Sermons and Treatises of Meister Eckhart

follow where God leads. If the soul, which rather than the body constitutes us man, if the soul, I say, would only obey all God’s intimations she would overcome every obstacle with ease and rejoice in the burdens borne for him. And when she finds herself with nothing to correct she will be free with perfect freedom from opinion. It is the mark of the God-loving soul that from the moment she goes into his service she never follows her own will as distinct from his. God is the one thing that needs nothing and that all things need. And when the soul, beholding herself from within, perceives herself by grace omnipotent she stays in her own ideal nature. The soul observes concerning God, first, that she has intuition of him who is to come to her. Next, she is in essential union with him who is operating in her. Thirdly, she enjoys him who so richly entertains her at his table. Fourthly, he provides her with a refuge where she is at peace. Dionysius says, ‘ When the soul returns to God her idea of herself in God is that, except for selfawareness, nothing survives in her but God.* When the soul does this she still keeps in touch with her outward man whom she supplies with his natural life. By speaking himself into the soul God unites himself with her and makes the soul into himself, giving her such great ability, it seems to her that being hen; in time is her only obstacle to good. In the virtuous uses of her exaniplar mind, all things being present to the soul in this interior Word of God, her spirit converses with God freely in proportion to the clearness of the Father’s inspiration. It is important then for the soul to* Kliow what behaviour to adopt towards God so that she may discover the practices that draw from God his intimations. For this the loving soul must love God more than anything, who, descending into her and energising in her with his spirit, gives her to understand that the interior love she has from him she ought to have and show towards all mankind ; and the soul should submit herself to God as though he suffered death for her alone. So doing she will wax in truth and fit herself to receive the universal gift of God whereby she will arrive at the truth of the humanity of Christ. But if she does not do her best she puts herself on a material level with the brutes, that must be spurred to great exertion ; yet the sorriest of men, who are always bound to fall short of God, Christ wrought more deeds of love for than all the saints have ever done for love of him. Though all creatures were to speak they could never tell the perfection God confers on man, especially the soul, than which he neither could nor would make any nobler creature. 1’his he proves in his own Person, with its common boundary bi;twcen his divine and human natures. It follows that the soul ought to shun all creatures as things unworthy

of her whereby she may be lured from the things she is destined to by God, and she ought to be ashamed if, being within reach of his eternal good, she should fail to grasp it. Here there is the question, If the soul is of such high estate that time and place and nature arc powerless to move or even touch her in her essential self, does God then work in her without any image of himself ? To this theologists reply, Granting the soul is creature and has a spiritual nature it follows of neeessity that what God does in her is wrought essentially and free from all contingency ; for his works arc all essential and eternal as they are in himself, and the soul participates them in her nature above grace. Grace is the outflowing light designed for the service of the spirit ; grace would not be a light had it no recognised spiritual mission. At the point where God enters the soul in love she is no more known than the highest angel is to her and loves all things God -fashion without any natural idiosyjH*rasy. God is abstract intellectual essence, eternal in itself, whereas the soul is made eternal. The soul is no more to be grasped in images and forms than God in words and names. The soul is one in nature with and subject to the laws of the authentic intellect of God, a monad so perfectly balanced in itself no creature can And room there.

The Lord Jesus said to his disciples, ‘ 1 go to prepare a place for you.’ These words teach us two important facts. First, that the soul is by nature made for heaven and God is her lawful heritage. For God brought forth the soul alone in unbroken line and no man knoweth what she is. Every man has got a soul, but what she actually is there is no telling here in time. St Augustine says, the soul is sent from God and returns to God and she cannot rest except in him ; for God is spirit and soul is also spirit and germane to God as one spirit to another. And they compare the soul with fire, most lofty in its nature, most mighty in its ojjcration, which never rests until it licks the skies. Fire envelops all the elements, spreading further and wider and higher than the air, than water or the earth, so that it surrounds the rest and coming next the heavens turns round with them. The soul is called a lire because in her desire she keeps up with God, like fire with the heavens and can find no rest except in him. Again, the soul is dubbed a spark of celestial nature because one has already ascended into heaven, the soul, to wit, of Jesus Christ, which shows the common restingplace of souls is nowhere else than heaven. But unless the soul has turned from temporal to celestial things the Holy Ghost cannot enter in to do its work in her. All God’s work is wrought in spirit. God is high and man is low : to rise to him in prayer he has to hoist himself by putting under him God’s creatures, all of them, including the powers of the soul which end in the functions

of the body, then she will have the love and knowledge to carry her above the world. For to know God I want no eyes or ears ; for union with God in love I want no hands or feet ; I want to withdraw myself from all created things and let my spirit swoon into God’s spirit and be one spirit with Gk)d ; withal it was the love God bears my soul that prevailed with him to create all creatures and therein reveal to her his glory. And albeit he made creatures glad, he mixed therewith some sorrow, that anyone careless of his honour might be whipped and spurred with pain. Marvellous as the mind of man are the ways of God, drawing one to him with pleasure and another with the buffets of ill-fortune ; witness the amazing conversion of St Paul on his way to persecute the Christians, notwithstanding which his soul was caught up into the third heaven. And the very day St Augustine was converted he refused to be appeased with the extraordinary pleasure he felt in the security God sent into his soul to turn her to him. Three things keep the soul from being content with creatures. In the first place they are partial. In the second, they arc corporal : emblems of stagnation and corruption and unprogressiveness. Thirdly, the gift of creatures is no largesse of him from whom she first came forth {Le, from God), so they are not relished by souls who have been caught up into bliss ; but God the Jiord lures souls to him just as the lambs are lured from one spot to another by green pasture. Though all psychic powers lay in a single soul she could not here receive the very least reward of the smallest act decreed by God in his eternal love without the soul melting and dying to the body. Not so, however, when she gets the whole reward, namely God himself. But for this the soul must transcend herself and creatures and enter into the divine estate, into her divine exemjdar nature ; for the soul contacts eternity with her higher powers and with her lower, creatures, whicli often lead her into evil. Could the soul see God as clearly as the angels do she would never have come into the body. God is formed in the image of himself, after a pattern of his own, and when she mingles with him in actual intuition, the soul resembles him in form, for he conforms her to him : divine light streams into the soul confusing her with God like one light with another and this is called the light of faith, the divine virtue. Where the soul with her powers and her passions is forbidden to go, there faith can take her ; and when in this power God is apprehended in the soul she acquires the virtue of hope wherein the soul becomes so intimate with God she fancies there is nothing in God beyond her reach. St Augustine says, ‘ The pears I stole, these were to me far sweeter than the ones my mother bought, because they were private and forbidden fruit.’ And so is that grace sweeter to the

soul which she conceives in wisdom than that which is common to mankind. The soul must serve God here with her lower powers and in eternity with her higher ones, for she is not made of time nor of eternity : she is made from naught of the nature of them both. Leaning to the temporal she is unstable ; keeping to the eternal she is strong and stable and superior to change. The bridegroom of the soul is the Lord Jesus of sevenfold likeness. First, in his beauty with which the sun is nothing to compare, for it is not self-luminous : God provides the light wherewith it lights the air. And his bride should be the same in thought and word and deed. For this God lias to brighten all her tarnishes of sin, making luminous the place of her abode.- Secondly, her Lord is of noble lineage : in heaven he has a F ather but no mother and on earth a mother but no father, parentage too strange for any mind to grasp. And his bride, the soul, by birth adorns a rank higher than anything inferior to God. — Thirdly, her Lord is immensely rich : heaven and (‘arth belong to him with all the creatures in it. Accordingly his bride, the soul, may freely confide her every care to him and have no doubt of his providing, for lui is readier to give than we are to receive. — Fourthly, his wisdom is so lucid, it lights the ground of every heart and nothing is hidden from his eyes. Wherefore his bride, the soul, must be very cartTul not to do anything she thinks may be displeasing in his sight,- “F'ifthly, his power is prodigious ; by it all things have come to be and arv preserved in being. And his bride, the soul, has corresponding ho])(i in times of trouble or in any kind of suffering or struggle. For what she cannot do he can to wllom all things arc possible.- Sixthly, he is sweet-tem[)ercd. He is called in the scriptures a lamb without blemish, for he is free from anger and bears no resentment. Likewise the soul, his bride, must be gentle, kind and patient in whatever he shall send her to his glory. — Lastly, her Lord, Jesus Christ, has eternal health and dcatlilessncss. And the soul, his bride, should be cheerfully indifferent to disease, not caring for anything so much but she would always be as glad to do without as keep it, just as her bridegroom pleases, and finding no pain so hard to bear but she would suffer it as lief as not. God’s justice to her is as precious as his mercy. This soul is just as pleased with God’s gifts to others as herself.

It is written, ‘ The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God ’ who keeps them too tightly to his sides to be gotten out. Also he made them separate as his handiwork ; their guerdon in eternal life, himself ; for God alone did make the soul, unhelped by any creature ; in power according to his might ; in intellect according to his wisdom and according to his goodness in her will, as he from eternity knew how to make her mighty in his power and blessed in his infinite good. The soul is not made of the nature of God but in the image of the Holy Trinity, and being bound to God by love alone she, seeking perfect rest in him, proclaims her fitness to be his pleasant temple. He went into his temple and drove out the buyers and the sellers, commanding them. Take these things hence. So he made it known that he would have the temple of the soul swept clean, with nothing in it but himself alone. The soul should take example by the angels who disregard all outward things and are without intention except to do the perfect will of God. So bent are they upon the will of God, upon its being done in them, that were it to pick nettles or anything like that, they would do it with a will, as though their whole happiness depended on it.

Any soul devoted thus to the will of God and seeking not her own Jesus takes delight and will work wonders in. When she goes out of her own will all things go in with .Jesus and she becomes so full of light that God alone rivals her in splendour. For though the angels do to some extent resemble the soul in the joys of the hereafter, they have a limit set which they cannot pass beyond. The soul can transcend it in good works, and having once, in grace, drawn level here with the highest angel, her will, free now from all good works, carries her incalculably higher than the angels, provided she can leave her body. The uncreated God alone is free and the soul’s virgin nature is the same but not her creature nature : it was she who chose to come to ‘naught, but it is left to God to fetch her back. For Jesus to be in the soul she has to recollect herself and be quiet and listen to his Word. When her spirit is receiving power in the Son her every word is pregnant of purity and virtue and perfection. Such a soul nothing can disturb : she stands firm and unshaken as in the power of God.

And Jesus reveals himself in the soul in his infinite wisdom wherein the Father knows himself in all his fatherly authority, together with his Word which is wisdom’s self and all that therein is and the oneness of it. When this same wisdom is embodied in the soul, doubt, error, obstacles of all sorts fade away and leave her in the clear, pure light which is God himself. God in this soul is seen with God : she knows herself and all things with his wisdom. — Also Jesus manifests himself with passing sweetness in the power of the Holy Ghost, and with him the soul flows into herself and beyond herself and transcending all things in grace, plunges directly into her first cause. Richardus says, commenting upon the Book of Virtue ; When the divine light strikes into the soul she finds her own activities exceedingly insipid, and unable to tolerate herself in her own powers she confines herself to enjoying God. Now St Augustine says, ‘ My soul is where she loves rather than where she is giving life.* At this rate God is nearer me than I am to myself ; and any loving soul who follows God so far as to rise above herself, nor rests with pleasure in herself or any creature, such a soul, I say, will have no pleasure either in God’s gifts : what she desires is God himself. When the soul is rid of things she has certain knowledge of and is nothing lacking in the image of God, her mind is wide open to the eternal truth. The eternal sun sheds its light into this soul and permeates her powers, each separate faculty feeling the physical contingency of the visitation according to its individual nature. And the light of the eternal sun raises all the soul-powers to the power of itself in the wholly intelligible image. When the soul undergoes this operation, as it is performed by God, in essential understanding, then the soul’s understanding becomes the light (or knowledge) of all God is bringing about in her by grace. And her mind being enhanced, as we have said, her faculties are raised above the things of time, so that come what may her powers arc unhindered by anything infernal and are always being augmented, never getting less. For divine understanding we depend upon God’s bounty ; but it is his nature to give himself to us and the soul’s nature is to give herself to him who gives himself to her, thus giver and gift, doer and deed are one. The Lord Jesus said, ‘ I go to him that sent me.* And the soul too may say in her ascent to God, ‘ I go to him I came from.*

She goes to the Father, first, in her fixed intention no longer to disobey his will by cumbering herself with untoward creatures. Secondly, she goes the perfect way of answering every call God makes upon her ; and thirdly, she goes in the sweet savour of God’s love wherein her suffering is no suffering. Fourthly, she goes in the four cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice, over time and creatures. And she goes in the three virtues of faith, hope and charity, without which no one gets to God. Who knows to what wonders the soul may not attain by committing herself into the hands of God ? Every blessed soul keeps open heart to God’s consolation, and such as she receives from him she passes on to her inferior powers wherewith she knows not God else were he dishonoured in the weak intelligence of these lower faculties. And because all souls have not the same aptitude for God, the vision of God is not enjoyed the same by all any more than the sunshine affects all eyes alike. It is written, ‘ There shall come forth a stem out of the root of Jesse.* Here let us consider three things : what this root is out of which God is born in the soul, and what and what measure

of profit does it bring ? ‘ Root of Jesse ’ is a term for the fiery nature whieh attracts and transmutes all comers to itself. It is the fiery nature of God : drawing the soul it converts her into itself and she is spiritually born in understanding ; for the soul has in common with the angels a light wherein she can see God, and this light she is provided with is her intellect which is ceaselessly conveying God’s wisdom to the soul. But it darkens when poured into the body. We read of three kings bringing Christ their offerings. These we take to mean the three inferior powers of the soul, things by rights at the disposal of her superior powers. I am going now to speak of these superior powers, showing how they are the kings and what gifts of lower powers it is they bring. The first king is memory, bearing the produce of his kingdom. When the soul calls to mind how noble God has made her there flows from this perception a passionate desire which ascends to God, flinging behind it all the things of tiiiK*. Then indeed King Memory conies offering the gold of love to God, together with surrender of all else. The second king of the soul is understanding. This corresponds with her other power, reason or judgment. When the soul sees that by grace she is enabled to fulfil the will of God, she is never weary of subjugating creatures to please God and each one the more in proportion to the merit she acquires from God. Understanding then, comes rich with patience and grateful acceptance of whatever lot God destines for her in the body here and with this she has the fruit of incense, the union of all virtues, so that what would otherwise be hard and difficult her love makes feasible and easy. — The soid’s third king is will. When in the flower of his strength he brings the soul the fire of love, which tries her through and through and consumes away all the sinful affections of her nature, then she is fixed, and neither life nor death nor any creature can separate her from the love of God. So they bring her myrrh to keep her from the rot of temiwral things which to the soul arc a fertile source of evil. St Ambrose says, ‘ Gk)d pours forth the soul creating and pouring forth he creates her.’ And when she is in love with him, immediately he comes to her, as his spiritual bride admits where she says in the Book of Love, ‘ While I was at rest upon my bed my love came tapping at my window and he put in his hand and touched me.’ This suggests that when the soul comes to know herself she withdraws from all the things which are present to her here, for she herself is of greater worth and higher status than any of the other things in time. When now the loving soul has gone out of all creatures and herself, then the eternal truth comes forth as well to meet the loving soul and touch her understanding and exalt it with his

light which more enriches her than all the knowledge of material things hitherto amassed by her own nature. St Augustine says, ‘ As the sun shines through glass and makes its contents plain, so is the soul’s intelligence illumined by the light of God with the recognition of her divine abilities.* Then the soul is seen in her poverty and God in his purity. Indeed Dionysius says as much when he speaks of ‘ the naked soul, one with her naked God, resting in the desert of the Godhead.’ It may well be called a desert, for creature never looked therein by grace. Ignorance of these matters is just cause for shame. Yet if one of the chief angels should descend and, with creatures all as w^ise as he, discourse of human happiness, they might talk till doomsday and not tell the tale of all God has in store for every loving soul in life eternal. But the soul must not seek God for any reason except God himself. The emptier she keeps the more God fills her and the more ])erfectly he does his work in her ; besides, it is the safest way, for then at any moment she will be prepared to quit the body at God’s instance rather than remain there at her own. And being so poor of self she will find naught but God both here and yonder. There is no call for such a soul to look outside herself : the Holy Ghost will teach her the elements of bliss in the school of her own heart. She cherishes the gift wherewith God has endowed his best beloved. And the better to fulfil God’s will in everything she does she trains herself never to be without pure consciousness so that the heavenly Father can go on ever giving birth in her to his eternal Word, Jesus Christ his Son. For at her highest point my soul is not in time and does not work in time and is just as neaf td things a thousand miles away as to this spot I stand on.

J^hcorctically speaking, nothing that takes shape or is touched by time can get into the soul, and not only time but likeness. The head of the soul is her highest power, and from the moment she was made she has never for an instant been without the boon of this divine light, this power in which the time God made the world in and the judgment day are just as present to the soul as this time wherein I speak. Being in the power of her head the soul enjoys the benefit of participation in the grace and happiness common to all saints as though they were her own. It is certainly the fact that anyone actually in this head never commits sin and knows so much about eternal bliss and is so well informed that he needs no sermons. Wherefore erecting the head of the soul let us gather ourselves up into the breadth and freedom of a power like this and depart from temporal to eternal things when, in this same power, God suddenly gives birth to all he is in might and truth and wisdom in the soul. Verily the soul in whom this grace is found is absolutely pure and every whit like God. For anything

well-pleasing to the Father or which makes for our profit or our weal, must be well-pleasing to him in his Son, because apart from him he has no likes whatever. This then is the nobility which God has implanted in the soul, her beatific nature which is receptive to the grace of God, so that in this grace the light of God’s pure nature can shine into the soul and the Word of the Trinity be spoken in her mind and the life of eternity energise in her. Theologians say the soul is a suspended force in the power of the Father and a reflected light in the wisdom of the Son and a circulation in the sweetness of the Holy Ghost. According to St Augustine, the soul comes from the heavenly land, out of the paternal heart ; the offspring of God’s love and scion of the noble house of the holy Trinity, she is the heir to heaven, the mistress of all creatures and the proprietor of all the joys God gives in his eternity. She is the image of God and the noblest creature that ever God conceived. For God gripped in between his divine nature and his Godhood, into his eternal essence, and produced the soul from nothing, just as he made from nothing heaven and earth and all things. If you ask how big the soul is, know, she is too big for heaven and earth to fill, or even God himself whom the heavens cannot comprehend. To measure the soul you must gauge her with God. And she is so beautiful as long as she is in the grace of God and not deformed by sin, the highest angels, Seraphim and Cherubim and all the saints try in vain to copy her in form and likeness, for she is God’s image. As to her life in time, she is flowing back to her natural source whence she issued forth ; and the freer she has kept herself from temporal forms and creatures the kinder her return to God, for God is absolutely free from matter, mode and form. For the soul to compare with the abstract spirit of God she must be free from the smallest trace of sensible affection and quite without attachment to anything not God. That such perfect freedom is not known to every spirit is due solely to our undiscovered life and our untaught senses. All the potential good in creatures the soul will find in God together with inestimable joy. St Augustine says, ‘ When everything was still that existed in me God spake a silent Word within my soul, which no one understood but me.’ And to whatever soul this Word is said she will forget all modes and forms and become an in-dweller with God. Thus St Paul relates, ‘ From the moment the eternal Word was revealed within my soul I no linger lived for flesh and blood.’ Inasmuch as she is selfless she is self-possessed and strong. The faithful, loving soul is like the bee, sipping from all kinds of flowers the sweets to make its honey. And even so the soul culls from the flowers of virtue somewhat of each one to heal and fortify her. It is a crying need for she has three mortal

foes : the world, the flesh and the devil, hanging all together like three cherries on one stem. Of these three foes the deadliest is the body, wherein the soul is clapt as into prison : not that she may pander to its vicious appetites but to say them nay and by this resistance daily to augment her reward in heaven and here the love inpoured. It was Seneca, the heathen philosopher, who said, ‘ Man is his own worst enemy.’ Death stands at the door of evil appetites, and the pursuit of vice leads into paths which seem all right to us but sometimes they debouch in the pit of hell. If the soul, the mistress of the body, indulges its base appetites and fails to check its sins she has herself to blame when either here or yonder she must pay for it to God. And that there may be no escaping from God’s justice for them that kill the soul with sin and end in fleshly lusts, he says in the prophet Amos, ‘ My wrath shall drive over you like a chariot, cracking with its weight ; my anger the swift shall not outrun nor the valiant turn aside nor yet the strong man conquer with his strength. Not one shall escape me, how fair or strong or mighty soever he may be.’ And seeing that the soul has such a high and heavenly destiny, therefore Meister Elckhart of Paris, at the end of the aforesaid things, which are taken from his writings, sets the following prayer :

O Sovran Riches of Divine Nature, show me thy way which thou in thy wisdom hast ordained and open to me thy most precious treasure whereto thou hast called me : to know with supercreaturely intelligence, to love with the angels, to enjoy with thy only Son our Lord Jesus Christ and to be thine heir to Sternal wisdom and by thy help to be preserved from evil. For thou hast exalted me above all creatures and hast sealed me with the seal of thine eternal image and put my soul beyond the grasp of creatures and hast made nothing liker to thyself than man is in his soul. Teach me to live so that I never want thee ; so as never to hinder the working of thy love-stream in me ; so as never to lend myself to any outward pleasure without thee nor occupy my mind more with any creature than with thee. Lord thou art spirit and incomprehensible to creature ; thou dost inspire the soul and raise her to an order above creature so that she can do thy will, O Eternal Wisdom, and in grace be free from inroad of unbidden images. Thou hast made the soul to suit thyself in her nature and her laws and she maintains she has no room for anyone but thee. O Almighty and Most Merciful Creator and dear Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner and help me to overcome all pitfalls with their lures to idle pleasure ; to shun in thought and act what thou forbiddest and both to do and keep all thy commands ; help me to believe, to hope, to love ; to live and feel exactly as

thou wilt and as much as thou wilt and what thou wilt. Lord, grant me the sorrow of the humble ; a mind escaped from mortal body ; to love, to laud and to behold thee and cherish every act and thought that is toward thee. Grant me a clear and sober and genuinely prayerful mind with real intuition of thy will, together with the love and joy which make it easy to perform. Lord, vouchsafe me always modest progress towards better things and never to backslide. And, O my Lord, condemn me not, as I deserve, to rely on my own powers or on human weakness and unwisdom but on thy good providence alone. Direct me Lord to The Good itself, my every thought and act to thine own liking, so that on my part, in me, thy will is always being done and I being saved from evil and brought to thy eternal life where thou art three in Person and one in the essence of thy divine nature : Father, Son and Holy Ghost and ever blest almighty God. Amen.

Speaking of the final perfection of the soul theologians ask. What is meant by saying that the spirit in its understanding has become the intellectual existence of the eternal essence in the perennial now with nothing between ? That is the first question. The second question is. How can the spirit make good its intellectual return into the unchanging, and have the eternal image in perfect clearness and essential intimacy and in the interior freedom of the spirit ? The third question is about the highest flight of the spirit, its nearest approach of all to the divine presence and whether its own powers are equal to the task ? First, we must remember how the divine being proceeded forth in the present now, with falling man, the gist of it, immediate in his spiritual prototype in virtue of its nearness and also by reason of the inherent now of its light of glory and intellectual image from which the intellect sees back quite clearly to the un-proceeded splendour of its eternally immanent spiritual exemplar wherein it is nameless and beyond all words which are creaturely. The word is in the eternal Word and one presence with it and God with his whole nature and the full range of his power can make out of his essence nothing more resembling the divine species in the ground divine nature and reflecting him so well. He who receives the light of the spirit as it is the image of God, wherein is no part, that is the medium of perfection, for therein his spirit is one with divine nature.

1 See also Jostes, No. 34, of which this tractate forms the middle portion. As to the second question, you must understand that although the intelligible image of God in the spirit partakes in its nature and purity more of the perfection of the content of its immanent essence than of the emanation of itself, nevertheless it is therein essence that has become. Take the spirit in its nearest ground, abiding within in its endless image and eternal image. As the endless image it is always within and in its eternal image it presents itself as an eternal question. As Christ asks, ‘ Whose is this image and this superscription ? ’ Mark the difference between this image and its superscription. In the image exists God, and all his output in spirit and in nature — the human mind (or spirit) with all it is able to afford, — these are in uniformity so exact and close that the image of divine glory shines in all its detail in the spirit and this image in the spirit is perfectly reflected back into its indwelling essence. So much for the image of God. And what of the superscription ? That is the unspeakable species of the divine nature, which in its whole ground, actual and essential, is a naked and immediate presence in the spirit, in virtue of which the spirit in its free nature and intellectual image suffers all God’s super-rational operation. The limit comes where the divine freedom seizes the spirit’s freedom and turns it into foolishness and at this point all scientific knowledge fails ; there is no further progress to be made by natural creature-knowledge but only in spirit by experiencing God.

Now to answer the third question. Philosophers say that one’s own is ever innate and can be had at will. It follows .thfit the spirit can rise to the supreme perfection of its divine nature for it can stand in its first now, in that wherein it was not. And that is the answer to the third query. Then there is the question, can God leave man’s spirit to itself or not ? I say, No, it would be against the justice of his nature and against his truth and would make a travesty of God’s whole creation. God must cither let the spirit be God extra to himself or else he must merge it in himself, when it has left all things. This will not outrage God, for the spirit is too haughty and touches too closely the honour of God for him to be able to make aught but himself the end of its perfection. It has this unique property : its ground can overleap all spirits into his super-intelligible spirit, namely, the indwelling essence of divine nature. A man was asked, What dost thou lack ? He said. Nothing, except poverty of spirit. — And though I have a will no bigger than a grain of mustard seed I am no poor man, and if God were to ask me. Art thou a poor man ? I should reply that, be my will as good as God’s yet am I not poor, not even if with that same will I do as much as God, And why ? Because God and God’s will

are one, I and my will are two, for I am a man and not God and if I mean to do real work entirely without or free from will then I must emulate the stone which lies in the water and the water Hows over it but enters not into the stone. Even so if I were a poor man I should do my works in such a way that they entered not into my will any more than the water does into the stone : I should do them simply at the will of God. And if again God asked me, whether I was poor and if I replied, ‘ I have abandoned my own will and did I know the will of God that would I do,’ I might be assuming something not my own, for no one knoweth who we are, though we are not the truth for God can change^^our knowledge, not his knowledge, because he is the truth and we are not. Perhaps someone will say, How can I do my work like this, will -free ? The answer is, I ought to do my work as though no one existed, no one lived, no one had ever come upon the earth. Then if God asked me once again. Art thou a poor man ? and if I replied, ‘ I am unworthy of that knowing,’ that were the barest poverty that ever I heard tell of or went through : the deepest, direst poverty. Yet all the while I have within enough of place for God to do his work in me, to give his gift to me, all that while I am not a poor man for all that while 1 am expecting God. — What more can I do ? — Thus shalt thou do : thou shalt leave all willing and knowing and receiving of things and at the very point where thou hast left all things there God has given thee all things ; he durst, not give thee more nor any more work with thee nor canst thou take in more, but thou shalt simply leave thyself. That is poverty of spirit the most near of all, for none is downright poor but he who wills not, knows not, has not, whether within or without. To the eternal truth, God help us. Amen.

Benedictus deus et pater domini nostri Jesu Christi etc, {2 Cor. I 3 ). That great teacher St Paul says in his epistle, ‘ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who cornforteth us in all our tribulation.’ Three kinds of tribulation may fall upon a man and plunge him in distress. First, misfortune to exterior belongings. Next, to our dearest friends. Lastly, to ourselves : shame, hardship, pain of body and distress of mind. So 1 purpose in this book to impart some teachings apt to console a man in all adversity, unhappiness and suffering. And having therein and therefrom culled sundry general truths to comfort him in any trouble, he will find thereafter thirty rules or maxims each of which alone is sufficient for his solace ; and after that again, in the third part of the book, he will find precepts and examples, theoretical and practical, the sayings and doings of the wise in times of tribulation.^ In the first place we must bear in mind that the wise and wisdom, true and truth, good and goodness, righteousness and righteous are closely related to each other. Goodness is not made nor created nor begotten : it is procreative and begets the good and the good man, so far as he is good, is the unmade, uncreated but withal begotten child and son of goodness. Goodness reproduces itself and all it is in good things : knowledge, love, energy, it pours forth all of them into the good man, and the good man receives all his being, kiiowing, love and energy from the central depth of goodness and from that alone. Good and goodness are no more than goodness by itself, except as unborn parent and horn child of goodness therefrom. In the good is but one being and one life. All that belongs to a good man he gets both from the good and in the good. Therein he is and lives and dwells and there he knows himself, and all he knows and loves he wills and works with goodness and in goodness and the good does all its work with him and in him, iis it is written. The Son said, ‘ My Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. , AJl that belongs to the Father is mine ; all that is mine is my Father’s : his giving is my taking.’

Further we must remember that the Name or Word stands for nothing else, nothing more or less than the good, pure and simple. But when we call him good we understand his goodness to be given him, infused and engendered by the unborn goodness ; in the words of the gospel, ‘ As the Father hath life in himself so hath he given to the Son to have the same life in himself also.’ In himself, he says, not from himself for the Father gave it to him. Now all that I have said of good and goodness equally applies to true and truth, to right (or just) and righteousness (or justice), to wise and wisdom, to God’s Son and to God the Father, to every God-begotten thing that has no father upon earth and wherein is gotten no created thing : nothing not God, and wherein exists not any form at all but that of God alone. St John says in his gospel, ‘ to them gave he power to become the sons of (iod, which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God alone.’ ^ Only Part I is givon here.

By blood he means everything in man not subject to the human will. By fleshly will he means everything in man which is subject to his will, albeit with reluctance and with an inclination to fleshly appetites : a thing which is common to the body and the soul and not confined to the soul alone, which accounts for the weakness and exhaustion of their powers. By the will of man St John means the highest power of the soul, whose nature and energy, unmixed with flesh, resides in the pure nature of the soul, detached from time and place and from everything that smacks of time and place relation ; that has naught in common with naught ; wherein man is formed in the image of God ; wherein he is of the lineage of God, and God’s kindred. Yet since these are not God himself but are products of the soul and arc in the soul, therefore they have to lose their form and be transformed into God alone : born into God and out of God with only God for father. Then they are Son indeed, God’s only Son. I am his Son forasmuch as he begets me in his nature and forms me in his image. Such an one is the Son of God, good son of goodness, right son of righteousness. So far as he is simply good he is unborn parent and as born Son he has the same nature as righteousness has, and is and is possessed of all the characiter oT justice and truth. In all this teaehing which is found in holy gospel and confirmed in the natural light of the wise soul there is solace for every human sorrow.

St Augustine says, ‘ God is not far nor long. If thou wouldstfind him, neither far nor long betake thyself to God, for there a thousand years are as one day, to-day.’ And withal I say, in God there is no pain or sorrow or distress. And if thou wouldst be free from all adversity and pain, turn thee and cleave to God and to God alone. Doubtless all thy ills arc due to thy nonconversion into God and to God alone. If thou wert formed and gotten in righteousness alone, things could no more pain thee than righteousness, than God himself. Solomon says, ‘ The righteous will not grieve for aught that may befall him.’ He does not say the righteous man or the righteous angel, not this or that right thing ; just righteous, being right, for the righteous man is son with a father upon earth, he is creature, made or created as his father is creature made or created. He says righteous, pure and simple, and that has no made or created father, for righteousness is the same as God. So pain and sorrow can molest him no more than they do God. Justice will not grieve him, for love and joy and bliss arc justice, and if justice made sorrowful the just it would be causing sorrow to itself. Injustice, inequality, can in no wise grieve the just, for anything created being far beneath him has no influence and

makes no impression on the righteous nor is it gotten into him whose only father is God. A man then ought to set to work and de-form himself of himself and creatures and know no father except God alone. Then nothing will be able to afflict or cast him down, neither God nor creature, uncreated or created, and his entire being, life, knowledge, love and wisdom will be from God and in God and God. There is another thing which is wont to comfort us in any tribulation. It is the certainty that the just and virtuous man delights unspeakably, incomparably more in doing right than he or even the chief angel delights and rejoices in his natural economy or life. The saints will gladly sacrifice their lives for right. Supposing now that when outward ills befall the good and righteous man he keeps his even temper and his peace of mind, this only proves my argument that the righteous man is proof against external happenings. But suppose he is perturbed by these mishaps then it stands to reason that God is only just in sending trials to a person who while pretending to be righteous and fondly thinking himself so is yet upset by so small a thing. Since it is fair of God, he has no cause to mind but rather to rejoice, far more than he does at his own life, at what rejoices man and is of more good to him than this world all told ; for what profits a man the whole world when he is no more ?

The third important thing for us to understand is the elemental truth that the fount and living artery of universal good, essential tnith and perfect consolation is God, God only, and everything not God has in itself a natural bitterness, discomfort and unhappiness and docs not make for good which is of God and is the same as Ciod, but lessens, dims and hides the sweetness, joy and comfort that God gives. And further I maintain, all sorrow comes from love of that whereof 1 am deprived by loss. If I mind the loss of outward things it is a certain sign that I am fond of outward things and really love sorrow and discomfort. Is it to be wondered at that I am unhappy when I like discomfort and unhappiness ; when my heart seeks and my mind gives to creature the good that is God’s own ? I turn towards creature, whence there comes by nature all discomfort, and turn my back on that which is the natural source of happiness and comfort; what wonder I am woebegone and wretched ! The fact is, it is quite impossible for God or anyone to bring true solace to a man who looks for it in creatures. But he who loves only God in creatures and creatures in God only, that man finds real and true and equal comfort everywhere.

MEISTER ECKHART’s STRASBURG DAIJCHITER Blessed and praised be the name of our Lord Jesus Christ who has provided for us an image of the truth, himself namely, wherein is no possibility of error ! We read in the gospel that our Lord fed the multitude with five loaves and two roast fishes. The first loaf we interpret to mean the knowledge of what we have always been in God and what we are in God now. The second loaf is the scrutiny of our life in time : seeing how our time has been spent. And for this we need help in the shape of a trusty confessor. A confessor we judge of in this way. If he has what is tnie we may safely confide in him. There arc three signs of this. First, he is a true priest. Secondly, he is confirmed in the perfect life. And thirdly, he has the authority which stamps the true priest. Him seek wheresoever thou shalt find him. It is well worth any trouble. Go to him and solemnly kneeling before him as Mary Magdalene knelt at the feet of our Lord Jesus CJirist, earnestly entreat him for God’s sake to hear thee. Then open thy heart to him as thou shalt appear in the eyes of our Lord Jesus Christ at the day of judgment when all things arc revealed in truth. Discard shame in the kndwledgc that God has seen and heard all thy sins, and so too have those who are reflected into God from the face of the mirror of truth ; they know thy shortcomings better than thou dost thyself. Be not ashamed before thy confessor, be ashamed before God and the friends of God, acquiring godly fear in the realization that God’s divine glance has seen thy every will, word and act ; and opening thy heart pour out thy sins till, the whole tale being told, thou dost fervently pray him : ‘ Sir, ghostly father, I entreat thee by the love that bound Christ on the cross, show me the nearest way to my eternal happiness.’

Upon this it is open to thy confessor to indicate three ways with which it behoves thee to be quite familiar. Setting thee thy penance, instructs thee to repair wrongs done ; he bids thee restore goods not thine own ; he enjoins thee to make amends for aught thou hast done to another that thou wouldst not he should do unto thee. Word, will, and act ; what was willed without effect must be willed to more purpose, thy will being such that thou wouldst sooner die a thousand deaths than plan a mischief to thine evenchristian. Thy wicked will, which is toward evil deeds, endeavour to correct. Where thou wast haughty now walk humbly for all the world to see thou repentest thee of thy pride. Pride I single out, knowing it for a temporal fault most fatal to our eternal happiness. False pride robs spiritual no less than worldly folks of their eternal bliss. Dost know what pride is ? Flattery of yourself or other people is false pride which cheats you of eternal happiness. Next, examine yourselves for sloth in God’s service. Not doing thy best is sloth in God’s service. To meet this, set to and do good, showing by diligence thy sorrow for thine egregious dereliction ; yet remaining detached withal and regardless of aught but God and the friends of God.

Thereafter it behoves tliee to check thy third sin. Where thou wast greedy now be liberal and let thy bounty attest thy wholehearted abhorrence of greed. Dost know what greed is ? Desire of anything not God is evil greed. The fourth sin is envy and hate : bearing malice and hatred towards any with intent to do unto him what thou wouldst not he should do unto thee. Hast injured any man by act of thine, repair the injury at any cost. Hast tarnished his fair name by word of thine, thy words must brighten it again : abasing thyself before him, entreat him humbly for God’s sake to forgive thee and reiterate thy rueful supplieation till he grant thee his free pardon. Call people’s attention to this, withal speaking so well of the man that thou dost win him back honour no less than thou didst filch from him. Know forsooth, ere thou canst find favour with God thou must needs pay in full for wrongs done *to thine cvenchristians. Disparagement is mischievous. Worldly goods we can replace but stolen honour cannot be restored save by the payment of our own. So weigh thy words well, friend. The fifth sin is anger. Reckon up words and deeds done in anger and cancel them with kindness. Pe rad venture thou hast spoken in anger words which, if adhered to, shall doom thee to eternal death. A word said here may reach to Rome, and from Rome to overseas : how^ then recall it ? Thus : man pays his debts through God. Saying, Shall 1 not tell the truth ? folks canvass the failings of their cvenchristians and forget their own. I say, though thou seest and hearest the faults of thine evenchristians, betray them not. If so be that thou canst not forbear the mention of them, then go and see the person privately, just you and he together ; point out his faults to him in a friendly manner and invite him by thine own excellent precept and example to eschew his vicious habits. If he will not forswear them, acquaint the right authorities and leave it at that, allowing nothing of it to escape thy lips however much he vex thee. For know, to rebuke

him for sin in thine anger is to commit mortal sin : raising him out of sin thou dost fall in thyself. The sinner of to-day is the saint of to-morrow. Wherefore, unmindful of the sins and shortcomings of our evenchristians, let us look to our own imperfections, surely forgetting what God has forgotten : sins truly repented, which God has forgotten, ’tis no business of ours to remember. The sixth sin is eating and drinking to excess : eating, perhaps, two regular meals or three while thine evcnchristian goes hungry and thirsty, who is nigher to God than thou art, and liker to boot ; for he is poor while thou art rich in temporal things. Christ said, ‘ Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ These frailties it behoves thee to amend so thoroughly that God must needs forgive them thee. The seventh sin in unehastity. Concerning this a heathen master says : ‘ All superfluity, anything unnecessary in word or deed, is unehastity.’ The traverner sets his hoop to a mark when he goes to sell wine. When the wine is sold, he takes off the hooj). So let them do who are minded to cure the sin of unehastity : let them avoid excess in word and deed and walk right humbly and soberly before the world, so all shall say that anything to be called excess offends them.

Thy next care, daughter, is whether thou hast kept the ten commandments ail thy days. To take one that Christ mentions, ‘ Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength,’ thou canst be shown to have broken this frequently. And breaking this commandment thou dost break them all. It behoves thee to tell thy confessor how often thou hast broken it from childhood up. It would take too long to go through all the ten commandments and say what thou must tell to thy confessor. Thou wilt see that for thyself better than we can tell thee. Then, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost : how often thou hast resisted them and hast failed to practise the seven works of mercy, wherefor God shall arrantly upbraid thee at the day of judgment. Make a fresh start, my daughter, so mending thy ways that God is obliged to forget thy shortcomings. Such is the first counsel of the worthy confessor and the first way. To the question : ‘ Sir, is it the best way ? ’ he will answer, ‘ No, but what I am telling thee is indispensable.’ Says she,

‘ Then, sir, tell me the best way.’ He answers, ‘ Bide till thou hast made thine own this counsel I have given thee ; bide till thou hast cast thy sins ; and meanwhile come often to see me.’ Obedient to her revered confessor, the daughter does this. She often comes back to him and says, ‘ Sir, I will obey you to the death if you will help me so to live that I am bold to die.’ — ‘ Hast cast thy sins ? ’ he asked. ‘ Aye,’ she replied, ‘ so far as I shall ever do it here in time ; and will do till I die.’ — ‘ Then 1 will redirect thee, and give thee fresh instructions. Keep a truthful tongue, a pure body and a loving soul. A code that may be construed thus : A truthful tongue means that the lips utter only the intentions of the heart. Thus thou shalt speak the truth, daughter. God is truth, so thy whole conversation shall be of God ; not praying nor thinking of God thou thus speakest of God, and art ever receiving from God. ‘ A pure body means that, pierced with godly fear, thou sufferest naught save God to dwell in thee.

‘ A loving soul is one that loves her likes, God namely. Unite thyself with him until thee thinks thy heart is fit to burst with too much love.’ Whereat the daughter cried, ‘ And 1 an utter stranger to it ! Sir,’ she said, ‘ shall I ever come acquainted with it ? ’ He said, ‘ Yes. Do as 1 bid you : discard the things that are darkening thy soul, and let the light of truth in. Then thy soul can retrace the road she came.’ Hy the third loaf wc understand God’s mercy. Consider, daughter, the plenteous comptission that God has shown thee. When, having endowed thee with frci; will, thou didst of thy free will incur eternal death, he ransomed thee with his own self and washing thee in his own blood did cleanse thee from original sin. Observe further God's mercy in being ready to forgive thy sins as often as thou scekest grace in time. To enumerate God’s mercies time would fail us though we lived till doomsda/. Folks talk of God’s providence. Know, what God has provided for us is his eternal felicity, in token whereof he has given us free will to do good and eschew evil.

At this point it behoves us to determine whether wc truly repent us of our sins. Wouldst know the quality of true repentance ? It has to be so strong in thee that thou wouldst sooner die a thousand deaths than sin one sin. There be many that say ‘ I truly repent me of my sins ’ who yet remain in sin. Speaking falsely they augment their sin. Thou virtuous soul who wouldst enjoy God’s mercy and be baptized in the Holy Ghost, repent thee thrice : (first) for the sins thou hast committed against the Lord thy God by word and deed. Repent thee next of sins against thine even Christians. If thou wouldst taste God’s clemency and have him to forgive thy sins and dowse thee with his Holy Ghost in grace, then show the mercy due to all mankind made in Christ’s image as they are, whether or not they shall have sinned against thee : needs must if thou art ever to find grace. The third repentance is heartfelt pity for thyself, bred from a survey of the happy days that God has granted thee for finding thy eternal happiness, he having made all creatures for signposts to thy highest good. As St Augustine says : ‘ All creatures point me to my good ; Lord, I deeply rue that if I ever get to thee ’tis by thy mercy. The time goes by that thou hast given me and thou art still unknown to me and unbeloved : hence my regret. And yet I fear me, Lord, I never felt the true rue that I ought.’

By the fourth loaf we understand God’s justice. Innately, he is as just as he is merciful. Yet know, were I to tell you of God’s justice, ’twould be too hard for you : precious few would look for grace. Hence we emphasise God’s mercy, who throws souls into purgatory to find grace at the judgment day if not before. Know that in itself God’s justice is of a sternness that must make all tremble. Well knowing this, Christ said to his disciples : ‘ Having done all that is possible to you, say. We arc unprofitable servants.’ We learn this from St John also, who, though he did no sin to separate him from Ck)d yet likened himself to the beasts of the forest. Surely he knew God’s truth. I say, moreover, God’s justice is so harsh that, though a man should do all the good works wrought by the company of saints now in eternal life, yet, being found in any mortal sin (the first is pride ; the second, slothfulness in God’s service ; the third, hate ; the fourth, anger ; the fifth, greed ; the sixth, overeating and drinking ; the seventh, unchastity ; these are the seven deadly sins), being found, I say, in one of these, he would be lost eternally. I hold it would avail him nothing for all the saints in heaven to intercede for him. I affirm, moreover, were Christ to supplfcate his Father, and Mary his mother, ’twould not avail to save his soul. Further, concerning this I say that I would sooner have the man who sins a thousand mortal sins and knows it, than him who sins but one in ignorance : that man is lost. I hold he may have practised every virtue of Holy Christendom and it will not avail him, he is damned with the lost, while he of a thousand conscious sins is saved, provided that, renouncing them heartily in true repentance, never to do them more, he mends his ways, steadfast in love till death. That man ranks with the saints. Ah, daughter, mark those souls who, all their days exempt from mortal sins, can say with the young man, ‘ I have kept thy commandments all my life.’ Would to God I knew one person who could even say, ‘ All my days have I kept the first of Christ’s commandments, Thou shalt love thy God with all thy soul-powers,’ and who has been preserved the while from spiritual pride.

The fifth loaf signifies true faith. It means absolute trust in God. He who believes in God trusts God and knows God and therefore loves God. Observe, woman, having true faith means believing in God’s omnipotence. The masters say ; ‘ Whosoever has true faith as much as a grain of mustard seed, can remove mountains/ Wherefore it behoves us assiduously to free ourselves from things corruptible, which dim the light wherein we see the true faith, which is God. To be able to say, ‘ I am a true Christian,’ a man must subsist in Christ in the sense that Christ is his exemplar whereto he is conformed in word and deed. Know, that whatever Christ did he did to edify us in eternal truth, for he is the truth itself ; he (»an initiate thee into the true faith. What I say is, that to get to the Father we must go to him in Christ ; to know the Father we must know him in Christ. And so Christ taught. When Philip asked him, ‘ Show us the Father,’ Christ answered, ‘ He who seeth me seeth the Father, and where the Father is there I am.’ Plainly then, we must follow the lead of the Beloved if we would be saved. People say, ‘ How can I do as Christ did ? ’ Christ tells us how. He said, ‘ Take up your (^ross and follow me.’ Which do not understand to mean he bids you die the death he died upon the cross. His words were,

‘ Follow me,’ meaning wc arc to imitate his perfect life. Our temporal failure to imitate his life in word and deed is our eternal failure. Concerning this he said, ‘ In my Father’s house arc many mansions.’ For you must know that many a man who goes to heaven no more enjoys the light of God’s countenance than sunshine in forest gloom. Nay, friend, mark what Christ said to the kinswoman who besought him for her son. He said, ‘ He who drinks of the cup I wot of shall be joint heir with me in my Father’s kingdom.’ Which being interpreted means : by our measure here it shall be meted to us again by our heavenly Father in his eternal kingdom. As St Augustine says : ‘ So far as we know and love here we profit eternally.’ Theologians speak of hell. I will tell you what hell is. It is merely a state. Your state here is your eternal state. This is hell. Take an illustration. A thief who has incurred the penalty of death on being caught : picture his state of mind seeing others happy ! So do we feel, and worse. And so with those in hell who see God and his friends : the height of torment, so the masters say.

This learnt, the aforementioned daughter goes to her revered confessor. She says, ‘ Sir, tell me the best way to my eternal happiness.’ Quoth he, ‘ Daughter, let be.’ — ‘ I shall never let be,’ she said, ‘ so long as my eternal happiness is not assured.’ He said, ‘ Thou art sure of eternal life, daughter.’ — ‘ But, sir,’ she persisted, ‘ have you told me the nearest way to it ? ’ — ‘ Any creature will tell you that,’ he said. ‘ With one accord they all exclaim : Pass on, wc are not God. ’Tis direction enough, daughter.’ — ‘ Not for me, sir,’ she said. Said he, ‘ An thou wilt not believe me, at least thou wilt credit the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said : Take up thy cross and follow me. He did not say, Take up my cross and follow me. What he meant was : be content to do thy best, knowing that therewith God too is satisfied.’ — ‘Would I had done my best,’ she cried. — ‘What wouldst thou do ? ’ he asked. She answered, ‘ I would leave honour and possessions and friends and kindred and the outward solace I get from creatures.’ — ‘ Wouldst leave me too ? ’ asked her confessor. She answered, ‘ Aye, sir ; leaving all things, I must leave you also.’ — ‘ Essay it not,’ he said, ‘ ’tis not for a woman.’ Quoth she, ‘ Full well I wot no woman can enter heaven till she loe man. That means she must do man’s work and have the strength of mind to withstand him and all imperfections.’ — ‘ Thou deemst thyself mighty strong ! I wonder now, how thou wouldst like to bear more than thou hast already.’ She said, ‘ I can bear all, sir, that Christ has borne for me.’ He said, ‘ These are words ! ’ She said, ‘ It is true.’ — ‘ Canst prove it ? ’ said he. ‘ With ease,’ said she. ‘ I have heard tell that in none of Christ’s sufferings did his Godhead come to the help of his manhood.’ He said, ‘ That is true. The Godhead is impassible ; it never has suffered and never can suffer, seeing that nothing affects it.’ Quoth she, ‘ What Christ bore, I can bear.’ He said, ‘ Tell me how.’ — ‘ I will,’ she replied. ‘ Right well I ween Christ was the noblest man that ever was born : from threescore kings and twelve he was descended ; and I say, moreover, he was the best heart’s-blood of Mary. See now my proof that I am fit to bear all he boVe for me. Taking the test of breeding, the best bred are the tenderest. It follows that I can bear more than Christ can.’ Said he, ‘ Were I to tell you all I know of the perfection of his life in time in right willing poverty, ’twere like to break my heart. Bethink thee well ! ’ She said, ‘ I have bethought me. This very day I mean to follow the dictates of the Holy Ghost.’ — ‘ What does the Holy Ghost dictate ? ’ he asked. She answered, ‘ He counsels me to leave myself in the mighty hands of God and to sever my ties with creatures.’ — ‘ Thou art wrong,’ he said. ‘ How so ? ’ said she. He said, ‘ In not taking advice. Obedience is a virtue, as thou knowest.’~ "‘ I am obedient unto death,’ she said.

‘ To whom ? ’ he queried. ‘ To Christ and his heavenly Father to whom John was obedient in the wilderness, and Mary Magdalene and Mary of Egypt and Mary Salome.’ Quoth he, ‘ It seems thou wilt no longer mind me.’ — ‘ You are right,’ she cried ; ‘ I am heartily sorry I listened so long to the counsels of men and was deaf to the counsel of the Holy Ghost.’ — ‘ Now listen to me, my daughter. What thinkst thou I have done to thee ? ’ — ‘ You have kept me from eternal bliss,’ she said. ‘ How so ? ’ he asked. She answered, ‘ By not telling me outright the quickest way to it.’ — ‘ It is obedience to the Holy Ghost,’ he said. ‘ I should never counsel thee otherwise than I have counselled thee.’ — ‘ If you had not discouraged me,’ she said, ‘ and other spiritual folks to boot, I should have spent my time more virtuously. I weened, forsooth, it were the gospel that priests propagated.’ — ‘ The gospel is begotten in the Holy Ghost of the perfect life of our Lord Jesus Christ and according to his noble teachings. We read and preach the gospel openly : he who would follow it let him follow it to the utmost.’ — God forgive me for not doing so all my days,’ said she. Quoth he, ‘ I grieve thou shouldst accuse me of preventing thee.’- ‘ Aye,’ she replied, ‘ I accuse you and all creatures.’ — ‘ Thou art mistook,’ he said. ‘ No one can hinder thee but thine own self. Know, whom God impels none can resist : not all the saints in heaven nor all the preaching friars and barefoot monks on earth can stand against one man moved by the truth. He is impelled by that same word which Christ spoke, answering the youth who sought the perfect life. Christ said ; Keep the ten commandments. The young man replied, All these have I kept from my youth up. Then said Christ, If thou wilt be perfect, sell all thou hast and give to the poor and follow me. Christ made known this same truth to us by Peter and others of his disciples whom he called to live with him in willing poverty. Thou knowest, daughter, that what Christ said and did is true, for he is truth itself ; and know moreover, that to reach the Father wc must walk in Christ’s footsteps all the way.’ Quoth she, ‘ Well then, good father, why be so discouraging ? ’ — ‘ ’Tis such a flawless life,’ he said, ‘ anyone leading it God must needs come and help.’— ‘ God docs not come and go,’ she said ; ‘ that I do know. I wot right well when we resign ourselves to him he does not fail to succour us at need.’ Quoth he, ‘ What if all creatures despise thee ? ’ She said, ‘ I want to be the least of creatures in our Lord Jesus Christ, the lowest of his creatures ; then I can say with Paul, Rejoice, all creatures are my cross and I the cross of creatures.’ He said, ‘ Daughter, thou art too young.’ — " Mary was younger than I,’ she said, ‘ when she set forth into the desert and exile, driven by robbery and murder.’ — ‘ God was with her,’ said he. ‘ And well I wot God is with me.’ said she. ‘ He was there present in her.’ he replied. ‘ He is ever present in my soul,’ she said. Quoth he, ‘ But Mary had a solemn pledge of his presence, which thou hast not, my daughter.’ Quoth she, ‘ Since I dispense with outward consolations, I am without his outward presence. I would that he were ever being bom within my soul.’ — ‘ Think twice,’ he said, " before adventuring that.’ — ‘ Peace, let me speak I ’ she cried, ‘ ’tis by your too much admonition that you have hindered me.’ He said, ‘ Know, did

the truth move thee, thou hadst not done nor yet forborne because of me. I am but creature, as thou knowest. As long as any creature has power to give and take thou livest not unto truth. Truth has virtue sufficient to raise man to the summit without help from creatures. Thou durst not cast the blame on me, for know, whom the truth moves has the Holy Ghost to his master, who educates his pupils in the high(!st school of all. There we learn more in the twinkling of an eye than all the doctors can express.’ You speak the truth,’ she said. The second article of faith is trust in God. He can say he trusts God who keeps not overnight so much as a pen’orth of possessions. I say more : he keeps nothing at all ; but he who withholds but a pennyworth of worldly goods from his evenchristian, knowing him to be in need of it, is a robber in the sight of God. 1 warn you, l)y Christ who suffered so for love of men, allow no want in any man, he being made in tlie likeness of Christ for whose sake God created all things ; and impair not his condition by withholding from him his father’s goods, which it behoves him to restore to God.

Further I declare, who spares a penny for himself to put it by against a rainy day, thinking, I may need that for to-morrow, is a murderer before God. And I will prove it. For if he trust God he will leave himself in God’s hands ; if God give him the morrow, he will give him also the wherewithal for it. Hence I affirm there be few who have faith enough to trust God blindly. Know that the man who sets more store by worldly goods than by his powers of knowing and loving God, is justly termed a murderer. This I call Christ to witness, who said, ‘ When I am ascended I will draw all things after me.’ In the same way the virtuous man takes all things up to God, to their first source. The masters teach that creatures were made for man. They prove it from the fact that creatures all need each other : cattle need grass, fish water, birds the air, and beasts the forest. By the same token all creatures come in useful to the good and are carried, one creature in the other, by the good soul to God. Lived there a man who trusted God, God would do unto him better than ever he could do unto himself.

Take the third article of faith, that is, knowledge of God. I say, no man knows God who knows not himself first. Mark how to know yourselves. To know himself a man must be for ever on the watch over himself, holding his outer faculties, breaking them in by vigorous training to obey the higher powers of his soul. This discipline must be continued till he reach a state of consciousness so pure that nothing short of God can form in it. Then thou dost come acquainted with thyself and God. The fourth property of faith is love. To be able to say, ‘ I love thee, Lord,’ a man must suffer without why what without why Christ suffered, and suffer it gladly without suffering. Though God shall tell him mouth to mouth, ‘ Thou shalt be lost for ever with the damned,’ he only loves God all the more, and says, ‘ Lord, an thou wilt that I be damned, damned I will be, eternally.’ Thus he identifies his will with what God wills, willing that same in earth and heaven. Of this he deems himself unworthy. That man can say, ‘ I love thee.’ We have explained now what faith means. To carry out in practice these articles of faith as enumerated from the start entitles us to say, ‘ I believe in God.’

By the two roast fishes (one fish is will, the other its fulfilment) we understand thorough subjection, the downright death of thy whole nature — the marrow of thy bones, blood in thy veins and whole concomitants of natural vigour — so that albeit having the will to sin, thou hast no power to. Doctors debate whether a man can reach the stage at which he is incapable of sinning in his body. The best authorities say ‘ Yes ’ ; alluding to souls so perfectly disciplined outwardly and inwanily that they have no propensity to sin. The second fish we take to signify achievement of the virtues ; virtue consummated to the pitch where it becomes instinctive ; where virtue is our very being ; where our knowledge and love transcend virtue. A man at this stage gives pure light. Doctors describe four kinds of light. The first is natural, the light of natural man apt in affairs, which is less a help ihan a hindrance. The second is the light of grace. Whom this enlightens has his natural light put out. It lights him on the road to his salvation, preserving him in grace so he follow it closely. The third light lightens the angels and man in his primitive innocence. For know, the man who with the angels receives all things from God is void of mundane things and creaturehood and naked as he was when he came out of God. Man can what angels cannot : in this light he can transcend the angels and receive all things from the source of divine truth. Then he is given divine light, the fourth light, and about this I am dumb. I keep that to myself.

Here the daughter comes to her revered confessor and says, ‘ Sir, I fear I shall never do it.’ — ‘ Why not ? ’ said he. Said she, ‘ I still have all the virtues to cultivate. I ween I never brought one single virtue to the pitch required.’ Quoth he, ‘ Be satisfied to do thy best.’ — ‘ I have never done my best,’ she said, ‘ albeit I am well aware that I am thrice behoven unto God. My first behoof is to repair my faults.’— ‘ None can repair a fault if God forgive it not in love,’ said he. ‘ I wot of that,’ she said, ‘ but I must do my share and live in hopes of grace until I die.’ Quoth he, ‘ What is thy second accusation ? ’ She answered, ‘ That, while fain to be in the joy of our Lord, I have not lived accordingly, albeit well aware that to enter there one has to live the perfect life in our Lord Jesus Christ.’ — ‘ That is so,’ he said. ‘ Tell me, what is thy third behoof ? ’ She said, ‘ Though there were neither hell nor heaven, to follow him for true love all the same, as he prevented me : to follow him to the end without a why. 1 know my duty but mend not my ways as in duty bound.’ — ‘ What more wouldst thou do ? ’ he asked. ‘ 'Fhou hast given up honour and possessions, and kith and kin and every comfort thou didst get from creatures.’ — ‘ True, sir, in letter,’ she said, ‘ but giving up all God ever created to leave it for God’s sake is giving up nothing ; it is not mine to give. It is God’s. Anything in the shape of possessions is God’s. Wherefore I ween there is still something more for me to leave.’ — ‘ What must thou leave ? ’ he asked.- - ‘ Myself,’ she answered. ‘ If I leave myself wherever 1 find myself I can say, I have left myself.’ — ‘ Thou art right,’ he cried, ^but I marvel, being so sensitive, thou canst brook the insults heaped upon thee.’ She said, ‘ God knows I feel none.’ Quoth he, ‘ Does it not touch thee that thy friends, spiritual as well as worldly, are so distressed on thy account, thinking thee most mistook in thy behaviour ? ’ — ‘ What is that to me ? ’ she said. ‘ For well I ween Christ knew, when he was sitting in the temple, that Joseph and his mother sought him sorrowing. The doctors told Christ : Thy father and thy mother are seeking thee. Christ answered : He who is kind to me, the same is my father and mother and sister and brother.’ — ‘ True,’ he said. ‘ I prithee, though, accept life’s necessaries when they are offered thee in the name of God.’ — ‘ Tell me,’ she queried, ‘ what are necessaries ? ‘ Wouldst

have me specify the bare necessities of life ? ’ he asked. ‘ Aye,’ she replied. ‘ Bread, water, and a cloak,’ he said. ‘ These arc bare bodily necessities.’ Quoth she, ‘ Now tell me what is necessary ? ’ And he made answer, ‘ To dwell in utter ignominy in Christ who alone lives.’ — ‘ Now God reward you ! ’ she exclaimed. ‘ Pray God on my behalf to give all creatures licence to cry me down and persecute me to their topmost bent.’ Quoth he, ‘ Thou ’It get a plenty in thy vocation. A holy man has said, Did God know anyone willing to suffer the sum of human suffering, he would give it him to bear that his worth might be so much the greater in eternity. God will db this out of pure love to anyone he calls to him.’ Quoth she, ‘ A master says, He alone deserves suffering who dearly desires it.’ — ‘ True, daughter,’ he said. ‘ Prithee, an thou wilt, remain in these parts and busy thyself among us.’ — ‘ That will I not,’ she answered, ‘ I must be about my own business. I mean to live in exile, anywhere where I am persecuted. For you must know I have found more of God in the least desi)iscry than ever I did in the sweetness of ereatures.’ — ‘ I’ll not quarrel with that for it is true,’ he said. ‘ Christ proves it by those words to his disciples. Go ye into all places where they shall persecute you.’ Quoth she, ‘ God bless you for it, who have my homage betwixt me and God.’ — ‘ Come to me wheresoever thou shalt find me,’ he said. That will I gladly.’

St Paul affirms of the holy martyrs and friends of our Lord, ‘ They are dead.’ From this we argue that we have to be dead too. I hold that anyone who is not really dead has not the faintest notion of the sacred things revealed by God to his beloved. As long as thou still knowest wlio thy father and thy mother have been in time, thou art not dead with the real death. Further 1 hold : as long as it affects thee that no one will shrive tliee nor give thee God’s body nor sh(‘lter thee from the world’s scorn, as long as it is in thee to be moved by this, know that thou art a stranger to the true death. When thou art aware of nothing within thee : when, having escaped from earthly species and forgot thy honourable estate and all temporal happenings, thou hast emtered oblivion so deep that nothing formulates itself in thee and thou art sensible of naught save the sheer ascension of Ihy soul, then thou canst say that thou art really dead. lie who is dead thus is always the same ; nothing affects him. Anent this St John says, ‘ Blessed are the dead that die in God.’ See then, my friends, how^ood it is to die in God. We can die gladly il' (iod will live and work in ns while we arc idle. We die, ’tis true, but ’tis a gentle death. Folks tell ns of the holy life, how they have suffered. To tell the tale of what our Lord’s friends suffered time would be all too short. T say : they did not suffer. The least suspi(*ion of God-eonseiousness and sufferings would be all forgot. This may well liappcn while the soul is in the body. I say more ; while yet in the body a soul may reach oblivion of its trav^ail not to remember it again. Further 1 hold : to him who suffers not for love, to suffer is suffering and is hard to bear. But he who suffers for love does not suffer, and this suffering is fruitful in God’s sight. It follows, friends, that by contriving to die in (iod gladly, we go scot-free from suffering. To practise this is to be really dead. So to die in God, help us O Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Here the aforementioned daughter comes to her confessor, beseeching him, ‘ Sir, hear me for God’s sake.’ — ‘ Whence come you ? ’ said he. ‘ From foreign parts,’ said she. He asked, ‘ Of what country art thou ? ’ She answered, ‘ Sir, do you not know me ? ’ ‘ Not I, God wot,’ quoth he. Quoth she, ‘ By the same token you have never known yourself.’ — ‘ True,’ he replied, ‘ for well I ween that if I knew myself as intimately as I ought, I should have perfect knowledge of all creatures.’ — ‘ You are right,’ she said ; ‘ but a truce to this talk, sir. Hear me, in God’s name.’ — ‘ Willingly,’ he said. ‘ Say on.’ The daughter made confession to her revered confessor, as it was now in her to do, in a manner to rejoice his heart. Quoth he, ‘ Return ere long, daughter.’ — ‘ Gladly, God willing,’ quoth she. Going off to his brethren he announces, ‘ I have just shriven someone, whether woman or angel I misdoubt, nay, I wot not. If woman, her soul powers dwell with tlic angels in heaven and her soul has received angelic nature. She knows and loves beyond anyone I ever met.’ ‘ Glory be to God,’ the brethren cry.

Seeking his daughter where he knows her to be, in the chapel, namely, her confessor earnestly entreats her to converse with him. — ‘ Do you not know me yet ? ’ she asks, lie answers, ‘ No, God knows.’ — ‘ Then I Avill tell you for love. I am the poor soul you led to God.’ And she discovers to him her identity. — ‘ Alas, wretch that T am ! ’ he cries. ‘ Shame on me in the sight of God that having spiritual light so long I am so unfamiliar with divinity. Prithee, my daugliter, for the love of God, recount to me thy life and doings since T last saw thee.’ Quoth she, ‘ That were a deal to tell.’ — ‘ Not more than I am fiiin to hear,’ he said. ‘ Know, I have been amazed by what you told me.’ Ere ^taking up her tale the daughter says to her confessor : ‘ You must never betray me while I live.’ — I give you my word,’ he answered, ‘ not to divulge thy confession during thy lifetime.’ Whereupon she embarks on such a wondrous story he marvels any human being could go through so much. Quoth she, ‘ Sir, still I fall short, I find that I have conquered all my heart’s desires save only that my faith be not assailed.’ — ‘ God be praised for making thee,’ he cried. ‘ Now rest content.’ — ‘ Never,’ she said, ‘ while my soul has no abiding place in eternity.’ Said he, ‘ I should be well content to have my soul ascend as thine does.’ She said, ‘ My soul ascends freely, but it makes no stay. To will does not content me ; if only I might know the thing to do to establish me permanently in eternity ! ’ He asked, ‘ Is the desire so strong ? ’ She answered, ‘ Aye.’ — ‘ Be rid of it,’ he said, ‘ if thou wouldst be confirmed.’ Saying, ‘ ’Tis gladly done,’ she sinks into destitution. And God drawing her in his divine light she weens that she is one with God. While this continues she keeps beating back into herself with an overwhelming sense of deity, and keeps ejaculating, ‘ I am sure there is no escape for me.’

The confessor visits his daughter frequently, inquiring, ‘ Tell me, how goes it now with thee ? ’ — ‘ 111,’ she replies. ‘ Heaven and earth are too confined for me.’ He entreats her to tell him something. She says, ‘ I have nothing whatever to tell.’ — ‘ Just a word, for God’s sake,’ he pleads, and wins it for the asking. She proceeds to reveal to him such profound and marvellous things concerning the pure perception of divine truth that he exclaims, ‘ Thou knowest this is not common knowledge, and were I not among those priests who have read it in theology, I had not known it either.’ — ‘ Much good it is to you,’ she said. ‘ I would you had a lively sense of it.’ Said he, ‘ I am this much alive to it, I feel as certain of it as of my having said the mass to-day. Natheless, this lack of actual experience docs trouble me.’ With the words, ‘ Pray God for me,’ the daughter returns into her solitude to enjoy God’s society. Ere long she appears at the door again, demanding her confessor, to whom she says, ‘ Sir, rejoice with me, I am God.’ — ‘ Glory be to God ! ’ he cries. ‘ Retire again into thy solitude ; all joy be thine an thou rernainest God.’

Obedient to her confessor, she goes into the chapel, into a secluded corner. There oblivion descended upon her, and she forgot everything named and was so far withdrawn from self and everything created that she had to be carried from the church and lay till the third day, surely accounted for dead. ‘ I misdoubt she is dead,’ quoth her confessor. Know, had there been no confessor they would have buried her. They essayed by all manner of means, but whether her soul was in her body they could not discover. They said, ‘ For sure she is dead.’ For sure she is not,’ said her confessor. On the third day the dau^^ter returned. ‘ Alas, me miserable, am I back ! ’ she cried. Her confessor, who was already there, addressed her, saying, ‘ Permit me to taste divine truth in the revelation of thy experience.’ She said, ‘ God knows, I cannot. My exj^ericnce is ineffable.’ — ‘ Hast got now all thou wilt ? ’ he asked. She answered, ‘ Aye. I am confirmed.’ Blest and praised be the name of our Lord Jesus Christ who showed us the way to conquer by grace what he is by nature. It needs a God-receptive man who treads beneath his feet self and all creatures. He has five deaths to die. The first is death to natural things. Being dead to nature spirit reigns. Nevertheless he still may lapse into eternal death, as shown by Lucifer. Himself pure spirit, from himself he fell, falling eternally. We must die in spirit, our spirit being inspired into the spirit of truth. Now we begin to live in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, strictly obeying his precepts and example. Thus we die in our Lord Jesus Christ in the truth which is himself, even as he died in his humanity. And we rise in our Lord Jesus Christ to live again in

the quick of life. We enter the Father in the Son. Humanity receives its coup de grace, pierced to the heart by light divine. Therein man learns to know himself. Forgot are all God’s gifts beknownst to him. Thought, word, will, act, lie strewn before him in the reflection of the divine light received from the Father. In this divine light the soul sees herself less than creature. She finds no place to dwell in. She deems herself the vilest thing God ever made. Lucifer is to her so meritorious that she ranks under him. Accordingly the masters say, ‘ Christ’s soul and Lucifer’s were made in the same light.’ Hence the soul’s grievance and selfcondemnation. Christ’s soul was the wisest soul that ever was : she faced round in the creature and looked towards the creator. Wherefore the Father clad her in the divine garment and property of his own nature. Hut Lucifer looked away to the defieiency and thereby fell, falling eternally. So fall all they that turn from God to things corruptible. In this plight the soul now finds herself and is consumed within herself, there thinking to remain eternally, for it is she who is to blame.

The best authorities aver that from the very lowest angel of all those in heaven, there fell one drop upon Die highest heaven. This started the celestial revolutions, each heaven following the course nature laid down for carrying round the drop. From it all creatures get their life, those that have life in time ; in it all creatures hie them back to their first source ; in it the soul becomes aw'are that, so little has God become in time, our works must be wrought above time, in eternity. Christ taught us this. Ifis works arc all wrought in eternity. Did God perform one act outside himself, lie were not (iod. God’s works arc Avrought so that they remain in him. And our works which are wrought thus endure in eternity. Understand, we call viiue that which is in me, which none can take from me. —Here the soul is moved to exclaim : ‘ Alas, that 1 have Avrought so many works outside me ! ’ Concerning nature, the masters speak as folloAvs : Nature and naturalness are not identical. The natural state is taken on in time ; nature is in itself eternal. This touches the soul. Philosophers will tell you that thunder is merely the result of opposites. Clouds cannot bear being charged with opposites, Avhich crash together ; hence lightning and the thunder. So with the wind ; it blows till foreign matter is expelled, namely, the rain. Creatures in general will purify themselves from incompatiblcs.

Here the soul realizes that she has often harboured incompatibles. She says : ‘ Creatures all pointed me to my eternal happiness. They did not Lucifer : he fell from God for ever because of the unlikes he assumed. God kept me in himself. I had no mind to see it, so I can never look for grace.’ And there she stops, failing to rise beyond herself. Now theologians say, God is by nature bound to draw his likes out of their selfhood into himself just as the sun will draw up moisture. Then the soul, merged in the naked Godhead, is no more to be found than a wine-drop in mid-ocean. That soul can no more sin than God can. The man is said to be conformed to God. God is his active principle. He has real perception. Things are in him without images, for he is one with God in whom are all things. In this case it is true to say, all things arc in man formless. The masters say : ‘ To gauge the soul we must gauge her with God, for the ground of God and the ground of the soul are one nature.’ The part that gives life to the body is the least part of the soul. The man who realizes this has fresh and inexhaustible delight. What though he walks in time, he dwells in his eternal nature. He inhabits the truth. This man is known by five signs. First, he nevaT complains. Next, he never makes excuses : when accused, he leaves the facts to vindicate him. Thirdly, there is nothing he wants in earth or heaven but what God wills himself. Fourthly, he is not moved in time. Fifthly, he is never rejoiced : he is joy itself.

Here the trusty confessor comes seeking his daughter in an unknown land, earnestly entreating her to hold converse with him. She says, ‘ I can talk with you of outward things.’ — ‘ ’Twill serve,’ quoth he. ‘ Tell me, what, thinkest thou, made thee most ripe for the eternal truth ? ’ She answered : ‘ Leaving myself wherever I found myself. Next, never excusing myself from accusations which concerned myself alone. Thirdly, whatever my y)ain, wanting still more and compelling myself to bear it equably. Fourth, being supple to insignificance, poverty and lack of creature comforts. Fifth, never seeing souls sin without rebuke and never hearing things against the gospel and the life of Christ without I fought them to the death. But know that it has been my habit rather to rebuke those persons whose sins I saw were doing them a mortal mischief. 1 never did it save purely out of love to God, being moved to pity for them. Many an insult they have hurled upon me. Sixth, never avoiding occasion of insult : I fled from honour but I stayed for shame. Seventh, never looking back when once I knew the way to my eternal happiness ; and taking no man’s counsel, but plodding straight on. Eighth, being never content with present light nor present sight, which were as nothing to my certainty. Ninth, never resisting any use God chose to put me to. Tenth, rigid discipline, inward and outward.’

‘ God be praised,’ he said. ‘ Thou hast told me thy outward rule ; now tell me thy inner.’ Quoth she, ‘ God wot, I fear it is beyond you.’ — ‘ But just a hint ; deny me not,’ he urged. And she responded : ‘ At the moment of confirmation there existed in me all the works God ever wrought as a little thing inferior to heaven. My abode was heaven. I dwelt there with the inmates of the Trinity which to me was as familiar as to the householder the house he dwells in, and saw the partition between all creatures and God’s whole creation : it was as plain as the five fingers on my hand.’ - ‘ He said, ‘ Explain more fully.’ She replied, ‘ I will. I had assembled all my soul-powers. When I saw into myself 1 saw God in me and everything God ever made in earth and heaven. Let me explain it better. As you know right well, anyone wJio faces God in the mirror of truth sees everything depicted in that mirror : all things, that is to say. Such was my inner habit before confirmation. Do you quite take me ? ’ — ‘ It must be so, of course,’ he said. ‘ Is that not thy rule now ? ’ She answered, ‘ No, I have nothing to do with saints nor angels nor creatures nor anything created ; it is all uniform : not merely nothing created but nothing uttered concerns me.’ — ‘ Explain,’ he said. She said, ‘ I will. I am confirmed in the naked Godhead, wherein is neither form or image.’— ‘ Art there for good ? ’ he asked. She answered, ‘ Yes.’ Quoth he, ‘ Daughter, say on, this talk delights me.’ And she proceeded, ‘ As 1 am no creature can be, as creature.’ — ‘ Explain,’ he said. Quoth she, ‘ I am as I was before I was created : just God and God. No saint nor angel nor choir nor heaven. Eight heavens are often spoken of and nine choirs of angels ; there is nothing of that where I am. You must know tljat expressions of that sort, which conjure up pictures in the mind, merely serve as allurements to God. In God there is nothing but God ; no soul gets to God until she is God as she was before she was made.’

He said, ‘ You speak the truth, daughter. Now do for God’s sake counsel me as best thou canst how I may gain possession of this good.’— ‘ I will give you sure guidance,’ she said. ‘ As you are well aware, creatures were made from nothing and must return to nothing ere they reach their source.’ ‘True,’ he agreed. Quoth she, ‘ Enough said. Tell me now, what is nothing ? ’ He replied, ‘ I know what is nothing and I know what is less than nothing. Imperfections, I take it, are nothing to God. So that anyone subject to imperfections is less than nothing.’ — ‘ How so ? ’ — ‘ He is the servant of imperfection. Nothing is nothing. The servant of imperfection is less than nothing.’ Quoth she, ‘ Precisely. The way then to obtain your good is to subordinate yourself to yourself and creatures till you can find no more to do towards God’s working in you.’ — ‘ You are right,’ he cried. ‘ One mastqr says. He who loves God as his God, and prays to God as his God and is therewith content, is to me as an unbeliever.’ — ‘ Blessed be the master who said that,’ quoth she. ‘ He knew the truth. For you must understand that anyone content with what can be expressed in words -God is a word, licaven is a word — whose soul-powers, love and knowledge, insist on nothing further than what can be expressed, is aptly styled an unbeliever. It is the lower senses or powers of the soul which grasp things uttered. The higher powers are not content with tliat : these keep on pressing forward till they strike the source from whence the soul flowed forth. The powers of the soul cannot enter her source. All nine powers of the soul serve the man of the soul ; they draw him out of nether tilings and speed him to his source. When the soul stands before her eaus(‘, superior to things in iier main power, her powers remain without. Look you, it is the naked soul, naked of things namcable, one in the same, that progresses in the naked Godhead, like oil that creeps in cloth : so the soul goes creeping forward, flowing on and on so long as God ordains her to give life to the body in time. Know, whih* the good man lives on earth his soul is progressing in eternity, lienee the good like living.’ ‘ True daughter,’ he observed. ‘ One master says : Suppose there lay at point to die two men ecpially pl(‘asant in f lic eyes of God, and that both di(‘d, the one before the other but just long enough to give that other time to breathe one sigh for God, to east one thought to the least martyr that CJod ever led, the lightest word God ever spoke, this would entitle him to prcccdenee over the other who died first, while God remains eternal.’ — ‘ That is so,’ she said. ‘ Know also, as the good shall rise so fall the wicked who arc in sin.’ ’

‘ Now prithee, daughter, tell me. We speak of heaven and hell and purgatory and read a vast amount about them. We also read that God is in everything and every thing in God.’ — ‘ And so it is,’ she said. — ‘ Then, for God’s sake,’ quoth he, ‘ acquaint me with the rightful view of it.’ - ‘ Gladly, so far as I can put it into words,’ she said. ‘ II(;11 is nothing but a state or being. Our being here is our eternal being ; we are as it were grounded in it. Many people fondly imagine here to have crcaturely being and divine being yonder. That is not so. It is a popular delusion. Purgatory is a thing assumed, like penance, and comes to an end. Look at it like this. Some souls so reverence God and the friends of God that God is constrained to have mercy on them, be it only at their end that true repentance comes to them in love and knowledge and they rise out of themselves and everything created. Then true love is their being and did they go on living they would sin no more but suffer for true love’s sake all our Lord Jesus Christ suffered, and his beloved. These rise in grace. But people who

go hence in their state of creaturehood are in that state eternally which is called hell. Likewise, there remains their state to those who suffer naught but God to be in them : God is their being and remains their being eternally. ‘ Again, touching the last day, people say, God shall ju^Jge. So he shall, but not as they think. Each^n^an is his own judge in this sense : the state he then appears in he is in eternally. People frequently assert : The body shall rise with the soul. So it shall. But not as they think. The being of the body and the being of the soul go to form one being. Those souls who all their days have spent their time in God till God has come to be their being, to them God stays their being, body and soul eternally. Not so the wicked who have squandered their time on creatures ; what their state is it continues to be, and this eternal hq^sing from God and from his friends is called hell. Vet bear in mind that these same persons get their being from (iod or they would not be at all. So they are in God and Ciod is in them. You see, they have the being of God. Take it like this. They ani in God as ’tvvcrc a man with his life forfeit to some righteous lord whose honour he has stolen and whose friends, and plotted frequently against his life ; and now his lord, who showed him only kindness in liopcs of his reform, is vexed to find that he declines to mend. Holding him in the grip of justice, his lord forbears to kill. He punishes the outrage on himself. First, bound hand and foot, the man is cast into the lowest donjon among toads and reptiles and the foul water which is wont to lie in deepest donjon-keeps. Fetched up from thence, he is disgraced before the world, that they may see his opCTi shame and he their joy. So much the more his torment. Insult after insult do they heap upon him, shame unthinkable ; he is ever cast back into his donjon, ever in dread of execution. Even so it is permissible to say that man is at the court, for the donjon is the royal court as much as the hall is where the king stays with his friends ; but conditions, you sec, are different. Though not with that celestial race we spoke of. Know that grief endures eternally. I marvel that anyone who hears these words should dare to sin. Purgatory is so grievous in itself that anyone who knows the rights of it would stay no time in sin. Purgatory you must know is temporal and notional. A soul which leaves the body, as I said, in faith and love and will to do all for God’s sake and eschew sin for God, that soul is in dire distress, unable to do anything but wait till God shall deign to take compassion on her. And though this happen not till doomsday, the hope is her life. Doomsday past, this is over. But souls in the divine condition are not affected in this sense : on quitting the body such a soul remains in a condition of divinity determined by her knowledge

and love of God, and after the day of judgment the being of the body and the being of the soul arc one being in the divine actuality. According to the most reliable authorities, statements of theirs regarding creatures arc not to be construed to mean that John went body and soul to lieaven ; no more did others of our Lord’s friends cither, of whom report says they are body and soul in God, transcending time in eternity. It is not possible. In God can be nothing but God, not nioutli nor nose nor hand nor foot nor any creature pertaining to the body. So tlicy cannot be held to have got there in the body. IVi' may reasonably suppose that when the time came for John to go, God caused to befall him what was due to happen on the day of judgment. Ih^ did this for true love’s sake, be(*ause he was so pure. The being of his soul, taking with it, God helping, the being of his body, was drawn u]). We juay take it that his body, which was destined to perisli Iutc on earth, was disintegrated in the air, so that Mien* enter(‘d into God only the being of the body, which would liave aecoinpanied tlu; soul at the last day. Thus it befell Mary and all of whom it is related that they attained to (iod in the body.’

‘ ’Tis well argued,’ he said. ‘ Hut you must kno\v the cpiestion is in hot dispute among the theologians.’ Said she, ‘ I will give you the key to its solution. Pass to our Lord Jesus Christ and see what happened at his ascension. He was at meat when he ascended. As you well know, the food was lost in transit, with everything adventitious that Christ had taken on, wliicdi all remained in time. He eould only take with him into the Father that which came out of the Father. Tlu‘ being of C}irif?^’s soul took with it the being of the noble manhood of our Lord .Tesus Christ in its divine actuality. The ])ersons subsist in th(‘ Father as one with the Father. Fven so are all thost* in th(‘ Father who eoncpier Ijy grace what Christ has by nature : not that they take with them the life of the body when they go hence ; that waits till doomsday. The being of the body reverts to the b(‘ing of the soul only when all things have perished, according to the vulgar teaching. You doubtless know that whom (iod deigns to favour he treats as he treated St John.’ Quoth he, ‘ I wot that well. If I did as St Dominic, I should be as St Dominic. St Dominic sold his book and all he possessed and gave to the poor for God’s sake. We do not this, daughter, nor do we ])ractise numerous other virtues of St Dominie. We are as we are through pretending a priesthood we do not possess. St Francis was a simple soul wherefor God greatly favoured him. He approached Ckxl in perfect simplicity of life and so grew familiar with God. Now in those parts there was a priest who sorely hated a profane to be so intimate with God. Going to visit him, he said, “ What

shall we make of this, brother ? The scriptures say we must rebujce men for their sins.” — “ Assuredly,” said St Francis. — “ But,” said the priest, “ did I rebuke a man, he might repay me twofold.” — “How should he ? ” said St Francis. “I can rede you the scriptures better than that : we are to cultivate the true and perfect life, within and without, till we become a living rebuke to all mankind.” - “ True, brother,” said the priest ashamed. — ^Know that to do as St Francis is to become as St Francis. Further, I hold : when wc depart this life, grace departs from us. And again : to be less than St John is to be more than St John.’ — ‘ Thank God, you know it,’ she exclaimed. He said, ‘ I have known it lor long, and I ween it is true, though 1 do not live it.’ — ‘ That I rue,’ she said. Quoth she, ‘ You have told me of nine heavens. Now tell me what 1 ask. Advise me what sort of life to lead, for you know my life better than anyone.’— ‘ Indeed 1 will,’ said he, ‘ and gladly. Eat when thou art hungry, drink when thou art thirsty, wear fine linen, sleep and take thine ease ; gratify thy tastes in meats and drinks and, for a season, study thyself, live for thyself alone. An thou shouldst see God’s whole creation swallowed up before thine eyes, avert it not with so much as an Ave Maria, but summon all creatures at will to do thy bidding to the glory of God. Wear delicate, beautiful raiment, and, abiding in one place, carry all things up to God. Dost thou choose to enjoy creatures, it is seemly so to do, seeing that any creature thou enjoyest thou dost render to its cause. Thou wilt know full well that everything thou ejijoyest is in God to God’s glory.’ She said, ' I know right well that all you say is true but you must understand I never shall want anything except to be a beggar till I die.’ — ‘ Thou art mistook,’ he said. — ‘ Then mistaken I will remain,’ said she. ‘ I choose poverty and exile ; that none can take from me.’ — ‘ On my soul, thou art false to God,’ he cried. — ‘ How so ? ’ she asked. ‘ Just pleasing thyself,’ he answered. Quotli she, ‘ God knows I am but keeping on the lines that led me to eternal happiness. The natural error of those lines in time and in eternity shall be mine too in eternity and time. I will not deviate from the rule of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ He said, ‘ Thou shouldst know that. God prosper thee.’ Then she : ‘ Believe me, I do take more ease ; my discipline is not so strict as heretofore. If only I might forward on their way good souls approaching their eternal happiness but lacking certainty, that I fain Would do ; I would fain succour the whole world from sin for God’s sake. Since our Lord Jesus Christ made use of all his faculties up to his death, ’tis meet I should do likewise. My outer faculties shall occupy themselves with the exalted life and noble manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ

and with his lofty teachings, during my life in time. The highest powers of my soul will, as you know, be working in Christ’s soul in his heavenly Father, subsisteiit in one nature they never stoop from. The Holy Ghost flows from the Father through these powers into my soul and back from my soul into God, each several ])owcr doing its own work, here in the Holy Ghost and, in the Father, with his Son our Lord Jesus Christ. Regard it as an intercourse. He knows all my days from the time I discerned good and evil.’ ‘ Tell me, daughter,’ he said, ‘ doctors declare that in heaven a thousand angels can stand on the point of a needle. Now rede me the meaning of this ? ’ She answered, ‘ The doctors arc right. You can see it in this way. The soul that enters into (iod owns neither time nor space nor anything nameable to be expressed in words. Hut it stands to reason, if you consider it, that the space occupied by any soul is vastly greater than heaven and earth and God’s entire creation. I say more : God might make heavens and earths galore yet these, together with the multiplicity of creatures he has already made, would be of less extent than a single needle-tip compared with the standpoint of a soul atoned in God.’ — So the daughter went on, till her talk turning upon God, she waxed most clocpient, the fathe r urging her at intervals ; ‘ Say on, daughter.’ She inii)arted to him so much concerning the immensity of God, the might of God and the providence of God, that he took leave of his outer senses and they had to carry him into a neighbouring cell where he lay for long ere coming to himself again. Returning to himself, he desired his daughter to come ^o him. Admitted to his presence, his daughter impiired, ‘ How is it now with you ? Excellently well,’ he answered. ‘ God be praised for sending thee to a man. Thou didst show me the way to my eternal happiness, and I have been deep in divine contemplation where there was given me the realization of all I have heard from thy lips. Daughter 1 adjure thee, by thy love to God, help me by word and deed to win a permanent abode where now I am^ Quoth she, ‘ Impossible. You arc not tempered to it. When, soul and faculties, you are as used to going uy) and down as a courtier is to going to and fro at court ; when you recognise the various members of the heavenly eom])any and everything God (',ver made and fail in nothing but know them as the good man knows the members of his household, then you will distinguish between God and Godhead ; then too you see the difference between spirit and sy^irituality. Till then you are not qualified for confirmation. Do not run away ; wrestle awhile with creatures till you are independent of them and they, as such, of you. So shall you cultivate your faculties without going demented. This

do until your soul-powers are stimulated to the consciousness we have been speaking of.’ Blessed and praised be the sweet name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

According to one master, many people arrive at specific understanding, at formal, notional knowledge, but there are few who get beyond the science and the theory ; yet one man whose mind is free from notions and from forms is more dear to God than the hundred thousand who have the habit of discursive reason. God cannot enter in and do his work in them owing to the restlessness of their imagination. If they were free from pictures they could be caught and carried up beyond all rational concepts, as St Dionysius says, and also have the super- rational light of faith at its starting-point, where God finds his rest and peace to dwell and work in as he will and when he will and what he will. God is unhindered in his work in these so he can do in them his most precious work of all, working them up in faith into himself. These people no one can make out ; their life is an enigma, and their ways, to all who do not live the same. To this truth and to this blessed life, to this high and perfect consummation no one can attain except in abstract knowledge and pure understanding.

Many a lofty intellect, angels not excepting (for in life and nature an angel is nothing but pure mind), has erred and lapsed eternalty from the eternal truth and this may happen also to those who, like the angels, preserve their idiosyncrasy and find satisfaction in the exercise of their own intelligence. Hence the masters urge, and the saints as well, the use and the necessity of careful observation and close scrutiny to test the light which flashes in, the light of understanding and of vision which man has here in time, lest he be the subject of hallucination. If you would know and recognise the really sane and genuine seers of God, whom nothing can deceive nor misinform, they can be detected by four and twenty signs. The first sign is told us by the chief exponent of knowledge and wisdom and transcendental understanding, who is himself the truth, our Lord Jesus Christ. He says, ‘ Thereby ye shall know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another and keep my commandment. What is my commandment ? That ye love one another I have loved you,’ as though to say, yp may be my disciples in knowledge and in wisdom and high undemanding but without true love it shall avail you little if anything at all.

Balaam was so clever he understood what God for many hundred years had been trying to reveal. This was but little help to Him because he lacked true love. And Lucifer, the angel, who is in hell, had perfectly pure intellect and to this day knows much. He has the more hell pain and all because he failed to cleave with love and faith to what he knew. — The second sign is selflessness : they empty themselves out of themselves giving free furlough to things.— The third sign : they have wholly abandoned themselves to God : God works in them undisturbed. — The fourth sign : wherever they still find themselves they leave themselves ; sure method of advancement. — ^The fifth sign : they are free from all self-seeking : this gives them a clear conscience. — The sixth sign : they wait unceasingly upon God’s will and do it to their utmost. — ^The seventh sign : they bend their will to God’s will till their will coincides with God’s. — The eighth sign : so closely do they fit and bind themselves to God and God to them in the power of love, that God does nothing without them and they do nothing without God. — The ninth sign : they naught themselves and make use of God in all their works and in all places and all things. — The tenth sign : they take no single thing from any creature, neither good nor bad, but all from God alone, albeit God effect it through his creature. — The eleventh sign : they are not snared by any pleasure or physical enjoyment or by any creature. — The twelfth sign ; they are not forced or driven by insubordination ; they are steadfast for the truth. — The thirteenth sign : they are not misled by any spurious light nor by the look of any creature : they go by the intrinsic merit. — The fourteenth sign : armed and arrayed with all the virtues they emerge victorious from every fight with vice. — The fifteenth sign : they sec and know the naked truth and praise God without ceasing for this gnosis. — The sixteenth sign : perfect and just, they hold themselves in poor esteem. — The seventeenth sign : they arc chary of words and prodigal of works. — The eighteenth sign : they preach to the world by right practice. — The nineteenth sign : they are always seeking God’s glory and nothing at all besides. — The twentieth sign : if any man fight them they will let him prevail before accepting help of any sort but God’s. — The twenty-first sign : they desire neither comfort nor possessions, of the least of which they deem themselves all undeserving. — The twenty-second sign : they look upon themselves as the most unworthy of all mankind on earth ; their humbleness is therefore never-failing. — The twenty-third sign : they take the life and teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ for the perfect exemplar of their lives and in the light of this arc always examining themselves with the sole intention of removing all unlikeness to their high ideal. — The twenty-fourth sign ; to outward appearance they

do little who are working all the time at the virtuous life, hence the disesteem of many people, which, however, they prefer to vulgar approbation. These are the signs of the true ground wherein lives the image of the perfect truth and he who does not find them in himself may account his knowledge vain and so may other people. THE BIRTH OF THE ETERNAL WORD IN THE SOUL Now we will speak of the eoming of our Lord Jesus Christ as he is born to-day at this holy season of the Virgin Mary his blessed mother and again as he is born of grace in the perfect soul for that is the whole end of Christ’s work on earth ,* and we shall ask nine questions from which any pious man may tell whether the eternal Word is born in him or no. The first question is, how to prepare for the interior speaking of the eternal Word ? — Several things are needed. First, purity of life and mind. Next, the peace and freedom of a still and silent heart which is speaking to no creature and is spoken to by none, whether of the senses or the spirit. And now for a hard saying which few will understand : while the soul is speaking her own word and her noble word, the Father cannot speak his Word in her ; while the soul is begetting her own son, the noblest work of her own understanding, the Father is not able to beget his Soi^ in her to her best advantage. Thirdly, the soul must forsake herself in order to conceive the eternal Word like St Paul and Mary, God’s mother, in whom the eternal Word was uttered perfectly. The mind must die to itself, disowning itself and becoming God’s own. Fourthly, the mind must lift up its intellect and see, for seeing is the lustiest work and noblest of which the soul is capable. Mark how eagerly he comes ; he says, ‘ Behold I stand at the door and knock ! ’ Fifthly, it behoves us greatly to desire this birth, for desire is the root of all virtue and goodness.

The second question is, what is God’s birth in the soul ? God’s birth in the soul is nothing else than a special divine motion in a special heavenly mode whereby God wrests the spirit from the tumult of creaturely unrest into his motionless unity where God can communicate himself to the spul in his divinity. There man enjoys his Word in the Father jn its first discriminate emanation and with the Father as ^sential Person and in the Holy Ghost as the limit set to thdr eternal bliss, and it is in the soul as the reflection of her intellectual proto- ^ See also Greith, pp. 102, 103. type and in all creatures as the preserver of their being. For God speaks his Word in every creature, but no creature is aware of it save rational creatures only. The soul is reborn into God when she turns to God and pursues his eternal Word right into his paternal heart where God makes naked revelation of his birth to the soul. The soul falls upon this birth which is revealed to her, with love and knowledge. As the Father comes into the soul in his Word so in the Word the soul is returned into the Father. That we may eternally play this game in God, God help us.

The third question is, can any man be so well prepared that God is obliged to speak his eternal Word in him ? We know that God must fulfil two obligations. First, when God is pledged and bound to the soul by the bonds of mutual love. Then God never fails the soul provided she is ready ; he is obliged of mutual necessity to give himself to her, as Christ said to Zaceheus, ‘ This day I must abide with thee in thine house.’ There is another word that must be spoken. Every good thing communicates itself to whatever is able to receive it ; it would therefore be contrary to God’s goodness to withhold himself from us if we can take him in. And there is a third compulsory utterance, that of some cause or force which is inadmissible in God. Theologians tell us that works wrought by the soul with God and in his grace God rewards or not just as he chooses, for such works are creature and finite and befall in time. They are too insignificant and vile to deserve reward from God at all. But the work God docs in us without our co-operation, where the soul’s work fails and God’s activity prevails, in that the soul is merely passive and God is the only o^e who works. Works wrought thus by God in the soul it is his bounden duty to requite with his own self, for these works are so divine, so eternal, so immense and so nearly touch God’s honour, he has no guerdon for them but himself. These souls are the noblest product of this life and it is of them St John declares, ‘ Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.’ The outward world is dead to them as they arc also to the world. Their outward man can no more clash with their inner man than the dead can with the living and this is due to the gift of God and interior prayer and profound humility. Which God grant us.

The fourth question is, what particular place or power of the soul the eternal Word is born in ? The philosophers and saints have many fine sayings about this. Some say, in the intellect for that is most like God. Some say, in the will for that is the free power of the soul. A third school teaches, in the soul -spark because that is most nigh to God. A fourth, in the arcanum of the mind for it is there that God is most at home. A fifth school says (and it is with this one that I hold), that it is born in the innermost being of the soul and all her powers are made aware of it in a divine savour, each power in its own mode but intellect is the highest power of the soul and therewith the soul grasps the divine good. Free will is the power of relishing the divine good which intellect makes known to it. The spark of the soul is the light of God’s reflection, which is always looking back to God. The arcanum of the mind is the sum-total, as it were, of all the divine good and divine gifts in the innermost essence of the soul, which is as a bottomless well of divine goodness. Which may God grant us.

The fifth question is, what part does the mind play in this birth ? It enters a condition of complete passivity leaving God to work his will in perfect liberty. Perhaps it may be asked, Is the mind aware that God is working in it ? I answer : Virtue, all good works wrought by God in man, fervour and devotion for example, a man will be aware of, for with works of this kind there is very often the evidence of the senses. But when the divine good overwhelms with its riches the appetitive faculty and the light of God raises the intellect to a higher power, coercing or carrying the mind into his divine countenance, then the mind pays no more attention to creatures : she is standing face to face with the highest truth. Which may God give us. The sixth question is, what part is played by the body in this ? It is resting peacefully, incapable of movement in any of its members, for the superior powers have fetched home the lower, and the essence of the soul has absorbed her higher powers so all is at a stand-still while the eternal Word is being born, in the mind and in the body. So help us God.

The seventh question is, can no power of the soul remain at work while the eternal Word is being supernaturally born in this way in the soul ? The answer is this. The soul has two kinds of powers, and of these the outward senses of the body arc all at rest and also the powers which move the body have been fetched in so that none of her powers remain active, but the soul is merely the motionless form of the body. As the prophet says, ‘ When all things were in mid-silence God spake his silent Word into my soul.’ Motionless peace descends upon the body and the mind wherein the eternal birth is to be supernaturally conceived. To attain to this we must be like the shepherds watching in the night wherein Christ was born. So must a man keep watch and ward over his own mind, driving his intelligence up into the heights, to those eternal laws ordained by God for lost and saved.^ Let us beseech him daily to carry out in us his eternal laws and rules. For ^ Referring to the soul-spark or synteresis, sometimes identified with conscience regarded as the ii^ternal repository of the laws of right and wrong.

priests and rcli^rious the seven liours are ordained that they may thank God for his death and pray him to accomplish his eternal rules and laws in us. And you who know this truth better than others do should let your minds dwell more upon this birth than other people can who arc ignorant about it. God help us to the truth. The eighth question is, what fruits or gifts are granted to the soul in whom the eternal Word is spoken ? Him four things befall. The first is that he is united with God. Next, he becomes God’s Son by grace. Thirdly, he is made God’s heir. Fourtlily, he is loosed from bondage ; as St Paul, naming all four perfections, says, ‘ In Christ is neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free ; but ye are all one in Christ and arc sons of God. And if sons of God then heirs of God.’ May we being loosed from bondage be God’s sons, so help us God. ^ Now, taking as my text, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,’ I will set forth the things a man must have in order to be God’s Son by grace. First, he must have perfect selfcontrol, as the Lord Christ says, ‘ I have power to lay down my soul and take it up again.’ Meaning, he is not cast down by suffering and adversity nor puffed up by worldly happiness and prosperity. Secondly, he must have his mind ever charged with divine ideas and godly sayings. Thirdly, he must have the highest good ever present to his mind so far as his nature will allow. Fourthly, he must steadfastly abide therein so far as his nature can endure it. Fifthly, if he go out into creatures for the needs of life he must not tarry there longer than is neqjssary. Sixthly, what his mind conceives of from within of divine mystery or truth he must protect from nature as a rich man guards his treasure from robbers and from thieves. In the seventh place, he must make no attempt to express these things in words until the time is ripe, that is, until he puts them into practice. Eighth, he must know well enough and consider fit any person he reveals these secrets to : the fool confides in all the world but the wise in few. Ninthly, he must be gracious alike to yea and nay. Tenth, he must be indifferent about what God has done to him and is going to do. [Eleventh, it must not concern him what God has done or is to do.] Twelfth, he must behave impartially to those whom God has chosen or not chosen [to those to whom his grace has or has not been given] ; and all these things he must offer up to the glory of God, obeying the divine command that what pleases God shall please him also and saying with Christ, ‘ Father,

^ The rest of this tractate occurs also in Hermann von Fritslar’s Das Heiligenlebcn (see Pfeiffer’s Deutsche Mystiker, vol. i, p. 54), from which the words in bra^ckets are added. thy will not mine be done.’ These twelve articles, with the preceding four, set forth the highest life that can be led in time. Of him who has these things may the Father say, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye him.’ And he who has them not but defaults therein, his defects are what St Augustine calls spiritual sins. The ninth question is, how to recognise these people in whom the eternal Word is born ghostly and gratuitously ? I answer, by the following signs. The first is that these people are dead to flesh and blood and to all natural appetites, as St Paul says, ‘ Since the eternal Word was born in me I no longer live to flesh and blood.’ Secondly the pleasures of the body [the triumphs of the world], are like sour breath unto their soul. As St Gregory declares, ‘ Worldly joys and glories are nothing but untowardness. Thirdly, these people arc for ever listening for God’s voice in them, David says, ‘ I will hearken to what God the Lord shall say within me.’ Fourthly, they are not perturbed by the uncertainty of things : nothing vexes or depresses them, as Christ said to his disciples, ‘ In your patience possess ye your souls.’ Fifthly, these people turn everything to good account so nothing can corrupt them, but they are ever pure in heart ; as St Paul says, ‘ All things work together for good to them that love God.’ Sixthly, they have no desire to vie with anyone ; they live in the world as though there was no one but themselves and God. Wherefore their heavenly Father begets his Son in them unceasingly and this birth is for all who give their mind thereto.

Th^. Lord Christ calls himself the flower of the field, for this is common property. Even so this birth is the common property of all those who are ready and diligently longing to receive it. May we thus desire this birth and eternally enjoy it. So help us God. Amen.

I have read many writings of heathen philosophers and sages, of the old covenant and of the new, and have sought earnestly and with all diligence which is the best and highest virtue whereby a man may knit himself most narrowly to God and wherein he is most like to his exemplar, as he was in God, wherein was no difference between himself and God, ere God created creature. And having approfounded all these scriptures to the best of my ability, I find it is none othe r t han absolute detachment from all creatures. * See also Spamor, B. 4. As our Lord said to Martha, ‘ unum est necessarium,^ which is as good as saying, He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachmejit. Our (ioctors sing love’s praises, as did St Paul, who said, ‘ Whatsoever things I do and have not charity I am nothing.’ But I cx^j^etachj^^ any love. First, because at best love constrains me to love God. Now it is far better my constraining God to me than for me to be constrained to God. My eternal ^ happiness depends on God and me becoming one ; but God is apter to adapt himself to me and can easier communicate with ^me than I can communicate with God. Detachment forces God to ! come to me, and this is shown as follows. Everything is fain to be in its own natural state. But God’s own natural state is unity and purity and these conic from de^chmeixt. Hence God is bound to give himself to a heart detached. — Secondly, I rank detachment above love because love constrains me to suffer all things for God’s sake : detachment constrains me to admit nothing but God. Now j it is far better to tolerate nothing but God than to suffer all things 1 for God’s sake. For in suffering one has regard to creatures, whence the suffering conics, but detachment is immjjlie. from creature. Further, that detachment admits of none biit God I demonstrate in this wise : anything received must be received in aught. But detachment is so nearly naught that there is nothing rare enough to stay in this detachment, except God. He is so simple, so ethereal, that he can sojourn in the solitary heart. Detachment then admits of God alone. That which is received is received and grasped by its receiver according to the mode of the receiver ; and so anything conceived is known and und^stood according to the mind of him who understands and not according to its own innate conceivability.

And humility the masters laud beyond most other virtues. I / rank detachment before any meekness and for the following ; reasons. Meekness can be without detachment, but complete detachment is impossible without humility. Perfect humility is a matter of self-naughting ; but detachment so narrowly approximates to naught that no room remains for aught betwixt zero and absolute detachment. Wherefore without humility is no complete detachment. Withal two virtues are always better than one. — Another reason w’^hy I put detachment higher than humility is this : humility means abasing self before all creatures and in that same abasement one goes out of oneself to creatures. But detachment abideth in itself. Now no going out however excellent, but staying in is better still. As the prophet hath it, ‘ omnis gloria filice regis ab intusy" the king’s daughter is all glorious mthin. Perfect detachment is without regard, without either lowliness or loftiness to creatures : it has no mind to be below nor yet to be above ; it is minded to be master of itself, loving none and hating none, having neither likeness nor urilikeness, neither this nor that, to any creature ; the only thing it fain would be is same^ But to be either this or that it does not want at all. He who is this or ,that is aught ; but detachment is altogether naught. It leaves i -things unmolested.

Here someone may object. But surely in our Lady all the virtues flourished in perfection and among them absolute detachment. Now granting that detachment is better than humility, why did our Lady glory in her lowliness instead of her detachment, saying, ‘ quia respexit dominus humilitatem ancillce sua- ’ : ‘ He regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden ’ ? I answer that, in God there is detachment and humility as well, so far as virtues can be attributed to God. Know, it was his loving meekness that made God stoop to enter human nature while it remained within itself as motionless, what time he was made man, as it was while he created the heavens and the earth, as I shall show you later. And seeing that our Lord when he ' chose to be made man did persist in his motionless detachment, by that same token did our Lady know that he expected her to do the same, albeit for the nonce he had regard expressly to her lowliness and not to her detachment. So remaining unmoved in her detachment she yet gloried in her lowliness and not in her detachment. Had she but once remembered her detachment to say, ‘ He regarded my detachment,’ her detachment would by that have been disturbed and would not have been absolute and perfect since a going forth has t^Jien place. Any event, however insignificant, will always cause some troubling of detachment. There you have the explanation of our Lady’s glorying in her lowliness instead of her detachment. Quoth the prophet, ‘ audiani, quid loquatur in me dominus deus,^ ‘ I will be still and listen to what my Lord and my God may be saying within me,’ as though to say, if God would parley with me then he must come in for I will not go out. It is Boethius who exclaims, ‘ Yc men, why do ye look without for that which is within you ? ’

I prize detachment more than mercy too, for mercy means naught else but a man’s going forth of self by reason of his fellowcreatures* lack, wheiuiby, his heajt is Detachment is '. exempt from this ; it stays within itself permitting nothing to disturb it. In short, when I reflect on all the virtues I find not one. so wholly free from fault, so unitiye to Goci as is detach men t. It was Avicenna the philosopher who said, ‘ The mind detached ; is of such nobility that what it sees is true, what it desires befalls and its behests must be obeyed.’ For you must know that jwhen the free mind is quite detached it constrains God to itself and could it femairi formless arid free from adventitiousness it would take on the nature of God. But God grants this to none beside himself ; so God can do no more for the solitary soul than make it a present of himself. The man who is in absolute detachment is rapt away ;jinto eternity where nothing temporal affects him nor is he in the ( least aware of any mortal thing ; he has the world well dead, he having no relish for aught earthly. St Paul meant this when he declared, ‘ I live and yet not I : Christ liveth in me.’

Perad venture thou will say, ~ What then is detachment that it should be so noble in itself ? — True detachment means a mind as little moved by what befalls, by joy and sorrow, honour and disgrace, as a broad mountain by a gentle breeze. • Such motionless detachment inakes a man superlatively Godlike. For that God is GodT is due to his motionless detachment, and it is from his detach- ^ ment that he gets his purity and his simplicity and his immuta- ’ bility. If then a man is going to be like God, so far as any creature can resemble God, it will be by detachment. This leads to purity and from purity to simplicity and from simplicity to immovability ; and it is these three which constitute the likeness between man and God, which likeness is in grace, for it is grace which draws a man away from mortal things and purges him from things corruptible. I would have you know that to be empty of creatures '\ is to be full of God and to be full of creatures is to be empty of ■ God. Now it must be remembered that in this immutable detachment God has stood for aye and does still stand. Know also, that when God created the heavens and the earth he might not ha^e been making anything at all for all that it affected his deta^ment. Nay, I say more : prayers and good works wrought by a man in time affect no more the diviiie detachment than if no prayers nor virtuous Avorks had come to pass in time ; nor is God any kindlier disposed towards that wight than if his prayers and deeds had all V>een left undone. Further I declare, when the Son in his Godhead was pleased to be made man and was and suffered martyrdom, God’s motionless detachment was no more disturbed than if he had never been made man.

Haply thou wilt say, I gather then that prayers and virtuous deeds are all in vain ; God takes too little interest in them to be affected by them. And yet they say God likes to be entreated upon all occasions. .Now mark, and realize if possible, that in his first eternal glance (if a first glance may be assumed), God saw all things as they would happen and he saw in that same glance both when and how he would make creatures. He saw the humblest prayer that would be offered, the least good deed that anyone would do and saw withal which prayers and which devotions he would hear. He saw that to-morrow thou shalt call upon him earnestly, urgently entreating him ; and not for the first time to-morrow will God grant thy supplication and thy prayer : he has granted it already in his eternity ere ever thou becamest man. Suppose thy prayer is foolish or lacking earnestness, God will deny it thee not then, he has denied it thee already in his eternity. Thus God, who has seen everything in that first eternal glance, in no wise acts from any why at all, for everything is a foregone conclusion.

And though God docs stay all the while in motionless detachment yet are men’s prayers and virtuous works not all in vain, he who does well being well rewarded. As Philippiis says, ‘ God creator holds all things in the course and order he has given them from the beginning.’ With him nothing is past and nothing future, who has loved all his saints even as he foresaw them ere ever the world became. Yet when there come to pass in time the things he speculated in eternity then people think that God has changed his mind, though whether he be wrathful or benignant it is wc who change and he remains the same ; just as the sunshine hurts weak eyes and benefits the strong ones what time the light itself remains unchanged. God does not see in time nor is his outlook subject to renewal. Isodorus argues in this sense in his book on the Arch-Good. lie says, People arc always asking what God did before he created the heavens and the earth and whence there came to God the new will to make creatures ? His answer is that no new will at all arose in God ; for what though creature was not in itself as it is now yet it was from eternity in God and in his mmd. God did not make the heavens and the earth as we should say, man -fashion, ‘ Let them be ! ’ but creatures arc all spoken in his eternal Word. Moses said to God, ‘ Lord, if Pharaoh ask me who thou art, what am I to say ? ’ And God replied, ‘ Say, He-who-is hath sent me.’ Or in other words, He who is unchanging in himself, he it is hath sent me.

Here someone may object. But was Christ in motionless detachment when he cried, ‘ My soul is sorrowful even unto death ! ’ Or Mary when she stood beneath his cross ? yet much is said about her lamentations. How is all this compatible with motionless detachment ? — Know then, that according to philosophers there are in everyone two men : one, the outward man, is his objective nature ; this man is served by the five senses, albeit he is energised by the power of the soul. The other one, the inner man, is man’s subjective nature. Now I would have you know that the Godly-minded man employs his soul-powers in his outward man no more than his five senses really need it ; and his interior man only has recourse to the five senses so far as it is guide and keeper to these five senses and can stop them being put to bestial uses as they so often are by those who live according to the baser appetites, as do the mindless beasts, and who deserve the name of beast rather than that of man. What surplus energy she has beyond what she expends on her five senses the soul bestows upon her inner man, and supposing he has toward some right high endeavour she will call in all the powers she has loaned to the five senses and then the man is said to be senseless and rapt away, his object being either some unintelligible form or some formless intelligible. Remember, God requires every spiritual man to love him with all the powers of his soul. ‘ Thou shalt love the I^ord thy God with all thy heart,’ he says. Some squander all their soul-powers on their outward man. Namely, those whose thoughts and feelings hinge on temporal goods, all unwitting of an inner man. And even as the virtuous man will now and then deprive his outward self of all the powers of the soul what time he is embarking on some high adventure, so bestial man will rob his inner self of all its soul-powers to expend them on his outer man. Withal it must be realized that the outward man is able to be active and leave the inward man entirely passive and unmoved. Now in Christ too existed an outward and an inward man and also in our Lady, and what Christ and our Lady said concerning outward things was prompted by their outward man, the inner man remaining in motionless detachment. So was it when Christ said, ‘ My soul is sorrowful unto death.’ And despite her lamentations and various things she said. Our Lady, in her inner man, stood all the while in motionless detachment. Take an illustration. The d^r goes to and fro upon its hinges. Now the projecting door I liken to the outwafd^man and the hinge I liken to the inner man. As it shuts and opens the door swings to and fro while the hinge remains unmoved in the same place without undergoing any change. And likewise here.