Sermons and Treatises of Meister Eckhart

The profound Gospel of St John begins : in principio erat verhum^ that is to say : ‘ In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’ He who would grasp the interpretation of these abstruse writings of St John, which with God’s help I shall unfold, let him turn his mind from created things and from his own understanding, that being illumined by God’s spirit he may apprehend the meaning I shall give to these dark sayings. To start with, I premise from his words, ‘ in the beginning,’ a beginning without beginning. In God’s name I proceed. In the beginning was the Word : in the source of the effulgent formal light of rational creature and in the origin of its radiance the Word subsisted as the perfect Word, perfect in its wordless potentiality, and this wordless word was with God. This gives me a hint of some distinction, the word being with God. Now bring your best intelligence to bear on this. When the bound word of the Persons’ unity remained unuttered by the omnipotent intellect, then the Word, suspended in its divine origin transcended all words and names. When it was with God in the providential light dawning devoid of the created universe, then God was manifest to the world. Wherefore I, Meistcr Eekhart, do affirm : as soon as God was he created the world, the world being with God distinct in name. Whereas God in his motionless power was free from God and every name, God was the unspoken word in the bottomless abyss of his divine nature wherein the Word as such did never throughly understand itself. A thing that understands itself waxes and wanes in the act of understanding, but this word does not wax or wane, it is unchanging in itself, so it has never understood itself in itself albeit it is the intellect of the Father. It was in the beginning of the new procession of the Son that that the Son proceeded forth into the time of natural images united with the word ever-abiding in the paternal source. This same Word wrought its entire work of nature after the fashion of a person, humanly, and the bound Word itself energises in the Father in his characteristic nature, this same word being eternally immanent by nature. And. such

being the nature of the Word it is therefore permissible to say, ‘ In the beginning was the Word.* I will now give the psychic interpretation, which whosoever cannot understand let him go to the truth for enlightenment. In the beginning of the divine nature the soul is seeking herself above the points of time. Cast into the abysmal naught of the divine nature, her receptivity all gone, her portion in her felicity is the perfect naught that distinguishes her from creatures generally. As our Lord says, ‘ Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ But were it that the soul could know God with his own peculiar nature she would be loving something above God. Accordingly I say, that this word subsisting in the essential activity of the divine nature is the soul wholly deprived of receptivity, for with this she would be loving herself and all she is with a personal nature. So she may properly aflirm herself to be the work of God in the beginning where, albeit she is formless, she is expressing form. But the form she gets from God is gotten by the sealing in the soul of God’s own nature. In the beginning of her nothingness was the word and the word was with God as Son and the Word was God.

He goes on to say, ‘ The same was in the beginning with God.* Mark, I have jxist said, ‘ In the beginning was the Word.’ Now 1 say, ‘ and the Word was in the beginning with God.’ From these cryptic statements it appears that the Word was with God in the beginning. Now 1 suggest an obvious rational meaning. ‘ The word was in the beginning with God.’ 1 say, in the principle of paternity this same principle is to the Father the source of his entire Godhead, personal and essential, of Son and Spirit. ^ St John says, ‘ The word was in the beginning with God.’ Since there is in the Father an outpouring of his causeless divinity into the Word of his Son, this must occur in the paternal mind when, looking upon himself in the light of his abiding intellect, he perceives himself in the answering reflection in his divine essence ; or, in other words, the conception of the Word is God. Moreover by this reflection of his divine nature the intellect of the Father fashions or utters itself in imitation of his nature. So the Word is Son and it is in the divine substance, to wit, in the intellectual reflection of the Father, that occurs this birth of the Word proceeding, thus it is one in essence and distinct in Person. Hence we may say : ‘ The same was in the beginning with God ’ ; and because introspection and reflection of the divine nature are involved in its continuous thinking of itself, therefore this birth is eternal. For if once this reflection were to stop, if mental holiday, inertia, should once supervene, there would remain one God without distinction of Persons. Thus the Word of the

Father subsists eternally in its parental origin. Thereby it is ever being conceived and being born and born. The same was in the father-principle with God as distinct Person. This may well stand in lieu of my forhier explanations of the passage, ‘ In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.’ This is now fully explained. Next come the words, ‘ All things were made by him and without him was not anything made.’ Examine this carefully. Granting that all things were made by him and that without him nothing was made, then supposing someone asks me, ‘ Can God do anything without me seeing, that all things were made by him and without him was not anything made ? ’ I answer. No. God made all things with me standing in the groundless ground of God ; God made all things through me while I stood in him idle. While the Father was performing the act peculiar to his nature I was standing right in the gate through which all things return perfectly free to their supreme felicity. As our Lord said,

‘ Father, to know thee one true God and only Son, that is eternal life.’ If life eternal be aught beside the rational soul I have no knowledge of it. To return. Since I was lying dormant in the personal nature of the Father when he created creatures as a whole in his own nature, it follows that I was working with him ; I was the work of God wherein he wrought all things as giver, I being then conscious in my Personal nature of co-operating with the divine nature in this divine process. All the while I was working with him I was resting in God’s nature exactly as I was in God before I was created. God made the universe and I with him, standing as I did all undefined albeit substantial in the Father. Observe further, ‘ All things were made by him.’ If everything was made by him and without him nothing was made, then I affirm there is a power in the soul centred in the perennial now in the paternal heart and in the nature of God ; nor does it differ from the essential nature of God save in being the ereated image of God, as one saint observes : ‘ What the soul cannot conceive by nature can never be hers by grace.’ Like corn-seed dropped into the ground and lost to view, even so the seed or spark in the soul is shed from the essential nature of the Father, and is shining back into the incomprehensible essence, into that wherein the soul conceives superintelligibly, beatifically. There, in beatific mode, bereft of life and power, she returns to the uncreated good where, robbed of every faculty, she is the image in the Trinity, as our Lord said, ‘ Father, make them one with us.’ And when my soul, doffing her beatific habit, is buried in the paternal

field, in the living vine, as the gospel says : when in this sense I lose myself and come into my own as the rightful Son, then I with God do make all things and the Word is in the beginning with God. Take the next words, ‘ and without him was not anything made.’ I offer this interpretation of them. In all rational creatures I find the quest of God. They forge ahead according to the time and will bestowed upon it. But without him nothing is accomplished, in those creatures namely who, even as the brutes, stop at their outward powers ; their mental works are worthless, lacking as they do the divine light and spiritual freedom which gives them permanence. Christ says, ‘ What my heavenly Father planted not shall be plucked up, yea by the very roots.* That is all I want to say about this passage. Take the next, ‘ What was made, in him was the life.’ To see what this means, turn 0 yc blessed and commune with the understanding of your uncreated intellect. ‘ What was made, in him was the life.’ In this eternal procession, wherein all things proceeded forth without themselves, they were now ; but in time they were created from nothing and their life is in him. Thereof they are the creatures, the effect of that cause, the patent of his power resplendent in luminous detail. Thus we came forth into time ; but the revelation of himself to himself is in his eternal procession where the knower is the same as what is known, to wit, the eternal emanation which is the Son from the Father, in whom all things flow forth. Thus what was made was the life in him.

Look you. All rational creatures proceeded from God alike, wherefore I say : all things participate in every intelleetual mode. I hold that in her abstract understanding every rational soul knows the uncreated image which is her life. Now if my life and the life of all creatures is in God, I ask then. Can God know himself in me without my soul ? I answer, No. Man knows heat apart from the fire and light apart from the sun but God cannot know himself without the soul. And why ? Because the soul is the out-flowing stream of the eternal deity and she is sealed in the image of the blessed Trinity. By this she knows she is God’s creation. Therein I know the love of the divine fire whereby rational creatures are illumined. I say ; as the Father made me naked and free that I might stay and make my home in the groundless ground of the innermost heart of the Godhead, even so my soul must be utterly despoiled if I am to be beatified with God. As St Paul observes, ‘ He who is joined to God is one spirit with him.’ The Father cannot know himself without me, seeing that I stand in the ground of his eternal deity wherein his whole incomprehensible work is wrought with me and what is compre-

hended that I am. By which I mean the light of the divine Sun, the universal life-giver, therefore I see that God cannot know himself without me. ‘ The life was the light of men,’ St John says. Now realize the marvellous significance of this. What I say is : the life which is the light of men is man himself understanding (conceiving) himself in the wonder of the primordial power of the Father, in the leaping forth of his mysterious naught, in the blinding light of his indwelling Word brought forth in eternal creation, albeit the uncreated nature of the nameless essence. It is his nature and his wont, with perfectly receptive understanding, to take the incomprehensible essence for his own nature whereby the wonders of the negating naught are revealed to him, the night of the mind becoming bright like noon in the light of his pure primitive perfection and his distinct ineffable perfections shine out as clear as day. As David says, ‘ The truth shall not be hidden from thee and thy night shall be as light as day.’ And as his light is so is his enlightenment for in the naked essence man knows himself even as he is known. Which knowing, our Lord said, ‘ I am the door of my sheep-fold.’ In these words he invites us to enter by the door of his emanation and return into the source whence we came forth, for this gives promise in us of something more than is afforded by the soul’s beatitude.

Haply thou wilt say, ‘ Good Brother, if the life is become the light of men enabling them to know themselves as they are known, is it then possible for me to know myself the very Son of God ? ’ I answer and say, that the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, is so £d:tached to the Father’s nature that never for an instant docs he quit the paternal mode of deity. He wrought his whole work in that nature and into that nature which gives being to all things and he did so freely, in absolute idleness, for no reason at all. Here, bound to human nature, I have to work above nature freely, in absolute idleness or motionless quiet, so as not to be hindered by myself and by my personal nature and by things which are conditioned by time and temporalities ; for to know all things in the cause of their existence I must soar beyond all lights, temporal and eternal, and plunge into the causeless essence which gives mind and being to my soul. Drowned in this being, aware of self and things merely as being, my soul has lost her name and there remains no nature but that which, in the Father, is eternally in travail with the Son and as such I am a new man born in his nature and doing all I do supernaturally in the divine nature. As our Lord said, ‘ When I am lifted up I will draw all things after me.’ So I being lifted up with all my powers into the uncreated good do be with Christ one body and with God one

spirit and do draw all things to me in one pure, perfect nature. As the gospel says, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’ Knowing myself none other than the Son of God, in that same sonship I am cast into my middle power and that in the perennial now, thus the eternal Word is born in me unceasingly, as our Lord says, ‘ Father, glorify thy Son.* In this interpretation lies the explanation of the words, ‘ How hardly does the rich man enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Christ says in effect that the life is none other than the naked spark alight within the soul, which in the groundless Godhead knows itself none but God ; to wit, the light which in rational creatures is splendid with the truth. I might give another meaning but I fear ye could not follow it. To continue : ‘ The light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not.’ I make no comment here save to lament to the eternal truth what numbers fail to realize the high perfection, the deep happiness, glowing unseen within the soul. Christ says, ‘ Blessed be the eyes which see the things ye see.’ He did not mean our bodily eyes, he meant those eyes, twin powers of the soul, set in her mind. As the gospel says, ‘ There was a man sent from God whose name was John.’ Verily, be they male or female, these souls are John, for John denotes the grace of God. What is grace ? There is a power in the soul which is idle and does no work ; this is none other than the image of God, not that grace is itself this image, it is its form which reforms and transfigures the soul ; and in this re-formation wherein she has no form, in this transformation in which she has all forms, the omniform form, there is this quiet the soul has, she being self-contained because the truth is in her : not as hers nor as a quality. As Christ said, ‘ He that enjoyeth me liveth eternally.’ Such an one is sent from God but is not God-forsaken. Christ says, ‘ He that sent me sendeth me not alone, he sendeth also every one that doeth the will of my Father.’

There are four signs to tell a man that he is sent from God. First, that in time he is superior to time and temporalities. Secondly, being therein he is detached from creatures. The third is, that he is idle or quiet-minded. The fourth is, that he is not changeable by nature. Christ said, ‘ 1 am that I am.’ Possessing these a man may take it that he is sent from God and his name is John for he is the grace of God itself. Hence Paul’s words, ‘ God is my soul’s new form wherein she is formless.’ Pass on to the next. ‘ He came to bear witness to the light that all might believe in him.’ Examine this carefully. The words are open to a purely figurative interpretation. Just as he (John) bore witness to the light of the divine unity concealed in Christ in order that all might believe in him, so forerunning intuition tells the soul of insight into the innermost recesses of the mind where shines the spark which knows itself none other than the uncreated good of the ineffable Deity. Then the soul with all her powers acknowledges and affirms the Son eternally in the Father and eternally born of the Father who is without beginning. As Christ said, ‘ Whoso heareth my Word and keepeth it liveth forever.’

Now take this in another sense. I will put a question and answer it myself : What reference has this to the true light ? Look you. There is a power in the soul called mind, God sent it with the soul, it is her storehouse of incorporeal forms and intellectual notions. This soul-capacity the Father fashions in his outflowing divinity whereby all the words of his divine essence flow into the word in our mind in distinction of Person just as memory pours out treasure of images into the powers of the soul. When the soul sees in this power the form of a rational creature, an angel’s or her own form, the idea of the Father is clearly impressed in the soul angelically. But on penetrating deeper, into the very centre of the soul, intellect finds God there in this power face to face, and in this capacity, if she recollect herself to contemplate the vision of God in her, there wakes another power of the soul called understanding and the eternal Word is born, conceived by the soul while subsisting eternal in the Father, . these two powers forming one amicable disposition which gives ; direction to the intellect and is its will towards its source. When th€ spirit is flowing from the Father and the Son into this power and into all the powers she has, the soul, oriented to God, grows cognisant of his image as her eternal prototype in God and she ; perceives too how the holy Trinity is sealed in her. Thus the energies of the soul all bear witness to the light of the blessed Trinity that gives light to all mankind and they acknowledge and affirm and believe in the Son born in this man without ceasing. As the gospel says, ‘ He was not the light but bare witness to the light.’

Mark what follows. ‘ That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.’ Throw wide now the ears of understanding to catch the arcane meaning of the boundary between created and uncreated light which is plainly indicated in St John’s words, ‘ That was the true light.’ Taking the name John to mean the light of grace, as said above, then I propose to show what may be rightly termed * the true light that lighteth every man,’ which we receive direct. I distinguish five lights. The first is devilish light, the second natural light, the third is angelic light, the fourth is spiritu^ light, the fifth is divine light. Mark carefully how these five lights differ. The first or devilish light leads all astray from the truth. This can be seen in cases where the outward man is not entirely in sympathy with the inward man. Supposing then .that the inward man is sunk into his inner mind, where the eternal Word is born in the perennial now, the sudden shock of seeing the outward man pictured in the uncertain, fluctuating light of time, will distort the light of his understanding and stop the eternal birth from taking place. This shows it to be devilish light and it behoves you therefore to turn away from it to the peace and quiet of your higher mind. By this means Mary in her virginity, being enlightened by the Holy Ghost, contrived to shun ideas of temporal things and thus, transcending time, to harmonise her inner and her outer man into one settled calm, quite free from images, and this shows you the difference between this devilish light and the divine light.

The second light is natural light. The line of demarcation between natural light and the divine light comes where soul sees spirit direct in very truth. Thinking in natural light, in random images, human nature is changing, waxing and waning, sensible of weal and woe, as Christ shows by his death and passion. But when human nature is face to face with her proper self she is reflected into the divine nature. I ask then, does the soul in this natural light remain changeless in time ? I say, no. That is a supertemporal state of union with the divine light and by the grace of God. Being drawn or caught up into the suavity of the indwelling spirit of God, the soul loves universal human nature as her own nature, as God has been loving it eternally, where this nature is set over time in the light of glory. Apart from this light, this man has the natural light of indwelling grace and at the point where he expresses the idea everything in this light of nature must needs fade away out of time, as I have said. Even so Mary was changeless by nature inasmuch as she was free from sinful accidents in the idea of her created nature wherein she knew and loved all mankind. Here ye have the difference between the light of nature in time and light of that nature beyond time in eternal glory. To me it proves that all creatures are one man, loving God by nature.

The third light is angelic light. Now you must know that every individual angel is always open to any ideas that he may choose, one more than another according to the idiosyncrasy of his angelic nature. Their stability is not impaired thereby provided they know and will and love in idleness. This uncreated understanding Lucifer had, and if Lucifer in his creaturehood had seen into the light of nature, if his creature nature had veered round in his angelic nature to his formless divine nature, he would never have fallen from the truth. As Isaiah observes, ‘ The angelic light in man is the means.’ In the divine light the soul is not subject to ideas nor can any shape appear to her now that she knows, with knowledge that transcends the soul’s, of the inearnation of the Word. Even so Mary, aloof in absolute purity of mind and body, knew creatures as a whole in super-angelic light and her mind conceiving no form save the unformed form of God, she knew herself to be the ornament of God not fashioned in the form of any creature. Wherefore she cried, ‘ My spirit hath rejoiced in God my saviour.’ The fourth light is spiritual light, which is moreover the medium of the light of grace in the mind. In this light of the spirit ye know how to order things in your mind with a view to the contemplation and enjoyment of the groundless essence in your soul. Absorbed therein ye are aware that the divine deep transcends the highest height of creatures. Why, I ask, was Peter oblivious of himself upon the mountain when Christ was transfigured before his three disciples ? I answer, that the spiritual light of his mind was eclipsed by interior vision of the divine light : he forgot his own form on perceiving himself in this glory as the reflection ever streaming back to its paternal source. By formlessly apprehending in itself the bound Word whereto Christ knew himself united, he was taking the Christ-image for his own image. Howbeit he was not ravished into the divine light of the perfect intellect but he was caught up into the spiritual light of its reflection shinifig back into its actual self. Beyond this spiritual light Mary was ravished when at the annunciation she conceived the Word in the word begotten according to the love of men.

The fifth light is divine light. Therein stood Mary always, bearing her gracious child. But Christ was born of her bodily. This birth transcends all sense and reason and whoso is rapt away into this unveiled light perceives himself none other than that essence wherein God has his being, his very Godhead. An we would bear with Mary this eternal Word we must be caught up past the four lights into this fifth where we are ever giving birth to God in spirit as Mary bare him in the flesh. To continue. ‘ He was in the world and the world knew him not,’ vide what was said above anent the difference between created and uncreated light. I say, this means in the world of his providential knowledge. What time the world was in the Father as uncreated essence, his light, his flowing intellect to wit, was shining on this world-stuff wherein the world subsisted in the Father in uncreated formless simplicity. But in its first eruption the world leaps forth manifold albeit this multiplicity is one essentially. In this eruption this world was self-luminous light. Mark a second interpretation of the words, ‘ He was in the world and the world was made by him.* By this world I understand none other than the divine man. See how this divine light may be called the world. I say, man has within his soul the power of being all creatures, stones, trees and all the rest of them, and that in this same potentiality his mind has gotten the universal prototype of creatures discriminately. So within the ambit of her five senses the soUl compares with rational and irrational creatures. In this sense the soul has gotten both the form and matter, the rational and irrational natures of creature generally. In this sense all things were made in man. And by the same token, before God made everything as such, hell, purgatory, everything, was God : this man is the world this light was in, this is the world that was made by him. John says, ‘ All things were made by him and without him was not anything made.’ From which I can only gather that multitudinous man too is the world, to wit the world of darkness which comprehended not the light referred to in Christ’s words, ‘ I am the light of the world and whoso walkcth in me walketh not in darkness.’ Here our Lord is inviting rational men to follow his example.

He goes on to say, ‘ He came into his own and his own received him not.’ This refers to Christ and I apply it to the individual soul as well. He is come into his own and his own have neither known him nor accepted him. I say : whatever is found in Christ’s nature is found in the highest power of the soul, therefore God is man’s own, but his own is not received by him. I refer to the intellectual five senses. Clearly we have a parable of this in the woman at the well to whom Christ said, ‘ Show me thy husband.’ The woman answered, ‘ I have no husband.’ Christ said, ‘ Thou sayest truly : thou hast had five husbands and him whom thou now hast is not really thy husband.’ I take it that her interests had lain in her five senses. Christ’s words, ‘ him whom thou now hast is not really thy husband,’ I interpret to mean that she was neglecting the intellect she had so it was no true man to her. When God comes sensibly to the soul, which is his own, he is received by what is not his own, to wit the outward senses and inward faculties of the soul. When God is conceived by the soul insensibly then we can say, ‘ our abode is in heaven.’ This passage is clear in the light of the foregoing.

I Brother John, propound two questions. They concern the statement, ‘ But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become God’s sons, even to them that believe in his name.’ r ask in the first place, does the power to become God’s sons lie with us or with God ? In the second I ask, what name do we believe in ? My answers are briefly as follows. To start with it must be borne in mind that God is without will, without love, without justice, without mercy, nay without divinity or anything we can ascribe to him or predicate of him or attribute to him (for any good attributed to God or predicated of him simply reduces God to naught), so it is with the soul that lies the power, the ability to make this her own will ; in her real will she is incapable of stooping to anything opposed to the nature of that will, and at the point where God and spirit vanish, in that same point I am the Son of God, begotten of God eternally according to Christ’s words, ‘ I am the only-begotten Son of God,’ for I am free from self in all crcaturehood. Where 1 am God is and where God is I am and our joint love is God and he who dwells in this love dwells in God and God in him. Then mine is the highest angel God has in heaven, as much as he is God’s, by whose power and by whose might we make ourselves God’s sons, for he empowers us with himself, penetrating the will of the soul even as Father and Son permeate their common Spirit. That is the answer to the first question to the best of my knowledge at present.

Now to answer the second question : What divine name do we believe in ? That is written in the gospel in Christ’s words, ‘ Father, this is eternity or eternal life, to believe in thee the true God, i.e, truly as God.’ Truth is God, and love, as truly as God is God. If God is free from names then, I durst not think I have the name of Henry nor of Conrad nor of Ulric for by adding anything to God I block him with an idol ; but he who believes in the name of God rejoices in the universal name, to wit the divine name which we believe in. In this unfathomable light of faith, faith makes us of multitudinous knowledge ignorant, of multitudinous will without volition, in multitudinous form unshapen. And so with the prophet, ‘ I say, ye are Gods.’ Believing in the name of God we are God’s sons. If anyone is able to give a better answer to these two questions I would fain hear it. (He goes on to say, ‘ Which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man ’) for flesh and blood and human will unconquered cannot possess the kingdom of heaven till they are born again in God. This is quite clear, the meaning is patent to all. But I desire to speak briefly on the subject of manhood,

I say : the highest power of the soul is the man, her will namely, which always stands bare and uncovered. The second power is intellect, the woman, who is always veiled, and the lower is raised up to the higher. Now when the power we call the man, i,e. the will, is joined to the power we called the woman, the intellect, that IS t6 say, then the woman brings forth fruit in the perennial now. When the male is parted from the female power man’s will is wavering in false light. The apostle truly says, ‘ the Word was made flesh.’ The manhood of Christ as seeing in[to God] has a reflection in the Father’s personal nature. In the groundless substance of the Godhead human nature stands perfectly steady, gazing down in the transcendent light for love of creatures. Thus divine and human nature are atoned in human nature. And by the same token, even if Adam had not fallen yet would Christ have been made man by reason of the love proceeding which is ever being born in eternity in the divine nature and was bound to become man in Christ owing to the idiosyncrasy of that nature which flowed for aye out of the groundless ground of God. The smallest spark falling from out the least and lowest of the angels would illuminate and outshine this world and it would dim the brightest lights of human and angelic nature did it shine next to God. So Christ restores human nature not angelic nature. As his divinity lay hid in his humanity when ‘ the Word was made flesh ’ in him, so let us hide our human nature in his divine nature in that same Word which was incarnate. By living the Christ life more than my own life I am Christ rather than myself and my proper name is Christ rather than James or John, and so this befall beyond time I am changed into God.

Now listen to another meaning, the incarnation of the Word in the sacrament. Just as he made his body in the sacrament by word and knowledge and took and gave it to his disciples idly, without motion or passion, that is to say, nor was this sacrament consummated by knowledge alone but by words as well, even so I observe that in the highest power of the soul, corresponding to the Father-nature, intellect begat itself in the image of Divinity to smite into this Word as perfect will and in the groundless love of this same will the Holy Ghost was gotten in the Word with this same intellect. And still this birth is ever going on in the sacrament to those who arc Christ properly so called : these people are true priests and in the truth, for their going is above the angels and they are not to be touched by temporal things. As Christ said to Mary Magdalene, ‘ Touch me not for I am risen,* so verily these souls are risen with Christ. God gives himself freely, idly, as he gave himself to his disciples in token of the love which works the same in us, and those who take this sacrament as freely and resignedly and unselfhindered, do receive it as really as the giver gives it and he who takes it otherwise does not wholly and solely resign him to the truth. When in the sacrament I receive God from God thus supersacramentally, I am actually changed into the same that I receive, thus the Word is made

flesh and dwells among us mystically and wherever this is realized there is the proof of the divine spark, moreover I ma]k^ bold to say, were anyone prepared for outward food as for the sacrament he would receive God as much as in the sacrament ; which is to many people a hard saying albeit quite consistent with the truth, for the gift prepares for its own reception and I should be the thing prepared for that which has prepared me. St John says, ‘ We have his glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.’ From which I gather that anyone who knows the joys of the divine life is shining within and without like the only Son of God, as St Paul says, ‘ I live not but Christ liveth in me in his love.’ Consider what is meant by sons of God and children of God. To be God’s children in the sense that he created us is not enough. For instance. If I paint my likeness on the wall, he who sees the likeness is not seeing me ; but anyone who sees me sees my likeness and not my likeness merely but my child. If I really knew my soul, anyone who saw my conception of it would say it was my son for I share therewith my energy and nature, and as here so is it in the Godhead. The Father understands himself perfectly clearly so there appears to him his image, that is to say, his Sou, The Father is light, the Son is light and image and the Holy Ghost also is light and image and inasmuch as the Father imagines (or conceives) his Son he is called Son and inasmuch as he endows him with his nature he is called his child. Likewise that man is the image of God who, being detached from things, is living as spirit in the spirit of God and such have glory and honour as the only Son of God full of grace and truth of the reflection of God, and really containing and possessing God in them ; thus the kingdom of God is within us.

Here endeth the Commentary on this Gospel. King David said : ‘ Lord in thy light shall we see light.’ Doctors debate as to the medium in which we shall see God. The common doctrine is that it will be in the light of glory. But this solution appears to me to be unsound and untenable. From time to time I have explained that man has within him a light called the active intellect : this is the light in which man will see God in bliss, so they seek to prove. Now man according to his creaturely nature is in great imperfection and is unable by nature ' See Preger, Oeachichte der deutachen Myatiker^ vol. i, p. 484. to discern God otherwise than as creatures do, by images and forms, as I have elsewhere demonstrated. The soul is unable of herself and by her own innate power to transcend this state ; that must happen in some supernatural power such as the light of grace. Mark this solution which I will now proceed to discuss. St Paul says : ^ By God’s grace 1 am that I am.’ He does not say that he is ‘ of grace.’ There is a difference between being by grace and being grace itself. Doctors declare that form gives being to matter. Now there are various definitions of grace current among them. But I say grace is nothing else than the flowing light proceeding direct from God’s nature into the soul : a supernatural form of the soul which gives her a supernatural nature. This is what I had in mind when I stated that the soul was unable of herself to transcend her own natural activity ; this she can do in the powder of grace which endows her with a supernatural nature.

Observe, grace effects nothing by itself. Moreover it exalts the soul above activity, (irace is bestowed in the essence of the soul and is received into her powers ; for if the soul is to effect anything in this matter, she must needs have grace by virtue of which to transcend her own activities such as knowing and loving. Whilst the soul is in process of taking this transcendental flight out of herself into the nothingness of herself and her own activity, she is ‘ by grace ’ ; she is grace wdien she has accomplished this transcendental passage and has overcome herself and now stands in her pure virginity alone, conscious of nothing but of behaving after the manner of God. As God lives, while the soul is still capable of knowing and acting after the manner of her creaturcliness and as a child of nature, she has not become grace itself though she may well be by grace. For to be grace itself the soul must be as destitute of activity, inw^ard and outward, as grace is, which knows no activity. St John says : ‘ To us is given grace for grace,’ for to become grace by grace is the work of grace. The supreme function of grace is to reduce the soul to what it is itself. Grace robs the soul of her own activity ; grace robs the soul of her own nature. In this supernatural flight the soul transcends her natural light which is a creature and comes into immediate touch with God.

Now I w^ould have you understand me. I am going to give an explanation I have never given before. The worthy Dionysius says : ‘ When God exists not for the spirit there exists not for it either the eternal image, its eternal origin.’ I have said before and say again that God has wrought one act eternally in which act he made the soul in his own [likeness], and out of which act and by means of which act the soul issued forth into her created existence, becoming unlike God and estranged from h€l^own prototype, and in her creation she made God, who was not before the soul was made. At various times I have declared : I am the cause that God is God. God is gotten of the soul, his Godhead of himself; before creatures were, God was not God albeit he was Godhead which he gets not from the soul. Now when God finds a naughted soul whose self and whose activity have been brought to naught by means of grace, God works his eternal work in her above grace, raising her out of her created nature. Here God naughts himself in the soul and then neither God nor soul is left. Be sure that this is God indeed. When the soul is capable of conceiving God’s work she is in the state of no longer having any God at all ; the soul is then the eternal image as which God has always seen her, his eternal Word. When, therefore, St Dionysius says that God no longer exists for the spirit, he means what I have just explained.

Now it may be asked whether the soul as here seen in the guise of the eternal image is the light meant by David wherein we shall see eternal light ? We answer, no. Not in this light will the soul sec the eternal light that shall beatify her ; for, says the worthy Dionysius, ‘neither will the eternal image exist for the spirit.’ What' he means is that, when the spirit has accomplished its transcendental flight, its creaturely nature is brought to naught, whereby it loses God as I have already explained, and then the soul, in the eternal image, breaks through the eternal image into the essential image of the Father. Thus saith the Scriptures : ‘ Everything flows back in the soul into the Father who is the beginning of the eternal Word and of all creatures.’ It may be questioned whether this is the light, the Father namely, in which the spirit sees the eternal light ? I answer, no. Now mark my words. God works and has created all things ; the Godhead docs not work, it knows nothing of creation. In my eternal prototype the soul is God for there God works and my soul has equality with the Father, for my eternal prototype, which is the Son in the Godhead, is in all respects equal with the Father. One scripture says : ‘ Naught is equal with God ; to be equal with God, then, the soul must be naught.’ That interpretation is just. We would say, however : where there is equality there is no unity for equal is a privation of unity ; and where there is unity there is no equality for equality resides in multiplicity and separation. Where there is equality there cannot be unity.. ^ 1 am not equal to myself. I am the same as myself. Hence the Son in the Godhead, inasmuch as he is Son, is equal with the Father but he is not one with the Father. There

is no equality where Father and Son are one ; that is, in the unity of the divine essence. In this unity the Father knows no Son nor does the Son know any Father, for there there is neither Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost. When the soul enters into the Son, her eternal prototype wherein she is equal with the Father, then, breaking through her eternal prototype, she, with the Son, transcends equality and possesses unity with the three Persons in the unity of the essence. David says : ‘ Lord in thy light shall we see light,’ that is : in the light of the impartible divine essence shall we sec the divine essence and the whole ])crfection of the divine essence as revealed in the variety of the Persons and the unity of their nature. St Paul says : ‘ We shall be changed from one brightness into the other and shall become like unto him,’ meaning : we shall be changed from created light into the uncreated splendour of the divine nature and shall become like it ; that is, we shall be that it is. St John says : ‘ All things live in him.’ In that the Father contemplates the Son all creatures take living shape in the Son, that being the real life of creatures. Put in another passage St John says : ‘ Blessed are the dead that have died in God.’ — It seems passing strange that it should be possible to die in him who himself said that he is the life ! — But see : the soul, breaking through her eternal prototype, is plunged in the absolute nothingness of her eternal prototype. This is the death of the spirit ; for dying is nothing but deprivation of life. When the soul realizes that any thing throws her eternal prototype into separation and negation of unity, the spirit puts its own self to death to its eternal prototype, and breaking through its eternal prototype remains in the unity of the divine nature. These are the blessed dead that are dead in God. No one can be buried and beatified in the Godhead who has not died to God, that is, in his eternal prototype, as I have explained.

Our creed says : Christ rose from the dead : Christ rose out of God into the Godhead, into the unity of the divine essence. That is to say that Christ’s soul and all rational souls, being dead to their exemplar, rise from that divine death to taste the joys above it, namely the riches of the divine natqrc wherein the spirit is beatified. Now consider the fact of happiness. God is happy in himself; and all creatures, which God must make happy, will be so in the same happiness that God is happy in, and after the same fashion that he is happy. Be sure that in this unity the spirit transcends every mode, even its own eternal being, and everything created as well as the equality which, in the eternal image, it has with the Father, and together with the Father soars up into the unity of the divine nature where God conceives himself in absolute simplicity. There, in that act, the spirit is no longer creature, it is the same as happiness itself, the nature and substance of the Godhead, the beatitude of its own self and of all creatures. Further, I hold that if God did what he is impotent to do, granted the soul while still a creature the knowledge and enjoyment of actual beatitude^ then, were the soul to be and to remain happy, it were impossible for God to remain God. Anyone in heaven knowing the saints according to their happiness, would not have anything to say of any saint but only of God ; for happiness is God and all those who are happy arc, in the act of happiness, God and the divine nature and substance of God. St Paul says : ‘ He who being naught, thinketh himself aught, deceiveth himself.’ In the act of happiness he is brought to naught and no creaturehood exists for him. As the worthy Dionysius says : ‘ Lord lead me to where thou art a nothingness,’ meaning : lead me, Lord, to where thou transcendest every created intellect ; for as St Paul declares : ‘ God dwells in a light that no man can approach unto ’ ; that is : God is not to be discerned in any created light whatever.

St Dionysius says : ‘ God is nothing,’ and this is also implied by St Augustine when he says : ‘ God is everything,’ meaning : nothing is God’s. So that by saying ‘ God is nothing ’ Dionysius signifies that there is no thing in his presence. It follows that the spirit must advance beyond things and thingliness, shape and shapenness, existence and existences : then will dawn in it the actuality of happiness which is the essential possession of the actual intellect. I ^ave sometimes said that man sees God in this life in the same perfection and is happy in the same perfect fashion as in the life to come. Many people are astonished at this. Let us try therefore to understand what it means. Real intellect emanates from the eternal truth as intelligence and contains in itself intelligibly all that God contains. This noble divinity, the active intellect, conceives itself in itself after the manner of God in its emanation, and in its essential content it is downright God ; but it is creature according to the motion of its nature. This intellect is to the full as noble in us now as in the after life.

Now the question may be asked : How then does this life differ from the life to come ? I answer that, this intellect which is happy in exactly the same way as God is, is at present latent in us. In this life we know God only according to potentiality . In the after life, when we are quit of body, our pptentiality will be all transfigured into the act of happiness which belongs to the active intellect. This transfiguration will render the fact of happiness no more perfect than it is now ; for active intellect has no accidents nor any capacity to receive more than it contains innately. It follows that when wc are beatified we shall be completely deprived of potentiality and shall conceive happiness only actually, after the manner of the divine nature. As David says : ‘ Lord in tliy light shall we see light ’ : with the divine nature we shall conceive the perfection of the divine nature, which alone is our entire felicity, here in grace and there in perfect happiness. THIS IS MEISTER ECKHART FROM WHOM GOD NOTHING HID Meister Eckhart said in a sermon. The work wrought by God in the God-loving soul which he finds empty and detaclied enough for him to bring himself to spiritual birth in her, this work, he said, gives God greater pleasure than any w^ork he ever did with any creature and is far nobler than the creation of all things from nothing.

On being asked the reason why this work gives God such pleasure, he said it was because God has no creature but the soul of large enough capacity for him to empty his entire might, the whole ground of his being in, as he docs in this act of begetting himself ghostly in the soul. When asked what God’s birth is, he said, God’s being born within the soul is nothing else than God’s self-revelation to the soul in some new knowledge and in some new mode. Anon they asked him. Does the soul’s chief happiness consist in this act whereby God gets himself in her in ghostly fashion ? Quoth he, Though it is true that God takes greater pleasure in this act than in any other deed he ever did concerning creature, natheless the soul is happier being re-born into God. God being born in her makes her not wholly blessed : she is beatified when, in love and praise, she follows this wisdom whercinto she is bom, back to the source from whence it came and in their common origin, holding to what is his lets go her own, she being happy not in hers but his.

Meister Eckhart said, A man of godly love and godly fear and perfect faith may, an he will, receive God’s body every day at the priest’s hands. The question is, what does God do in heaven ? The answer given by the saint is this, He crowns his own work : the works God crowns his saints for he wrought in them himself. Meister Eckhart says, I have Jjeen asked what God is doiiig in heaven ? I answer, He has been giving his Son birth eternally, is giving him birth now and will go on giving him birth for ever, the Father being in childbed in every virtuous soul. Blessed, thrice blessed is the man within whose soul the heavenly Father is thus brought to bed. All she surrenders to him here she shall enjoy from him in life eternal. God made the soul on purpose for her to bear his one-begotten Son. His birth in Mary ghostly was to God better pleasing than his nativity of her in flesh. When this birth happens nowadays in the good loving soul it gives God greater pleasure than his creation of the heavens and earth. Meister Eckhart says. He who is evcrjrvvhere at home is Godworthy ; to him who is ever the same is God present and in him in whom creatures arc stilled God bears his one-begotten Son.

Meister Eckhart says, Holy scripture cries aloud for freedom from self. Self-free is self-controlled and self-controlled is self-possessed and self-possession is God-possession and possession of everything God ever made. I tell thee, as true as God is God and I a man, wert thou quite free from self, free from the highest angel, then were the highest angel thine as well as thine own self. This method gives self-mastery. According to Meister Eckhart, Grace comes not otherwise than with the Holy Ghost. It bears the Holy Ghost upon its back. Grace is no stationary thing, it is ever-becoming. It is flowing straight out of God’s heart. Grace does nothing but re-form and convey into God. Grace makes the soul deiform. God, the ground of the soul and grace go together. Query, does God pour his grace into a power of the soul or into her essence, for no creature is allowed in the essence of the soul ? The answer is that grace is a matter of the soul and naught beside and grace without soul is not grace at all. It is immaterial for it is not true creature, it is creaturely. Grace to be grace must • have the soul for substance for if God poured his grace into a power of the soul that power alone would benefit. Not so : he instils it into her essence and essence works by grace in all her powers.

Meister Eckhart says, Practice is better than precept ; but the practice and precept of eternal God is a counsel of perfection. If 1 wanted a teacher of theology I should go for one to Paris, to its learned university. But if I came to ask about the perfect life, why then he could not tell me. Where then am I to turn ? To pure and abstract nature, nowhere else : that can solve thy anxious queries. Why, good people, search among dead bones ? Why not seek the living sacrum that gives eternal life ? The dead give not nor do they take. An angel seeking God as God would look not anywhere for him except in a quiet, solitary creature. The essence of perfection lies in bearing poverty, misery, despisery, adversity and every hardship that befalls, willingly, gladly, freely, eagerly, calm and unmoved and persisting unto death without a why. Meister Eckhart said, Whatever it be that lights devotion in man’s heart and knits him closest unto God, that is the best thing for him here in time. Again he says. To be the heavenly Father’s Son one has to be a stranger to the world, remote from self, heartwhole and having the mind purified.

O man, renounce thyself and so with toil-free virtue win the prize or, cleaving to thyself, with toilful virtues lose it. Meister Eckhart says. He who is ever alone is Godworthy and to him who is ever at home is God present and in him who stands ever in the present now does God the Father bear his Son unceasingly. Meister Eckhart says, He to whom (God) is different in one thing from another and to whom God is dearer in one thing than another, that man is a barbarian, still in the wilds, a child. He to whom God is the same in everything has come to man’s estate. But he to whom creatures all mean want and exile has come into his own. He was also asked : Does the man who goes out of himself need to trouble at all about his nature ? He answered, God’s yoke is easy and his burden is light : No, only about his will ; %vhat the tyro fears is the expert’s delight. The kingdom of God is for none but the thoroughly dead. God’s every infliction is a lure. I give no thanks to God for loving me because he eannot help it, it is his nature to ; what I do thank him for is that he cannot of his goodness leave off loving me.

The highest the soul can get to in this life is a settled habitation without all in all. Being without all means being detached, perfectly free from self and things. Being in all means a state of perpetual rest : poise in her eternal idea, in the omniform image shining impartible. Eckhart said, There are people upon earth that bear our Lord in spirit as his mother did in flesh. They asked him who these were ? He answered. They being free from things do see in the mirror of truth whereto they are gotten all unknowing ; on earth, their dwelling is in heaven and they arc at peace ; they go as little children. Meister Eckhart said. Better to my mind is the man who in the cause of charity will lend himself to taking dole of bread than he who gives an hundred marks for charity. How do I make that out ? I argue thus. Doctors agree that honour is of far more worth than temporal goods. Now he who gives an hundred mar^Ls for charity gets back in praise and honour more than his hundred marks’ worth. The hand he stretches forth with gifts collects both more and better than it gave. But the beggar reaching out his hand for bread is bartering his honour ; the giver buys honour but the taker sells it.

Another thing advantages the beggar who receives over the donor of the hundred marks to God : the giver glories in and gratifies his nature*, the beggar is subduing his and flouting it ; the giver is made much of for his gifts, the beggar scorned and shunned fo^ taking them. Meister Eckhart said, I never ask God to give himself to me : I beg of him to purify, to empty, me. If I am empty, God of his very nature is obliged to give himself to me to fill me. How to be pure ? By steadfast longing for the one good, God to wit. How to acquire this longing ? By self-denial and dislike to creatures ; self-knowledge is the way for creatures are all naught, they come to naught with lamentation and bitterness. God being in himself pure good can nowhere dwell except in the pure soul : he overflows into her, whole he flows into her. What does emptiness mean ? It means a turning from creatures : the heart uplifted to the perfect good so that creatures are no comfort nor is there any want of them save inasmuch as the perfect good, God namely, is to be grasped therein. The clear eye tolerates the mote no more than does the pure soul aught that clouds, that comes between. Creatures as she enjoys them are all pure for she enjoys creatures in God and God in creatures. She is so limpid she sees through herself ; nor is God far to seek : she finds him in herself when in her natural purity she flows into the supernatural pure Godhead where she is in God and God in her and what she does she does in God and God does it in her.

Meister Eckhart said, To die the death in love and knowledge, k that is more noble and more worth than all the good works put I together that holy Christendom has done in love and knowledge from its beginning until now and ever shall do till the judgment day. These do but serve to bring this dcatli about, this death wherein springs life eternal. Meister Eckhart says, We fail to get our way with God because we lack two things : profound humility and a telling will. Upon my life I swear that God in his divinity is capable of all things but this he cannot do, he cannot leave unsatisfied the soul with these two things. Wherefore vex not yourselves with trivialities ; ye were not made for trivial things and the glory of the world is but a travesty of truth, only a heresy of happiness. Meister Eckhart being questioned as to God’s greatest gift to him answered. There are three. First, cessation of carnal desires and pleasures. Secondly, divine light enlightens me in everything I do. Thirdly, daily I grow and am renewed in virtue, grace and happiness. Meister Eckhart says, Lofty aim is lofty nature. The vision of . God is a high endeavour, I say, God is omnipotent, but he is powerless to thwart the man of meek and mighty aspiration, and any failure on my side to get my way with God is due to lack either of will or meekness.

Meister Eckhart says. As a man gets to be like God and God gets dear enough for him to disregard himself and not seek what is his in time or in eternity, he is released from all his sins and purgatorial pains, yea though he have committed every sin on earth. And this life is attainable while yet he eats and drinks. Further he declares, To be the heavenly Father’s Son we must be strangers to the world, remote from self, pure-hearted, inward minded. On one occasion Brother Eckhart said, Five things there be which in whomsoever has them are sure sign that he will never lapse from God. First, though most grievous things befall this man from God or creature, never a murmur does he make : no word but praise and thanks is ever heard. Again, at the most trying times he never says one word in his excuse. Thirdly, this man desires of God what God will freely give and nothing else : he leaves it all to him. Fourthly, nothing in heaven or earth can ruffle him : so settled is his calm that heaven and earth in topsyturveydom would leave him quite content in God. Fifth, nothing in heaven or earth can cheer him ; for having reached the point where naught in heaven or earth can sadden him so neither can it gladden him, except as trifles can.

A man remote and far from his own self as the chief angel of the Seraphim from him, would have that angel for his own as he is GodJs and God is his. And that is the bare truth, as God is God. St Paul says : ‘ The whole world is the cross to me and I the cross to you.’ . Said Meister Eckhart the preacher. There is no greater valour [nor no sterner fight than that for self-effacement, self-oblivion. Brother Eckhart said, Not all suffering is rewarded ; only what is cheerfully consented to. A man hanged on the gallows, suffering unwillingly, were better pleased that it had been another. There is no reward for that. Other sufferings the same. It is not the suffering that counts, it is the virtue. — I say, to him who suffers not for love to suffer is suffering and is hard to bear. But one who suffers for love suffers not and his suffering is fruitful in God’s sight. According to Meister Eckhart^ Every sign, every holiness, every perfection possible to creature our Lady had par excellence. To take her holiness, it was so prodigious that our Lady never sinned. Of signs, again, she had the chief one, that of being God’s mother ; albeit our theologians do contend that our Lady was far happier uniting God to Godhead than she was in giving carnal birth to God. As to the overfullness our Lady got from deity, she was worthy of it, bearing as she did God in the flesh. Soul overbrimming like this overflows into the body and makes the body like it, thus she was God’s carnal mother. Accordingly some doctors do affirm that mental concepts tell upon the body more than physicians do with all their drugs. God is never born except in souls which have put creatures under their feet. Our philosophers say, Perfect rest is freedom from all motion.

On St Peter’s words, ‘ We have abandoned all things,’ Meister Eckhart comments thus : Thou hast well said, for laden thou couldst not follow him. It is no profitless exchange, giving up all for God : by him all things are given and having gotten him he stands in lieu of all. Meister Eckhart said. What our Lord did was done with this intent, and this alone, that he might be with us and we with him. Brother Eckhart preached saying, St Peter said, ‘ We have left all things.’ St James said, ‘ We have given up all things.’ St John said, ‘ We have nothing left.’ Whereupon Brother Eckhart asks, When do we leave all things ? When we leave everything conceivable, everything expressible, everything audible, everything visible, then and then only we give up all things. When in this^ sense we give up all we grow aflood with light, passing bright with God. He that would be what he ought must stop being what he is. When God made the angels the first sight they saw was that of the Father with the Son sprouting out of his Father’s heart like a green shoot out of a tree. This blissful vision they have had more than six thousand years and how it comes they wot as well

to-day as when they were first made. This owing to their keen perception ; the more we know the less we understand. In the Book of Wisdom it is writ, ‘ All men are fools in whom is no knowledge of God for men are mortal without God.’ Without divine wisdom we are without Gk)d and to be without God is to be without truth for God it is who inculcates the truth. Not being in God means being in lies and without wisdom. One may be worldly-wise without being Godly-wise but this is folly in God’s sight ; wisdom wisdomless, more foolishness than wisdom. The question is, who has this heavenly wisdom ? Meister Eckhart says, He who in deep and real humility so yields himself to God that his will is wholly God’s will and God’s will is his, as saith Isaiah the prophet, God teaches true wisdom to none but the Jhumble.’ And in the Book of Wisdom too we read, ‘ Where there is meekness there is true wisdom.’ Also the heathen doctor Ptolemeus says, ‘ Among wise men the humblest are the wisest.’ According to Meister Eekhart, with humility goes love : lowliness without love is dead indeed for the virtues are virtue in virtue of love.

— ‘ And so shall a man order his life if he would be perfect.’ Anent this Meister Eekhart says. Works wrought from within are pleasant both to God and man ; they are benign and living works. They are Godworthy for he alone it is who does in man works wrought from within, as saith the prophet Isaiah, ‘ Lord all our works thou hast wrought in us,’ and Christ too said, ‘ My Father who is in me he doeth that I do.’ Such works are both easy and pleasant to man for all deeds are agreeable and pleasant to man in which body and soul are harmonious. This is the case in all these works. Again, these works are living works : the dead beast differs from the living one in that the dead is moved from outside only ; it must be pulled or pushed, to wit, and its works are all dead works. The live beast moves itself where’er it will ; its motive power is within and its works are living yorks. In the |same way those works of men which have their source within j where God moves by himself, essential products, these are our iworks, divine works, useful works. But works which come from some external cause and not from inner being, these works I say are dead, they are not godly works nor are they ours. Meister Eckhart also says, Works wrought from within are willing works. But that which is willing is sweet, therefore works from within are all pleasant whereas works due to any outward cause are

unwilling and slavish for were there nothing moving from without no work were done at all, so that it is reluctant, menial, bitter. Meister Eekhart said, No person x'^an in this life reach the point at which he is excused from outward works. What though one lead the contemplative life, one cannot altogether keep fromj flowing out and mingling in the life of action. Even as a man without a groat may still be generous in the will to give, whereas a man of means in giving nothing cannot be called generous, so no one can have virtues without exercising virtue at the proper time and place. Hence those who lead the contemplative life and do no outward works, are most mistaken and all on the wrong tack. What I say is that he who lives the contemplative life may, nay he must, be absolutely free from outward works what time he is in act of contemplation but afterwards his duty lies in doing oub.vard works ; for none can live the contemplative life without a l-reak and active jife bridges the gaps in the life of contemplation. Meister Eekhart says and so do other masters, that there are two things in God : essence and regard, ix, relatio. According to these doctors, not in the Godhead does the Father bear his Son ; the Father in his essence does but see into his naked essence where he discerns himself in all his power : himself by himself, without the Son and without the Holy Ghost ; naught sees he there but the unity of his own essence. But the Father being minded to regard himself, to reflect upon himself in another Person, by this act of retrospection is begetting his Son ; and being well contented with himself in this regard and finding his reflection most delightful he must, since all joy is his eternally, keep on looking back eternally. So the Son is as eternal as the Father, and from the mutual liking and the love betwixt the Father and the Son there comes the Holy Ghost and since this love between the Father and the Son has been for aye therefore the Holy Ghost is as eternal as the Father and the Son and these three Persons have one simple essence and are distinct as Persons only : the Father’s Person never was the Son’s nor the Holy Ghost’s Person ; all three have each their own Person albeit they are one in essence.

Meister Eekhart says and so do other masters. No man has any merit apart from his intention and the why of a man’s action/ feives the measure of his merit, naught beside. Hence anyone ^tending, anyone striving, for something less than God is not worthy of God unless as the lover of creature, whatever it be, in God. . God-lovers have no guerdon but God ; them God rewards with himself. Meister Eckhart says, and so do other masters, that in the course of nature it is really the higher which is ever more ready to pour its power out into the lower than the lower is ready to receive it. The highest heaven, for instance, is turning far more rapidly than the rest which run against it. However fast the lower heavens race against the upper, in order to receive the influx from it, the highest heaven will go harder still both as to pace and influx. So God is vastly quicker to pour out his grace than man to take it in. There is no dearth of God with us ; what dearth there is is wholly ours who make not ready to receive his grace. The question is, When do the passions perforce obey the mind ?

( The answer Meister Eckhart gives is this. What time the mind is fixed on God and there abides, the senses arc obedient to the mind. As one should hang a needle to a magnet and then another needle on to that, until there are four needles, say, depending from the magnet. As long as the first needle stays clinging to the magnet all the other needles will keep clinging on to that but when the leader drops the rest will go as well. So, while the mind keeps«fixed on God the senses arc subservient to it but if the mind should wander off from God the passions will escape and be unruly. Why is it, Meister Eckhart asks, that people are so slow to look for God in earnest ? His comment is : When one is looking for a thing and finds no trace of its existence one hunts half-heartedly and in distress. But lighting on some vestige of the quarry, the chase grows lively, blithe and keen. The man in quest of fire, cheered when he feels the heat looks for its source with eagerness and pleasure. And so it is with those in quest of God : feeling none of the sweetness of God they grow listless but sensing the sweetness of divinity they blithely pursue their search for God.

Meister Eckhart asks. Whose are the prayers God always hears ? And Meister Eckhart answers. Who worships God as God God hears. But he who worships God for worldly goods, worships not Gk>d : he worships what he worships God for and employs God as his servant for the getting of it. As St Augustine puts it, ‘ What thou dost love thou dost worship ; true prayer, real prayer is nothing but^ loving : what one loves that one prays ^oV^'ffence no diie praysTo God aright but he that prays to God for God without a thought of aught but God, Meister Eckhart says and so do other masters, Whoso wants a virtue ought to seek it at the souree, in God to wit, where we find all the virtues added up to virtue. The man who finds a single virtue thus diseovers every virtue in the one and, attaining to the unity where all virtues are virtue, the soul sees God and God looks on the soul. Soul is caressed by God who, talking with her in familiar fashion, teaehes her universal wisdom and God and man now fully reeonciled, man is the lord of every ereature, of all the good things that have flowed from God ; as it is written in the Book of Wisdom where the wise man says, ‘ All good have I gotten in thee alone ’ : in virtue have 1 gotten all the virtues.

According to Meister Eckhart, God is not only the Father of all good things but he is the mother of all things to boot. He is Father for he is the cause of all things and their creator. He is the mother of all things as well, for when creatures have gotten their being from him he still stays with creatures to keep them in being. If God did not remain with creatures after they had started their own life they would most speedily fall out of being. Falling from God means falling from being into nothingness. It is not so with other causes, they can with safety quit the things they cause when these have gotten being of their own. When the house is in being its builder can depart and for the reason that it is not the builder alone that makes the house : the materials thereof he draws from nature. But God provides creature with the whole of what it is, with form as well as matter, so he is bound to stay with it or it will promptly drop out of existence. Meister Eckhart says, the man who doing some good deed does it not wholly for God’s sake and without any thought save God, that man darkens God’s glory. All good works are God’s. Hence if a man in his good work harbours intent towards aught but God

he gives thereto the honour of the work and robs God of his glory and all such works are sterile and unfruitful. The question is, Does the virtue of prayer increase with the outward practice of it ? Meister Eckhart says that the external habit adds little or nothing to the value of prayer. Prayer is a good thing in itself. Now a thing that is good in. virtue of its muchness is not good in virtue of itself. One groat has little value all alone but if thou hadst a thousand groats that were a handsome property, solely by reason of the number. Groats have small value in themselves apart from number. And so it is with outward practices : number adds little to the good of prayer ; one Ave coming freely from the heart has greater power and virtue than a thousand from the lips. And by the same token, no virtue dwells in number of good works ; virtue is every whit as fine, as good, in one least act of virtue rightly done as in a thousand. Virtue is not enhanced by multiplying outward acts of virtue, for were it good from number it would not then be good in its own right. A thing good in itself is good in its oneness not in its multiplication. True virtue means virtuous works wrought virtuously. Who gives an alms in God’s name but gives it grudgingly and not with cheerful heart, what though he do a virtuous deed, he does not do it virtuously. And so with prayer or any other virtue : done rightly it is virtue but not else. Take patience for example. External suffering does not make one patient : it merely tries one’s patience, as fire will try a penny whether it be of silver or of copper. The pa,tient man is patient still though outward suffering n’er befall. And prayer the same. The man of pure heart Godward turned who never does a stroke of outward work is nathcless in good case for hearts are not made pure by outward prayers : prayer rises pure from out pure hearts.

Doctors declare that God moves all things, i.e. all creatures, but creatures cannot move God. God can move creatures for he has created all creatures and it is he who keeps them in existence. But creatures cannot move God : no creature can affect God, according to the universal law that the lower does not flow into the higher. Now creatures are inferior to God so they do not influence God, ergo, they do not move God. In this connection some enquirers ask how God can move creatures and not be defiled by creatures which are full of fault ? The masters answer. If, as we see,'^the sun can shine on mire and filth without contamination then how much more can God protect himself from any taint of creature. But Meister Eckhart argues in a different fashion. He says God is in all things but so as to be wholly outside things, hence faults in creatures will not affect God. Just as we see the soul whole in the eye and at the same time whole outside the eye for she is whole in every limb ; no blemish of the eye can touch the soul which is in suchwise wholly in the eye as to be independent of the eye. Even so God in creature is wholly without creature, untouched and untainted by creature.

There is another answer Meister Eckhart gives : God is only in the essence (or being) of a creature. His argument runs thus. Essenee is without defect, defect being nothing but a lapse from being. Now seeing no defect can touch the essence and God is only in the essence of a creature therefore God is unaffected by the defects of creature. Regarding this amazing fact of deity John Chrysostom observes : ‘ That God is in all creatures we know and declare but how and in what manner we do not understand.’ Yet Meister Eckhart says it is quite plain if for the word God we put the word being. We see and have abundant proof that being is in all things. But if actual being is God it follows then that God must be in all things. Thus saith the wise man in the Book of Wisdom, ‘ Eternal wisdom is omnipotent for it is one.’ Upon which Meister Eckhart comments thus. The simpler a thing is the more powerful and effective it is. We can demonstrate it thus. In a thing made of parts the power of the thing resides in its parts. In a house made of walls, foundations and roof, the whole force of the house consists in these parts. If the house could but draw from its oneness the virtue it gets from its walls then it need have no walls. Now God is the simplest possible good wherein all things are one and as one he is therefore omnipotent. Again, the heathen doctors say that power dispersed is dissipated. It is so with the mind. Scattered in multitudinous creature it is so much more feeble and infirm toward God. But when the mind gets rid of creatures, when all the senses vanish into mind, then mind and passions being met in one the mind is strong enough to wrest from God whatever it desires. When man does what is in him not even God can say him nay.

In one of his sermons Meister Eckhart said. It is my humility that gives God his divinity and the proof of it is this. God’s peculiar property is giving. But God cannot give if he has nothing to receive his gifts. Now I make myself receptive to his gifts by my humility so I by my humility do make God giver and since giving is God’s own peculiar property I do by my humility give God his property. The would-be giver must needs find a taker ; without a taker he cannot be a giver for it is the taker by his taking that makes the man a giver. So God, to be the giver, must discover a receiver. Now none but the humble can receive the gift of God. So God, to use his godlike power of giving, will eke need my humility ; without humility he cannot give me aught for I without humility cannot accept his gift. Thus it is true that I by my humility do give God his divinity. Meister Eckhart also said, My lowliness raises up God and the lower I humble myself the higher do I exalt God and the higher I do exalt God the more gently and sweetly he pours into me his divine gift, his divine influx. For the higher the inflowing thing the more easy and smooth is its flow. How God is raised upon my lowliness I argue thus : the more I abase and keep myself down the higher God towers above me. The deeper the trough the higher the crest. In just the same way, the more I abase and 1 humble myself the higher God goes and the better and easier he f pours into me his divine influx. So it is true that I exalt God by ' my lowliness.

Meister Eckhart says. We ought not to have to ask God for his grace, his divine goodness, we ought to contrive to take it ourselves withor^t asking. God has gotten himself in his divine outflow just as the flowing. . . . Meister Eckhart points out how Isaias says, ‘ Thy light is come to thee, the light which is eternal, unchangeable and new and inconceivable, free and thine own ; well may thy heart both wonder and rejoice.’ The question is, how is it light if it is inconceivable ? How does it come if it is immoveable ? How be called thine if it is free ? I answer first. That light is God which is light in itself and which is light in all created things and wherein all creatures are light. For to begin with I contend that light has the peculiar property of being clear and luminous in itself and in others revelation. But this belongs exclusively to God. Wherefore I say the light in itself is God. The second point is argued thus. If everything caused is a manifestation of the first cause then light of intellect in us is surely God ; no mind can see the naked truth in a created

light for nothing gives what it has not got. Augustine says, * Our mind can only see the naked truth in light which is perfectly simple and pure, God, to wit.’ The third is proved as follows. If creature is light and God is light, as has been shown before, then creaturely being is merely a light in light-being. But one light in another produces but one light, so it is true. — ‘ Talking of light, now if so be that in this life our minds can see the naked truth by means of the light that is God, then it is also true that man may here see God and needs must it be true withal that man is here beatified.* I answer that, albeit here a man may see the truth by means of the light that is God natheless he sees not what God is, using this light as a means. I say, what though he see God as he is, he is not yet beatified for God as a means is germane to creature. Look you, God beatifies not as being the beginning (when he is of the nature of all things), not yet as being the mean (where he is of the nature of a creature), nor even as the end (for then again he is all things), neither does he beatify as being all of these but he beatifies just inasmuch as he transcends them all ; he beatifies as being God impartible, as being simply pure light in itself.

If thou shouldst ask, ‘ How is he light, being incomprehensible ? ’ I answer. Being incomprehensible therefore he is the light. I say, moreover, incomprehensibility is the light nature and this is plain, for his incomprehensibility comes from his unendingness. But his unendingness is due to his simplicity, to his purity (or clarity), which constitutes lightness in God. It is well said then, God is light. But know, this vision of the truth in the divine light is gotten in no school of creatures, it is learnt in the school of renouncement, of utter detachment from creatures, and for such lore the school is heaven, the book thy empty heart, eternity thy reading, thy mentor uncreated light and truth thy mentor too. This David meant when he declared, ‘ Lord in thy light shall we see the light.’ Then take the second question. How does he come who is without motion and how does he come who is without place ? To whom does he come who is in all hearts ? I answer, He does not come as anything at all nor yet as gaining something for himself but he comes ordering ; he who was hidden comes and reveals himself. He comes as the light which lay concealed in people’s hearts and in their minds, now taking shape in intellect and will and in the deepest being of the soul. He is in the inner man in such a way that there is naught without him and there is naught there with him : he is there all by himself. He comes, appearing in the mind and in the will, nothing at all without him, nothing at all with him but mind and will are full

of him alone. There seems nothing with him, nothing without him ; the mind is but the place of God, a Godstead to itself and nothing more, as David sings, ‘ Lord the light of thy countenance is risen upon us ’ as though to say, Holding thy peace, with sighing and with rue do thou by means of intellect turn thy will round to feel the charm of God. Converse with him as man to man and as thou dost discourse with God in the first person and of God in the third so do thou talk to God in the second Periion. Forgetting everything, aware of God alone, say unto him, ‘ Thou art my God, thou only art within, thou only art all things.’ Creatures are not receptive to God, except those that are made in the image of God, like angels and man’s soul : these being Godreceptive he is in them and they in him. To others God is essential, not that they have gotten him but simply that they have no being without him. Not in virtue of his presence do they see him, does she see God in her innermost depth ; nor is it by his power for he is powerless apart from her ; but we can do nothing without him. God being in the soul as in himself therefore the soul is called a place and soul is also called the place of peace for where God is as it were in himself there is the kingdom of heaven and peace untroubled, joyous and delightful. The blest soul is at rest in God as in her own, and more so.

A man who has gone clean out of himself straightway finds God in God and God with God. He behaves like him for what he is he is to God and what he is to God God is to him : God belongs wholly to him and is wholly he and he is wholly in God and is downright God they being so entirely the same, one cannot be without the other. The soul is no different from Christ save that the soul has a born nature and a created nature. This Christ has not in his eternal Person. If the soul doffed her born nature and her created nature she would be all the same, just essence itself. I say, put off thy creature ; it is easy to doff the creature for this is a labour of love and the greater the pain the greater the joy. I Whoso has three things is beloved of God. The first is riddance lof goods ; the second, of friends, and the third is riddance of self. Meister Eckhart said that in the essence of the soul we may surely see and know God. And the closer acquainted one is in

this life with the soul the closer acquainted with God. The only way is to abandon creature and escape from self. Ilarkee. Love creature as I may in God never can I love God in creature as perfectly as in myself. Thou hast to go out of thyself into thyself again ; there lies the home of truth which none may find who looks for it in outward things. Mary Magdalene, when she left creatures and betook herself into her heart, found there our Lord. God is unmixed and pure : I can find God then only in the pure. But my interior soul is more undefiled and pure than any creature ; so my best chance of finding God is down in my own soul. And eke I am the life in God for ‘ All that is in the Father is the life in him,’ John said. In this guise does the Father bear the Son and in this selfsame birth I do proceed from him. Now he declares the Son to be in him, in the very depth of his heart. But since all that was made in him is the life in him therefore I am this life in the innermost heart of God. ‘ And the life was the light of men,’ said John. Mark you, he says the divine light in us is our light wherein we see all things conceived in the mind,

God is being, perfect being, without which are no beings ; for all beings are from his being. May we be this same being. So help us God. Amen. According to Meister Eckhart, there are seven degrees of contemplation. Whoso would practise contemplation let him seek out a quiet spot and set himself to thinking, first, how noble his soul is, how she has flowed straight out of God, a thought that fills him with a great delight. Having well cogitated this, •next let him think how God must love his soul to make it in the likeness of the Trinity, so that all God is by nature he may be by grace ; whereat he will delight perforce more vehemently still for it is far more noble to be made in the form of the Trinity than merely to come straight from God. — In the third stage he meditates that he has been beloved of God for aye ; the Trinity has been for aye and God has loved the soul for aye. — Fourthly, he reflects that God did ever charge him to enjoy with God what God has aye enjoyed and always shall, God himself namely. At the fifth stage the soul enters into herself and knows God in herself, which happens in this wise : No being can be without being and being feeds on being ; but being cannot live upon this food till this food is converted to the same blessed nature as that which feeds upon it and this applies to being which is being-of-itself. But there is no being-of-itself excepting God, So my soul is living on nothing but God. And by entering into oneself like this one finds God in oneself. If God will that I faint not he must give me being. No

being can stand without God so if he means me to have being theii he must give me himself. The sixth stage is, soul knows hersdf in God. As thus. Everything in God is God. Now my idea has always been in God, is still and ever shall be, therefore my soul is ever one with God and is God and I do find myself in God in the exalted fashion oi being God in God eternally. This brings the expert soul ineffable delight. At the seventh stage the soul knows God in himself as being without beginning whence all things emanated. This gnosis comes to no man fully in this life for it means the beholding of God. a thing not of this world. Mind you, all our perfection, our whole happiness, depends or our traversing and transcending creature, time and state and entering the cause which is causeless. God will never give himself openly to the soul . . . except she bring her husband, her whole free will, to wit. What the joy of the Lord is none can tell. But mark this much concerning it. The joy of the Lord is the Lord himself none else, the Lord being live, essential, actual intellect whict knows itself and is and lives itself in itself and is the same, I dc not i^addle it with any mode, nay, I divest it of all mode for he himself is modeless mode who is and is glad because he is. This is the joy of the Lord and is the Lord himself. W^hite is not black nor is aught naught. From naught naught can be taken, From aught aught can be taken and it is wholly thus with God, Of aught that is wholly in God naught remains. Soul joined to God has in him once for all all that is at all in absolute perfection. There soul forgets things and herself, as she is in herself, waking up in God, godlike as God in her, so much in love with self in him, so indiscriminately one with him, she enjoys naught but him, delighting in him. What more should she know or desire ?

God being still sets everything going. So desirable a thing starts them all running back into that from whence they came ; to that which stays unchanged in its own self ; and the nobler the thing the more blithely it runs. God can no more abide his likes than he could abide not being God. Likeness is not a thing that can belong to God. There is sameness in the Godhead, in eternity ; but likeness is not sameness. If I am same I am not like. Likeness is no form of being in the one ; there is sameness for me in the unity, not likeness. The first work of God in the soul is the birth of his Son in the soul and from this act his other gifts do flow into the soul, as grace and virtue. What God can do in the soul is to bring forth his Son in the soul and this must needs be. It is characteristic of God that he cannot refrain, he must beget his Son in me and in you all. I say, God begets me his Son and so say I of you all as well. That we are all born of God his Son, is nothing wonderful ; we can see this with creatures. Now mark my words, I say, this man is the not ; I am not what you are and you are not what I am. Suppress the not and we are just the same ; take naught from creatures and creatures are all the same. The remainder is one. What is this one ? It is the Son the Father bears. To be the actual Son the Father bears we must cancel the naught of creatures. This naught which all creatures are e\imbers a man and stops him being the very Son begotten of the Father. God bids us part with naught so as to be the selfsame Son the Father bears. For this man must be one ; he must escape from images and forms ere he can be the actual Son the Father brings to birth ; he must be rid of everything, not merely alien things, but eke his own ; for God’s Son and man’s son are not two sons, they are one Son, one nature ; so it behoves a man to flee from other natures as well as from his own and stand in the bare nature of the Son in the Godhead, in that only. What I say is that if one is to be the actual Son the Father bears one must give up own nature altogether. — ‘ But many people have natures so alien to their own, how then can they surrender their own nature ? ’ — We always must surrender our own natures in order to become the very Son the Father bears. As St Paul says, ‘ Wc must be changed into his Son.’ In other words, the Son alone being beloved of the Father, whatever things the Father loves he must love in his Son and inasmuch as we become this Son the Father bears we do be changed into his Son of love and are his very Son. Of this be sure. God will love them in us and in all creatures in the guise of his alonebegotten Son. Provided we abandon naught, become estranged from naught. We must relinquish all things, must forget all

things, keeping nothing but the single nature of the Son. It seems a great deal but is not. It is a simple thing God bids us do, he bids us give up naught. Whoso is without why has given up naught and by doing this we gain the whole world and abundance. To the good man all things come, be sure of that. If I am better than you are, all the good you do and what you have is rather mine than yours for what you have you have in naught. But if I have abandoned naught I am the very Son the Father bears and everything belongs to me in God. What could be sweeter than to have a friend with whom, as with thyself, thou canst discourse all that is in thy heart ? When God made man the innermost heart of the Godhead was put into man. What is God’s speaking ? The Father regarding himself with pure perception sees into his own simple uncompounded essence and there descrys the whole idea of creature. By doing so he speaks himself, his Word being clear understanding and this is his Son. Speaking of man wc mean a person ; speaking of manhood we mean human nature.

Doctors define what nature is. It is the thing that essence can take on. God took on manhood and not man. I say : Christ was the first man. How so ? What is first in intention is last in execution, as the roof is the finish of the house. The uppermost soul-face has two acts. By one she knows God, his gift and his emanation. Therein she loves God today and knows him, and not tomorrow. The image lies not in these powers owing to their impermanence. There is another action of the upper face, which is concealed. In the concealment lies the image. Five things belong to this image. First, it is cast by another. Secondly, it answers to that same. Thirdly, it emanates therefrom. Fourthly, it is like thereto in nature ; not that it is God’s nature but it is a substance which is self-sub - sistent ; pure light-emanation from God and differing from him only by the fact of knowing God. Fifthly, it tends towards the exemplar whence it came. Two things adorn this image. The one, its being arrayed like him. The other, its having in it a somewhat of eternity. The soul has three powers. Not in them lies the image. But she owns a single power, namely, the active intellect. Now according to Augustine and the New Philosophers, memory, understanding and will are found herein together, nor can these three be told apart. This is the secret image answering to God, God shining straight into this image.

It is God’s will that we be holy and that we do what makes us holy. Holiness is a matter of will and wisdom. According to the best authorities holiness lies in the ground, in the summit of the soul, where soul is in her cause, where she has outgrown names and her own powers withal. For powers too are the deficiency. We cannot give a name to God, nor can we name the soul in her own nature. The point where these twain meet is holiness. Essence is so noble it gives being to all things. Were there no essence angels would be like stones. A learned doctor said on one occasion when preaching in the capital, that there was once a man, we read of him in holy scripture, who went a full eight years yearning for God to indicate some person who should instruct him in the way of truth. Then in a moment of vehement desire there came a voice from God and said, ‘ Get thee to the temple, there shalt thou find a man to set thee on the path to truth.’ And he went and found a beggar, his feet all cracked and dirty, his rags scarce worth three pence. He greeted him, ‘ Give thee good morrow ! ’ He answered, ‘ I n’er had a bad.’ — ‘ How now I ’ quotha, ‘ Give thee good luck ! ’ He answered, ‘ I never had ill.’ Again he adventured, ‘ God bless thee I How sayst thou. Sirrah, to that ? ’ He said, ‘ I was never accursed.’ — ‘ God ’a mercy I ’ he cried, ‘ unriddle me this, I trow it is beyond me ! ’ Said he, ‘ I will. Thou dost wish me good morrow and I say I ne’er had a bad. Hungry I praise God ; freezing I praise God ; poor and forsaken withal I praise God so I never have a bad morrow. Thou dost wish me good luck ; I say, I have never had ill. Whatsoever God gives or may lay up for me, be it sour or sweet, good or bad, I accept all from God for the best so I have no ill hap. Thou dost call down God’s blessing upon me. I answer, I am not accursed. I have given my will up to God’s, every whit, so that anything God wills I will. That is why I am never unblessed, because I have no will but God’s.^ — ‘ Marry, good Sir, suppose God chose to cast thee into

hell, what would^t thou say to that ? ’ — ‘ To cast me into hell ? ’ quoth he, ‘ that would spite himself ! Yet if he cast me into hell I should still have two arms to clasp him with. One arm is true humility and this I should put under him, embracing him the while with the other arm of love. Better,’ he said, ‘ to be in hell with God than be in heaven without him.’ Said Meister Eckhart to a beggar, ‘ Good morrow, brother.’ ‘ The same to you Sir, but I never have bad ones.’ — ‘ How so, brother ? ’ he asked. — ‘ All God gives me to bear I eheerfully suffer for his sake deeming myself unworthy, so never am I sad or sorry.’ — ‘ Where didst thou find God first ? ’ he asked. — ‘ Leaving all creatures I found God.’ — ‘ Where didst thou leave God, brother ? ’ he said. — ‘ In every man’s pure heart.’ — ‘ What manner of man art thou, brother ? ’ quoth he. — ‘ I am a king,’ he said. — ‘ Of what ? ’ he queried. — ‘ Of my own flesh. Whatsoever my spirit desires of God my flesh is more eager, more ready to do and to bear than my mind to accept.’ — ‘ Kings have kingdoms,’ he said : ‘ where is thy realm, brother ? ’ — ‘ In my own soul.’ — ‘ How so, brother ? ’ he asked. — ‘ When, having locked the doors of my five senses,

I am desiring God with all my heart then do I find God in my soul as clearly and as joyful as he is in life eternal.’ — He said, ‘ Granting thee holy, who made thee so brother ? ’ — ‘ Sitting still and thinking deep and keeping company with God has gotten me to heaven, for never could I rest in aught inferior to God. Now having found him I have peace and do rejoice eternally in him and that is more than any temporal kingship. No outward act however perfect but hinders the interior life.’ Meister Eckhart met a lovely naked boy. He asked him whence he came. He said, ‘ I come from God.’ — ‘ Where hast thou left him ? ’ — ‘ In virtuous hearts.’ — ‘ Whither away ? ’ — ‘ To God.’ — ‘ Where wilt thou find him ? ’ — ‘ Leaving all creatures.’ — ‘ Who art thou ? ’ — ‘ A king.’ — ‘ Where is thy kingdom ? ’ — ‘ In my own heart.’ — ‘ Mind no one shares it with thee.’ — ‘ So I do.’ He took him to his cell and said, ‘ Take any coat thou wilt.’ — ‘ Then I should be no king ’ (said he), and vanished.

It was Gk)d himself that he had had with him a little spell. A daughter came to the Dominican convent asking for Meister Eckhart. The porter said, ‘ Who shall I tell him ? ’ She, ^ See also Spamer’a Textc, C, 6. answered, ‘ I do not know.’ — ‘ Why do you not know ? ’ he enquired. — ‘ Because,’ she said, ‘ I am not either virgin or [Spouse, not man nor wife nor widow nor lady nor lord nor wench nor thrall.’ The porter went off to Meister Eckhart. ‘ Do come out,’ h^said, ‘ to the strangest wight that ever I heard and let me come too and you put your head out and say, ‘ Who is asking for me ? ’ He did so. She said to him what she had said to the porter. Quoth he, ‘ My child, thou hast a shrewd and ready tongue, I prithee now thy meaning ? ’ — ‘ An I were virgin,’ she replied, ‘ I were in my first innocence ; spouse, I were bearing the eternal Word within my soul unceasingly ; were I a man I should grapple with my faults ; wife, should be faithful to my husband. Were I a widow I should be ever yearning for my one and only love ; as lady I should render fearful homage ; as wench I should be living in meek servitude to God and to all creatures and as thrall I should be working hard, doing my best tamely to serve my Master. Of all these things I am no single one who am the one thing as the other running thither.’ The doctor went away and told his students, ‘ I have been listening to the most perfect person I ween I ever met.’

This fragment is entitled, ‘ Meister Eckhart’s Daughter.’ Meister Eckhart tells how once upon a time there came a beggar to Cologne on Rhine in quest of poverty and the life of truth. Accosted him a noble dame, ‘ Eat with me, brother, of God’s charity ! ’ — ‘ Gladly,’ quoth he. When they were seated she encouraged him, ‘ Eat heartily, be not ashamed.’ — ‘ ’Tis wrong,* he said, ‘ to eat too much, to eat too little is wrong too ; the just mean lies between : I will eat as a beggar.’ — ‘ What is a beggar ? ’ she asked. — ^He said, ‘ It means three things. First, being dead to natural things. Next, not having inordinate desire of possessions. Thirdly, begrudging suffering to everyone except oneself.’ — ‘ Tell me,’ she questioned, ‘ what is poverty of the inner man ? ’ — ‘ That also means three things,’ he said. ‘ First, complete detachment from creatures, which arc out of God, in time and in eternity. Secondly, abject humility of the outward and the inward man. Thirdly, an active interior life ; the mind unceasingly wrought up to God.’ — ‘ What is poverty of spirit ? ’ she asked. — ‘ You want to know too much,’ he said. — ‘ I can never know too much,’ said she, ‘ of God’s glory and man’s happiness.’ — ‘ True,’ he returned. ‘ That again means three things. First,

not knowing aught but God in time and in eternity. Secondly, not seeking God outside oneself. Thirdly, not owning any property that one conveys from place to place.’ — ‘ But surely Meister Eckhart, our father, must get from out his cell the sermons he preaches from his pulpit ? ’ — ‘ Not he,* he said. — ‘ Whence then ?/ (she asked). — ‘The more temporal the more personal, the more personal the more temporal.* — ‘ I trow,* she said, ‘ this guest is not out of Bohemia.’ ^ Quoth he, ‘ The sun that shines here in Cologne is shining also in the town of Prague.’ — ‘ Explain,^ she begged. He said, ‘ ’Tis not my place with Meister Eckhart present.’ Meister Eckhart said, ‘ He who knows nothing of the truth from within, if he woo it without shall find it too within.* — ‘ The reckoning is paid,’ she cried. And he : ‘ Lady, you furnish the wine.* — ‘ I am not loath,* she answered, ‘ an you ask me.’ (So Meister Eckhart asked her), ‘ Wherein do we divine the working of the Holy Ghost within our souls ? * She answered, ‘ In three things. First, in the waning day by day of personal things, desires and natural love. Next, in the waxing of divine love and of grace from day to day. Last, in the eager charity which moves us to bestir ourselves on our fellow-man’s behalf before our own.’ Quoth he, ‘ Our Lord’s friends prove it.* Anon he asked, ‘ How does the spiritual man divine God’s presence at his orisons or exercises ? ’ She answered, ‘ By three things. First, by the object he sets before his chosen, world scorn and body suffering, to wit. Next, by a growth in grace commensurate with the love betwixt himself and God. The third one is th^it God does never leave him without hint of some fresh truth.’ — ‘ That is, of course, the case,’ he said. ‘ Now tell me, how does he know if what he does is wholly in accordance ♦with the sovran will of God ? * She answered, ‘ By three things. First, clear consciousness never fails him. Secondly, he has union with God without break. Thirdly, the heavenly Father keeps giving his Son birth in him, in inspiration.’ Quoth Meister Eckhart, ‘ Were every reckoning as well paid as this one for the wine there’s many a soul in purgatory would tliis day be in life eternal.* Whereon the mendicant chimed in, ‘ What more remains it is the Doctor’s turn to pay.* — ‘ Leave the old to their age,’ protested Meister Eckhart. — ‘Then love shall settle it,’ the beggar said, ‘ that never faileth.’

Quoth the lady, ‘ Prithee father, how does one know oneself the heavenly Father’s child ? ’ He answered, ‘ By three things. First, one does everything for love. Next, one takes everything the same from Go^. Thirdly, one has no hope in anyone but God.* ^ * B&heim (Bohemia) I interpret thus : M stands for heatua ; heim, domua or house is to be interpreted as own house or fixed abode' Wilhelm von Wenden. Quoth the beggar, ‘ Prithee father, how are we to tell if virtue is doing her perfect work in us ? ’ He answered, ‘ By three things, love of God for God’s sake, good for good’s sake, truth for truth’s sake.’ Quoth the Doctor, ‘ My children, how lives the teacher of the truth ? ’ The lady said, ‘ He practises what he preaches.’ The beggar cried, ‘Agreed. But the truth in his heart no words can say.’ As the eternal Word is the birth of the heavenly Father, so is the will of God the birth and the becoming of all creatures. 1. Here the disciple is supposed to question his master, saying, ‘ Tell me, could God an he would have made all things as good as he is himself ? ’ The master said, Yes, what God wills he can do. — ‘ Are things all made of his own nature ? ’ The master said. No.

2. The disciple inquired, ‘ What is the soul made of ? ’ — She is made out of nothing. — ‘ Where did God get the nothing he made the soul out of ? ’ — Some say he got it in himself. That is not the case for in God is not nothing : that which is in God is God. — ‘ But God has all things in himself and without God is nothing. Surely then he gets this nothing out of himself ? ’ — The master said, No, not at all ! He gets it neither in himself nor out of himself, nor above himself nor below himself. There is no getting nothing from inside or out. If it were gotten anywhere it would not be nothing. Anything that docs this : takes nothing from nowhere and makes of it something, is God. So runs the argument that the nothing is gotten from nowhere. They asked St Augustine about this mysterious nothing out of which the soul is made and where, apart from place, this nothing hides ? His explanation was that this nothing is openly enclosed in betwixt God and Godhead, in his almighty power. Were it in close confinement it would not be naught : it either would have ))lace or else be God by nature, the soul being made of the nature of God. But it is not. Ergo, this nothing is at large in the almighty power of the Father to whom it is as easy to get from nowhere naught as aught. It is confined to his omnipotence to be able to take naught from nowhere and from it create aught. Whatever can do this is God.

3. Now another question. Dionysius says, Tell me, what about the soul who is in full enjoyment of her rights : what is it that she has by rights at the height of her perfection ? — By rights the soul has knowledge : clear understanding of all things and is so mellowed by love as to be all unwitting, when people love and hate her, whether she be not dearer to her haters than her lovers. And this soul has by rights absolute freedom from herself and things : sunk in the sovran good she cannot find herself at all. Here we have two natures. One, the thing that sinks ; the other, what it sinks in. She sinks eternally but never touches bottom. This sinking shows her two things. In sinking from herself she is more God than creature. The fact that she does sink proclaims her creaturely for deity sinks not. — But when she has yielded her aught to his aught and her naught is subsisting in naught, then what will belong to her aught and her naught ? — None can tell, but she has no more than her rights. That is the answer. 4. Another question is, has the soul more enjoyment in the source of joy or in the vision of its wonders ? — Consider what she has in each. In admiring its wonders she obeys the selfsame wondrous law that the first cause laid down for all causes as befitting each. But soul does not stop here, she transcends wonder. The wonders have become her potential being. Hence her enjoyment is much keener in the source of joy than in tlie beholding of its wonders. In the source is her abode, not in its wondrous vision. There all wonders end ; there all is one to her and one in all. That is the answer to this question.

5. The question is, if the Godhead has all things how comes it then neither to give nor to beget ? If it does not beget it is not Father. — The explanation is this. Man’s nature is called manhood, and manhood as such neither acts nor begets ; it acts and begets in a human person. And the same with Godhood : it is all-containing and yet not active and productive in itself. What it does is all done by the Persons in person and nature. The Godhead is called fruitful inasmuch as it is brought forth in the Persons in Person and essence. 6. An angel may do three things in the soul. Either he confronts her with the scriptures or with the holy life or, again, with the e?camplc of Christ Jesus, showing her something clearly as though in a mirror wherein one may espy some blemish on the human face and so proceed to cure it. Thus she sees herself, what she still lacks ; where she is not as yet all that she ought to be ; what things to leave and what to keep ; how much or little she should be to things : all this she plainly sees. And whatever an angel can do the devil may very well copy. — ‘ Have we no means of telling. Sir, if it is an angel or the devil ? ’ — Yes, they are very different. Tests for angel and the devil are as follows. Anything an angel does is done in the light, orderly and clearly, and the soul rejoices in the amiable presence of the angel ; also it is a sign to know him by that she is left with a sense of pleasure. In counterfeiting this the devil makes it vague, confused, ambiguous, and the soul, affrighted at this haunting of the fiend, is restless and depressed and by this she may know it is the devil.

The angel talks virtue to the soul, the fiend talks virtue too but God does not talk virtue. — ‘ For the love of God, good Sir, tell us what you mean.’ — 1 will explain. The angel talks virtue to the soul and his talk (the angel’s), which is of necessary virtue, is friendly and persuasive, something in this fashion : ‘ See, there is still this to go and that to do and the other to leave off ’ : orderly counsel and plain and the soul finds peace in complying with his words. The devil talks virtue too, but he urges superfluous virtues : too much fasting and watching and kneeling, too much weeping, and his counsels are more in the nature of commands, as thus : ‘ Do this or that or thou art damned,’ or ‘ art not good nor perfect.’ An orgy of uncontrolled virtues with no definite aim, that is his cue and the soul is affrighted within her and gleans no satisfaction from his words. — But God’s talk is not of virtue though it is wonderful talk. The burden of it a fair Word that is passing good to hear. The Holy Ghost goes before the angel and embracing the soul prepares her to receive what the angel has to say ; and the Son gives wisdom and order to the words and God the Father help and consummation to that which is spoken in the soul. Thus God does not talk virtue in the soul ; he forestalls the angel and prepares the soul, giving wisdom, order and achievement to the angelic utterance in the soul ; the Holy Trinity all work together in her without speaking.

7. The statement that our Lord from time to time holds converse with good people and that they hear words or become impressed with the sense of certain sayings such as, ‘ Thou art mine elect, or my beloved ; thou shalt never leave me and I will never leave thee,’ and the like, things like this, I say, should be accepted with reserve and judged upon their merits for locutions of this kind are often due to a trick the soul has, when indulging in comfortable intuitions of divinity, of answering herself by a sort of reflex action. When the soul, aflood with God, is void and free from sensible affections she grows apace in created light till nothing transcends her but intellect and essential knowledge. In this detachment the knower is the known ; out of her own light she creates what, she desires. Such is the effect of the benignant reign of essential understanding. Aristotle says in the third book of The Soul, ‘ Every immaterial substance or isolated form is in itself both the knower and the known,’ and this is why the soul, cut off from the corporal things by the encircling flood of God, draws deiform truth out of her own self. It follows that anything in her of which she has a rational perception is not said by God : God’s speech is none other than the perfect image of divine truth wherein the spirit is caught up out of its selfhood, past understanding, into intellect. There in unity she understands without understanding.

8. To drag the hawthorn through the hay without a catch we must lop it well, like our Lord Jesus Christ, the tree of love, who dragged the hawthorn through the hay of this wicked world, so shorn of all its branches that no moving thing could cling thereto and so he gathered up nothing that was unstable. And to attain to him we must be too bare for things to cling to us or we to them. We take up our cross when stripping everything of self and self of everything we cling all pure and naked to the bare cross of Christ. 9. He who loves aright loves not nor is not loved. They love and are beloved who can be pleased and pained : they pour out themselves in love on creatures and creatures back on them. But they love not nor are they loved who are not moved by creature good and ill ; these neither give nor do they take ; they pour not out on creature nor creature back on them. They love not neither are they loved. We ought to love God out of love. They love in love who love for why : who love him for some bodily or temporal good. But they love out of love who love without a why ; who do not love for temporal good nor yet eternal : they love him merely for himself, for his own sake pure and simple apart from anything he gives.

10. We read of John the Baptist that he was a prophet. He was more than prophet for when the Holy Ghost from time to time spake by the prophets they were thereafter as they were before, in sinful habit. Prophets are people who are now and then constrained to play this part. While the Holy Ghost is speaking through them by actual infusion of his grace they are exercising virtue and thereafter they revert to their former habit : they are called virtuous as practising virtue intermittently : they do right and also wrong. Not so St John ; he was more than prophet for he practised virtue not at intervals, it was his natural and settled wont. And those who follow him in this are not prophets either, they are more than prophets, seeing as they do in the clear light of God exactly what to do and what to leave undone and having given them the Godlike power to act up to their lights with effortless, spontaneous delight and delightful spontaneity. These are called virtuous not because they practise virtue intermittently : they are fixed and established in it. That thing is habitual which we do at one time and at another not ; it is an alternation. That is not habitual which is continuous and without admixture.

11. A good man is known by three things. One is singleness of will : all we call nature his will is free from. The second is clear understanding : any mental knowledge that she has his soul has fully mastered : she either approfounds it here or yonder in the common groilnd during illumination. The third is peace of mind : such images as may occur therein are nd hindrance to the soul; 12. Three things distinguish the solitary soul. The first is, cessation of desire : no more wants or sense of deficiency. The second is, active love for and acquiescence in the will of God. The third is a lively feeling in the soul of the love of the Holy Ghost. 18. Divine good in the singular no body or blood receives but it does receive God’s manifold goodness. It is simple divine good for the spirit to be rapt out of itself into God’s oneness, there to understand without sensible perception. But God’s manifold goodness means anything revealed to her in form and likeness, for this is all a matter of the mortal nature. — The heavenly Father gives his consolation to none but the man of peaceful heart, Christ said to his disciples, ‘ My peace I give unto you.’

14. Let no one claim to have received the perfect gift of the Holy Ghost, who can be shaken in his convictions by any arguments that are disquieting. I refer to things which are spoken contrary to our knowledge of eternal truth. 15. Nature comes with God into creature and driving God out remains alone in creature. Spirit goes with creature into God and driving creature out stays by itself in God. The most perfect mode of soul is one of self-oblivion in good works as a whole and the way thereto is the clear discernment of special imperfections. In the least of mortal quests there is at stake all natural creature appetite. Effortless achievements are wiped out of the mind as though they had not been. It is true wisdom to recognise the folly of evil and the freedom of perfection. 18. Hosea the prophet, rapt in wonder, had a threefold marvel shown him. The first one was, how God is one in essence and three in Person. The second marvel, which, though somewhat less is still ineffable and incomprehensible to creature, is this^ how two natures meet together in one Person. The tliird marvel is the marvel of marvels : how creator is creature and creature is creator. The prophet Hosea says, ‘ His going forth is prepared as the morning ; he shall come unto us as the soft evening rain.’ Here the morning light suggests the nearness of his coming : the dawn is the herald of the day. The day dawns thrice. First in the chamber of the Person of the Father. Next, in the chamber of the Person of the Son. Thirdly, in the world. The first dawn was the will of the Father ; the second, the obedience of the Son ; the third one broke when their common Spirit caught the precious most pure blood-drops that ever flowed from the virgin heart of Mary. The fire of love once kindled, he no longer tarries : day is here.

20. Suppose a man insults me and I silence him by my retort, it is not I who conquer : I am conquered. I conquer if, in true humility, I hold my peace. Conquering we are conquered and being conquered conquer. 21. It is a question if angels grow in heaven ? I declare they do. They go on growing till the day of judgment, waxing in knowledge and in love ; by then th^ lowest is about as wise as the highest was when he was created. — ‘ But tell me Sir, does the soul grow in heaven as well ? ’ — I say. No. — ‘ But why. Sir, should the angel grow and not the soul ? ’ — For this reason. The soul grows in the body and when she quits the body that is her judgment day : the highest she has reached by then is the nearest she will ever get to knowing God. But her growth is far nobler than an angel’s for what an angel has comes by no effort of his own ; hers is the reward of toil so that one light of hers is worth ten of any angel’s.

22. Three kinds of progress take place in serious people. The first is natural ; when, fought to a finish, man’s nature is vanquished and subdued, then at length he sees all random thoughts as things he can turn to his account and we to ours. Not a single notion but will serve to bring light to pious people, and this (light) is essential almost as much as natural ; essential, though by grace, a divine repugnance to all base inventions. — The second kind of progress is unconscious. The man is spiritualised so that his words, his ways and his whole self enlighten other people with a realization of their own shortcomings. Nature sleeping, spirit wide awake, that I call light and she is a light not alone to other people but the devil quails before her. — * Sir, tell me, what is he afraid of ? ’ — The devil does not know what is in the soul except what he can recognise by its outward form. Supposing her brimfull of light then divine light comes surging out of her and when the fiend sees this he is afraid and durst not test her with a notion, so the soul stays undisturbed. Which is to her credit though unbeknownst to her. — The third progress is spiritual. When such a soul is flooded with the influx of God’s spirit, love reinforces love, light light, giving a love which fires the soul and which she cannot fail to be aware of. The first growth is conscious, the third also is conscious and the middle one unconscious.

28. Plato says, ‘ The soul of all creatures is the Godhead.’ Then our Lord Jesus Christ is the soul of the elect. 24. The question is, what is the effect on man of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ ? I say that its effect on nian is to clarify his nature and prevent him committing mortal sin. On the enlightened it confers another boon, receptivity to the divine light and then though they die they will have nothing between. 27. ‘ Pray Sir, one to whom eternal light is given, suppose he were to die, would he have aught between ? ’ — Once having had eternal light he never has anything between. 28. ‘ Tell me, good Sir, what is divine light ? ’ — ^With divine light the natural life is no obstacle to the eternal light, or in other words, there is no consenting to sin. When we are unable to act up to our lights that is a sign that we have not received eternal light. Knowledge with the power to apply it, that is eternal light. He who receives eternal light takes everything the same. 29. ‘ But even good people are now and then perturbed : have they then no light ? ’—When our Lord Jesus Christ was drawing near his passion, his agony of suffering pierced his soul and called forth the rebuke to Judas at the table and St Peter on the mount, to whom he said, ‘ Couldst thou not watch with me a while ? Thou who didst promise to be with me unto death.’ But he did not on this account lose the light of unity. Once more harmonious with his Father’s will he was filled with joy at having in accord therewith submitted willingly to pain. The fact of being moved involves no loss of light : anything conceived in time is moved in time. While we are in time we are affected by time. But the more imperturbable one is the more one is established in eternity. By their deeds ye shall know them.

30. He alone can do God’s will who resigns his own. Wc are strong in proportion as we are inspired with divine power to withstand the things that come between ourselves and God. When we stand in our primitive innocence, then at last we begin to live. 31. ‘ But when is a man in a state of primitive innocence ? ’ — Primitive innocence is not attained without divine light. Simple, primitive innocence reigns when the pattern of all virtues is present in a man and he stands without impediment of nature in the eternal truth. It is only by treading upon creature thift we reach the bottom rung of Godhood. — ‘ What is the bottom rung of Godhood ? ’ — It is spiritualised nature. 32. ‘ Sir, is it better having and giving or not having and letting ? ’ — Letting is better than giving. Giving adds more lustre, letting shows more spirituality. We shed our blood ; the saints let their blood be shed. 33. ‘ Will you tell me. Sir, what causes the decay of tenderness ? ’ — ^What is the tenderness you mean ? — ‘ I mean interior tenderness.’ — ^To have it is a sign of immaturity ; to lose it betokens adolescence. The father pets his child when the child is young but as it gets to know its father’s will he grows seemingly less fond and this less obvious fondness is an indication of the child’s approach to man’s estate. With the soul it is the same. Ilis tenderness to her proclaims her immature, but as she grows in knowledge and constant harmony with the will of God he inspires her with less irrational fondness and this is a sign she is developing.

85. That alone is perfect which does not seek for aught outside itself. — Whatever we can say about perfection to that we can attain. — A gentle man is one whose serenity no trouble can disturb. — ^We stand before God while we do not cross the will of God. 36. When does God work in man unhindered ? — God finds no hindrance in a man who takes both good and ill from God with the same thankfulness. 87. Sure proof of true humility is the fearful joy of being praised. For on coming into touch with truth and finding in himself a witness of it, a man is sensible of pleasure but fears it as a likely cause of his undoing. 88. The right loyal heart receives with bitterness inventions of the soul which are not sent by God. — That heart is kind whose graciousness is proof against every good and ill. 89. The treasure of God is loss of possessions, people’s despisery, sickness and submission to God. 41. Our Lord Jesus Christ waxed not at all in eternal light ; but the things he taught, in beholding these he took peculiar pleasure. 42. Pious folk should imitate the deified man, Christ. By imitating Christ I mean becoming Godlike. What I mean by Grodlike is, your words, deeds, conduct, being free from human wont. By human I mean imperfect. In proportion to his imperfection a man is moveable by aught or anybody can be (moved) by him. — ‘ What do you mean by moveable ? ’ — By moveable I mean not impatience only : moveable I call anything affected by either good or ill and that can in anywise be anything to anyone or to whom anyone can as such be anything, and I call immoveable only- that which nothing can affect and which affects nothing. That man then I call immoveable to whom good and ill are just the same ; who is as far as possible exempt from the agitations of both joy and sorrow. It will never be natural to him that his emotions stir not independently of mind. But once the mind takes charge, it is all over and as it was before and then the man is not a mortal man, he is man deified.

48. Good people have three sorts of expert knowledge. In the first place the intelligence is sharpened so that it estimates correctly the smallest thing presented to it : its more or less amount of sensible admixture they gauge to a nicety and can act accordingly. — In the second place, when they have to do a thing they can always tell whether it proceeds from the ground of God or the ground of nature. Thirdly, so subtile is their understanding that any ghostly form, the very faintest light, which appears to them, they recognise for fiend or spirit. 44. The true test of interior perfection is that nothing thou doest from without casts any shadow within. 45. When the Godhead began to inquire how mankind could be restored to its original perfection, the Father sat in counsel in the chamber of the Holy Trinity. The Father said, ‘ Who shall we send to save mankind ? ’ Answered him the Son and said, ‘ Father, send me : I will save mankind.’ Then stooped him down the eternal Word of the heavenly Father, that is to say, his Son, who is the middle Person of the Holy Trinity, and clad himself in human nature. Remaining what he was he took upon him that which he was not and was thus obedient to his Father in heaven and not in heaven only but on earth as well. Obedience to his Father and love towards mankind constrained him to perfect all his Father’s work.

46. ‘ Sir, for God’s sake, may I ask you something that I want to know, something very subtle ? ’ — By all means. Whatever it may be and however subtle, I will try and answer. Ask me what you will. — ‘ Well, what I want to know is this : was our Lord Jesus Christ hindered in any way by doing outward works ? ’ — I can give you a definite answer to that. The soul of Christ was never an independent entity as such. It no sooner was than it was Christ ; directly it was made, straightway it was united ; first one and then the other it is true but yet both timeless. At his first appearance Christ was snatched from independence into the keeping of the middle Person of the Trinity where in essential wisdom he gazes without blenching at the naked fullness of the divine perfection. From the moment when Christ’s soul and body were united with the Godhead his soul has been gazing at the Godhead as it is doing to this day. As to the lower powers of his soul which function in the body making possible his preaphing and his teaching and the other things he did, there the joy of contemplation was diminished somewhat : not the vision but the pleasure of the sight. But the higher powers of his soul, wherein he was united, these remained always in unveiled contemplation. Now I have explained how Christ was hindered and at the same time not. One thing more and let that suffice as giving you the key to the whole matter. The hindrance was physical not psychic. But even so he never failed in the minutest point to fulfil the mission on which his Father sent him, preaching and teaching and doing outward works whereby he earned reward and honour.

47. ‘ Could Christ earn reward ? ’ — There are two rewards ; one of them Christ earned, the other not. One of the rewards we earn by our good works is the vision of the Godhead. This reward Christ did not earn since from the moment Christ’s body was united with the Godhead, his soul has been gazing at the Godhead, as it is doing to this day. The other reward we earn by our good works is the glorification of the body with the soul after the day of judgment and this reward Christ earned by his holy life, his body being glorified together with his soul at his resurrection. Now thou knowest how Christ did earn' reward and also not. 48. ‘ Just one other thing.’ — Tell me, what is that ? — ‘ You say that Christ gained honour. What honour did he gain ? ’ — Christ has the title of The Head of Holy Christendom and this honour Christ has won by his holy life. 49. ‘ A man to whom eternal light is given, is he prone to sin in time ? ’ — One to whom eternal light is given may well stoop to imperfection and sometimes falls an easier prey to frivolity and suctilike venial sins than another man. — ‘ What is the cause of this propensity ? ’ — It comes from being engrossed in one simple thing ; multitudinous images disturb the soul, tossing her about with their various conceits. Once conceiving unity she is distracted by diversity. But as soon as she begins to sec, it is as though it had never been and she can free herself completely without the slightest effort ; which is a sign that she has eternal light. To see and be unable to escape would argue lack of eternal light. You know now how it is that people, even with eternal light, are prone to sin. St Paul sinned after he had been caught up.

50. The first and noblest work of God is motionlessness : divine rest. It stands to reason that the maker of the motionless is himself unmoved. Were God not immoveable there could nothing motionless be made. Aristotle says all moving things proceed from rest and from necessity and moving things arc all seeking rest. Man likewise then "^ought to be as motionless as possible. — ‘ When is a man motionless ? ’ — The soul is motionless when nothing whatever can perturb her ; when she is neither glad nor sad and cannot be gladdened nor yet saddened. And she must be unnecessitous. — ‘ When is she unnecessitous ? ’ — The soul is unnecessitous when she has no need to cleave to any creature and not only has no need, it is hell-pain to her to dwell upon the form of creature since there is no rest for her save in the formless form of God. She is unnecessitous when she has come into her rights and, with no need of change, rests in the unnecessitous nothingness of his unchanging nature. 51. ‘ Sir, what did St Paul mean by saying, ‘ ‘ We shall be one spirit with God ? ” When is the soul one spirit with God ? ’ — She is one spirit with God when she has no image or anything between. And she is turned to spirit when she is not subject to any creature love or appetite.

52. ‘ Sir, what is perfect love ? ’ — Perfect love leaves nothing less than God. — ‘ Pray tell me what you mean.’ — I mean, having hold of nothing but God they cannot leave go of less than God, who are as they should be. Natural ties have been cut. 53. ‘ Tell me, Sir, for the love of God, is it possible to pray or ask of God quite unselfishly ? ’ — Oh yes. I will tell you how. There are two cases of unselfish prayer. The first is on our own account, that we may be rid of some imperfection which comes between us and eternal truth. The second case is prayer for some other person’s sin, knowing all the facts and that he desires to be free. For these things we may pray and with avidity. But our human will must confine itself to the will of God, as thus : ' Lord, thou knowest I desire not nor do I will aught save what thou dost will : an thou know something better, give me that,’ so losing thine own and keeping his. 54. ‘ Sir, what about the man they talk of sometimes among pious folk, who sets such store by physical austerities and longwinded prayers ; is that the best or is there something better ? ’ — The most perfect bond that we can have is innocence, a blameless life, and being wholly without guile it is best to drop words altogether for words are interlopers between ourselves and God.

55. ‘ What is the sign of union with God’s will ? ’ — Perfect singlemindedness. — It is characteristic of the gracious, deified mind, from trivial error to extract much wisdom. — The very least thing in excess of absolute necessity will count. — Christ’s every action is a pious precept. — An angel’s nature is his intellect and his intellect is his impartible nature. 56. He to whom light is given grows conscious of the darkness in all creatures. 57. ‘ Will you tell me, Sir, why Solomon should say. The righteous man falls seven times a day ? What is this falling of the righteous man ? ’ — It is the lapsing of his soul from the highest level she can reach to : failure to remain at the very summit where she transcends creature in God, that is the fall of the perfect man. 58. ‘ When does one person love another in God without admixture of nature ? ’ — The sure test of pure divine love is the sense of nothing but God, always with enlightenment. 59. ‘ Why is it that a man will ask for things he does not need and knowing this to be the case will still go on doing it : what does he do it for ? ’ — It is nature. When appetites are uncontrolled a man will ask for the impossible. — ‘ But supposing it is not impossible nor yet unlikely and he is self-controlled, what is it then ? ’ — I tell you it is nature. — ‘ Yes, yes, good Sir, but leave out nature I ’ — That will I not. It is nature inasmuch as it is mingled with divine nature.