Sermons and Treatises of Meister Eckhart

In order to give an account of the means within my reach and It the same time to give the reader some idea of the extent and lifTiculty of my work, I append a list of the jirinted matter and nanu scripts used, together with a statement of their contents irranged and numbered to correspond with my edition. 1. A. Strassburg, stadtbibliothek, A. 98. 1 tth cent. 4to. (I, 16, 17, 26-28, 30-39, 41, 44, 46, 48, 50-53 ; II, 6.) 2. B. Basel, universitatsbibliothek, B. XI, 10. 14th cent. 12mo. (I. 17-25 ; III, 6, 7 ; IV.)

I decided therefore to rely solely on my sources and the order in which their individual sermons were presented. With this end in view those manuscripts were chosen out which were specially distinguished for their age or authenticity, and from these again selection was made of those with superscriptions imputing them to Eckhart. In this way and in this way only I found it possible to enter into the genius and the method and the idiosyncrasy of Eckhart and gain a reliable standard whereby to determine those sermons which, though found among the authentic ones, were yet without his name. By this means I hope to have acquired the necessary ]>ractice and familiarity with Eckhart’s writings and I believe 1 need not fear that any important item of my collection will ultimately prove to be wrongly attributed to Eckhart. The Sayings, with few exceptions, bear all the marks of authenticity and need no further verification. Only a couple of them are traceable to the complete sermons and tractates included, though most are fragments and portions of larger works. From this we can form some notion of the amount of Eckhart still lost to us.

With regard to the fourth section, which I have called Liher Positionum, I had no external evidence of Eckhart’s authorship, but Eckhart’s genius and characteristic outlook seem to me to be unmistakably shown in these arguments in which, in the form of dialogues between master and pupil, a series of weighty philosophical and theological questions are ventilated. Further, the separate items of this work which only loosely hang together, I have met with only among Eckhart’s writings. The title I have borrowed from Trithemius’ Catalogue (see above) ; it might have been made for it. Obviously my text is not all of equal value and correctness ; who could expect it ? With the numerous pieces preserved only in late and bad MSS. it was often impossible owing to the carelessness of the scribe to unravel the manifold confusion of thought and connection ; how was I to restore and supply words and whole sentences which had been omitted ? I mean to comment in the Notes on the passages which seem to me to be corrupt and give the emendations and conjectures which I have found it inexpedient to publish with the text. Of another kind but no less great was my didiculty with those passages which certainly appeared in the best MSS. but showed considerable variations among themselves. How important these discrepancies often are the variants will show. In cases of this sort the recognition and isolation of the authentic* from the unauthentic later additions or distortions is rarely to be done with any certainty and for that reason I have sometimes adopted the expedient of putting the variants themselves in juxtaposition in the text.^

As to the diction of the contents of this volume, which I have neither wished nor been able to give much order to, I have followed the oldest and best MSS. which, consistently with Eckhart’s home and birthplace, Strassburg, are written almost entirely in the Alcmanic idiom : Middle German and the speech of Cologne do appear occasionally but notwithstanding Eckhart’s long sojourn on the lower Rhine, only rarely and in late MSS. Stuttgart, ^th July 1857. The last two pages of Pfeiffer’s Preface arc occupied with acknowledgments of the help and kindness received from professors, librarians, keepers of archives, etc. Among these appear the names of Wackernagel, P. Gall-Morel, Franz Hoffmann, and the Cardinal Prince-Bishop of Breslau, Melchior von Diepenbrock, ^ Many examples of this occur. See especially I, Ixxvi and II, xi.

‘ who never tired of lending me a helping hand.’ He is especially grateful to the then Prefect of the Vatican Archives who enabled him to trace and placed at his disposal eight documents (s. Pertz. archiv 9, 449) relating to Eckhart and of much importance ‘ as showing the relations of Eckhart with the Church, his position with regard to the Archbishop of Cologne and the justification of the latter for setting in motion the Inquisition against him, as well as for the history of the powerful spiritual movement which at the beginning of the fourteenth century took place on the Rhine.’ All these documents he reserves for his projected volume of Notes, with the cxce])tiori of one short quotation from Eckliart’s Declaration at Cologne, 13 Feb. 1327. This, together with other relevant documents, was afterwards published by Preger at the end of the first volume of his Geschichie der deutschen Mi/stik, Eckhart ^ (d. cir. 1327) has been ealled the lather of the German mystics,^ the philosophical creative genius of the German mystics ® and the father of German speculation.^ According to Dean Inge he is ‘ next to Plotinus the greatest j)hilosopher-mystic ’ ^ and the most Plotinian of all Christian philosophers.^* lie was a learned ^ member of the Dominican or Preaching Order and sometime lector hihlicus at the University of Paris, then the Dominican College of St Jacob where he was given his title of Meister by Pope Honiface VIII. But it was probably at Cologne that he graduated in the Scholasticism of Albertus Magnus (1205 -1281) and Thomas Aquinas (1226 -1274) whose system was at that time rapidly acquiring its hold. He held at different times important provincial posts and proved himself an able administrator and reformer of the numerous religious houses in his eare but it was principally at Strassburg and afterwards at Cologne that he established his great influence as a teacher and ‘for an entire generation, with the boldest freedom, preached to the multitudes in the German tongue on topics bristling with difliculties for the orthodox faith.’ For he had conceived the then novel idea of instructing the lait}^ and the many semi-religious communities and brotherhoods of that date-— Beguines, Beghards, Friends of God (Gottefifreunde), etc. — no less than the religious of his Order, and for this purpose it was necessary to make the further innovation of using the vulgar tongue instead of Latin, the teaching medium of that day. Ilis success in expounding the abstruse tenets of the Scholastic philosophy in an undeveloped language which he had to supply with words and fashion to his needs, has earned for Eckhart the titles of father of the German language and the father of German philosophic ® prose. Ultimately the Church authorities became alarmed at the enthusiasm roused by his teaching and especially at its effect u))on the laity. He was accused of preaching to the people in their own language

^ The following facts aro takon chiefly from Preger’s GcffchirMe and Laason’s Meister Eckhart. (See Bibliography for full titles.) * Bach, p. 1. 3 Wackornagel, p. 298. * Bach. ^ TAght^ TAJe arid Love, p. xv. * Philosophy of Plotinus^ vol. ii, p. 107. ’ Tauler (1300-13G1) describes him as ‘ a man of prodigious learning, loo profoundly versed in the aubtilties of God- and nature-wisdom for many of the scholars of his day rightly to understand him ’ {Sermom, Basle od., 1521). Rufus M. Jones, p. 218. • Lasson, pp. 66, 69.

things that might lead to heresy ^ and this led to his excommunication in 1329, after his death, on the general grounds of preaching to the laity the secrets of the Church, a list of seventeen specific heretical and eleven ohjectional doctrines being appended to the inditcment.2 T(^ the first accusation he replied : ^ If the ignorant are not taught they will never learn ’ ; ‘ the business of the doctor is to heal.’ The charge of heresy he strenuously denied and largely succeeded in rebutting while he lived. ‘ I protest in the presence of God,’ he says, ‘ that I have always avoided with horror all error in matters of faith,’ and he never made any recantation of his teaching although he publicly declared his willingness to retract any error ‘ that might be proved against him.’" TTis ‘errors’ appear to be the logical outcome of the system he taught. As Lasson says, ‘ lie taught what Dionysius and St Thomas taught . . . but he goes further than any of his predecessors and crosses the boundaries of Church dogma.’ There is only the scantiest material for a biography of Eckhart. Of his birth neither date nor place is known. It is argued that he was born before 1200 either at Strassburg in Saxony, or at Hoclihcim in Thfiringia. The first known mention of his name is in a list of Professors at the University of Paris : /r. Echardus^ Tutonicus, licentiates per Bonifavium, 1302. In 1303 he was Provincial of the Order in Saxony, with its sixty convents, men’s and women’s. To this title he added in 1307 that of V^icar-General of Bohemia where he refonned the religious liouses. In 1311 he returned to Paris University and in 1312 began his long sojourn as head of the Order at Strassburg. Eight years later (1320) he is Prior of Frankfu rt. There is now some suspicion of his orthodoxy but the Order still supports him and he is given a Chair at the Dominican College in (Cologne where he enhances his reputation as a preacher. Here Tauler, Suso and Ruysbroeck probably heard him, and Tauler also at Strassburg. In 1325-6, suspicion of his teaching having revived, Nikolaus of Strassburg was appointed his special Inquisitor and his case came before the Inquisition in Venice. lie delivered his Protest before that body on 24 Jan. 1327, and on 13 Feb. following made his public Declaration of orthodoxy in the Dominican Church at Cologne. This is the last date on which he is known to have been alive. The answer of the Inquisition to his appellation, refusing to accept it, is dated 22 Feb. 1327, and it is conjectured that he died soon after. He was excommunicated by the Bull of John XXII, 27 March 1329.

' Inquisition at Venice, 1326. ^ Bull of John XXII. See Pregor, Appendix. ® Declaration at Cologne, 13 Feb. 1327. After his excommunication in 1329 Eckliart gradually lost all but legendary fame and his writings survived mostly under other names. Five hundred years later, in 1829 , Gorres speaks of him as ‘ line figure chretienne presque mythique.’ ^ But for at least two generations after his death his writings, secretly passed from hand to hand and frequently transcribed, fomied what Lasson calls ‘ the text-books of God-intoxicated piety.’ To the preachers of his school, John Tauler ( 1300 - 1361 ), Suso ( 1300 - 1365 ), Ruysbrocck ( 1293 - 1381 ), all members of the Brotherhood of the Friends of God, and to others of less note, they were a veritable mine from which they drew not only inspiration but words, sayings, whole passages and even whole sermons. To the Basle 1521 edition of Tauler’s sermons Adam Petri had appended a few pages of sermons under Eckliart ’s own name and this led to his rediscovery by Schmidt in 1817 .- Taulcr’s sermons were afterwards shown by Pfeiffer to be a valuable source of Eckhart’s writings and tliis applies also to the works of Suso and Ruysbroeck to a less degree.

Pfeiffer’^ collection of Eckhart’s works is the earliest and still by lar the largest. He confined himself principally to writings in Alemanic, the High German dialect of Strassburg at that date, but there are a number of others in different dialects of German, a few in Latin, ^ and some in a mixture of the two.* Tlierc are often numerous variants of the same original, sometimes under Eckhart’s^ name but often attributed toothers, e.g. Frankc von Koln, Hermann von Fritslar, Nikolaus von Landau, Johannes von Sterngassen, Kraft von Royberg, all belonging to the fourteenth century. The nauH's of David of Ausburg and Nikolaus of Strassburg might possibly be added but, as Pfeiffer points out, frequently the only test of authorship is the internal evidence of style and matter and this test has \ et to be, conclusively ajiplied. A few of Pfeiffer’s attributions would seem to have been wrongly made and in some cases overworking has robbed the writing of its Eckhartian flavour. In the following translation the six last and doubtful sermons have been omitted and a few other numbers of Parts I and II hav^c been replaced by substitutes, either discoveries of Pfeiffer’s or from independent sources. With regard to the authorship of these substitutes, I, Iviii, 11, xvii and xix, are attributed to Eckhart on the authority of Preger (see Geschichte, pp. 318 - 324 ) ; I, xii on that of Biittncr (sec M, EclxharVs Schriften, etc., vol. ii, p. 228 ). Tractate i (from the Jostes collection) is evidently by the same hand as II, xix and

* Works of Suso, 1829. Quoted by Jundt. * Martensen had already published his Monograpli iu 1842. ® Deniflo. Also Spamer’s Texte. • Spamer’s TexU^ aud Jostos.

I, xliii by the same author as I, Ixxii. Sermon xlvi is found (sec Jostes, No. ;34) forming part of Pfeiffer’s Tractate iv. Of the other substitutes, I, ix is a typical Eckhart fragment from Hermann von Fritslar’s Das Jleiligenlehen (1349), a collection which must now be recognised as a source of Eckhart’s writings (see also II, viii). Lastly, I, x and xv (from Spamer’s Texie) appear to be compilations from Eckhart’s works. This applies also to Greith’s Second Book ^ from which I, Ixxxix is taken. The Scholastic movement originated in the schools founded by Charlemagne (742 -814). It aimed at reconciling the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists - (Plotinus, Poq>hyry, Proclus) with the doctrines of Christianity. The first and greatest period of Scholasticism, which culminated with Aquinas (d. 1274) and his Summa Theologica began with Scotus Erigcna (d. cir, 877) who translated into Latin the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius (sixth century) and in reviving his system popularised also the philosophy of Aristotle as known chiclly in the Latin translations of his works and of Porphyiy’s which had been made by Boethius (d. 542). The tradition of Aristotle had also been handed down through the great Arabian Aristotelians represented later by Avicenna (d. 1037) and Avcrrocs (d. 1193) the Latin translations of whose commen- ‘tarics Aquinas appears to have used. Through the same Moliainrnedan school came the so-called Theology of Aristotle^ really the Enneads (iv- vi) of Plotinus. Finally, Proclus exerted a profound influence on the Scholastic philosophy not only through the medium of Dionysius’ writings but also directly through his own, for it was his Elements which, emanating from the Arabians under the name of the Liber de Cmisisy famous in the middle ages, was a favourite text-book in their schools.^

' Greith aitributea to »Suso, by a process of exclusion, the untitled work which forms his .SVeond Book. (See Die dculsche Mystiky pp. 81 and 96.) The original of this is an early h f teen th -century MS. of 342 small 4to pages from a Dominican Convent at St Gall, and roferonco to the various Eckhart collections shows it to be a ‘ Teaching System ’ mainly, if not wholly, compiled from his writings. * Eckhart a New Philosophers’ ? ‘ The Philosopher ’ is Aristotle. Aquinas IS called J ho I )octor,’ and * a heathen doctor ’ is often, but by no means always, Averroes. « Soo History of the Later Boman A’mptVe, J. B. Bury; Macmillan, 1923. Amcenne Carra de Vaux ; Paris, 1900. The Metaphysical Elements of Proclusy rhos. M. Johnson; Missouri, U.S.A., 1909 ]. 521-2. Taulk’h (J.), Sormons. Adam P^»tri. Basic. 1530. Flach (Martin), Eiii dcmutigc erinanung, etc. Slrassburg. (Four pages only.) 1842. Martens KN (Bishop of Zealand), Meistor Eckhart : Ein thcologiseho Studio. 1845. Pfeiffer (Franz), Deutsche Mystikor des vierzohuton Jnhrhimderts, Bd. i. Leipzig. 1847. ScuMTDT (K.), Studien uiid Kritiken, 13.39, Heft 3, S. 603. And iStudes sur kn rnystieism allemand in the Me moires do V academic de.s Sciences morales et politique.y. Pari.s. T. 2.

1850-1, Pfeiffer (Franz) in Zeitse.hrift fur deutsoher Altertliuin, Leipzig. Bd. vili. Heft. 1 and 2, 1850. Also Heft 3, 1851. 1857. Pfeiffer (Franz), Deutsche Mystikor, etc., Bd. ii. Meistor Eckhart. Leifizig. 1861. Gheith (E.), Dio doutscho My.stik im Prediger-Orden (von 1250-1380). .. Friburg. 1864. Bach (Joseph), Meistor Eckhart dor Vater des deutschen Speculation. Wien, 1868. Lasson (A.), Meistor Eckhart der Mystikor. Berlin. (Monograph with Emendations to Pfeiffer’s text, for which see al.so Zt. f. dt. Phil., 1878.) 1871. JuNDT (A.), Essai sur lo Mysticism sp^culatif do Maitro Eckhart. 1872. SiEVERS, Zeit.seh. f. d. Alt. Berlin. Bd. 15. (Twenty sermoiLS from an Oxford MS., Laud. Mise. 479. 8.) 1874. Preoeu (VV.), Geschichto dor deutschen Mystik im Mittclalh'r. Leipzig. 1875. Wackernaukl (W.), Altdeutscho Predigteii und Gebete aus Hand- 1875. JuNDT (A.), Pantheism populaire. Paris. 1885-6. Denifle, Meistor Eckhart’s I..atin Schrirton etc., in Archives fiir Litcratur und Kirchongeschiehte <les Mittolaltors. Berlin. Vol. 2. (Latin sermons found at Erfurt.) 1885. MicHELsi.N (C.), Meistor Eckhart : Ein Versuch. Berlin. 1895. JosTEs (F.), Meistor Eckhart und seine Jiingcr, Ungcdrucktc Texto. Friburg. (Contains 82 sermons, etc., from a Nuremberg MS. Also 4 more in Apiiendix.) 1895. Hartmann (F.), Dio Gcheimlehre in der Christlichcn Keligion nach Erklarung von Meistor Eckhart.

1905. ZucHHOLD (H.), Dos Nikolaus von Landau Sermone als Quelle fiir die Predigt M. Eckharts, etc. Halle. 1908. Spamer (A.). Zur Oborlieferung dos Pfeifferschon Eckharttexte in Ileitrigo zur Gcschichte der doutachen Sprache und Literatur, Bd. 34 (2). 1909. Buttneb (H. ), Moister Eckhart’s Schrifton und Predigten, 2 vola. Jena. (A very free translation from Middle High into modem German.) 1912. Spamer (A.), Toxto aus dor deutschen Myatik dea 14 und 15 Jahrhunderts. Jena. (Latin and German texts from MSS. in Berlin, Brussels, Cues, Oxford, etc.) In English, some account of Eckhart and his writings is found in the following works : Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics ; Max Muller’s Theosophy ; Dean Inge’s Light, Life and Love. Methuen, 1904 ; Von Hugcl’s The Mystical Element of Religion. Dent, 1908. Vo), ii, and Studies in Mystical Religion by Rufus M. Jones. Macmillan, 1909. Also Karl Pearson’s “ Meister Eckhart the Mystic ’’ in Mind, vol. xi. 1. Sermons and Collations ^ ....... I I. This is Meistor Eckhart ^ ...... 3 11. This is another Sermon * ......() III. This too is Moister Eckliart * . . . .14 IV. The Eternal Birth ....... 20 V. Dcus Charitas ost ....... 25

VI. Jesus wont into the Temple ...... 28 VJJ. The Sons of God ........ 31 VJII. The Castle of the Soul . . . . . . . 35 * IX. The Eternal Birth 38 X. Man has to seek God in Error and Forgetfulness ^ . .39 XI. The Hour eometh and now is . . . .41 XII. Contemplation, Hints and T^romisos ^ . . .44 XIII. In this was manifested the I-ove of God .... 47 XIV. Like a Va.se of Gold .50 XV. The Divine Being ^ . . .53 XVI. The Sixth Beatitude ....... 55 XVll. In Brincipio erat Vorbum ...... 57 XV 111. I know a Man in Christ ...... 58 XIX. Paul rose from the Ground ...... 50 XX. And behold there was a man . . . Simeon ... 04 XXI. He that hateth his Soul ...... 07 XXII. The Lord put forth His Hand ..... 09 XXIII. The Spirit of tlie Lord . . . . . . .71 XXIV. St John saw in a Vision . . . . .73 XXV. The Lord hath sent His Angel 74 XXVI. The Feast of the Virgin 70 ^ Collazie, Lat. collotio, sometimes translated table-talk (see Wackernagel). The discourses read aloud in monasteries during meal-time.s were called collations, hence the use of tho word collation for the meal itself.

^ Title as in Pfeiffer’s text. ® From other sources than Pfeiffer’s Meister Eckhart. XXVIi. Rejoice in the Lord ....... 77 XXVIII. The Angel Gabriel was sent ...... 79 XXIX. The Angel Gabriel was sent ...... 80 XXX. ‘ Vision i.s the whole Reward ‘ .81 XXXI. The Man in the Soul ....... 84 XXXII. The Soul 8park. With Appendix. ‘ Syndereais . 86 XXXI IJ. If ye then be risen with Christ ..... 92 XXXIV. St Diony.siiis speaks of three kinds of Light ^ . . .94 XXXV. Stand in the Gate ....... 95 XXXVI. Young Man, Arise !....... 98 XXX VII. Young Man, Arise ! . . , . . . .100 XXXIX. Every good Gift ........ 104 XL. Every good Gift ........ 107 XLl. A Tattle and ye .‘^hall not .see Mo . . . . .110 XLTl. The linage aufl it.s Object . . IL‘1 XLJIJ. Knowledge and LoveA ...... 110 XLIV. Jn All Thing.s I seek H(‘st . . . .118 XLV. In All Things 1 seek Rest . . . .119 XLVJ. I'ovt'i ty ' . . . , . .122 XLVIJ. This is Life Eternal ....... 123 XLVni. Behold, 1 s(‘nd iny Ang^d ...... 125

XLIX. Belujld, T .send my Angel . . . . . .127 L. 1 came forth from the Eather . . . .129 LI. He sought to see . . . who He was .... 1,32 Lll. The good Housewife . . . . .134 LTir. Whoso(?ver would come after me . . . . .136 LIV. Eroiu Him and through Him and in Him . .137 LV. God made the Boor for the Rich ..... 1,39 LVI. The Emanation and Retxirii . . . .142 LVll. Such is tho Nature of God ...... 144 LVI 1 1. Divine Understanding ^ ..... . 140 LTX. Tho Just lives in Eternity ...... 149 IjX. Likes love and unite ....... 152 LXJ. There comes forth a Rod out of the Root of Jesse . .153 LXll. What maimer of Child .shall this be ? . . . . I54 LX HI. Atonement . . . . . . .150 LX IV. The swift Rivi'r . . . . . . .158 LXV. d’ho Just live for ever . . . . . . .100 LXVl. Rubli.sh the Word . . . . , .164 LXVll. The Powers of FTeaven shall bo moved . . . .100

LXVHI. Tlio Powi^rs of tho Soul “ . . . . . .109 LXIX. The Kingdom of God is at hand ..... 171 LXX. '_rhis is a vSermon about our Lord’s Body . , .174 LXXl. BoiUhius says : He who wants to see true . . .174 LXXll. 3Iie Prophet says : Lord bo merciful . . . .175 LXXIII. St Benedict’s Day . . . . . , .177 LXX IV. The Promise of tho Father . . . . .179 LXXV. Ascension Day . . . . . . , .183 1 From other souree.s than Pfeiffer’s Aleister Eckkarl. * Title as in Pfeiffer's text. 2. I go to Him that sent me 3. The Soul’s Place .... The Image in the. Soul .... The Son of the Widow There is one Power in the Soul 1 have chosen you .... Tlic IVast of Martyrs .... St Germanus’ Day .... Like the Morning Star . A new Commandment I give unto you . DotHchrnent has ftnir Steps . 1'he Poor in Spirit ....

The Virgin Birih ..... 1. The Word of Gotl .... 2. The Word of the Soul ^ . Elizabeth’s Full Time came . Rejoice 0 Heavens .... But now tho Light in God Ho went up into a Mountain Bo yo renewed in tho S})irit of your Mind Olio God and Father of All . In All Things I seek Rest. Part I. Honour Thy Father .... Out of the Mouth of the Most High The Kingdom of God ^ The Nobility of tho Soul The Rank and Nature of the Soul . ’I’ho Soul’s Perfection .... The Book of Godly Comfort . Signs of tho True Ground Tho Birth of tho Eternal Word in the Soul ^ From other sources than Ffoiffor’s Meister Eckliart. ® Titles as in Pfeiffer’s text, except xiv and xv.

XII. Tho Drowning ........ 368 Tim Gloss on 'Hie Drowning ...... 369 Xin. 'rho Flow into tho Father . . . . . .371 XIV. vSt John says, ‘ I saw tho Word in God ’ ... 377 XV. I'ho Throo CroatioiLS ....... 382 XVI. The Soul’s .Rago ........ 389 XVJl. Tho 3’wofold Way ^ ....... 390 XVill. Common tary on tho Gospel of St John .... 396 XIX. Tho Doatilic Vision ^ ...... . 408 IV. Liheii Positionum ......... 443 ^ From other sources than rfeilfer’s Mvistvr ICckkaif. Someone compltiinotl to Moistor Eckhart that no ono could understand his sermons. Tie said, To iindorstand my sermons a man requires three things. Ho must have conquered strife and bo in contemplation of his highest good and bo satisfied to do God’s bidding and be a beginner with beginners and naught hitnsolf and be so master of hiinsclf as to bo incapable of anger. Cod. Monac. Qerm.y 3G5, Eol. 1926.

THIS IS MEISTER ECKIIAllT FROM WHOM GOD NOTPIING HID Dum medium silentium tenerent omnia et nox in suo cursu medium Her haheret etc. {Sap. 18, 4). ‘ For wliilc all things were in quiet silenee and the night was in the midst of her (bourse, etc.’ Here in time we make holiday because the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity is now born in time, in human nature. St Augustine says this birth is always happening. Hut if it happen not in me what does it profit me ? What matters is that it shall happen in me. ^Ve intend therefore to speak of this birth as taking place in us : as [)eing eonsum mated in tht‘ \ irtuous soul : for it is in the ])erfect soul that God speaks his Word. What I shall say is true only of the [)erfceted man, of him who has walked and is still walking in the way of God : not ot the natural undisciplined man who is entirely remote from and unconscious of this birth. There is a saying of the wise man : ‘ When all things Jay in the midst of silence then leapt there down into me from on high, from the royal throne, a secret word.’ This sermon is about this word.

Concerning it three things arc to be noted. The first is, whereabouts in the soul God the Father speaks his Word, wliere she is receptive of this act, where this birth befalls. It is bound to be in the purest, loftiest, subtlest part of the soul. Verily, an God tlic Father in liis omnipotence had endowed tlie soul with a still nobler nature, had she receiva‘d from him anything yet more exalted, then must the Fatlier have delayed this birth for the presence of this greater excellence, 'fhe soul in which this birth shall come to pass must be absolutely pure and must live in gentle fashion, quite peaceful and wholly introverted : not running out through the five senses into the manifoldness of creatures, but altogether within and harmonised in her summit. That is its place. Anything inferior is disdained by it. The second part of this discourse has to do with man’s conduct in relation to this act, this interior speaking, this birth : whether it is more profitable to co-opcrate in it -perhaps by creating in the mind an imaginary image and disciplining oneself thereon by reflecting that God is wise, omnipotent, eternal, or whatever else one is able to excogitate about God — so that the birth may come to pass in us through our own exertion and merit ; or whether it is more profitable and conducive to this birth from the Father to shun all thoughts, words and deeds as well as all mental images and empty oneself, maintaining a wholly God-receptive attitude, such that one’s own self is idle letting God work. Which conduct subserves this birth best ?

The third point is the profit and how great it is, which accrues from this birth. Note in the first jilaee that in what I am about to say I intend to avail myself of natural proofs that ye yourselves can grasp, for though I put more faith in the scriptures than myself, nevertheless it is easier and better for you to learn by means of arguments that can be vc^rified. First we will take the words : ‘ In the midst of the silence there was spoken in me a secret word.’ — 13ut, Sir, where is the silence and where the place in which the word is spoken ? As I said just now, it is in the purest part of the soul, in the noblest, in her ground, aye in t he very essence of the soul. That is mid-silenee for thereinto no creature did ever get, nor any image, nor has the soul there either activity or understanding, therefore she is not aware of any image cither of herself or any creature. Whatever the soul effects she effects with her powers. When she understands she understands with her intellect. When she remembers she does so with her memory. When she loves she does so with her will. She works then with her powers and not with her essence. Now every exterior act is linked with some means. The power of seeing is brought into play only through the eyes ; elsewhere she can neither do nor liestow such a thing as seeing. And so with all the other senses : their operations arc always effected through some means or other, lint there is no activity in the essence of the soul ; the faculties she works with cTuanatc from the ground of the essence but in her actual ground there is mid-stillness ; here alone is rest and a habitation for this birth, this act, wherein God the Father speaks his Word, for it is intrinsically receptive of naught save the divine ess:*nce, without means. Here God enters the soul with his all, not merely with a part. God enters the ground of the soul. None can touch the ground of the soul but God only. No creature is admitted into her ground, it must stop outside in her powers. There it sees the image whereby it has been

drawn in and found shelter. For when the soul-powers contact a creature they set to to make of the creature an image and likeness which they absorb. By it they know the creature. Creatures cannot go into the soul, nor can the soul know anything about a creature which she has not willingly taken the image of into herself. She approaches creatures through their present images ; an image being a thing that the soul creates with her powers. Be it a stone, a rose, a man, or anything else that she wants to know about, she gets out the image of it which she has already taken in and is thus enabled to unite herself with it. But an image rceeiv^cd in this way must of necessity enter from without through the senses. Consequently there is nothing so unknown to the soul as herself. The soul, says a philosoplier, can neither create nor absorb an image of herself. So she has nothing to know liersclf by. Iniages all enter through the senses, hence she can have no image of herself. She knows other things but not hcrsell’. Of nothing does she know so little as of herself, owing to this arrangement. Now thou must know that inwardly the soul is free from means and images, that is why God can freely unite with her without form or similitude. Thou caiist not but attribute to God without measure whatever power thou dost attribute to a master. The wiser and more powerful the master the more immediately is his work effected and the simpler it is. Man requires many instruments for his external works ; much preparation is needed (‘re he can bring them forth as he has imagined them. The sun and moon whose work is to give light, in their mastership perform this very swiftly : the instant their radiance is poured forth, all the ends of the world arc full of light. More exalted arc the angels, who need less means for their works and have fewer images. Tlie highest Seraph has but a single image. lie seizes as a unity all that his inferiors regard as manifold. Now God needs no image and has no image : witliout image, likeness or means does God work in the soul, aye, in Iier ground whereinto no image did ever get but only himself with his own essence. This no creature can do.

— How do(\s God the Father give birth to his Son in the soul ; like creatures, in image and likeness ? No, by my faith ! Imt just as he gives him birth in eternity and no otherwise. — Well, but how docs he give him birth there ? See. God the Father has perfect insight into himself, profound and thorough knowledge of himself by means of himself, not by means of any image. And thus God the Father gives birth to his Son, in the very oneness of the divine nature. Mark, thus it is and in no other way that God the Father gives birth to his Son in the ground and essence of the soul and thus he unites himself with her. Were any image present there would not be real union and in real union lies thy whole beatitude. Now haply thou wilt say : ‘ But there is nothing innate in the soul save images.’ No, not so ! If that were true the soul would never be happy, for God cannot make any creature wherein thou canst enjoy perfect happiness, else were God not the highest happiness and final goal, whereas it is his will and nature to be the alpha and omega of alk No creature can be happiness. And here indeed can Just as little be perfection, for perfection (perfect virtue that is to say) results from perfection of life. Therefore verily thou must sojourn and dwell in tliy essence, in thy ground, and there God shall mix thee with his simple essence without the medium of any image. No image represents and signifies itself: it stands for that of which it is the image. Now seeing that thou hast no image save of what is outside thee, therefore it is impossible for thee to be beatified by any image wliatsoevcr.

The second point is, what it does behove a man to do in order to deserv'c and procure this birth to come to pass and be (*onsummated in him : is it better for him to do his part towards it, to imagine and think about (hxl, or should ho keep still in peace and quiet so that God can speak and act in him while he merety waits on God’s operation ? At the same time I rep(‘at that this speaking, this act, is only for the good and perfect, those who have so absorbed and assimilated the essence of virtue that it emanates from them naturally, witliout their seeking ; and above all there must live in them the worthy life and lofty teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. Such are permitted to know that the very best and utmost of attainment in this life is to remain still and let God act and speak in thee. When the powa‘rs hav(' all been withdrawn from tJieir bodily forms and functions, then this \\ ord is spoken. Thus he says : ' in the midst of the silence the secret word was spoken to me.’ The more completely thou art a})lc to in-draw thy faculties and forget those things and their images which thou has taken in, the more, that is to say, thou forgetlcst the creature, the nearer thou art to this and the more susceptible thou art to it. If only thou couldst suddenly be altogether unaware of things, aye, couldst thou but ])ass into oblivion of thine own existence as St Paul did when he said : ‘ Whether in the body I know not, or out of the body I know not, God knoweth ! ’ Here the spirit had so entirely absorbed the faculties that it had forgotten the body : memory no longer functioned, nor understanding, nor the senses, nor even those powers whose duty it is to govern and grace the body ; vital warmth and energy w(‘re arrested so that the body failed not throughout the three days during which he neither ate nor drank. Even so fared Moses when he fasted forty days on the mount and

was none the worse for it : on the last day he was as strong as on the first. Thus a man must abscond from his senses, invert his faculties and lapse into oblivion of things and of himself. Anent which a philosopher apostrophised the soul : ‘ Withdraw from the restlessness of external activities ! ’ And again : ‘ Flee away and hide thee from the turmoil of outward occupations and inward thoughts for they create nothing but discord ! ’ If God is to speak his Word in the soul she must be at rest and at peace ; then he speaks in the soul his Word and himself : not an image but himself. Dionysius says : ‘ God has no image nor likeness of himself seeing that he is intrinsically all good, truth and being.’ God performs all his works, in himself and outside himself, simultaneously. Do not fondly imagine that God, when he created the heavens and the earth and all creatures, lYiade one thing one day and another the next. Moses describes it thus it is true, nevertheless he knew better : he did so merely on account of those who are incapable of understanding or conceiving otherwise. All God did was : he willed and they were. God works without instrument and without image. And the freer thou art from images the more receptive thou art to his interior operation ; and the more introverted and oblivious thou art the nigher thou art thereto. Dionysius exhorted his disciple Timothy in this sense saying ;

‘ Dear son Timothy, do thou with untroubled mind swing thyself up above thyself and above thy powers, above all modes and all existences, into the secret, still darkness, that thou mayest attain to the knowledge of the unknown super-divine God.’ All things must be forsaken. God scorns to work among images. Now haply thou wilt say : ‘ What is it that God docs without images in the ground and essence ? ’ That I am incapable of knowing, for my soul-powers can receive only in images ,* they have to recognise and lay hold of each thing in its appropriate image : they cannot recognise a bird in the image of a man. Now since images all enter from without, this is concealed from my soul, which is most salutary for her. Not-knowing makes her wonder and leads her to eager pursuit, for she knows clearly that it is but knows not how nor xvhat it is. No sooner docs a man know the reason of a thing than immediately he tires of it and goes casting about for something new. Always clamouring to know, he is ever inconstant. The soul is constant only to this unknowing knowing which keeps her pursuing.

The wise man said concerning this : " In the middle of the night when all things were in quiet silence there was spoken to me a hidden word.’ It came like a thief, by stealth. What does he mean by a word that was hidden ? The nature of a word is to reveal what is hidden. It appeared before me, shining out with intent to reveal and giving me knowledge of God. Hence it is called a word. But what it was remained hidden from me. That was its stealthy coming ‘ in a whispering stillness to reveal itself.’ It is just because it is hidden that one is and must be always after it. It appears and disappears : we are meant to yearn and sigh for it. St Paul says we ought to pursue this until wc espy it and not stop until we grasp it. When he returned after having been caught up into the third heaven where God was made known to him and where he beheld all things, he had forgotten nothing, but it was so deep down in his ground that his intellect could not reach it : it was veiled from him. He was therefore obliged to pursue it and search for it in himself, not outside himself. It is not outside, it is inside : wholly within. And being convinced of this he said, ‘ I am sure that neither death nor any affliction can separate me from what I find within me.’

There is a fine saying of one heathen philosopher to another about this, he says : ‘ I am aware of something in me which sparkles in my intelligence ; I clearly perceive that it is somewhat but xsihat I cannot grasp. Yet methinks if I could only seize it I should know all tnith.’ To which the other philosopher replied : ‘ Follow it boldly ! for if thou eanst seize it thou wilt possess the sum-total of all good and have eternal life ! ’ St x\ugustine expresses himself in the same sense : ‘ 1 am conscious of something within me that plays before my soul and is as a light dancing in front of it ; were this brought to steadiness and perfection in me it would surely be eternal life ! ’ It hides yet it shows. It comes, but after the manner of a thief, with intent to take and to steal all things from the soul. 13y emerging and showing itself somewhat it purposes to decoy the soul and draw it towards itself to rob it and take itself from it. As saith the prophet : ^ Lord take from them their spirit and give them instead thy spirit.’ This too the loving soul meant when she said : ‘ My soul dissolved and melted away when Love spoke his word ; when he entered I could not but fail.’ And Christ signified it by his words : ‘ Whosoever shall leave aught for my sake shall be repaid an hundredfold, and whosoever will possess me must deny himself and all things and whosoever will serve me must follow me nor go any more after his own.’

Now peradventure thou wilt say : ‘ But, Sir, you are wanting to change the natural course of the soul ! It is her nature to take in through the senses, in images. Would you upset this arrangement ? ’ No ! But how knowest thou what nobility God has bestowed on human nature, what perfections yet uncatalogued, aye yet undiscovered ? Those who have written of the soul’s nobility have gone no further than their natural intelligence could carry them : they never entered her ground, so that much remained obscure and unknown to them. ‘ I will sit in silence and hearken to what God speaketh within me,’ said the prophet. Into this retirement steals the Word in the darkness of the night. St John says, ‘ The light shines in the darkness : it ciime unto its own and as many as received it became in authority sons ol‘ God : to them was given power to become God’s sons.’ Mark now tlie fruit and use of this mysterious Word and of this darkness. In this gloom which is his own the heavenly Father’s Son is not born alone : thou too art born lliere a cliild of the same heavenly Father and no other, and to thee also he gives power. Observe how great the use. No truth h‘arncd by any master by his own intellect and understanding, or ever to be learned this side the day of judgment, has twer been interpreted at all according to this knowh^dge, in this ground, ( all it an tliou wilt an ignorance, an unknowing, yet there is in it more than in all knowing and undc'rstanding without it, for this outward ignorance lures and attracts thee irom all understood things and from tliysclf. This is what Christ meant wlieii he said : ' Whosoever denieth not himself and Icaveth not father and mother and is not estranged from all these, he is not worthy of me.’ As though to say : he who aliandons not creatunly externals can neither be conceived nor born in tiiis divine birth. Ihit divesting thysell'of thyself and of everything external thereto does indeed give it thee. And in ver}^ truth I believe, nay 1 am sure, that the man who is established herein can in no wise be at any lime separated from (xod. I hold he can in no wise lapse into mortal sin. lie would rather suffer the most slianicful death, as the saints have done before him, than commit the l(*ast of mortal sins. 1 hold that he cannot willingly commit, nor yet consent to, even a venial sin, whether in himself or in another. So strongly is he drawn and attracted to this way, so much is he habituated to it, that he eoukl ne\ er turn to any other : to this way are directed all his senses, all his powers.

May the (iod who has been born again as man assist us in this birth, continually helping us, weak man, to be born again in him as God. Amen.

Ubi est qiii nalus est rex Jud(voruni? (Matt. 2 . 2 ). Where is he who is born King of the Jews ? Now concerning this birth, mark where it befalls. I say again as I have often said before that this birth befalls in the soul exactly as it does in eternity, neither more nor less, for it is the same birth : this birth befalls in the ground and essence of the soul. Certain questions arise. Granting that God is in all things as intelligence (or mind) and is more instinct in things than they are in themselves and more natural ; and granting that God wherever he is is in operation, knowing himself and speaking his Word, then mark in what respects the soul is better fitted for this divine operation than other rational creatures God exists in. God is in all things as being, as activity, as power. But he is procreative in the soul alone for though every creature is a vestige of God, the soul is the natural image of God. This image is perfected and adorned in this birth. No creature but the soul is susceptible to this birth, this act. Such perfection as enters the soul, whether it be divine light, grace or bliss, must needs enter the soul in this liirth and no otherwise. Do but foster this birth in thee and thou shalt experience all good and all comfort, all happiness, all being and all tnith. \Vhat comes to thee therein brings thee true being and stability and whatsoever thou mayst seek or grasp, without it, perishes, take it Iioav thou wilt. This alone gives life ; all else eorru2)ts. Moreover, in this birth thou dost j)articipate in the divine inllux and its gifts. This is not received by creatures wherein God \s image is not found : the soulidea belongs to the eternal birth alone and this happens only and solely in the soul, begotten of the Father in the ground and innermost recesses of the soul whercinto never image shone nor soul-power peeped.

Another question is : If this birth befalls in the ground and essence of the soul, then it happens alike in sinner and in saint, so what use or good is it to me ? The ground of nature is the same in both, nay even in hell the nobility of nature persists eternally. — It is characteristic of this birth that it always comes with fresh light. It always brings great (mlightcnment to the soul because it is the nature of good to diffuse itself. In this birth (iod pours into the soul in such abundance of light, the ground and essence of the soul arc so Hooded with it, that it nins over into her powers and into the outward man as well. Thus it befell Paul when iqion his journey God touched him with his light and spake to him : the reflection of this light showed outwardly so that his companions saw it surrounding Paul like the saints. The sujjerfluitv of light in the ground of the soul wells over into the body which is tilled with radiance. No sinner can receive this light nor is he worthy to, being full of sin and wickedness, or darkness. As he (John) says, ‘ The darkness neither receives nor comprehends the light.’ Because the

avenues by which the li^^ht would enter are choked and obstmeted with guile and darkness. Light and darkness are incompatible, like God and creatures. Enter God, exit creatures. Man is quite conscious of this light. Directly he turns to God this light begins to glint and sparkle in him, telling him what to do and what to leave undone, with many a shrewd hint to boot of things he hitherto ignored and knew nothing of. — IIow dost thou know ? — Suppose thy heart is vehemently moved to retire from the world. IJow could that be if not by this light ? It is so cEarming, so delightful, it makes other tbings so tiresome which are not God or God’s. It attracts thee to God and thou art sensible of many a virtuous impulse all)cit uncertain whence it comes. This interior mood is in no wise due to creatures nor is it any of their bidding, for what creatures effect and direct comes in from without. But thy ground alone is stirred by this force and the freer thou dost keep the more truth and discernment are thine. No man w^as ever lost save for tbc reason that once having left his ground he has let himself become too permanently settled abroad. St Augustine says : Many there be that have sought light and truth but only abroad where they arc not. They linally go out so far that they never get back nor find their way in again. Neither have these found the truth for the truth is within in their ground, not without. So he who means to see this light and find out the whole truth must foster the awarciK^ss of this birth within himself, in his ground, so shall his powers all be lighted up and his outer man as well. I)ire(dly God inwardly stirs his ground with the truth its light darts into his powers, and lo, that man knows more than anyone could teach liim. As the prophet says, ‘ I know more than I was ever taught.’ It is because this light cannot lighten and shine in sinners that this birth cannot occur in them. This birth is inconsistent with darkness and sin therefore it befalls not in the powers but in the ground and essence of the soul.

Then conu'S the question : If God the Father labours only in the ground and essence of the soul, not in her powers, what have the powers got to do w ith it ? How do they help by being idle and taking holiday ? What is the use, seeing this birth befalls not in the powxrs ? — It is w(‘ll asked. But consider. Every creature works towards some end. The end is ever the first in intention and the last in execution. And God too works for a wholly blessed end, to wit, himself : to bring the soul and all her powers into that end, into himself. For this God’s w^orks are wrought, for this the Father brings his Son to birth in the soul, that all the powers of the soul may end in this. lie lies in wait for all the soul contains, all arc bidden to his royal feast. Here, the soul is scattered abroad among her powers and dissipated in the act of each : the power of seeing in the eye, the power of hearing in the ear, the power of tasting in the tongue, and her powers arc accordingly enfeebled for their interior work, scattered forces being imperfect. It follows that for her interior work to be effective, she must call ill all her powers, recollecting them out of extended things to one interior act. St Augustine says, ‘ The soul is where she loves rather than where she animates the body.’ Once upon a time thci’c was a heathen philosopher who studied mathematics. He was sitting by the embers making (‘alculations in pursuance of his art when there came along a man brandishing a sword, who, not witting that it was the master, cried out, ‘ Quick, thy name, or I shall slay thee ! ’ The master was too much absorbed to see or hear his enemy and failed to cat(‘h the threat. So after hailing him several times the enemy cut off his head. And tliis to acquire a mere natural science ! How much more does it behove us to withdraw from things in order to concentrate our powers on perceiving and knowing the one infinite and immortal truth ! To this end do thou assemble thy entire mind and memory ; turn them into the ground where thy treasure lies hid. Hut for this thou must drop all other activities ; thou must get to unknowing to find it.

The question is, Were it not better for each power to go on with its own work, then none would hinder the otlu rs in their work nor yet God in his V Can there not be ercaturely knowledge in me that is no hindrance, as God knows all things without hindrance and so do the saints ? — 1 answer : The saints behold God in a simple image and in that im.agc they discca’n all things ; and God himself secs himself thus, perceiving all things in himself. He need not turn, as wc do, from one thing to another. Supposing that in this life w(* were always confronted with a mirror wherein we see and recognise all things at a glance in one single image : neither act nor knowledge would be a hindrance then. At present we must turn from one thing to anotlua’ : we can only mind one thing at the expense of all tlic others. And the soul is bound so straitly to her powers that where they How she must flow with them ; the soul must be present at everything they do, and attentive too, or nothing would <?ome of their exertions. The drain of attending to external acts is bound to weaken her interior operation. For this nativity God wants, and he must have, a vacant, free and unencumbered soul wherein is nothing but himself alone, w^hich waits for naught and nobody but him. As Christ says : ‘ Whoso lovcth aught but me, whoso eleaveth to father or mother, or many other things, he is not worthy of me. I came not upon earth to bring peace but a sword ; to cut away all things, to part thee from brother, child, mother and friend, which are really thy foes.’ For verily thy comforts arc thy foes. Doth

thine eye see all things and thine ear hear all things and thy heart remember them all, then in these things thy soul is destroyed. A master says, ‘ To achieve the interior act one must assemble all one’s powers as it were into one corner of one’s soul, where, secreted from images and forms one is able to work. We must sink into oblivion and ignorance. In this silence, this quiet, the Word is heard. There is no better method of approaching this Word than in silence, in quiet : we hear it and know it aright in unknowing. To one who knows naught it is clearly revealed. Haply thou wilt object : ‘You place our salvation in ignorance. Sir. That seems a mistake. God made man to know : “ Lord make them to know,” says the prophet. Where there is ignorance there is defect and illusion : he is a brutish man, an ape, a fool, and so remains as long as he is ignorant.’ But this is transformed knowledge, not ignorance which comes from lack of knowing ; it is by knowing that we get to this unknowing. Then we know with divine knowing, then our ignorance is ennobled and adorned with supernatural knowledge. Then in our passion we are more perfect than in action. According to one authority, the sense of hearing is much nobler than the sense of sight, for we learn wisdom more by car than eye and live this life more wisely. We read about a heathen philosopher who was lying at death’s door while his pupils were discussing in his presence some noble science, that, lifting up his dying head and listening, he ex(;laimed, ‘ O teach me even now this art that I may practise it eternally ! ’ Hearing draws in more, seeing leads out more, the very act of seeing. In eternal life we are far more ha})py in our ability to hear than in our power to see, because the act of hearing the eternal Word is in me, whereas the act of seeing goes forth from me : hearing, I am receptive ; seeing, I am active. But our bliss docs not consist in being active but in being receptive to God. As God excels creature, so is God’s work more excellent than mine. It was out of love that God did set our happiness in suffering, for we undergo far more than we do and receive incomparably more than n return we give ; moreover, each divine gift is the preparation for some new and richer gift, each gift increasing our capacity and our desire to receive a greater still. Some theologians say that the soul is symmetrical with God in this respect. For as God is infinite in giving, so the soul is infinite in receiving or conceiving. And the soul is as profound to suffer as God is omnipotent to act, hence her transformation by God into God. God must act and the soul must suffer ; for him to know and love himself in her, for her to know with his knowledge, love with his love ; and since she is far happier in his than hers it follows that her happiness depends upon his work more than on her own.

The pupils of St Dionysius asked him why Timothy outstripped them in perfection ? Dionysius said, ‘ Timothy is a God-receptive man. He who is expert at this outstrippeth all men.’ In this sense thy unknowing is not a defect but thy chief perfection, and suffering thy highest activity. Kill thy activities and still thy faculties if thou wouldst realise this birth in thee. To find the newborn King in thee all else thou mightest find must be passed by and left behind thee. May we outstrip and leave behind such things as are not pleasing to the newborn King. So help us thou who didst become the child of man that we might become the children of God. Amen. THIS TOO IS MEISTER ECKHART WHO ALWAYS TAUGHT THE TRUTH In hisy quee patris rnei sunt, oportet me esse (l,nc, 2jy). ‘ I must be about my Father’s business.’ This text is opportune to what we have to say concerning the eternal birth which took place here in time and is still happening daily in the innermost recesses of the soul, in her ground, remote from all comers. To become aware of this interior birth it is above all necessary to be about our Father’s business.

What is pecxiliarly the Father’s ? Power is ascribed to him beyond either of the other Persons. And I tell you, no one can experience this birth without a mighty effort. None can attain this birth unless he can withdraw his mind entirely from things. And it requires main force to drive back all the senses and inhibit them. Violence must be offered to them one and all or this cannot be done. As Christ said : ‘ The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.’ Regarding this birth there arises the question, Does it happen continuously or only at intervals when one is disposed for it, what time one is exerting oneself to the utmost to forget things altogether and be conscious in this ? Here let us discriminate. Man possesses an active intellect, a passive intellect and a potential intellect. Active intellect is ever in act, ever doing something, be it in God or in creature, to the honour and glory of God. That is its province and hence its name active. But when God undertakes the work the mind must preserve a state of passivity. Potential intellect again has regard to both these, to the action of God and the passion of the soul, to its acting potentially. In the one case the mind is active, when it is functioning, to wit ; in the other receptive, when God takes up the work and

then the mind ought, nay must, remain still and allow God to aet. Now ere this is begun by the mind and linishcd by God, the spirit has prevision of it, potential knowledge of its happening. This is the meaning of potential intellect, which, however, is often neglected and does not bear fruit. When the mind is exerting itself in real earnest, God interests himself in the mind and its work, and then the soul secs and experiences God. But since the uninterrupted vision and passion of God is intolerable to the soul in this body, therefore God withdraws from the soul from time to time, as it is said, ‘ A little while ye sec me, and again a little while and ye do not see me.’ When our liord took his three disciples with him up the mountain and showed them the trans figuration of his body by union with the Godhead, which also we shall have in our archetypal body, straightway Peter, beholding it, was fain to remain there always. Verily, where we And good we are loath to leave it, in so far as it is good. Where intuition finds, love follows and memory and all the soul to boot. And our l.ord knowing this hides himself sometimes ; for the soul is the impartible form of the body, so she turns as a whole to whatever she turns. Were she conscious of good, God to wit, immediately, unintermptedly, she would never be able to leave it to infiuence the body.

Thus it befell Paul : had lie remained a hundred years there, where he knew the good, he would never have returned to his body, he would have forgotten it completely. Seeing then that it is wholly foreign to this life, and inconijiatible therewith, the good God veils it when he will and unveils it again when he chooses and when he knows, like a trusty physician, that it is best and most useful for thcc. This withdrawal is not thine, but his whose is also the work ; let him do it or not as he will, he knows what is good for thee. It is in his hands to show or not accordiiig as he knows thee able to endure it. God is not a destroyer of nature, he perfects it, and this God does ever more and more as thou art fitted for it. Haply thou wilt object : Alas, Sir, if this requires a mind quite free from images and without activity, albeit both are natural to its powers, then how about those outward works we must do sometimes, works of charity, external ones, such as teaching and comforting those in need thereof : are we debarred by these ? things which so occupied our Lord’s disciples, notably St Paul, who endured a father’s care on account of other people : are we to be deprived of this great good because we arc engaged in charities ?

The answer is this. The one is perfect, the other very profitable. Mary was praised for choosing the best, but Martha’s life was very useful, serving Christ and his disciples. 8t Thomas says the active life is better tlian the life of contemplation, so far as we actually spend in charity the income we derive from contemplation. It is all the same tiling ; wc have but to root ourselves in this same ground of contemplation to make it fruitful in works, and the object of contemplation is achieved. True, there is motion, but no more than one ; it conics from one end, God, and goes back to the same. As though I went from one end to th«^ other of this house ; that would in sooth be motion, but of one in the same. Even so in this activity wc are in the state of contemplation in God. I'he one is centred in the other and perfects the other. God’s puqDose in the union of contemplation is fruitfulness in works ; for in contemplation thou servest thyself alone, but the many in good works. Hereto Christ admonisheth us by his whole life and the lives of all his saints, every one of whom he drove forth into the world to teach the multitude. St Paul said to Timothy, ‘ Beloved, preach the Word.’ Did he mean the outward word that beats the air ? Nay, surely ! He meant the in-born, hidden Word that lies secreted in the soul ; it was this that he exhorted them to preach, to the end that it might be made known to and nourish the powers of such as spend themselves wholly in the exterior life. That what time thy fellow-man hath need of thee thou niayst be found ready to serve him to the best of thy ability. It must be within thee, in thought, in intellect and will, and shine forth in thy deeds. As Christ said, ‘ Let your light shine before men.’ He was thinking of those people who (*are only for the contemplative life and neglect the virtuous uses of it, which, they say, do not concern them, they are passcxl that stage. Not these had Christ in mind when he observed : ‘ The seed fell upon good ground and yielded fmit an hundredfold,’ but these he meant when he declared : ‘ The tree that bcareth not fruit shall be cut down.’

Thou mayst object : ‘ Hut, Sir, what of that silence you said so much about ? This means images galore. Every one of these acts has its ayjpropriate image, be the act internal or external ; whether it be teaching one or comforting another or arranging this or that, so what quiet can I get withal ? If the mind sees and formulates and the will wills and memory holds it fast, does not all this necessitate ideas ? ’ Let me explain. We were speaking just now of the active intellect and the passive intelle(!t. Active intellect abstracts the images of outward things, stripping them of matter and of accidents, and introduces them to the passive intellect, begetting their mental prototypes therein. And the passive intellect made pregnant by the active in this way, knows and cherishes these things with the help of active intellect. Passive intellect cannot keep on knowing things unless the active intellect keeps on enlightening it. Now observe. What the active intellect does for the natural man that and far more does God do for the solitary soul : he turns out active intellect and installing himself in its stead he himself assumes the duties of the active intellect.

When a man is quite idle, when his intellect is at rest within him, then God takes up the work : he himself is the agent who produces himself in the passive intellect. What happens is this. The active intellect cannot give what it has not got : it cannot have two ideas together, but first one and then the other. What though light and air sliow multitudes of forms and colours all at once, thou canst only observe them one after another. And so with thy active intellect, which resembles the eye. But when God acts in lieu of thy active intellect he engenders many images together in one point. Suppose God prompts thee to some one good deed, thy powers are all proffered for all virtuous things, thy mind being straightway set on good in general. All thy possibilities for good take shape and come into thy mind collectively, focussed to one point. Clearly this is not the work of thine own intellect which has in no wise the perfection nor plenitude for it ; rather is it the work and product of him who has all forms at once in himself. As Paul says : ‘ I can do all things in him who strengtheneth me ; in him I am undivided.’ Know then, the ideas of these acts are not thine own : they belong to the author of thy nature who has planted therein both their energy and form. Lay no claim thereto, for it is his not thine. True, thou rcccivest it temporally, but it is gotten and born of God beyond time', in eternity above images.

Thou wilt say, perhaps : From the moment my intellect is divested of its natural activity and no longer has either form or action of its own, what is preserving it ? It must have a hold somewhere ; the powers, whether memory, intellect or will, are bound to have some lodgment somewhere, some place to work in. The answer is this. Intellect’s object and sustenance is essence, not accident, just pure unadulterated being in itself. On descrying something real the intellect forthwith relics upon it, comes to rest thereon, pronouncing its intellectual word concerning the object attained. As long as intellect fails to find the actual truth of things, does not touch bedrock in them, it stays in a condition of quest and expectation, it never settles down to rest, but labours incessantly to trace things to their cause, that is, it is seeking and waiting. It spends perhaps a year or more in research on some natural fact, finding out what it is, only to work as long again stripping off what it is not. All this time it has nothing to go by, it makes no pronouncement at all in the absence of experimental knowledge of the ground of truth. Intellect never rests in this

life. However much God shows himself in this life it is nothing to what he really is. Truth lies in the ground, but veiled and concealed from the intellect. And meanwhile the mind has no support to rest on as on something permanent. It gets no rest at all, but goes on expecting and preparing for something still to come but so far hidden. There is no knowing what God is. Something we do know, namely, what God is not. This the discerning soul rejects. Intellect, meantime, finding no satisfaction in any mortal thing, is waiting, as matter awaits form. As matter is insatiable for form, so is intellect unsatisfied except with the essential, all-embracing truth. Only the truth will do, and this God keeps withdrawing from it step by step, purposing to arouse its zeal and lure it on to seek and grasp the actual causeless good : that, not content with any mortal thing, she may clamour more and more for the highest good of all. But thou wilt say ; ‘ Alas, Sir, you laid so much stress on our quieting our faculties and now this calm resolves itself into yearning and lamenting : to a muckle moan and clamour for something not possessed, which puts an end to peace and quiet. This may be desire or purpose or praise or thanksgiving or any of their brood, but it is not perfect peace and absolute stillness.’

I answer that, when thou hast emptied thyself entirely of thine own self and all things and of every sort of selfishness and hast transferred, united and abandoned thyself to God in perfect faith and complete amity, then everything that is born in thee or that enters into thee, external or internal, joyful or sorrowful, sour or sweet, is no longer thine own at all, but is altogether thy God’s to whom thou hast abandoned thyself. Tell me, whose is the spoken word ? His who speaks it or his who hears it ? Though it fall to the hearer it really belongs to the speaker, to him who gives it birth. The sun, for example, throws out light into the air and the air receives the light and transmits it to the earth. Now, although the light seems in the air, it is really in the sun : the light is actually from the sun, originating in the sun, not in the air : the air entertains it and passes it on to anything that can be lighted up. And so with the soul. God begets in the soul his ehild, his Word, and the soul conceiving it passes it on to her powers in varied guise, now as desire, now as good intent, now as eharit}^ now as gratitude, or as it may take thee : It is his, not thine at all. What is thus wrought by God take thou as his and not thine own, as it is written, ‘ The Holy Ghost asketh in us with unutterable yearnings.’ He prays in us, not we ourselves. St Paul says, ‘ No one is able to say. Lord Jesus Christ, except in the Holy Ghost.*

Above all, lay no claim to anything. Let go thyself and let God act for thee and in thee as he pleases. This work is his, this Word is his, this birth is his and all thou art to boot. For thou hast abandoned thyself and art gone out of thy faculties and thy personal nature. God installs himself in thy nature and powers when, self-bereft of all belongings, thou dost take to the desert, as it is written, ‘ A voice crying in the wilderness.’ Let this eternal voice cry on in thee at its sweet will and do thou be a desert in resj^ect of self and creatures. Maybe thou wilt say : ‘ But, Sir, what must one do to become this desert, void of self and creatures ? Should one stay waiting for God all the time and do nothing oneself or should one do something between whiles, such as praying or reading or some good occupation like going to church or studying the Bible ? Not, of course, taking things in from without, but everything from within, from one’s God. Besides, is there not something we miss by neglecting these things ? ’ My answer is this : Outward works were instituted and appointed for the purpose of directing the outer man to God and training him to ghostly life and virtues lest haply he should stray out of himself into ineptitudes : to act as a curb upon his inclination to run aw’'ay from self to things abroad ; so that when God shall choose to work in him he shall find him close at hand and not first have to fetch him back from things gross and alien. The greater is the ]3leasurc in external things the harder work it is to leave them ; the stronger the love the sharper the pain when it comes to parting.

All pious practices - ])raying, reading, singing, watching, fasting, penance, or whatever discipline it be were contrived to catch and keep us from things alien and ungodly. Suppose one feels God’s s]3irit is not working in one, but rather that one’s inner man is Godforsaken, that is the proper moment for the outward man to exercise the practical virtues, and particularly such as arc most feasible and useful to him ; not for his o\vn selfish ends, but that, respect for truth preserving him from being led away by what is gross, he may stick straitly to God who will not need to seek him far afield, but will find liini there at hand when he chooses to return and carry on his own work in liis soul. But given that a man has genuine experience of the interior life, then let him boldly drop all outward disciplines, even those practices which thou art vowed to and from which neither p(3pe nor prelate can release thee. From vows made to God no man (Nan excuse thee : such vows are a bond between thyself and God. But supposing one has taken solemn vows of fasting, say, or prayer or pilgrimage, then on entering some order, one is released from them forthwith : in the order, obligation is to goodness as a whole, to God himself.

Ami so I say here. Whatever one’s vows to manifold things, initiation into the real interior life releases from them. While the interior expei'ieiicc lasts, maybe a week, a month, a year, no hours arc neglected by the monk or nun, for God who occupies them will also answer for them. On returning to himself the religious shall perform his vows for the time present, but the time elapsed and lost, as thou dost think, ’tis no business of thine to make good. God makes good any time he takes up. I'hink not to make it good by any act of creature, for the smallest act of God outweighs all the work of creatures put together. I am speaking here of clerks and those enlightened souls who are illumined by God and by the scriptures. But what about the poor profane who, ignorant of corporal discipline, has assumed some vow or other, praying or the like ? My view is this. Tf he finds it hampering and that he draws much nighcr God and much more easily without it, let him boldly give it up, for whatever brings nearest to God is the best. Paul implied this when he said : ' But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.’ Vows taken before priests, vows of marriage, for example, arc very different from these other obligations which amount to solemn promises of oneself to God. Vows taken with the laudable intention of binding oneself to God are for t he moment the best way. But supposing that we find a better way, a way we feel and know to be much better, then the first may be deemed null and void.

Et cum facUis esset Jesus annorum duodecim etc, {Luc, 2j,). We read in the gospel that when our Lord was twelve years old he went with Joseph and Mary to Jerusalem into the temple ; and when they went out, Jesus remained behind in the temple without their knowing it. And when they reached home and missed him, they sought him among aequaintan(‘es and among strangers, among their kindred, and among the multitude, and found him not ; they had lost him in the crowd. So there was nothing for it but to return whence they were come ; and when they got back to their starting-point, into the temple, there they found him. If thou wilt find this noble birth, verily thou must quit the multitude and return to the starting-point, into the ground out of which thou art come. The powers of the soul and their works, these are the multitude : memory, understanding and will, these all diversify thee, therefore thou must leave them all : sensible perception, imagination and everything wherein thou findcst thyself and hast thyself in view. Thereafter thou mayest find this birth, but, believe me, not otherwise. He has never been found among friends, nor among kindred nor acquaintances, there rather docs one lose him altogether.

Now the question arises, whether this birth is to be found in anything which, albeit relating to God, is nevertheless taken in from without through the senses, in any presentment of God as good, wise, or compassionate, or whatever intellect can conceive of divinity : whether tJiis birth is to be found in any such-like things ? In truth, no ! for, although good and godlike, they are nevertheless introduced from without through the senses ; all must well up from within, out of God, if this birth is to shine with a really clear light, and thy own work must lie over, every faculty serving his ends not thine own. If this work is to be tlone, God alone must do it, and thou must undergo it. Where from tliy willing and knowing thou truly goest out, God with his knowing surely and willingly goes in and shines there clearly. Where (xod thus knows himself thy knowledge is of no avail and cannot stand. Do not fondly imagine that thy reason can grow to the knowledge of God ; that God shall shine in thee divinely no natural light can help to bring about ; it must be utterly extinguished and go out of itself altogether, then God can shine in with his light bringing back with him everything thou wentest out of and a thousandfold more, besides the new form containing it all.

Of this we have an allegory in the gospel. When our Lord had talked so friendly with the Gentile woman at the well, she left her pitcher there, and running to the town announced to her people that the true Messiah was come. The people, not believing her report, went out with her to see him for themselves. Then said they unto her, ‘ Now we believe, not because of thy words, but because wc have seen him in person.’ Verily, neither by any crcaturcly science nor by thine own wisdom canst thou be brought to know God divinely. To know God God-fashion, thy knowledge must change into downright unknowing, to a forgetting of thyself and every creature. Now haply thou wilt say : ‘ Prithee, Sir, what is the use of my intellect if it has to be inert and altogether idle ? Is it my best plan to raise my mind to the unknowing knowing which obviously cannot be anything ? For if I knew anything it would not be ignorance, nor should I be idle and destitute. Must I remain in total darkness ? ’ — Aye, surely ! Thou canst do no better than take up thy abode in total darkness and ignorance.

— ‘ Alas, Sir ! must everything go then, and is there no return ? ’ — No, truly ! By rights th^c is no return. — ‘ But what is this darkness ? What does it mean, what is its name ? ’ — It can only be called a potential receptivity, which, however, is not altogether wanting in nor indigent of (real) being : the merely potential conception wherein thou shalt be perfected. Hence there is no return from it. An thou rctiirnest it is not because of any truth ; it is cither the senses, the world or the devil. And pei\sisting in this turning back, thou dost inevitably lapse into sin and art liable to backslide so far as to have the eternal fall. Wherefore there is no turning back, only a pressing forward and following up this possibility to its fulfilment. It never rests until fulfilled with all being. As matter never rests until fulfilled with every possible form, so intellect never rests till it is filled to the full of its capacity. Concerning this a heathen master says : ‘ Nature has nothing swifter than the heavens which surpass all else in swiftness.’ But surely the mind of man outstrips them. Given that it retains its vigour and stays undemeaned and undisinembered by what is base and gross, it can outstrip high heaven nor slacken till the summit, where it is fed and cherished by the Arch-Good, by God himself.

How' profitable then to (.‘iisiie this possibility, for by keeping thyself empty and bare, merely tracking and following and giving up thyself to this darkness and ignorance without turning back, thou mayest well win that which is all things. And the more thou art barren of thyself and ignorant of things the nearer thou art thereto. Of this barrenness it is written in Ilosea : ‘ I will lead my friend into the desert and wall speak to her in her heart.’ The genuine \Vord of eternily is vSpoken only in eternity, where man is a desert and alien to himself and multiplicity. For this desolate self-estrangement the prophet longed, saying : ‘ Who w^ill give me the wings of a dove that I may fly away and be at rest ! ’ Where shall I find peace and rest ? Verily in rejection, in desolation and estrangement from all creatures. Wherefore David says : ‘ I had rather be an abject in the house of my God than have honour and riches in the tabernacles of sinners.’ Now haply thou wilt say : ‘ Alas, Sir, after all, is it necessary to be barren and estranged from everything, outward and inward : the powers and their works, must all go ? It is a grievous matter for a man thus to be left by God without support ; for God to thus augment his misery, neither enlightening nor encouraging nor working in him, for that is what your teaching means. For a person in such downright nothingness would it not be better to be doing something to beguile the gloom and desolation ; to pray or read or go to church or else make shift by working at some useful occupation ? ’

No, be sure of this : absolute stillness, absolute idleness is best of all. Know that thou canst not without harm exchange this state for any other whatsoever. Fain wouldst thou partly fit thyself and let God partly fit thee, but that cannot be. Art never so quick to think of this fitness and desire it, God forestalls thee always. But granting, what is impossible, that it is shared : that the preparation for this working or infusion is jointly his and thine, know then, that God is bound to act, to pour himself out (into thee) as soon as ever he shall find thee ready. Think not it is with God as with a human carpenter, who works or works not as he chooses, who can do or leave undone at his good pleasure. It is not thus with God ; but finding thee ready he is obliged to act, to overflow into thee ; just as the sun must needs burst forth when the air is bright and clear, and is unable to contain itself. Forsooth, it were a very grave defect in God if, finding thee so empty and so bare, he wrought no excellent work in thee nor primed thee with glorious gifts.

In the same sense philosophers declare that the instant the child-stuff is ready in the mother’s womb, God pours into the body its living spirit, that is, the soul the form of the body. It is one flash, the being-ready and the pouring-in. Nature reaching her summit, God dispenses his grace : the instant the spirit is ready God enters without hesitation or delay. In the book of Mystery it is written that our Lord offers himself to men ; ‘ Behold I stand at the door and knock, waiting for someone to let me in, with him will I sup.’ Thou needst not seek him here or there, he is no further off than at the door of thy heart ; there he stands lingering, awaiting whoever is ready to open and let him in. Thou needst not call to him afar, he waits much more impatiently than thou for thee to open to him. He longs for thee a thousandfold more urgently than thou for him : one point the opening and the entering. Thou wilt say, perhaps : ‘ How can that be ? I have no inkling of him.’ — Know, that to find him is not in thy power but in his. He discovers himself when he chooses and he hides himself too when he will. This is what Christ meant when he said to Nicodemus, ‘ The spirit breatheth where he will ; thou hearest his voice, but knowest not whence he corneth nor whither he goeth.’ This is a contradiction : ‘ Thou hearest but knowest not.’ By hearing we know. Christ meant that through hearing it is imbibed or absorbed ; as though to say : thou rcceivest it but unawares. For know, God cannot leave anything void and unfilled ; that aught should be empty or void is not to be endured by nature’s God. An thou seemest, therefore, not to find him and to be wholly empty of him, yet that is not the case. For were there any

emptiness under heaven, whatever it might be, or great or small, the heavens must either draw it up to them or, bending downwards, fill it with themselves. God, nature’s lord, on no aeeount permits of anything remaining empty. Wherefore stand still and waver not, lest turning away from God now for the moment thou never turn baek to him again. Perad venture thou wilt say : ‘ Well, Sir, since you are always assuming that some day this birth wdll happen in me, that the Son will be born in me, can I have any sign whereby to recognise that it has taken place ? ’ Yes, surely ! There would be three signs. 1 will tell you one of them. I am often asked whether it is possible to reach the point of not being hindered by anything in time, cither by multiplicity or matter ? Indeed it is ! If this birth really happens no creature can hinder thee, all point thee to God and this birth. We find in lightning an analogy for this. Whatever it strikes, whether tree, beast or man, it turns towards itself with the shock. A man with his back to it instantly fiings round to face it ; all the thousand leaves of the tree turn over to front the stroke. So with all whom this birth befalls, they arc promptly turned towards this birth with everything present, be it never so earthly. Nay, even what was formerly a hindrance is now nothing but a help. Thy face is turned so full towards this birth, no matter what thou dost see and hear, thou rceeivest nothing save this birth in anything. All things are simply God to thee who seest only God in all things. Like one who looks long at the sun, he encounters the sun in whatever he afterwards looks at. If this is lacking, this looking for and seeing God in all and sundry, then thou lackest this birth.

Thou mayest question : ‘ Ought anyone so placed to practise penance ? Does he lose anything by dropping penitential exercises ? ’ Penitential practices, among other things, were instituted for a special object. Fasting, watching, praying, kneeling, scourging, wearing of hair shirts, hard lying or whatever it may be, were all invented because body and flesh stand ever opposed to spirit. The body being far too strong for it, there is always battle joined between them, a never-ending conflict. Here the body is bold and strong for here it is at home ; the world helps it, the earth is its fatherland, it is helped by all its kindred : food, drink, ease — all are opposed to spirit. The spirit is an alien here, in heaven are its kindred, its whole race ; there dwell its loved ones. To succour the spirit in its distress and to impede the flesh somewhat in this strife lest it conquer the spirit, we put upon it the bridle of penitential practices to curb it, so that the spirit can control it. This is done to bring it to subjection ; but to conquer and curb it a thousand times better, put thou upon it the bridle of love. With love thou overcomest it most surely, with love thou loadest it most heavily. God lies in wait for us therefore with nothing so much as with love. For love is like the fisherman’s hook. To the fisherman falls no fish that is not caught on his hook. Once it takes the hook the fish is forfeit to the fisherman ; in vain it twists hither and thither, the fisherman is certain of his catch. And so I say of love : he who is caught thereby has the strongest of all bonds and yet a pleasant burden. He who bears this sweet burden fares further, gel s nearer therewith than by using any harshness j)ossiblc to man. Moreover, he can cheerfully put up with whatever befalls, cheerfully suffer what God inflicts. Naught makes tlice so much God nor God so much thine own as this sweet bond. He who has found this way will seek no other. He who hangs on this hook is so fast caught that foot and hand, mouth, eyes and heart and all that is man’s is bound to be God’s.

So then thou caiist not, better than by love, prevail over thy foe and stop him doing thee a mischief. Wherefore it is written : ‘ Love is strong as death and hard as hell.’ Death separates soul from body, but love separates all things from the soul ; she will not tolerate at any cost what is not God nor God’s. Who is caught in this net, who walks in this way, whatsoever he works is wrought by love, whose alone the work is : busy or idle it matters nothing. Such an one’s most trivial action is more profitable, his meanest occupation is more fruitful to himself and other people and to God is better pleasing than the cumulative works of other men, who, though free from mortal sin, arc yet inferior to him in love. H(^ rests more usefully than others labour. Await thou therefore this liook, so thou be happily caught, and the more surely caught so much the more surely freed. That we may be tlius caught and freed, help us () thou who art love itself. Amen.

Deus charitas est et qui manet in charitate in deo manet et deus in eo (J Joh, 4jq). ‘ God is love, and he who dwells in love dwells in God and God in him.’ This is the epistle we read at Mass, and it is St John speaking. Take the opening words : ‘ GocL is love.’ That is so, inasmuch as all that can love, all that does love, he compels by his love to love him. God is love, secondly, inasmuch as every God-created and loving thing compels him by its love to love it, willy-nilly. God is love, thirdly, inasmuch as his love drives all his lovers out of multiplicity. The love of God in multijDlicity pursues the love which is himself right out of multiplicity into his very unity. God is love, fourthly, who by his love provides all creatures with their life and being, preserving them in his love. The colour of the cloth is preserved in the cloth : even so creatures are preserved in existence by love, that is, God. Take the colour from cloth, its subsistence is gone : so do creatures all lose their subsistence if taken from love, to wit, God. God is love, and so lovely is he that lovers all love him, willy-nilly. No creature is so vile as to love what is bad. What we love must be good or must seem to be good. But creaturely good, all told, is rank evil as compared with God. St Augustine says, ‘ Love, that in meditating love thou mayst provide the wherewithal to satisfy thy soul.’ God is love.

My children, mark me, I pray you. Know ! God loves my soul so much that his very life and being depend upon his loving me, whether he would or no. To stop God loving me would be to rob him of his Godhood ; for God is love no less than he is truth ; as he is good, so is he love as well. It is the absolute truth, as God lives. There were certain theologians who maintained that the love which is within us is the Holy Ghost, but this is false. For the bodily food we take is changed into us, but the spiritual food we receive changes us into itself, hence love divine is not preserved in us, otherwise there would be two. Divine love preserves us in itself as one in the same. ‘ God is love, and he who dwells in love dwells in (iod and God in him.’ There is a difference between ghostly things and bodily things. One ghostly thing dwells in another ; but nothing bodily dwells in another. There may be water in a tub, with the tub round it. But where the wood is the water is not. In this sense no material thing dwells in another. But spiritual things dwell in each other : each several angel with all his joy and happiness is in every other angel as well as in himself, and every angel with all his joy and happiness dwells in me, and God to boot with his entire beatitude, though I discern it not.

If anyone should ask me what God is, I should answer : God is love, and so altogether lovely that creatures all with one accord essay to love his loveliness, whether they do so knowingly or unbeknownst, in joy or sorrow. Instance the lowest angel in his pure nature : the smallest spark or love-light that ever fell from him would light up the whole world with love and joy. See his innate perfection ! Moreover, as I have explained at various times, the angels are numerous beyond number. — But to leave love and come to knowledge. If only we knew God it would be easy to forsake the world. All that God ever made or shall yet make. all this (I say), if God should give it to my soul without himself, he staying, so to speak, a hair’s-breadth off, would not content my soul nor make me happy. I am happy when all things are in me and God, and where I am God is, and where God is I am. ‘ He who dwells in love dwells in God and God in him.’ Suppose I am in God, then where he is I am ; and if God is in me, then, unless the scriptures lie, where I am God is. It is the absolute truth, as God is God.

‘ Faithful servant, I will set thee over all my goods,’ ix. the manifold goodness of God in creatures will I set thee over. Secondly, ‘ I will set thee over all my goods ’ means : at the source of creature happiness, in the pure unity of God himself wherein he has his own felicity. In other words : God being the good, in that sense will he set us above his manifold goodness. Thirdly, he will set us over all his goods, means : above all nameables, all effables, all so-called good things and all intelligibles. Thus he sets us over all his goods. ‘ Father, I pray thee, make them one as I and thou arc one.’ Where two grow one, one loses its nature. Ergo, for God and the soul to be one the soul has to lose her own liic and nature. They arc one as regards what is left. Hut for them to be one, one must lose its identity and the other must keep its identity. Then they arc the same. Now, the Holy Ghost says : ‘ I pray thee, let them be one as we are one. I pray thee, make them the same in us.’

When I pray for aught my prayer goes for naught ; when I pray for naught I pray as I ought. When I am one with that wherein are all things, past, present and to come, all the same distance and all just the same, then they are all in God and all in me. There is no lliought of Henry or of Conrad. Praying for aught save God alone is idolatry and unrighteousness. They pray aright who pray in spirit and in truth. When praying for someone, for Henry or Conrad, I pray at my weakest. When praying for no one I pray at my strongest, and when I want nothing and make no request I am praying my best, for in God is no Henry nor no Conrad. To pray to God for aught save God is wrong and faithless, and, as it were, an imperfection.. For to set up something beside God is, as I lately said, but to make naught of God and God of naught. Whoso is far and foreign to himself as the chief angel of the Seraphim is far from him, that man owns that same angel just as God docs and is God, and that’s the naked truth, as God is God. ‘ God is love, and he that is in love is in God and God in him.’

May all of us attain this love whereof I speak. So help us our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Intravit Jesus in templum dei et ejiciehat omnes vendentes et emeyites etc. (Matt. 21 We read in the gospel that our Lord went into the temple and cast out all them that sold and bought and said to them that sold doves : ‘ Take these things hence ! ’ It was his p\irpose to have the temple cleared, as though he said : This temple is by rights mine own and I want it to myself to be lord therein. This temple that God means to rule in is man’s soul which he has made exactly like himself, as saith the Lord, ‘ We will make man in our image and likeness.’ Which he did. So like himself God made man’s soul that nothing else in earth or heaven resembles God so closely as the human soul. God wants this temple cleared of everything but himself. This is because this temple is so agreeable to him and he is so comfortable in this temple when he is there alone. Now consider who they were that sold and bought therein and who they are still. Mark me well : 1 name none but the virtuous. Yet, even so, I can point out who the merchants were, and still arc to this day, that thus buy and sell : those whom our Lord drove forth and cast out. He still does so to those that buy and sell in this temple : he would not leave a single one therein. Lo, they arc merchants all who, while avoiding niorhd sin and wishing to be virtuous, do good works to the glory of God, fasts, for example, vigils, prayers, etc., all of them excellent, but do them with a view to God’s giving tliem somewhat, doing to thein somewhat, they wish for in return. All such arc merchants. This is plain to see, for they reckon on giving one thing for another and so to barter with our Lord, though they are mistook as to the bargain. For all they have and have the power to do, they have from God and do effect by means of God alone. God has no call to do to them or give to them anything unless he choose to. For what they arc they are from God and what they have they get from God, not from themselves. God is in no wise boimden to requite their acts or gifts, except he care to do so of his own free will, apart from what they do or give ; for they give not of their own nor do they act of their own selves, as God says, ‘ Without me ye can do nothing.’ They be sorry fools who bargain with our Lord like this ; they know little or nothing of the truth. God cast them out of the temple and drove them forth. For light and darkness cannot dwell together. God is the truth, he is the light itself. When God enters the temple he drives out ignorance and darkness, revealing himself in the light of truth. Merchants go when the

truth appears, for the truth needs no tnerchanting. God seeks not his own, he is perfectly free in all his acts, which he does in true love. So does the man who is at one with God : he is perfectly free in all his deeds ; he docs them out of love and without why, just to glorify God, not seeking his own therein, God energising in him. Moreover I maintain : as long as we work at all for gain, while we desire aught God may have given or may give, we rank with these merchants. Woiildst thou be free from any taint of trade ? then do what good thou canst and do it solely to God’s glory, as exempt from it th 3 ^self as though thou wert not. Ask nothing whatever in return. So done 1 hy works are ghostly and godly ; the merchants are driven from the tem])le and God is there alone when one has no intention but God. Behold thy temple cleared of merchants. The man who is intent on God alone and on God’s glory, verily he is free from any taint of commerce in his deeds, nor is he in any wise self-seeking.

T have related further how Jesus said to them that sold doves : ‘ Take these things hen(*e ! ’ These peoj3lc‘ he did not drive forth nor rebuked them harshly : he said quite mildly : ‘ Take these things away ! ’ As though to say, it is not wrong albeit a hindrance to the pure and simple truth. These are virtuous folk, working for God impersonally though subject to personal limitations, to time and numljer, to before and after. Their activities keep them from the highest truth, from being absolutely free like our Lord Jesus Christ who is receiving himself afresh incessantly and a-temporally from his heavenly Father and in that same now is borne back again unceasingly with praise and thanksgiving into the Father, perfect, vicing with him in his majesty. Even so, to be receptive to the sovran truth, a man must be without before and after, without the hindrance of any acts or images that are wiihin his ken, but freely receiving the divine gift in the perennial now and bearing it back unhindered in th(‘ liglit of the same with praise and thanksgiving in our Lord Jesus Christ. Then the doves arc gone, to wit, the obstacle of ownership in actions, good in themselves, wdicrcin one has any self-interest at all. ‘ Tak(‘ these things hence ! ’ said our Lord, as though to say, they are blameless but tliey ar(‘ in the way.

When the tem])le is free from obstructions (possessions and strangers to wit), it looks right beautiful, shilling out bright and clear above cver^dJiing God has created and through everything (iod has created, so that none (*an compare with it but the uncreated God alone. In very truth, there is none like this tein]Jc but the uncreated God himself. Nothing below the angels is the least like this temple. The very highest angels arc the same as this temple of the human soul in many ways, but not entirely. This partial likeness with the soul they have in love and knowledge. But there is a limit set them which they cannot pass. The soul goes on beyond. Suppose the soul to be identical with the highest human being here in time, natheless that man has the potential freedom to soar to untold heights above the angels in the now of each, new without number, that is, without mode : above the angelic mode and every created intelligence. God who alone is uncreated is her sole peer in freedom, though not in uncrcatedness, for the soul is created. Emerging into the unclouded light she in her naught leaps so far into his naught that she is helpless to regain the state of her created aught. God with his uncreatedness supports her nothing-at-all, preserving the soul in his all-in-all. The soul has dared to come to naught and, failing by herself to reach herself, she swoons away ere God comes to her rescue. It must needs be so. ^

Jesus, as 1 said, went into the temple and east out them that bought and sold and he began to command the rest, ‘ Take these things hence ! ’ The words I have here read, ^ Jesus went in and began to say, “ Take these things hence ! ” ’ Observe, there was no one there but Jesus when he began to speak in the tenij^lc of the soul. Be sure of this : while anyone else is speaking ii^ the temple {i,e, the soul) but Jesus, Jesus is silent, as thougli he were away, nor is he at home in the soul while she has strange guests to talk to. For Jesus to s])eak in the soul slic must be all alone, and she has to be quiet to hear what he says. VV(*11 then, he comes in and starts speaking. What is it he says ? He says what he is. What is he, then ? lie is the Word of the Father. In this same Word the Father speaks himself, all his divine nature, all that God is, just as he knows it, and he knows it as it is, for he is perfect in knowledge and j)ower. It follows that he is ])crfcet in s])eeeh too. In pronouncing the Word he utters himself and all things in another Person to whom he gives the nature that he has himself, and speaks all intelligences in echo of the actual Word, according to the indwelling image ; like the sun-rays shining forth, so each (intelligence) is a word in itself, not the same in all respects as the Word, but : they have the power to receive by grace the same nature as the actual Word, and this Word as it is in itself the Father sj)oke entire by the Word and everything in that Word.

If this is what the Father said, then what is Jesus saying in the soul ? As I have told : the Father speaks his Word ; he speaks in this Word and no otherwhere, and Jesus speaks in the soul. His manner of speaking is to reveal himself and what the Father said in him, so far as the soul is able to receive it. He reveals the Father in the soul in infinite power. Experiencing this power in the Son the soul waxes powerful in like emanation till she is the same in might and virtue and every perfection, so that neither joy nor sorrow nor aught that God has made in time avails to destroy that soul, she standing staunch as it were in this divine power against which all else is insignificant and futile. Secondly : Jesus reveals himself in the soul in infinite wisdom, himself to wit, the wisdom wherein the Father knows himself in full paternal power. The very Word, whieh is wisdom itself, and all that is therein, is, at the same time, one alone. When wisdom is in union with the soul, doubt, error and illusion arc entirely removed, she is set in the bright pure light of God himself, as saith the prophet, ‘ Lord in thy light shall we see light.’ Then God is known by God in the soul ; she discerns with his wisdom both herself and all things. She knows not this same wisdom with herself, but with this widsom she discerns the Father fruitful in travail and his real being in impartible oneness void of all distinctions.

Jesus manifests himself further in infinite suavity and fullness in all receptive hearts. When Jesus reveals himself in this plenitude of sweetness, uniting with the soul, then on this amiable tide the soul floats into herself and out of herself and beyond the things of grace, back in unmitigated power into her first source. Thus the outward man is obedient, even unto death, to the inner man now established in peace in the service of God for ever. May Jesus enter into us and clear out and east away all hindrances of soul and body to the end that we arc one with him here upon earth and there in heaven. So help us God. Amen.

Videte, qualem charilaiem dedit nobis pater, ut Jilii dei nominemur et simus (/ Joh. It must be understood that this is all the same thing : knowing God and being known by God, and seeing God and being seen by God. We know God and see him because he makes us know and sec. Even as the luminous air is not distinguishable from its luminant, for it is luminous with what illumines it, so do we know by being known, by his making us conscious. Christ said, ‘ Again ye shall see me.’ That is to say : by making you see I make you see me, whereat ‘ your heart shall rejoice,’ rejoice in the vision and knowledge of God, and ‘ your joy no man taketh from you.’ St John says : ‘ Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called and should be the sons of God.’ lie says not only ‘ should be called ’ but ‘ should be.’ Now I maintain that we can no more be wise without wisdom than Son without the filial nature of God’s Son : without having the very same nature as the Son of God himself. Wouldst thou be the Son of God ? Thou canst not, without having the same nature as the Son of God. But this is hidden from us hero, as it is written, ‘Beloved, now we are God’s sons (and it doth not yet appear what we shall he), but we know that he is our exemplar and we shall be like him.’ That is, the same as he is : same life and enjoyment and understanding : exactly the same as he is, when wc see him as God. I say, God cannot make me the Son of God without I have the nature of God’s Son, any more than God can make me wise without my havdng wisdom, "riiough we are God’s sons, wc do not realize it yet : ‘ it doth not yet a]3pear ’ to us, but this much wc do know, he says, ‘ we shall be like him.’ Sundry things in our souls overlay this knowledge and conceal it from us.

The soul has something in her, a spark of intellect, that never dies ; and in this spark, as at the apex of the mind, we place the paradigm of the soul ; and there is also in our souls knowledge of externals, sensible and rational ])erecption, present there as images and words which obscure it from us. ITow are we God’s sons ? By having one nature with him. But any realization of this, of being God’s sons, is subjective not objective knowledge. The inner consciousness strikes down to the very essence of the soul. Not that it is the soul itself, but it is rooted there and is in a measure the life of the soul, her intellectual life, the life, that is, wherein a man is born God’s Son, born into tlu' eternal life, for this knowledge is a- temporal, unex tended, without here and without now. In this life all things arc the same thing and all things common ; all things arc all in all and all atoned. I will give you an illustration. In the body the members are united so that eye belongs to foot and foot to eye. Could the foot speak, it would declare that the eye seems rather in the foot than in the head, and the eye would say the same the other way about. Accordingly, I trow that the grace which is in Maiy is really more an angel’s and is more in him (yet being in Mary) than if it were in him or in the saints. For everything that Mary has belongs to every saint, so the grace in Mary is his own and he enjoys it more than if it really wore in him.

But such a simile is too gross and carnal, depending as it does on bodily imagery. I will give you another, therefore, more subtle, less material. I assert that in heaven all is in all and all one and all ours. The grace our Lady has exists in me (when I am yonder), not as welling up in and flowing out of Mary, but as in me as my own and not of foreign origin. I contend that there what one has another has, not as from another nor as in another, but in its own self, so that the grace in one is simultaneously in another as his own grace. Thus spirit is in spirit. And that is why I say I cannot be the son of God unless I have the very nature the Son of God has there ; and that having this same nature makes us the same as he is, we seeing him as God. ‘ Hut it doth not yet appear what we shall be.’ Meaning, I take it, that there is then no like nor different, but : wholly without distinction we are the same in essence and in substance and in nature as he is himself. This is not apparent now : it will be obvious when we see him as God.

God makes us to know him, and his knowing is his being, and his making me know is the same as my knowing, so his knowing is mine : just as, in the master, what he teaehes is the same as, in the pupil, the thing that he is taught. And be(*ausc his knowing is mine, and his knowing is his substance and his nature and his essence, it follows that his substance and his nature and his essence are mine. And his substance, his nature and his essence being mine, therefore I am tjie Son of God. Behold, brethren, what manner of love God hath bestowed upon us that we should be called and should be the Son of God ! Mark whereby we arc sons of God : by having the same nature as the Son of God.- -How can one be the Son of God, or know it, seeing that God is not like anybody? — True, Isaias says, ‘To whom will ye liken God or what likeness will ye compare unto him ?’ Sitice it is God’s nature to be not like anyone, we must needs not be so to be the same as he is. AVhen I contrive to see myself in naught and to scc naught in me ; when I succeed in rooting up and (tasting out everything in me, then 1 am free to pass into the naked being of the soul. Likes must be ousted ere I can be transplanted into God and be the same as he is : same substance, same essence, same nature and the Son of God. Onc;c this happens, there is nothing hid in God that is not revealed, that is not mine. I am wise and mighty just as he is, and one and the same with him. Then Sion is a true beholder, true Israel, a seer : God, since nothing in the Godhead is (concealed from him. IMan is turned into God. Lilt that nothing may be concealed from me, everything revealed, there must appear in me no like, no image, for no image can show 'is God’s nature nor his essence. While there abideth in thee any image or like thou art never the same as God. To be the same as ^od there must be nothing in thee, latent or defined, nothing Covered in thee that is not discovered and cast out.

Mark wliat sin is. It is born of negation. Negation’s brood must be exterminated in the soul ; while there is not in thee thou art not the Son of God. VVe weep and lament for want of something. The minus quantity must go, be cancelled out, if man is to become tlie Son of God and \veep and wail no more. Man is not wood nor stone : impcrfeetioii and naught. We shall not be like him until this minus is made good and we are all in all as God is all in all. There are two births of man : one in the world, the other one out of the world and ghostly, in God. VVouldst know if thy child is born and if he is naked ? Whether, that is to say, thou hast been made God’s Son ? If thy heart is heavy, except for sin, thy child is not born. In thine anguish thou art not yet mother ; thou art in labour and thine hour is nigh. Doubt not, if thou art travailing for thyself or for thy friend no birth has taken place though birth be close at hand, 'fhe birth is not over till thy heart is free from earc : then man has the essenee and nature and substance and wisdom and joy and all that God has. Then the very being of the Son of God is ours and in us and we attain to actual Deity.

Christ says : ‘ If any will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’ That is : east away care and let perpetual joy reign in your heart. Thus the (^hild is born. And when the child is born in me, the sight of friends, of father, dead there before my eyes will leave my heart untouched. Were my heart moved thereby the child would not be born in me, though peradventurc its nativity is nigh. I maintain that God and his angels lake such keen delight in every act a good man docs, that there is no joy like it. And accordingly, I say, the birth of this child in thee brings thee most keen delight in all good deeds done in this world, thy joy being so continuous as to be neverending. Hence the words : ‘ ^'our joy no man taketh from you.’ When I am transported into God, then God is mine and all he has. ‘ I am the Lord thy God,’ he says. Then I have real delight which neither pain nor sorrow can take from me, for then I am installed in Ciod where sorrow^ has no place. We shall sec that in God is no anger nor sadness, but only love and joy. Though he seem sometimes to be wrathful with sinners it is not really wrath, it is his kindness, the effect of his great love : ‘ Whom he loveth he chasteneth,’ for he is love, the Holy Ghost. God’s anger springs from love ; he chides us with dispassion. When nothing is grievous or hard, when all is pure joy, then verily thy child is born. Strive that this child shall be not nascent merely but be born in thee, even as in God his Son is ever being born and is ever born. May this betide, So help us God. Amen.

Intravit Jesus in quoddam castellum et mulier qiuedam excepit ilium etc, {Luc, 10.^^). I quote first in Latin this text from the gospel. The translation reads : " Our I^ord Jesus Christ went up into a certain fastness and was receivTd by a oerlain virgin who was a wife.’ Mark the term. Needs must it be a virgin by whom Jesus is received. Virgin is, in other words, a person void of alien images, free us he was when he existed not. It may be questioned ; Man born and launched on rational life, how can he be as free from images as he was when he was not, he knowing a variety of things, iinagt'S all of them : how can he possibly be void thereof ? I answer tliat, were I sulfieiently intelligent to have within me intellectually the sum of all the forms eoueeived by man aiid which subsist in C«od himself, I having no projxTty in them and no idea of ownership, positive or tiegative, past or to eome, but standing in the present fioro ])erfectly free in the will of (h.)d and doing it perpetually : then verily I were a virgin, unlumdleapped by forms, just as 1 was when J was not.

Further, T hold that the fact of being virgin does not deprive a man at all of works that he has done : he is untrammelled, virginfree of them in the sovran truths even as Jesus is absolutely free and virgin in himself. According to the masters, likeness, likeness only, is the cause of union, so man must be maiden, virgin, to rcceiv^e the virgin Jesus. Now lay this fact to heart : the ever virgin is never fruitful. To be fruitful the soul must be wife. Sj)ouse is the noblest title of the soul, nobler than virgin. For a man to rec(‘iv'e God within him is good and in receiving he is virgin. Ihit for God to be fruitful in him is still better : the fruits of his gift being gratitude therefor, and in this newborn thankfulness the spirit is the spouse bearing Jesus back into his Prather’s heart. Many good gifts received in maidenhood are not brought forth in wifely fruitfulness, reborn in praise and thanks to God. Such gifts corrupt and come to naught, man being no better and no happier for them. In this case his virginity is useless because to his virginity he docs not add the perfe(*t fruitfulness of wife. That is the mischief. Hence my text, ‘ Jesus ascended to a certain fastness and was re(?eived by a certain maid who was a wife.’ It must be so, as I have said.

Wedded folks yield little more than one fruit yearly. But it is other wedded ones that I have now in mind : those whose hearts are wedded to praying, fasting, vigils or other outward discipline and mortilications of the i’esh. A predilection for this sort of thing, involving loss of freedom to wait instantly on God in the here and now, and follow him alone in the light wherein he would fain show thee what to do and what to leave undone, moment by moment, fresh and clearly, as though thou hadst naught else, nor would nor could not : any such proclivity or preoccupation which constantly deprives thee of this freedom I call here a year, and thy soul yields no fruit till she is done with this work of thy affection nor hast thou any trust in God or in thyself till thou hast finished with thy predilection ,* in other words, thou hast no peace. There is no fruit till thy own work is done. 1 reckon this a year and one whose yield is poor ; the proceeds of affection not of freedom. And these folks I call wedded, yolked to their affections. Their crop is small and undersized at that, so I say, in God’s sight.

The virgin wife, free and unbound in her affections is ever as near God as to herself. She abounds in fruit and big withal, no more nor less than God is himself. This fruit, his birth, does that virgin bear who is a wife ; daily she yields her hundred and her thousandfold, nay, numberless her labours and her fruits in that most noble ground, the very ground, to speak more plainly, wherein the Father is begetting his eternal Word : there she is big with fruit. For Jesus, light and shine of the paternal heart (according to St Paul he is the ‘ light and splendour ’ of the Father’s heart), this Jesus is atoned with her and she with him, she is radiant with him and shining as the one alone, as one pure brilliant light in the paternal heart. Elsewhere I have declared, there is a power in the soul untouched by time and flesh, flowing from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, altogether spiritual. In this power is God, ever verdant, flowering in all the joy and glory of his actual self. Such dear delight, such inconceivable deep joy as none can fully tell, for in this power the eternal Father is procreating his eternal Son without a pause, the power being big with child, the Father’s Son and its own self this selfsame Son withal, in the unique power of the Father. Suppose a man absolute monarch, the sole ])osscssor of all earthly goods ; suppose he gave up all for God and was the poorest of the poor ; and that God laid on him to boot a burden big as ever he did lay on mortal man, all which he bare down to his death and then God granted him one fleeting vision of his being in this power : so vehement would be his joy that poverty and suffering would be wiped out. Aye, though God gave him never any taste of heaven but this, yet would he have the guerdon of his passion, for God himself is in this power as in the eternal now. If a man’s spirit were always joined to God in this same power, he could not age

For the now wherein God made the first man and the now wherein the last man disappears and the now I speak in, all arc the same in God where there is hut the now. Behold this man in ,thc same light as God having in hirii ho past nor yet to come, only one level of eternity. This man in truth has motion taken from him and all things stand intrinsic in liim. Nothing new conu'S to him from future things nor yet by accident for he dwells in the now, ever new and unceasingly renewed. So dominant is God in this same power. There is another power, immortal too : proceeding from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, altogether spiritual. In tliis power God is fiery, aglow with all his riches, with all his sweetness and with all his bliss. Aye, in tliis power is such poignant joy, such vehement, immoderate delight as none can tell nor yet in truth reveal. I say, moreover, if once a man in intellectual vision did really glimpse the bliss and joy therein, then all his sufferings, all God intends tliat he should suffer, would be a trille, a mere nolhing to him; nay, I say more, it would be pure joy and pleasure.

Wouldst thou know for certain whether tliy sufferings are thine owp or God’s? Tell by these tokens. Suffering for thyself, in whatever way, the suffering hurts thee and is hard to bear. But suffering for God and God alone thy suffering Inirts thee not nor docs it burden thee, for God bears the load. Believe me, if there were a man willing to suffer on account of God and of God alone, then though he fell a sudden prey to the collective sufferings of all the world it would not trouble liim nor bow him dowji, for God would be the bearer of his burden. If the burden they put upon my neck is forthwith shouldered by another I would as lief a hundred pounds as one, for not to me is it heavy and distressful. In brief : man’s sufferings for God and God alone he makes both light and pleasant. I prefaced this sermon with the words : ‘ Jesus went up into a fastness and was received by a virgin who was wife.’ Why ? She must needs be virgin and wife too. How Jesus was received I have explained. 1 have not told the meaning of this fastness and that I will now proceed to do.

From time to time I tell of the one power in the soul which alone is free. Sometimes I have called it the tabernacle of the soul ; sometimes a spiritual light, anon I say it is a spark. But now I say : it is neither this nor that. Yet it is somewhat : somewhat more exalted over this and that than the heavens are above the earth. So now I name it in a nobler fashion than before as regarding rank and mode which it transcends. It is of all names free, of all forms void : exempt and free as God is in himself. It is one and simple as God is one and simple, and no man can in any wise behold it. This same power I am speaking of, herein God blooms and thrives in all his Godhood and the spirit in God ; in this very power the Father bears his only Son no less than in himself, for verily he liveth in this power, the spirit with the Father giving bii th therein to his very Son, itself this selfsame Son, for in this light wliich is the light of truth, it is the Son himself. Could ye see with iny heart yc would understand my words, but it is true, for truth itself has said it.

So om' and simple is this fastness, frowning above all ways, of whieh 1 mind me and am telling you, within tlic soul, that this high faculty I speak of is not Avorthy even of a fleeting glam^e therein; nor is tliat other power God glows and burns in, it durst not peer in either ; so one and indivisible this refuge is, so wayand powcr-transeeiiding tliis solitaiy one that never mode nor faculty has any insight there, not even (h)d himself. Never for an instant, as God lives, docs God see into this, nor did he ever look in his conditioned nature, in his gnis(.‘ of Person. Note well, this ()7ie (done is lacking in every mode and quality. It follows that for God to see therein would cost him all Ins divine names and personal properties : all tliese he must forgo to look therein : only as one and indivisible, having no jot of mode or (piality, not Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost as sm^h, can he do this ; as somewhat, yes, but not as tliis or that. As one and impartible behold him entering this one that here I call the fastness of the soul, but in no different guise can he get in : thus only does he enter and subsist in it. In part the soul is the same as God but not altogether. — This that I tell you is true : truth is my witness and my soul the pledge. May we be as this fastness whereinto on ascending Jesus is received to abide eternally as I have said. So help us God. Amen.

To return to the subject of the eternal birth. There is the question whether the soul brings forth the eternal Word in images or imagcless ? Remember this. When tlic soul resigns herself to God and is atoned with him and God undertakes her work, she is receptive merely and leaves God to act. Here the soul is pregnant without form or image, for anything conceived in form or image trenches upon time and place and is akin to creatures ; whence it follows that the more the work is of the soul the less it is of God. ^ Soe Pfeiffer, Deut, Myst., vol. i, p. 2G. SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 8d The soul conceives more truly without images than in them, for this birth is more by way of Godhood than of selfhood. But we may still enquire, in which image does the soul best succeed in giving birth to the eternal Word ? There are three kinds of images. The llrst the soul takes in from without through the senses. The second the soul conjures up from within by thinking on the childhood of our Lord or on his martyrdom ; but all images so gotten arc called divine births in the soul. The third kind of images is given to tlie soul by God direct. It is in these last that the soul conceives the best. According to another gloss : this happens when the mind engenders, feels and knows the eternal Word in its proper image as gotten by the Father in himself, supposing the soul able to attain thereto ; or, intellect failing her for this, when, faring forth in biith and love, he reaches out to this same image : for in this final image the eternal Word is born most perfectly of all.

Another (juestion is, whether the birth of the eternal Word is fleeting or essential ? Now you must understand that it is this birth which unifies tlie soul, and in this respect it is intrinsic and passes not away unless a man should fall into mortal sin. But as happening in the sensible pen^eptions and in the discursive mind this birth is fugitive. Further, it is asked, in what particular place does the soul bring forth or seek the eternal Word ? Mark. It is in the Father as the intellectual image of his divine essence and is the reflection of his divine nature, so that it embodies both his essence and his nature. It is with the Father as the filial Person. It is in the Holy Ghost as the exuberance of their eternal satisfaction. It is in the soul as the likeness of God’s equal forms (or Persons). It is in all creatures as the preserver of their being. It is here the soul must seek the eternal Word, here in these places, and Christ says : ‘ Seek and ye shall find.’ May we so seek as to find eternally. So help us almighty God. I will say no more at this collation. Pray God to fit me for this blessed moment. Amen.

MAN HAS TO SEEK GOD IN ERROR AND FORGETFULNESS i Man has to seek God in error and forgetfulness and foolishness. For deity has in it the power of all things and no thing has the like. The sovran light of the impartible essence illumines all things. ^ Josios, No- 3. St Dionysius says that beauty is good order with pre-eminent lucidity. Thus God is an arrangement of three Persons. And the soul’s lower powers should be ordered to her higher and her higher ones to God ; her outward senses to her inward and her inward ones to reason ; thought to intuition and intuition to the will and all to unity, so that the soul may be alone with nothing flowing into her but sheer divinity, flowing here into itself. As St Dionysius says, By purity she has discovered her capacity and only her superior powers are in operation. It has been said by one philosopher that as soon as the chief power takes cominand the others all run into it, leaving their own work. Then the soul is in order and in her pure nature, in her supernal light-nature wherein all things are potential. A heathen doctor says, If the soul knew herself she would know all things. Deity flowed into the Father and into the Son and into the Holy Ghost: in eternity into itself and in time into creatures, to each as much as it can hold : to the stone its being, to the tree its growth, to beasts sensation, to the angels reason and to mankind all these four natures. When God was made man he took upon himself by grace, in time, the nature of all things, which in eternity was his by nature. As St Paul says, ‘ To me C'hrist is all things.’ Here it was a matter of the light and reflection of his own nature. God’s being is fontal : flowing and fixed, final as well as the first. From being power flows out into work. In this sense the three Persons are the storehouse of divinity and the three Persons are poured forth into the essence of the soul as grace, God’s being in the essence of the soul is the imitation of the Persons and one being permeates the other. Her chief power flows from the essence of the soul just as the three Persons issue from the Godhead. And when God pours his grace into the soul it is into her essence that he pours it. For into the soul’s essence no speck can ever fall, do her powers what they may. The chief power of the soul draws its virtue from the grace existing in the essence of the soul and this highest power goes out into the lower ones, into their essence. The crescent soul, the spirit receptive of God’s nature, is the imitation of Christ’s Person and man’s nature. The soul when she reaches divine nature is deprived of all deficiency and imperfection ; she suffers death in divine nature, getting God’s nature in herself as the Father does in him. She takes it not from her own nature, she receives it from God’s nature into her nature ; she receives perfection and power according to the words of St Paul, ‘ I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.’ The wisdom thence arising in her mind begins in understanding and is perfected in will and it has neither heart nor thought. St Dionysius says. As the soul takes the outgoing tide

to journey in eternity and time and in her own intelligence, so on the ebb does she return ; as God the soul Hows back again, without exertion. God returns to himself as little mindful of his own as though they wore not. And the soul shall do the same. She shall grasp with her manhood the Person of the Son, and with the Person of the Son she shall apprehend the Father and the Holy Ghost in both, and them both in the Holy (ihost ; and with the Person of tlie Father she shall apprehend his simple essence, and with the essence the abyss, and shall sink into the void without matter and without form. Matter and form, being and knowledge, she loses ill this unity, for she herself has come to naught. God does all her work, he preserves her in his being and leads her in his power into his very (Godhead where she Hows with deity itself into all God Hows into. She is all things’ place and has herself no place. This is the most eternal wisdom, which has neither heart nor thought. So nigh soul Ho\vs to God that many are deceived ; but wdiat she is she is by grace, and where she is she is by another’s power. Yet she approaches near enough to (xod to be, in the power of the Father, invested with divinity by grace the same as the Father is by nature. St Paul says : ‘ In the same image we shall go from one glory to another,’ meaning, we shall receive divinity in its perfection and all that is consequent thereon. Therein she shall conceive divinity as it conceives itself and her will and God’s will shall be one : whatever God may be wc shall be with God. No one can attain it in this body, but when (Jod gives the soul his final gift, the vision of his Godhead, the soul is raised up in the Trinity. May wc attain to this, So help us God. Amen.

Mulier^ venit horn ci nunc e.st, quando veri adoratores adorabunt pafrem in spiritii et veritaie (Job, This comes from St John’s Gospel. I take one sentence from a long discourse. Our Lord said : ‘ Woman, the hour eometh and now is, when true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth and the Father seeketh such.’ Taking the opening words : ‘ The hour eometh and now is.’ He who would worship the Father must betake himself into eternity in his desires and hopes. There is one, the loftiest, part of the soul which stands above time and knows nothing of time or of body. The happenings of a thousand years ago, days spent millenniums since, are in eternity no further off than is this moment 1 am passing now ; the day to come a thousand years ahead or in as many years as you can count, is no more distant in eternity than this very instant I am in. He says, ‘ true worshippers worship tlie Father in spirit and in truth.’ What is trutJi ? The truth is a most noble thing. Tf (iod were able to backslide from truth T would fain cling to truth and let God go. Hut (iod is truth, and things in time, the things that (xod created, are not truth.

He says, ‘they worship the Father.’ Alas, how many worship crealurcs and saddle tlKanselv^es with them, fools that they arc. As sure as thou dost pray to God for creatures thou prayest for thine own undoing, for no sooner is creature creature than hey for trouble and bitterness, Avrong and distress. They get tlieir deserts, do these lolk, with their wrongs and their bitterness. For why ? They prayed for it. I have sonudimes said, whoso gO('s seching God and seekiiig aught with God docs not iind (md ; but he who seeks God by himself in truth docs not lind God alone ; all God affords he finds as well as God. Art tliou looking for God, sc'eking God with a view to thy jiersoual good, thy personal prolit ? Then in truth thou art not sething God. ' True Avorshippers Avorship the Father,’ he saA^s, and he says right well. If a A irtuous man is asked, ‘ Why dost thou seek (xod V ’ he ansAvers : ‘ Because he is God.’- AVhy dost thou s(‘ek truth? ’ - ^ Beeause it is truth.’ — ‘ Why dost thou seek right ? ' ‘ Jh'cause it is right,’ and Avith