to God in death he will exalt her likewise and will give her a new name above every name. For as the Godhead is apart from name and nameless so also the soul, like God, is nameless, for she is the very same as he is. Christ said : ‘ Henceforth I call you not servants but friends, for all that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.’ ‘ A friend,’ says a heathen, ‘ is a second self.’ God became my seeond self that I might become his second self. And St Augustine declares : ‘ God became man that man might become God.’ In God the soul receives a new life. In him she arises out of death into the life of the Godhead ; here God pours into her his divine fullness, here she receives a new name which is above every name. For as St John says, ‘ we have passed from death unto life because wc love.’

Such is the interpretation of Christ’s words : ‘ Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.’ Now let us sec how ‘ all things shall be added unto us.’ We can take this in two ways : first, as meaning that whatever of perfection there is in tilings wc shall lind in that first kingdom. Secondly, that we must hold fast to perrection in all we do : a man’s works should be wrought according to the law of God’s kingdom. If any man acts in such a way that his deeds are able to demean him, be sure he is not acting according to the law of God’s kingdom. When works are wrought according to humanity weeds and discord soon fall among them, but he whose work is wrought in the kingdom of heaven remains tranquil in every undertaking. ‘ And God saw all that he had made and behold it was very good,’ say the scriptures. And I say concerning the soul, that all her acts are perfect as seen in the kingdom of heaven, for there all works are equal, my least is my greatest, and my greatest least. Humanly speaking they are imperfect, for works in themselves are manifold and lead to multiplicity, wherefore in respect of such one is nigh on the brink of discord. Hence Christ’s words : ‘ Martha, Martha, thou troublest thyself about many things ; one thing is needful.’

Of this be sure : to win perfection our activity must be of a nature so exalted that all our works arc wrought as one act ; and this must take place in the kingdom of heaven where man is God. There all things make divine response, there man is lord of all his works. Verily I say unto you : works wrought out of the kingdom of God arc dead works but works wrought in the kingdom of God are living works. The prophet says : ‘ God as little loves his works as he is disturbed and changed by them.’ And so with the soul when she works in accordance with the law of God’s kingdom. People of this sort are always the same whether they work or whether they work not, for works give nothing to them and take nothing from them. That is the meaning of : ^ All things shall be added unto you.’ This is addressed to none but those who already know it as a live reality or who at least possess it as their heart’s desire. May it be revealed to us, So help us God I Amen. Whosoever would attain to the summit of his noble nature and to the vision of the sovran good, which is God himself, must have profoundest knowledge of himself and of things above himself. Thus he reaches the supreme. Beloved, learn to know thyself, it shall profit thee more than any craft of creatures. How to know thyself, of this now learn two ways.

First, see that thy outward senses are properly controlled. Reflect, as regards these outward senses, that to the eye evil presents itself no less than good. The ear is importuned by one as well as the other and so with the other senses. Wherefore it behoves thee strictly to confine thyself and with all diligence to those things which are good. So much for the outward senses. Now turn to the inward senses or noble powers of the soul, lower and higher. Take the lower powers first. These are intermediate between the higher powers and the outward senses. They are excited by the outward senses : what the eye sees, what the ear hears, they offer forthwith to desire. This offers it again, in the ordinary course, to the second power, called judgment, which considers it and once more passes it on to the thiffl power, reckoning or reason. In this way it is clarified before it arrives at the higher faculties. So exalted is the power of the soul that she can seize it minus form or image and carry it in this state up into her higher powers. Here it is stored in the memory, mastered in the intellect and consummated in the will. These are the superior powers of the soul and they are one in nature. What the soul does is done by this simple nature in her powers.

Now it may be asked, What is this nature of the soul ? — It is the consciousness (the spark or synteresis) in the soul, that is the impartible nature of the soul. So subtile is this nature of the soul that space might not exist at all for all it troubles her. For instance, if one has a friend a thousand leagues away, thither flows the soul with the best part of her powers, loving her friend there. St Augustine testifies to this. He says, * The soul is where she loves rather than where she is giving life.’ The simple nature of the soul is in no way hampered by place. So much for the nature of the soul. Next consider her higher powers, so orderly appointed, so ^ See also Greith, p. 114, etc. ; and Spamer, Texte, B. 2. admirably adapted to their several functions albeit of one nature. Memory is the power of storing up what the other powers bring in, that is its function. — The second power is understanding. This is so exalted that in its understanding of the highest good, God namely, all the other powers must subserve it to the best of their ability. — The third faculty is will. It is lordly enough to bid what it will and forbid what it will not ; from things it does not will it is altogether free. So much for the superior powers of the soul and the role assigned to each.

Doctors dispute as to whether understanding is the nobler or the will. The position is this. Understanding secs things beyond this mundane level, that is its prerogative. But to will alone are all things possible. As St Paul declares, ‘ I can do all things in God who strengtheneth me.’ When understanding comes to the end of its tether, up soars the will transcendent in the light and power of faith. Here will surpasses understanding. This is the prerogative of will. But mind you, though the will is free to do and leave undone exactly as it will, this upward flight is not achieved by its own power alone : help comes from the other powers and from faith as well. What help we shall now see. The powers have in common their impartible nature, and to this is due the transcension of the will. The other powers are the cause of this transcension in virtue of identity of nature. That is one help. Then comes the qucsticrti, which is the power in the psychic trinity wherein faith first appears ? — The middle one : it springs from uriSerstanding but it is fortified in will and will is fortified by faith. Thus the light of faith contributes to this ascent of will. That is the second help. And of still another it remains to tell. Intellect projects itself to hear and understand. It analyses, orders, synthesises. But even when working to perfection, always there is something on beyond which it cannot penetrate and which it recognises as belonging to a higher order. This it communicates to will, in their common nature, not in its individual capacity. This communication gives will an upward swing which displaces it into that higher order — always in their common nature. Here understanding is superior to will. But to will as individual a certain superiority belongs at the summit of its nature where it receives from the highest good, from very God. — What does it receive ? — It receives grace and in grace the highest good itself. What soul receives she receives willingly or not at all. Not that will as such receives this light : to receive is not its part ; but by the grace of the sovran good the other powers are strengthened in their common nature. This light is kindled in that second power, in the Holy Ghost. It is in this

light that all works are wrought in the soul. As Isaias says, * All our works are wrought by* God.’ This light is gracious light, and any light outside this light is the light of nature. It is a sure sign of this light when of his own free will a person turns from mortal things to the highest good, God namely. We are in duty bound to love him for conferring on the soul such great perfection. When she has reached her limit of endeavour then will as such is free to leap over to that gnosis which is God himself. A somersault which lands the soul at the summit of her power. A marvel, truly, God has made from naught in the image of himself ! See now how the soul rises to sovran rank and to the zenith of her power. One master says, God is conveyed into the soul and there implanted. Whence there arises in the soul a divine love-spring which bears the soul back into God. Mark how. According to one holy man, ‘ Whatever we can say of God, that God is not.’ According to another, ‘ Whatever we can say of God, God is.’ And an eminent authority declares that both are right. With these three holy men even so I say, that when with her own understanding the soul receives divine understanding it is offered forthwith to her will. Will accepting it grows one with what it has accepted and finally takes it and puts it away in the memory. Thus God is conveyed and implanted in the soul. Then as to the divine love-spring. This overflowing in the soul causes her higher powers to flood the lower ones and the lower ones flood the outward man who, borne above all nether things, is incapable save of what is spiritual. As the spirit works Tjy divine energy even so the outward man is driven by the spirit.

Oh wonder of wonders ! When I think of the union of the soul with God ! lie makes the soul to flow out of herself in joyful ecstasy, for no named things content her. And since she is herself a nature named therefore she fails to content herself. The divine love-spring surges over the soul sweeping her out of herself into the unnamed being in her original source, for that is all God is. Creatures have given him names, but in himself he is nameless essence. Thus the soul arrives at the height of her perfection. Further as concerns the noble nature of the soul. St Augustine says , ‘ As with God so with the soul.’ Had God not made the soul in the likeness of himself, to be God by grace, she could never be God above grace. Her likeness to the pattern of the blessed Trinity we see by comparing her with God. God is threefold in Person and onefold in his nature. God is in all places and in each place whole. In other words, all places are the place of God. And the same with her. God has prevision of all things and everything is pictured in his providence. This is natural to God. And also to the soul. She too is threefold in her powers and simple in her nature. She too exists in all her members and in each member whole. So that all her members are the place of the soul. She too has foresight and imagines such things as she is able. To anything that we can predicate of God, soul has a certain likeness. Or, in the words of St Augustine, ‘ Like God like the soul.’ God has endowed the soul with his own likeness which did she not possess she could not be God by grace nor above grace either ; whereas in this likeness she is able to attain to being God by grace and also above grace. And she must equal him in divine love and divine activity. So much for the soul as being God by grace.

The soul who abides in this perfect likeness and in this noble nature God has given her, and at the same time rises to higher rank and higher, to her, what time she leaves the body, and at that very point, eternal life is open and in the opening she is encompassed with divine light, and enveloped in this divine light she is absorbed and transformed into God. Now each of the powers of the soul is endowed with the likeness of a divine Person : will receives the likeness of the Holy Ghost ; understanding receives the likeness of the Son ; memory the likeness of the Father and (her nature the likeness of the) divine nature withal remaining undivided. — That is as far as I can understand it. In the third place let us see how the soul becomes God above grace. What God has given her is changeless for she has reached a heighrwhere she has no further need of grace. In this exalted state she has lost her proper self and is flowing full-flood into the unity of the divine nature. But what, you may ask, is the fate of this lost soul : does she find herself or not ? My answer is, it seems to me that she docs find herself and that at the point where every intelligence sees itself with itself. For though she sink all sinking in the oneness of divinity she never touches bottom. Wherefore God has left her one little point from which to get back to herself and find herself and know herself as creature. For it is of the very essence of the soul that she is powerless to plumb the depths of her creator. Henceforth I shall not speak about the soul, for she has lost her name yonder in the oneness of divine essence. There she is no more called soul : she is called infinite being.

Now I go on to speak about abstract knowledge of God. And I address myself to you, my brethren and my sisters, beloved Friends of God who are familiar with him and know something of the matter. I will start with the nomenclature of the holy Trinity. And here you will be called upon to follow an abstruse, technical discussion. When we speak of the Father or the Son or the Holy Ghost we are speaking of the Persons. When we speak of the Godhead we arc speaking of their nature. The three Persons, as Person and essence, flow with their essence into the essence wherein they are Godhead. Not that the Godhead is other than what they are themselves : they are the Godhead in their unity of nature. They flow in essence into the essence, both Person and essence, because essence is comprehended by nothing but itself. It is fast locked in stillness, comprehending itself with itself. This influx is, in the Godhead, the oneness of the three inseparate Persons. In this same Ilux the Father flows into the Son and the Son again into the Father (as our Lord .Tesus Christ declares, ‘ He that sceth me secth my Father. My Father is in me and I in him ’), and they both flow into the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost back to them again. (As our Lord Jesus Christ says, ‘ I and my Father arc one Spirit.’) The Father utters his Son and in liis Son tells forth himself to creatures as a whole, all in this flow. And the Father returning to himself speaks himself to himself : ‘ The fountain flows into itself,’ as St Dionysius says. This proceeding in the Godhead is a speaking without words and without sound; a hearing without ears; a seeing without eyes. In this proceeding each Person wordlessly utters himself in the others. It is a flow where nothing flows. Compare with this the noble soul, which provides a striking likeness of this flow ; for where her higher powers and her simple nature have the same property (hyparxis) they are flowing into each other, speaking themselves without word and without sound. Happy ftle soul who thus attains to the vision of eternal light !

But it may be questioned, what about their power ? Is their power that of Person or of essence ? — I answer that, the three are one God, no one is before or after the other : all three Persons are one first in the unity of their essential nature. Hence we speak of the activity of the blessed Trinity not of their essence. This is silence. Now speech, remember, beats into silence. In this sense the Persons are the hypostasis of essence. — ^But why call it a beat ? — Because it is neither a coming nor a going. In this impulse the Trinity has equal power to act and has wrought its work entirely unmoved and undisturbed. Examine, again, the statement, ‘ the Persons are the hypostasis.’ This reveals two things. From the word are we gather that each Person is distinct in the Personality. But saying ‘ the hypostasis ’ argues the three Persons and one nature to possess one property. The Persons are the hypostasis of the essence since their unity and personality have like power to act. This power the holy Trinity possesses in the unity of its natural essence. There you have the argument in full for the blessed Trinity having power in the unity of its divine nature.

Two things we attribute to God, essence and nature. — ‘ I should much like to know the difference.’ — Essence attracts and nature is common to the Persons : they are one. — ‘ For God’s sake, Sir, explain.’ — Then follow with enlightenment, with mind attuned to the highest pitch. You see, God, whatever he is, has essence and essence is absolute stillness ; it is immoveable. It speaks not, loves not, gets not ; but it moves moveable things like creatures. Immoveability and motion do not represent (the divine nature) and the divine Persons : Persons and nature have one property. (Immoveability) distinguishes the essence. But what the divine nature is, of that no single drop did ever fall within the ken of any creature. According to one philosopher, ‘ God’s nature is God’s beauty.’ And to this I add that in this same beauty there is play of light and its reflection, each Person radiant to the rest as to itself. This illumination is the perfection of beauty. — ‘ Good. I am quite satisfied with that. But now I want to ask about the eternal Word of the Father : is it to be taken as abiding within in his essence ? ’ — No. — ‘ Is it to be taken in his Person ? ’ — No. — ‘ Then is it to be taken as being in the abstract nature of the Father ? ’ - St Augustine, speaking as it were in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, gives for it five analogies : ‘ I am come as a word from the heart that is spoken therefrom ; I am come as the light from the sun ; I am come as the heat from the fire ; I am come like the fragrance of a flower ; I am come like the streanT'from its perennial spring.’ Even so is the eternal Word uttered in the Person of the Son while remaining God by nature in his nature. That is the answer.

— ‘ Now another question. Theologians say God is in everything. Is God in everything in his nature ? ’ — No. — ‘ Is God in everything in Person ? ’ — No. — ‘ Then how is he in everything ? ’ — As preserving their unity of nature. Persons and nature have but one property and this property is the divine essence as a whole. As such God is in all places and in each place God is all at once. For since God is impartible, all things and all places are the place of God. So everything is full of God, of his divine essence, continually. Three things are to be noted about the divine essence. First and foremost, it is the principle preserving all things ; in his divine essence God is in all things upholding them. But he is in the soul innately. Witness our Lord Jesus Christ : he was God and man. He has given us his sacred body : whoso receives it worthily receives at once the Person of the Son and divine nature ; he receives human nature joined with divine nature. For he is really present where he is worthily received. This accounts for God’s loving himself in the soul.

It may be asked, how does God love himself ? — God is in all things, for he is with himself. God is with himself for love of himself. Hence God loves himself with himself in all things. — Secondly, God is one alone ; hence it is from itself not from another. Were it from another it would reveal the thing from whence it came. Not so : it is by itself in stillness so profound it cannot of itself reveal anything at all. And here it may be noted that although God is potent for good yet it may be maintained that his greatest power is his impotence. The argument runs thus. The impartible essence of divine nature is unity. Now unity cannot reveal itself to itself. That is its impotence and this impotence is the unity itself : the unity which is God’s chief potentiality. Whence also the deduction that the three Persons have like power in their natural essence. And since this cannot manifest itself therefore the three Persons have manifested it and to none more than to themselves, for it is their own essential nature. — ^Thirdly, it unifies and embraces all things in itself and in this embrace the Father loses his name although he preserves his paternity of Person. That is one Person. And the same with the other Persons. In this embrace all is dissolved in all for all encloses all. But in itself it is self-disclosed.

Here arises the question how the first embraces all ? The answer is this. Things flowed forth finite into time while abiding infinite in eternity. There they arc God in God. Take an illustration. Suppose some master of the arts. If he pfb&uce a work of art he none the less preserves his arts within himself : the arts arc the artist in the artist. Even so tJie first contains the idea of all things, which is God in God. Then there is the question of how all things return into their first source ? The answer is this. Creatures all change their names in human nature and become ennobled ; in human nature they lose their own particular nature and find their way back into their cause. There are two ways of doing this. First, it is feasible for human nature to scale the heights by ghostly toil, for in spiritual travail the soul ascends to whence it came. That is one way. But there is another. The meat and drink a man consumes turns into flesh and blood. Now it is the Christian \ faith that this actual body will rise at the last day. Then things shall all arise, not as themselves but in him who has changed them into himself. He, spiritualised and turned to spirit, shall flow in spirit back to his first cause. From this it may be argued that every single creature has, in human nature, a stake in the eternal. Furthermore it argues the faithfulness and kindness and perfect

love of God who refuses to shut out any belonging of his faithful servant : he takes him all together to himself. All embraces all, for all is one and one is all in all. Then there is the question how the Person of the Son was sent into Mary’s virgin body and took on human nature without his ever quitting the shelter of his Father’s bosom ? The answer is as follows : The bosom of the Father is the throne of God. The Father has given birth to his Son, is now giving him birth and shall go on giving him birth without stopping. This birth has been taking place in him for ever. At the very instant when the Son was donning human nature the Father was bringing him to birth. That is one explanation. Or take it in another way : the Son is the understanding of the Father and the architect^ of all things in his Father. Had this architect not wrought in his Father without ceasing the Father had not wrought at that particular point. So God’s Son while taking on man’s nature in Mary’s body was the architect of all things in his Father. That is another explanation. Or take it, thirdly, in yet another sense. The Son has no less of the essence than the Father or the Holy Ghost, with whom he possesses it in common. And in the community of their essential nature the Son himself is the encloser. Unity is the close, the Persons what the one encloses. Each Person in the utterance keeps his individual nature. But within this close the three Persons have one nature. The Son has his nature in common with the Father and with the Holy Ghost so that as therein contained he has with them one common property. It follo^^ that the Son has never for one instant left the Father. And herewith I conclude this threefold argument. It demonstrates conclusively that God has never waxed or waned in divine glory. — So much of theology and of the noble lineage of the soul.

Now we will speak about the union of the soul with God. There are those who say, nothing unites the soul so much as knowledge. Others again aver the same of love. And yet a third school teaches that nothing unites like use {Le, actual enjoyment). Now I put one question regarding these three things. What is the property of each ? Each is its own peculiar property. But at the summit of its property (its nature) each of them approaches so closely to the rest that they are virtually the same : threefold yet one in nature. This, to be sure, is not strictly true, but in the higher reaches of their nature, where they are verging on each other, knowledge enhances love and love enjoyment. Each one, however, does its own appropriate work. Knowledge raises the soul to the rank of God ; love unites the soul with God ; use perfects the soul to God. These three transport the soul right out of time into eternity. There the spirit in perfect freedom enjoys in its origin the height of bliss. Love and the sweetness of its uses have lured forth the soul to its naked spark. What is her fortune there ? All I can say is this ; the glance, out of the spirit, which pierces without stop into naked Godhead ; the flow, out of the Godhead, into the naked spirit, these are but one form which conforms and unites the spirit to God in form and oneness so that it receives as like from like. How spirit fares in this exalted state I know not, nor can I tell at all more than to say that the spirit is then at the summit of its power and its welfare is supreme.

Peradventure you will say, ‘ It is all very well to talk, my friend, but how do I arrive at this exalted state you have described ? ’ — See. God is what he is and what he is is mine and what is mine I love and what I love loves me and absorbs me and what absorbs me that I am rather than my own self. By loving God therefore ye may become God with God. But I will not pursue this subject further. Now I want to say a little about the virtuous life so that you may have some guide to its attainment. Whosoever would attain to God must make him some return for all his godly works. He who would atone to God must needs possess one virtue : righteousness (or justice). This is the epitome of all the virtues. He must be bare and free within and without. What is the freedom of a godly man ? Being absolutely nothing to and wanting absolutely nothing for himself but only the glory of God in all his works. Mark two degrees of freedom in the willing poor. First they abandon friends and worldly goods and honours and^ descend into the valley of humility. There the willing poor find outward freedom and dwell unsolaced by perishable things. Follow the scorn and bitterness of the world. Courage, my children, establish yourselves in the valley into which ye have gone down. If the sons of the world revile you waver not ; stand fast in Christ remembering and acting on his words, ‘ The servant is not greater than his lord ; if the world hate you, know, it hated me before it hated you ! ’ Accept it all from God with hearty thanks and deem yourselves all unworthy of it ; then, only then, have ye renounced yourselves.

Then again there is ghostly freedom. He is in this^ sense free who finds within himself no sort of sin or imperfection. More free is he who cleaves to nothing that has name nor it to him. Still freer is the man who works not for reward from God but solely for God’s glory. And most free of all, one who forgets himself and flows with all he is into the bottomless abyss of his first cause. This is the case of those willing poor who have descended into Humble Valley. They verily obey the precept of our Lord, ‘ If any man will come after me let him take up his cross and follow me/ From such as have denied themselves to follow after God in genuine poverty how can God refrain ? he must pour out his grace into those souls who thus in love have undone themselves. He pours his grace into them filling them full and in his favours he bestows himself. With his own self does God adorn the soul like gold adorned with a precious stone. Thereafter he leads on the soul to the beholding of his Godhead. In eternity this happens, not in time. Although in time she has a foretaste of it in what is here described of the virtuous life. This I have told so ye may know that none achieves the crown and summit of his nature, knowing and loving, excepting by the path of willing poverty, of being like these poor. That is for all the best.

Now praising God for his eternal goodness we pray him to receive us at the last. So help us Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen. When God created the soul he fell back upon himself and made her after his own likeness. Meister Eckhart of Paris says, God made nothing like himself besides the soul. Thus we can give no shape to God nor can we to the soul, and as God is immortal so did he make the soul. The soul is not dependent upon temporal things but in the exaltation of her mind is in communication with the things of God, hence her prodigious capabilities, and it amazes me that, being so like God and of such perfection and with such a powerful word of her own, the soul is still unable to speak the same as God. Some say it is because what is innate in God is not so in the soul : God is his own being and gets this from himself, but what the soul is that she gets from God and when she issues forth from him she does not keep his nature : she takes another nature, a descendent of divinity. So she does not behave the same as God : God moves all things in heaven and earth and gives life to all, and the soul moves the body, giving life to every limb so that it sees, hears, feels and walks and talks although the mind may be elsewhere. St Gregory observes, ‘ We cannot see the visible except with the invisible ’ : the eye sees nothing corporal, lacking the a-corporal thing which quickens it to sight. Subtract the mind, Le, the soul which is invisible, and the eye is open to no purpose, which before did see. God has formed the soul to himself and with himself and in himself ; of time and in time and timely, and no soul can get into God without first being God as she was before she was made into God. Nothing but God finds its way into

God, and once the soul is in God she is God, borne into God on his eternal Word. Soul is the mean ’twixt God and creature ; she is placed at the beginning and end of the supreme, in touch with common knowledge and with the consolation the angels bring to her from God. If she prefers the inferior powers of her live senses to her higher ones whence comes her knowledge of celestial things, then she grows ignoble and base. The creature pleasures of the soul God has no stomach for, and when she realizes this she discards the joys in which God has no share. While the soul is still here, in sleep, she drives away the angels, and refusing any longer to serve creature she conceives herself all one with God. St Augustine says the soul is nobler, mightier, grander than any creature, but the angels are by nature of still higher rank, for they are the first issue of the breath of God which gives life to them. Gregory, again, observes that ‘ The soul God has appeared to, who has some inkling of him, hnds creatures all so narrow and so vain.’ — While the higher powers of the soul are holding fast to God she actuates her lower powers so that what occurs in these comes to the knowledge of the higher ones. The highest power of the soul is called an inextinguishable light because of the vision the soul has in this power. However far away her power is from God she can discern God always. Her power is never so much out but that it still burns somewhat, enough to be a danger-signal to the soul and, even were she spiritually dead in sin, a beacon showing her the way to come alive again and arise in true sorrow and repentance.

Here comes the question. Can the soul with her owff powers comprehend her highest happiness ? The answer given to this question by the four doctors, Thomas, Egidius, Henricus and Albertus is, that if the soul had her knowledge of herself, as she has her being, image-free, then she would be able to take in her highest happiness, she being an infinite capacity which God cannot fill excepting with himself. St Augustine says. If her own perfect nature were immediately present to the soul she would be her proper self rather than creature in her nature, as she is classified. For God is spirit and he en-spirits the soul who, in her spiritual nature, belongs to an order above creatures; she finishes with creature in the perfect image of the eternal birth which is directly formed in her. Another question is. How does God enter the soul ? Is he innate in her, sustaining her with his intrinsic energy and providing her with life and being ? One theory is that God enters the soul in three ways. First in his grace whereby a man being gratified is filled with the desire of perfecting virtue as a whole, mingled with alarm lest any creature ever filch it from him.

Secondly, God enters the soul in pure perception wherein a man beholds himself and learns to know himself and answer any call God may make upon him, be it suffering or trials, bodily or mental. Thirdly, God enters the soul in true freedom, liberating man from all the cares of life. Let the soul bid him welcome, refusing to be satisfied save with him alone. At the highest point of his inner self, his soul, man is more God than creature : however much he is the same as creature in his nature, in mind he is like God more than any creature. To the soul at rest in God in her potential, her essential, intellectual nature, everything comes natural as though she were created not at the will of something else but solely at her own. In this point creatures are her subjects, all submitting to her as though they were her handiwork. It was in this power the birds obeyed St Francis and listened to his preaching. And Daniel took refuge in this power, trusting himself to God alone, when he sat among the lions. Moreover, in this power it has been the custom of the saints to offer up their sufferings which, in the greatness of their love, arc to them no suffering.

Dionysius says the soul has got to purify herself till in her perfect clarity she is like the angels and receives by grace what the angels have by nature. For the soul will not be able to fulfil her destiny till she is like the angels in whom is no sin. But the soul is from heaven (that is to say, from God who is the heaven of the soul) and body from the earth, s© they are ever opposed to one another. And that is why the soul, wanting to get back to God whence she issued forth, absconds and leaves behind her all the thfli^s which are not God and do not lead to God. All form and likeness, Dionysius says, God in the first instance imprinted in the lesser angels so that they should inform the soul with divine light and consolation and enable her to enter into her own solitude, God namely, wherein no creature can ever look and sec. Theologians say the soul is more greatly blest when God begets himself in her without corporal union than the body of Christ is without his Godhood and without his soul. But any beatific soul is a nobler thing than Christ’s mortal body, for the interior birth of God within the soul is the final consummation of her happiness, a happiness more real to her than Christ’s becoming man since this profits the soul nothing without union with God. As Dionysius says, ‘ Beatitude means an in-dwelling with God such that he is more present to the soul than she is to herself, and the soul can apprehend him best when she approaches him with a tranquil mind.’ For in peace is his habitation and in peace he elected us his children. But as God is the mover in the starry and revolving heavens so here in the soul he is the mover of the freedom of our will towards himself and towards all good things :

it is in his light that she sees the light and in his light she will be united with the light. Theologians say that in their own nature the angels in heaven are nobler than the soul of Christ or Mary because they are in essence nearer than the soul to God. But by merit Christ’s soul has more joy than all the angels and is nearer God than any angel. And the same with Mary’s soul. Not by nature though, for by nature Christ’s soul, and Mary’s too, is the same as mine or any other human soul. Further, theologians teach that the soul in man is more than thousandfold, for it is whole in every limb : in the fingers, in the eyes and in the heart and in every several portion of each member large and small. Just as in the eighth heaven, where there are so many stars, there is one angel who revolves that heaven and exists entire in each star. When God created man he safeguarded him against all ills ; the golden (ihain of destiny coming from the Trinity to the highest power of the soul and running also through her lower powers subordinates them to the higher so that no fell disorder can attack either the body or the soul excepting he transgress this law. In her higher powers the soul is spirit and in her lower, soul ; and betwixt soul and spirit is the bond of one common being.

Also you must know that in the soul there exists one power which rests not day or night ; it is flowing from the Spirit and is altogether ghostly, and in this power God comes out in the full flower of his joy and glory, as he is in himself. Such intense delight, such supreme exaltation as no mind can conceive nor tongue express. Were he always recollected in this power a man would never age. Nay more I say : should he in this power catch but one fleeting glance of the joy and bliss therein, it would be happiness enough to make amends though he suffered all things. The soul receives four things from God in her power of understanding. First, the entire certainty of freedom, of riddance, from all creatures, which God object^ to in her. Next, the full enjoyment of God while she abides in the power of love. Third, the. complete protection of God against all harm from creatures. Fourthly, victory in this power over all her foes. For as the Son of God, so also is the soul, and the promise of the Son is the promise of the soul, only she is not suspended from where the Son issues from the Father. Fire and heat are one ; taste and tasted are one, albeit far asunder. The Word God speaks eternally lies hidden in the soul so that one neither knows of it nor hears it. Dionysius says the soul resembles the procession in the Godhead since the higher powers of the soul have her nature common to them and each power flows into the rest. For the soul to rise

to spirit she must betake herself to her eternal part, never failing to remember that, by the grace of Gk)d, hers is an imperishable nature and capable of eternal bliss. Her spirit is suspended from the unchanging God, so neither life nor death nor height nor depth nor angel nor man nor any creature can loose her steadfast hold on God : the soul who dies in God is also buried in him and beyond the ken of creatures just as much as God is beyond their ken. As Dionysius says, when the soul considers the greatness of God’s might beside her littleness she casts herself out of herself and out of every creature and thus reduced to naked nothingness, God keeping her in his power, she persists simply in the grace of God. God is concerned solely with himself ; he is to each thing absolutely whole. And the soul should be the same : what God is by nature she must be by grace : detached and free from creatures, abandoning all things to God as though they were not. In a soul like this all that survives is God : his uncreated Breath is what the soul draws in inspiration, and she is spirit to all things and all things spirit to her, the eternal spiration of the Holy Ghost. Vicentius the philosopher observes, ‘ The spirit detached is of such perfection that what it sees is real, what it wills comes true and its commands must be obeyed.’

It must be remembered that when the free spirit stands in perfect isolation it constrains God to itself, and if it could subsist as form devoid of accident it would have all the character of God. But this God grants to none beside himself ; the utmost God can do is to^gjyc himself to him, and such an one is so far raised up to eternity that nothing temporal can move him, nothing material affect him ; he is dead to the world, as St Paul says, ‘ I live not ; Christ Hveth in me.’ According to Dionysius, death in God is nothing but the uncreated life, that is, God himself, not now called the soul but the sovran power of God, because with it he performs his will. What the five senses get from such a soul she gives the whole of to her inner man whenever he embarks upon some high adventure, and such an one is then nonsensical (or senseless), his object being the rational, a-sensible idea. Dionysius comments on the dictum of St Paul, ‘ There be many that run for the crown but it falls to none but the wise.’ This race, he says, is nothing else than the flight from creatures to union with their uncreated God. The soul, in hot pursuit of God, becomes absorbed in him, and she herself is reduced to naught, just as the sun will swallow up and put out the dawn. St Augustine says, ‘ The soul has a private door into divine nature, where for her all things amount to naught.’ And, ‘ The flavour of the spirit spoils the taste for flesh ’ ; and, ‘ The soul at her summit is ignorant with knowing, j5pj .tjb^ .oneness of

the spirit those that have abandoned everything to God are as he had them when we existed not.’ The Lord Jesus stands before the soul as the perfect pattern for our human conduct. But the subjective aspect of the three Persons — Godhead, mind — no creature ever saw, not soul nor angel nor the humanity of Christ, in its own nature. Yet it is held by some, and Meister E(rkhart of Paris notably, maintains in the teeth of all objections : As surely as you know me for a man so surely God gives birth to his own nature in the ground of my soul as in his heaven, and I am not happy till I return to God discarding every means of sin and all its brood together with all creatures. For in th(^ selfsame ground wherein the Father bears his Son in his own nature therein am I born. In the soul that has trodden underfoot all the ills of time the Father naturally will beget his Son as surely as my father gat me a living man. In the very ground wherein the Father gets his Son therein does he get me and all whom the Fatlier draws to him by grace. And as God in himself is absolutely free from things so I am there by gratae what God is by nature. God destines all of us to such a glorious lot as few indeed can credit who have not gone out of themselves. If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be lillcd thereby but only with himself : he is the very highest uncreated heaven of all the heavens in God’s nature. That the soul in us is deathless is not our doing but God’s : it is the nature of her. But union comes by grace, the highest stooping down to inform the lowest, and therein lies our hope of future sight.

The soul ascends from corporal things and, being caught up above herself, abides within herself, lirst, for the sake of the delights she finds in God. For the divine perfection invests her in him with his likeness. His fullness is i)oured forth without stint : angels more in number than the sands and grass and waterdrops and every single angel with his own distinctive nature, not one the same as any other,- Secondly, the soul ascends for the sake of the purity she finds in God ; things in him arc all quite pure and noble, but once they issue forth from him into the nearest creatures there is all the difference between aught and naught. — Thirdly, the soul ascends for the recollection she enjoys in God. In order to grasp God she must have a wont that is higher than herself ; though God had made a thousand earths and a thousand heavens the soul could comprehend them all in her one power, the active power’s reflection. But she cannot conceive God in the act of making her in his own image. — Fourthly, the soul ascends for the sake of the infinite good things she enjoys in God : all things in him are ever new in his Son who to-day is being born the same as though his Father had never given him

birth. And as God is flowing into the soul she is flowing back into God. The soul takes four steps into God. On turning to God, at first she feels afraid of his magnificence. Her next step is to overcome this fear and conceive the hope of God’s affection. Her third step brings the vehement desire, she hails it as the promise, of the infinite embrace wherein she is embraced by God. — At the fourth step she falls into such deep oblivion she never thinks of leaving what she has found in God. God made the soul for his only Son to be born in her. And when and where soever there befalls this birth it gives God greater jdcasure than the creation of the heavens and earth because the soul is nobler and bigger than the heavens. As there is wedlock between a man and wife so there is wedlock between God and the soul. The head power in the soul is the man and the lowest is his wife. The man in the soul always stands Ijareheadcd and the woman veiled, the lower power being caught up to the highest of the soul. First God begets his likeness in the soul and afterwards himself as he is in eternity. God’s Son is the soul’s Son : in him God and the soul have the same Son, that is, God. Once this birth has happened in the soul she is fit for (iod, and the oftener this birth befalls the more at home the soul will be in God, in his paternal heart.

The soul has two feet, understanding and love. And the more she knows the more she loves. Who shall catise her to fall, she bdng uphold by the sustaincr of all creatures ? Grace lending wings to desire^he is borne out of herself, and by grace and in grace she is borne into grace and past grace into (iod her first cause where in blissful union her lot is good beyond compare. There every sense is dumb; the soul’s will and God’s will are confused with one another, the two wills love-locked in the true atonement. Now the soul does neither more nor less than the work of God, for there no longer lives in her anything but God. As the soul cries in the Book of Love, ‘ I have nni the whole world round and have found no end to it. Wherefore I have east myself into the solitary point of my one God who has wounded me with his glance.’ Whom this glance did never wound, his soul was never pierced with the love of God. St Bernard says, ‘ To the spirit that feels this glance it is ineffable ; to him that fe(;ls it not it is incredible.’ ’Tis an arrow sped without anger and received without pain ; thence starts the pure and limpid stream of healing grace which opens the inner eye to perceive in blissful beholding the delights of this divine affliction wherein we enjoy unheard-of spiritual favours, things never told nor preached of nor yet described in any book.

The soul must give up idle thoughts and worldly cares and corporal pleasures and find her way into his hiding-place whom the heaven of heavens is not able to contain. Gk>d’s comfort is only for that soul who scorns all temporal consolations ; and the more she runs from creatures the faster their creator comes and makes her one with him. Dionysius says, love takes the soul out of herself and identifies her with the object of her love, making her insensible and reckless of herself so long as she can do the will of her best-beloved. The powers of the soul, those of her spiritual mind, are celestial in the sense that they do celestial work ; thus the first power receives, the second one perceives and the third one loves. When the soul, conceiving God, is using in recollection her mnemonic power and, in beholding, her intelligence, then love transports her into the midst of God, the point at which there is eternal rest. The Father abiding in the soul clasps her to his heart, and in this fatherly embrace she conceives the Son in his personal procession and hence divines his presence with the Father in his essence ; as saith the Lord, ‘ 1 will lead her into the desert,’ meaning, he will lead the soul away from vanity and say his say, his only Son, in her. And in this same begetting of his Son they pour their holy Breath into the soul, informing her of all things. Any act of soul that is to share in the eternal meed must be wrought in God. However good an act is in itself, excepting it be wrought in God, it meets with no reward from hini who docs not pay by length or size or multitude of works but for their being done in God, soul being the material God works in. In this divine alliance she is highly honoured, for what God is by nature she is made by grace. But if a soul presents herself before her bridegroom Jesus Christ without the ordinary virtues, forgetting to prepare herself in this resja.'ct for heaven, her shall he cast out into the pit of hell, there to realize his justice just as much in suffering as St Peter did in heaven liis eternal joy. Her true bridegroom Jesus Christ comes to the soul and shows her in his visible humanity his divine affection in order that all creatures may do homage to our nature which has been exalted higher than the angels. We cannot imagine him creating any creature nobler than ourselves. His manhood satis lies our sense as his Godhood does our soul. As St Augustine says, we shall end with our soul in the Godhead, and our bodily senses in the humanity of Christ which is exalted above the saints and angels to where, in its unchanging nature, no (creature can attain. When the watching soul is warned by various signs of the coming of her king, everything in her rejoices, and it is his royal right to use his sovran power to fulfil the expectation of the soul who longs for him to buttress her against her outward senses lest by yielding to them in the least she should bring about in any creature something counter to the will of God. The surest way to friendship with the king is for the soul blindly to