Sermons and Treatises of Meister Eckhart

Thirdly, mauy pious souls are hindered by scrupulosity in confession and repentance, the outward forms thereof, but they take no trouble about the truth itself. Jesus says of these, ‘ He that has bathed needs but to wash his feet ’ ; once cleansed, that is, by genuine sorrow and confession, no man has need to re-confess old sins ; but he should wash the feet of his desire and purify his conscience by shriving from new faults. And devout souls are hindered too from spiritual attainment by indulgence in sheer physical enjoyment of the humanity of Christ. When our Lord said to his disciples, ‘ It is expedient for you that I should go away,’ he was addressing not them only but all who in the days to come should try to follow him to high achievement. For these there is a hindrance in his manhood if, regardless of his Godhood, they content themselves with that. We ought to follow God in all his ways, not kec^p to his humanity as distinct from his divinity. The Lord Jesus said, ‘ I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh to the Father but by me, and whoso shall enter by any other door the same is a thief and a robber.’ He also said he was not from himself. The Eternal Wisdom said, ‘ He that created me is resting in my tent ’ and witlial is uncreated. Christ is the born wisdom and power of the Father. His wisdom is the Son and his goodness is the Holy Ghost, they being of one nature and distinct in Person. And this tent that Wisdom speaks of is the humanity of Christ wherein the Father reposes with his Son and with the Holy (rhost who are alike in nature and are God in Person. Wherefore let us worship this tent of his humanity solely in its oneness with his deity. For man is truly God and God is truly man. Nor ought we to encumber ourselves with any creature excepting Jesus Christ, who is our saving way to his heavenly Father and apart from whom there is no other way. But albeit we have taken leave of creature and entered the true path, which is Jesus Christ, we are not wholly blest. Though wc are in sight of the divine reality wc are not yet the same as what we see. St Augustine says. No soul can get to God who goes not minus creature to find God minus likeness. And this finds warrant in Christ’s words, ‘ Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye then thou canst take the mote out of thy brother’s eye.’ Whence we draw the moral that any temporal thing is a beam in the eye of the soul and prevents divine oneness. It follows that the soul will have to cast herself out of herself and stand all bare of creature and wholly unncccssitous, for so she puts herself upon a par with God who, naked and unindigent of things, goes absolutely free from matter. Thus at length the soul enters the union of the Holy Trinity to be wholly blest when, casting herself into the desert of the Godhead where neither act nor form exists, she is

lost to self in the rapture of reunion : as self she comes to naught and has no more to do with things than she had when she was not. Now dead to self she is alive in God. But the dead perish in the tomb. So perishes the soul as such, entombed in the desert of the Godhead. Of such St Paul declares, ‘ Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’ According to Dionysius, burial in God is nothing but the crossing over into uncreated life. This crossing is beyond the ken of multitudinous knowledge. Such is the nature of the soul that where she is she is entire : where this nature exists it exists as a whole in each member ; and by the same token, God is in all places and in every creature, for what lives in the soul is none other than God. So leaving everything to him let her dcj)art from all that is not God nor rest until she grasps the uncreated God. So help ns our Lord Jesus Christ who, as though to-day, ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of the Father with whom and with the Holy Ghost he is the working of the Deity. Amen.

Faciamus honiineni ad imaginem el similitudinein nostrarn {Gen, Igo)* said, ‘Let us make man in our image.’ What is God’s speaking ? The Father observing himself with impartible perception perceives the impartible purity of his own essence. There he sees the image of creatures as a whole, there he speaks himself. His Word is his clear perception and that is his Son. God’s speaking is his begetting. God said, ‘ Let us make.’ Theologians ask : Why did not God say, ‘ Let us do ’ or ‘ I.et us work ? ’ Doing is an outward act beseeming not the inward man. Work (*omcs from the outward and from the inward man, but the innermost man takes no part in it. In making a thing the very innermost self of a man comes into outwardness. When God made man the innermost heart of the Godhead was concerned in his making. A heathen philosopher says, God made* all things with wisdom. The Doctor says, ‘ The Son is the wisdom or love of the Father wherewith he made all things.’ God said, ‘ Let us make man.’ Why did God not say, ‘ Let us make manhood,’ for it was manhood that Christ took ? Man and manhood differ. Talking of man we mean a person ; talking of manhood we mean human nature. Philosophers define what nature is. It is the thing that essence can receive. Hence God assumed manhood and not man. It is written in the book of ' See also Greith, pp. 99-104, etc.

Moses, Adam was the first man that God ever made. And I say that Christ was the lirst man God made. How so ? The philosopher says, what is first in intention is last in execution. When a carpenter builds a house his first intention is the roof and that is tJic finish of the house. God said, ‘Let us make man.’ Whereby he gave it to be understood that he is more than one : three in Person, one in essence. St Augustine relates that when he was looking for the image in the soul he sought it in the outward man, and there he found four likenesses and three links and two faces. He found nothing of the image. Then he hunted for it in the inner man, and there he found one thing which answered to the simple essence in its simplicity and to the various Persons in its trinity of powers. He found two faces to it. One working downwards and the other upwards. With the lower face she knows herself and outward things. The upper face has two activities ; with one she knows God and his goodness and his emanation ; with this she loves and knows him to-day and not to-morrow. I love God to-day and not to-morrow. Now the image will not lie in her three powers, by reason of their instability. Another power is in the highest face, which is concealed ,* in this concealment lies the image.

The image has five properties. First, it is made by another. Secondly, it answers to that same. Thirdly, it has emanated from it ; not that it is the divine nature but it is a substance subsisting in itself ; it is the pure light that emanates from God and only differs from him in understanding God. Fifthly, it tends towards what it came from. Two things adorn this image. One is, it is according to him ; the other, there is somewhat of eternity therein. The soul has three powers : the image does not lie in them ; but she has one power : the actual (or active) intellect. Now St Augustine and the New Philosophers declare that in this lies impartible memory, intellect and will, and these three are inseparatc, i.e. the hidden image answers to God’s essence. The divine being ((xod) is shining straight into this image, and the image shines straight into God with nothing between. May God come into us and we into him and be united with him, So help us God. Amen.

St Paul reminds us that we being planted in the likeness of God may attain to higher and truer vision. For this St Dionysius says we require three things. The first is, possession of one’s mind. The second is, a mind that is free. The third is, a mind that can see. How can we acquire this speculative mind ? By a habit of mental concentration. The soul has a ghostly spot in her where she has all things rnattcr-free just as the first cause harbours in itself all things immaterially. The soul has also a light in her with which she creates all things. When this light and this spot coincide so that each is the seat of the other, then, only then, one is in full possession of one’s mind. VVliat more is there to tell ? It means our outAvard man’s farewell to all satisfaction in creatures and the inner man’s being so meet for God that nothing arises within him that he would have changed : then, not till then, a man is self-possessed. This cannot happen here for, as tlic Doctor says, when this that wc are siicaking of befalls, the highest power of the soul secs God in her own power. As St Dionysius puts it. Then the soul is not called soul, she is the sovran power of God.

The second thing is a free mind. Freedom means not being in any way bound ; our being as free and clear and unalloyed as we were in our first emanation when wc were loosed in the Holy Ghost. The third is the speculative mind. Herein the soul sees God. What does the soul see when she sees God ? Dionysius says she sees the one power. This unique power makes her one with it. She sees in him also the good passing good, embraeing all good things. He wants to entice us out of ourselves, to make us unwilling to stay in ourselves. As the heathen philosopher says. The arch delight, all delights excelling, attracts the soul out of all enjoyments into the sovran truth where all things end. And the same master says, Why arc we unaware of this ? B(*causc wc are bent on louver things. Supposing that we find ourselves desirous of God before all else, tlien God has touched this highest power. By this touch she is moved out of herself and into him ; not that she is moved by grace as one thing moves another, for she has no body to her deity. St Dionysius says that the motion of the soul is as in a circle, since she never varies from her centre.

He says too, God is splendid, and this by reason of three things. He is clear, he is a mutual illumination, he is one and the same. What docs clear mean ? Free from admixture of body ; persisting in his purity or light-nature. According to the scriptures, the soul is sevenfold clearer than the sun. The sun is clear albeit a corporal thing. But I declare the soul to be an hundredfold clearer than the sun, for the sun is bodily whereas the soul is ghostly. And her surpassing clarity is due to the ascendency of spirit over matter. Now if the soul is clear like this then God must be infinitely clearer, for he created her, and the cause is more than its creature has. lie is also a mutual illumination, for all that is in God is God. And St Augustine says the Father and the Son shine into each other in the Holy Ghost, who is the tie between them. And the three hypostases, which arc the three Persons, have one nature, like three lights with one shine. So too with us there should be unanimity, all multiplicity focussed to the highest power and this sovran power cast into God there to abide without reflection.

Thirdly, he is one and the same, this being characteristic of divinity, which is the same as unity. This is not said of creature, for it cannot be maintained of any creatures that it is from themselves they have their being. St Paul says, ‘ What we have we have received from the unique good, God namely, from whom are all good things.’ Things are not from themselves. That which is from itself and from which all things are, is God. It is expressly taught that God is one and the same. And it is for us to be like him. When we have parted from ourselves then we are not-being rather than being. May we, being planted in the likeness of God, attain to higher and truer vision, So help us God. Amen.

Adolescens, tihi dico : surge {Luc, 7^^). To-day we read in the gospel about the widow with an only son who had died. And our Lord came to him and said, ‘ Young man, arise ! ’ And he sat up. By the widow we understand the soul ; her husband was dead, so her son was dead also. Her son we take to mean her intellectual nature. Our I^ord, sitting by the well, said to the woman, ‘ Go home and fetch me thine husband.’ Not hers that living water which is the Holy Ghost ; that is vouchsafed alone to those who are quickened in their understanding. Intellect is the summit of the soul. It has fellowship and intercourse with the angels in angelic nature. Angelic nature no time can touch, nor can time touch the intellec^tual nature. Unless she lives in this her son will die. She was a widow. No creature lives but has some good and some shortcomings. She was a widow in this sense : intellect was dead in her, and with it perished also the fruit of it, the Son. Widow, in another sense, suggests abandonment, one who is forsaken. Even so must we abandon creatures and forsake them utterly. The prophet says, ‘ The woman who is barren, more in number are her children than hers who is fruitful.’ So with the

soul who travails ghostly : manifold are her offspring, instantly does she bear fruit. The soul that has gotten God is bringing forth fruit all the time. God must needs accomplish his work. God is ever at work in the eternal now, and his work is the begetting of his Son ; he is bringing him forth all the while. In his birth all things have proceeded forth, and so great is his pleasure in this birth that he spends his whole energy upon it. God bears himself out of himself into himself ; the more perfect this birth is the more docs it bear. I say that God is all one, he knows nothing but himself alone. God cannot know himself without knowing all creaturcis. God gives himself birth all at once in his Son ; he says all things in him. He says, ‘ Young man, arise I ’ God exerts all his power in his Son so as to quicken the soul back to God. And hell-torment really means the frequent lapsing of the soul fiorn the purpose of God’s effort, which is, to bring the soul to life again. God makes all creatures in a word, but in order to vivify the soul the whole of his power is expended in his Son with intent for the soul to be brought back therein. In his birth she comes to life, and God bears his Son into the soul so as to quicken her. God speaks himself in his Son. In the word wherein he speaks himself in himself he speaks himself into the soul. It belongs to all creatures to be born. A creature without birth would not be at all. According to one master, it is a sign of the divine birth that all creatures are wrought in it. Hence his words, ‘ Young man, arise ! ’

The soul has nothing God can speak into excepting her intelligence. Some powers are too vile for God to speak to. He could of course address them, only they would not hear. Will as will is not receptive, not in any wise ; will consists in aspiratioji. So he says, ‘ Young man, arise ! ’ The powers of the soul age not, they say. Not so the corporal faculties, which How ])ast and decay. The more a man knows the better he knows, and this ennobles the soul. But the corporal powers do not have this result, so his words, ‘ Young man, arise ! ’ have reference to the noble powers of the soul. Philosophers define as young things which are near to their beginning. Man has perennial youth in his intellectual nature ; the more he is in his active (intellect) the nearer he is to his birth, and a thing near its birth is young. The first issue of the soul is her intellectual nature, next follows will and then all the rest of her powers. Now he says, ‘ Young man, arise ! ’ The soul herself is one indivisible work ; what is wrought by God in the impartible light of the soul is more lovely and fair than the whole of his work in creatures. Yet foolish folk take bad for good and good for bad. To him who understands aright the unitiue work.

of God in the soul is better and nobler and higher than the whole world. Above this light comes grace. Grace enters neither into intellect nor will. For grace to enter into intellect and will, intellect and will must transcend themselves. A master says, There is I know not what, wholly mysterious, above them,’ meaning the spark of the soul, the only part of her which is Godreceptive. Here in this minute spark, called the spirit of the soul, there occurs true union between the soul and God. Grace never did any virtuous work : it has never done any work at all albeit good works are the outcome of it. Grace does not unify by works. Grace is the inhabiting and co-habiting of the soul in God. Work of whatever kind, external or internal, is beneath it. All creatures are searching for the Godlike. The more vile they are the more they search outside. Air and water, for example, flow away, but heaven steadily goes round and in its course is bringing forth all creatures ; therein being godlike so far as in it lies. Moreover, in its motion it is seeking rest. Heaven never condescends to serve inferior creatures. And in this it is very much like God. God’s birth of himself in his Son is denied to creatures. But heaven is striving after this act which God performs in himself. And if heaven does this, and also other creatures much baser than the soul, then it is thankless and shameful of her to make such scant effort to compass such things as resemble the works God does in eternity.

According to philosophers, the soul can give birth to herself in herself and bear herself out of herself back into herself. In her natural light she works wonders ; she is able to separate one. Fire and heat are one ; in her intellect she divides them. Wisdom and goodness arc one in God : in her intellect wisdom is never envisaged as goodness. Why ? Because wisdom enters more into God. The soul brings forth in her God out of God into God ; she is with young in her very self, and this by dint of her nearness to God, of her being the image of God. As I have often said, image as image, ix. as a reflection, is an inseparable thing. Soul as living in the reflection of God has real union no creature can sever. Not God himself, not angels, nor any sort of creature is able to disjoin the soul who is in the image of God. That is true union, and therein lies true happiness. Various philosophers are in search of happiness. My verdict is, that happiness lies neither in intellect nor will : happiness lies above them both, and it is there as happiness and not as intellection, and God is there as God and soul as the image of God. May he unite us to him in this sense. So help us God. Amen.

Adolescens, tihi dico : surge {Luc. 7^4). We read in St Luke’s gospel about a youth who was dead. And our Lord came and took compassion on him and touched him and said, ‘ Young man, I say unto thee, I command thee. Arise ! ’ Now you must know that in all good people God is present all at once and there is something in the soul wherein God lives and something in the soul where the soul lives in God, and if the soul turns outwards towards external things she dies and God dies also in the soul. But he does not die in himself at all and he is alive to himself. Just as, when the soul leaves the body the body dies and the soul lives on in herself, so (iod may be dead to the soul and be alive to himself. Andknow, there is one power in the soul wider than wide heaven, which is so incredibly extensive that we are unable to define it, and yet this power is much vaster still. Mark now. In this exalted power the Father is saying to his one-begotten Son, ‘ Young man, arise ! ’ It is God, and the closeness of its union with the soul is past belief, for God is so lofty in himself that nothing whatsoever can attain thereto by understanding. It is wider than the heavens, aye than all the angels, albeit one angelic spark is the cause of all the life on earth. Desire is far-reaching, limitless. All that mind can conceive, all that heart can desire, that is not God. Where desire and understanding end, in the darkness, there shines God.

Quoth our Lord, ‘ Young man, I say unto thee. Arise ! ’ If I am to hear God speaking in me I must be wholly estranged from all that is mine, as strange as I am to things under the sea, and especially from time. The soul is as young in herself as when she was made, for age as relating to her is an affair of the body, affecting iier use of its senses. As one philosopher observes, an old man with the eyes of youth would sec just as well as a boy. I made a statement yesterday which seems almost incredible, I said that Jerusalem is as near my soul as the ground I stand on now. ‘ Aye, in good sooth, a thousand leagues beyond Jerusalem is every whit as nigh my soul as my own body is, of that I am as sure as of my being a man, and to any learned clerk it is not hard to understand.’ Know then that my soul is as young as when I was created, aye, much younger. And I tell you, I should be ashamed were she not younger to-morrow than to-day. The soul has two powers which have nothing whatever to do with the body, namely intellect and will, which function above time. Oh, if only the soul’s eyes were opened so that her under-

standing might behold the truth ! Then it would be as easy to a man to give up everything as to give up peas and lentils, aye upon my soul, to him all things would be but vanity. There are some who give up things for love albeit greatly prizing what they leave. But to this man who knows in truth, it matters not one whit that he should leave himself and everything, for anyone who takes this course has all things for his own in truth. There is one power in the soul to which all things are alike sweet ; the very worst and the very best arc all the same in this power which takes things above here and now. Now meaning time and here meaning place. This place I arn in now, suppose 1 went out of myself and were entirely empty, why then I ween the heavenly Sire would bear his only Son within my mind so clearly that my spirit would bear him back again. Verily, were my spirit as ready as the wsoul of our Lord .Jesus Christ then would the Father energise in me as perfectly as in his onc-begotten Son, no less, seeing that he loves me with the selfsame love wherewith he loves himself.

St John said, ‘ In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’ Now to lu‘ar this Word in the Father (where it is absolutely silent), a man must be quite quiet and wholly free from images, aye, and forms as well. A man must be so true to God that nothing whatever can gladden him or sadden him. lie must sec all things in God, as they are there. He says, ‘ Young man, I say unto thee, Arise ! ’ Meaning to effect this thing himself. If someone tells me to carry one stone he may as well tell me a hundred if he is going to do it himself. If he orders a hundredweight load he may just as well make it a thousand if it is for his own back. And God will do this work himself if onl}^ we will wait and not resist. If the soul would but stay within, she would have everything there. There is one power in the soul and that not merely power but being ; and not merely being : it radiates life, and is so pure, so high and so innately noble that creatures cannot live in it ; none but God can abide therein. Nay, even God himself is forbidden there so far as he is subject to condition. God cannot enter there in any guise : God is only there in his absolute divinity.

Then, the fact of his speaking the words, ‘ Young man, I say unto thee.’ What is God’s speaking? It is his working, and God’s work is so noble, so sublime, that God alone can do it. You must understand then, that our whole perfection, our entire happiness, will lie in traversing and transcending all creatureliness, all time and all limitation and getting into the cause which is causeless. We pray thee O Lord, that we may be one and indwelling. So help us God. Amen.

Ego elegi vos de mundo (Joh. 15^^). These words wliich I quote in the Latin are from the gospel of to-day, the feast of one of the saints, Barnabas by naTiic, who is commonly referred to in the scriptures as being an apostle. Our Lord says, ‘ I have elected you, selected you, chosen you out of the world, from all created things, that ye should bring forth much fruit and that your fruit should remain,’ for it is very good to bring forth fruit and for the fruit to remain, and the fruit does remain if we dwell in love. At the end of this gospel our Lord says, ‘ Love one another as I have ever loved you ; my Father hath loved me eternally and so have I loved you ; keep my commandments, so shall ye remain in my love.’ All God’s commandments come from love, from the kindness of his nature ; did they not come from love they would not be God’s law, for God’s law is the goodness of his nature and his nature his benignant law. Whoso dwells in love dwells in the goodness of his nature : he dwells in God’s love, and love is without why. Suppose I had a friend and loved him for benefits received and because of getting my own way, I should not love my friend, 1 should be loving my own self. I ought to love my friend on his own account, for his virtues, for his own intrinsic worth : 1 love my friend aright loving him like this. And so with the man abiding in God’s love, seeking not his own in God nor in himself nor in any thing but loving God sim})ly for his kindness, for the goodness of his nature, for what he is in himself : tliat is true love. Love of virtue is the flower, the ornament of virtue, aye, the motJier of all virtue, all perfection and all happiness : it is God, for God is the fruit of virtue, and it is this fruit wliich remains to man. When a man works for fruit and the fruit remains to him he rejoices greatly. Sup])osc he has a vineyard or a field and makes it over to his man to work while keeping all the produce ; he may give into the bargain all the things thereto belonging and still be much rejoiced to have the fruits remain in pa)unent. Even so a man rejoices in the fruit of virtue ; he has no worries, no vexations, because he has made over himself and everything.

Our Lord says, ‘ Whoso shall leave anything for me and for my name’s sake, to him will I restore an hundredfold and eternal life to boot.’ But if thou leave it for that hundredfold and for the sake of eternal life, thou art leaving nothing ; nay, so thou leave it for a thousandfold reward thou art leaving nothing : leave thyself, give up self altogether, that is real riddance. A man once came to me (it was not long ago), and told me he had given up a quantity of land and goods to save his soul. Alack ! I thought, how paltry, how inadequate, the things thou hast resigned. It is blindness and folly so long as thou dost care a jot for what thou hast forsworn. Forswear thyself, that is true resignation. The man who has resigned himself is so impartial, this world will have none of him, as I said here not long ago. The devotee of justice is given up to justice, seized of justice, identified with justice. I once wrote in my book : The just man serves neither God nor creature : he is free ; and the more he is just the more he is free and the more he is freedom itself. Nothing created is free. While tlierc is aught above me, excepting God himself, it must constrain me, however small it be or however (great) ; even love and knowledge, so far as it is creature and not actually God, confines me with its limits. The unjust man, whether he would or no, is the servant of illusion : serving the world and creature he is the bondman of sin.

1 was thinking lately ; that I am a man belongs to other men in common with myself ; I see and hear and eat and drink like any other animal ; but that 1 am belongs to no one but myself, not to man nor angel, no, nor yet to God excepting in so far as I am one with him. All God’s work he puts into his one replica of himself, and though radically differing in their operation, (creatures) all tend to reproduce themselves. In my father nature took its normal course. In the course of nature I should be a father like himself. The tendency is ever towards self-repetition, towards the preservation of the species : it is every man’s intention that his work should be himself. Any shifting or hindering of his nature and the result is woman : thus where nature stops God begins to work and to create ; for without woman there would be no men. The child as conceived within its mother’s womb has shape and colour and material being ; so much is wrought by nature. That lasts for forty days and forty nights, and on the fortieth day God creates the soul in much less than the twinkling of an eye. Now ends the work of nature, all nature can contrive in colour, form and matter. The activity of nature goes out altogether, and as the natural energy is finally withdrawn it is restored intact in the rational soul. This then is the work of nature and the creation of God. In created things (as I have said repeatedly) there is no truth.

There is something, transcending the soul’s created nature, not accessible to creature, non-existent ; no angel has gotten it, for his is a clear (intelligible) nature, and clear and overt things have no concern with this. It is akin to Deity, intrinsically one, having naught in common with naught. Many a priest finds it a baffling thing. It is one ; rather unnamed than named, rather unknown than known. If thou couldst naught thyself an instant, less than an instant, I should say, all that this is in itself would belong to thcc. But while thou dost mind thyself at all thou knowest no more of God than my mouth docs of colour or my eye of taste : so little thou knowest, thou discernest, what God is. Plato, that great priest, who occupied himself with lofty matters, makes reference to this thing. He speaks about a light which is not in this world; not in the world and not out of the world; not in time nor in eternity : it lias neither in nor out. God the eternal Father, the fullness and the sink of all his deity does he give birth to here in his one-begotten Son, so that we are that very Son, and his birth is his presence within and his abiding within is his bringing forth. That remains ever the same which comes welling up in itself. Ego, the word /, is proper to none but to God himself in his sameness. Vos, the word implies your collective unity, so that ego and vos, I and you, stand for unity. May we be the unity itself, unity abiding. So help us God. Amen.

In occasione gladii mortal stmt {Hehr. II37). read of the blessed martyrs, whom we commemorate to-day, that they were slain with the sword. Quoth our Lord to his disciples, ‘ Blessed are ye when ye suffer for my name’s sake.’ And according to the scriptures these martyrs suffered death for Christ’s name, being put to the sword. Here we learn three things. First, that they are dead. Man’s sufferings in this world have an end. St Augustine says pain and the work of pain is finite and the reward is infinite. Secondly, that, seeing this life is mortal, we have no need to fear all the pain and travail falling to our lot, for it will end. Thirdly, that it behoves us to emulate the dead in dispassion towards good and ill and pain of every kind. The i)hilosophcr says heaven is immoveable. Referring to the soul as being the heavenly man who is imperturbable. One master enquires. If creatures are so vile, how comes it they so easily distract the soul from God ; is not the soul at her vilest better than heaven and all creatures ? The Doctor says it comes of minding too little about God. Were we to pay due heed to God it would be nigh impossible to lapse. From which we draw the moral that we ought in this world

to emulate the dead. According to St Gregory, no one gets so much of God as the man who is throughly dead. The fourth point is the weightiest. He speaks of their being dead. Death gives them being. A philosopher says, ‘ Nature never breaks but to mend.’ Air to fire, for instance, is a change for the better ; but air to water were destruction and untowardness. If this is nature’s way much more is it God’s : he never destroys without providing something better. The martyrs died : they lost their life and found their being. The philosopher says, ‘ Most precious is being and life, and knowledge is higher than life and nobler than being, for in knowing we have life and being.’ Yet life is nobler than being in the sense that a tree has life whereas a stone has being. Again, take being pure and simple, as it is in itself, and being transcends both knowledge and life, for in that it is being it is both knowledge and life. They have, I say, lost their natural life and have acquired being. The philosopher says there is nothing so like God as being : in so far as it is real being it is the same thing as God. The philosopher says, Being is pure, exalted : all that God is is being. God knows nothing but being, he is conscious of nothing but being ; being is his ring. God loves naught save his being, he thinks of naught save his being. I say, all creatures are being. One master says some creatures are so nigh to God and so instinct with divine light that they give being to other creatures. Tliat is not the case : being is too pure, too high, too much the same as God, for anyone but God to be able to give being. God’s idiosyncrasy is being. The philosopher says one creature is able to give another life. For in being, mere being, lies all that is at all. Being is the first name. Defect means lack of being. Our whole life ought to be being. So far as our life is being, so far it is in God. So far as our life is akin thereto, so far it is kin to God. There is no life so feeble but taking it as being it excels anything life can ever boast. I have no doubt of this, that if the soul had the remotest notion of what being means she would never waver from it for an instant. The most trivial thing perceived in God, a flower for example as espied in God, would be a thing more perfect than the universe. The vilest thing present in God as being is better than angelic knowledge.

When angels turn to creaturely knowledge, then it grows dark. St Augustine says. When angels know ereatures in God, twilight falls ; when the soul knows God in creatures it is eventide. But knowledge of creatures in God is the dawn. And when she knows God in himself as pure essence, that is high noon. It should be the soul’s desire to see, as though in non-sense, this most noble being. We advocate dying in God, to the end that he may raise us up to being which is better than life : the being our life subsists in, wherein our life is quickened into actuality. We ought to face ^ death willingly and die in order to obtain a better resurrection. I said on one occasion that a bit of wood is more precious than gold, a surprising statement. But a stone is nobler (having being) than God and his Godhead without being, if such a thing is possible as to abstract his being. That must be a vigorous life in which dead things revive, in which even death is changed to life. To God naught dies : all things are living in him. They being dead (as the scriptures say about the martyrs) are quickened into life eternal, into the life where living is real being. We must be so tliroughly dead as to be moved by neither good nor ill. What we know we must knoAv in its cause. We never really know anything in itself till we know it in its cause. There is no understanding it until wc^ apj^rehend it in its origin. Just as life is never perfected till it returns to its original source, wherein life is real being. The thing that k(ieps us from remaining there is, as the philosopher explains, our being in contact with time. What time can touch is temporal and mortal. The philosopher states that the heavenly progression is eternal ; true, it gives rise to time, and that makes it mortal. In its course it is eternal, all unwitting of time ; in other words, the soul obeys the laws of abstract being. Another thing is its being full of opposites. What are opposites ? Good and bad, white and black are in opposition, a thing which has no j)lace in real being.

The philosopher says the soul is given to the body for her perfecting. Soul apart from body possesses neither intellect nor will : she is one with no attendant power of speech ; true, she has it in her ground, in its root as it were, but not in fact. The soul \ is purified in body by collecting things scattered and dispersed. The resultant of the five senses, when these are recollected, gives her a common sense wherein everything sums up to one. In the second place, she is purified by a saving habit, that namely of ascending into the unitive life. The soul’s perfection consists in liberation from the life which is in part and admission to the life which is whole. All that is scattered in nether things is gathered together when the soul climbs up into the life where there are no opposites. The soul knows no opposition when she enters the light of intellect. Anything short of this light falls into death and dies. Perfection of soul consists, thirdly, in absence of sensible affection. What is prone to aught other shall die, it cannot last. We beseech thee Lord God to help us escape from the life that is divided into the life that is united. So help us God. Amen.

In diebus suis placuit deo et inventus est Justus {Eccl. In these words which I quote in Latin we celebrate the saint, Germanus by name, whose virtuous life so much is written of and whose festival is kept to-day in holy Christendom. ‘ In his days,’ that means there is more than one day. There is the soul’s day and God’s day. Days here, all that have passed for seven thousand years, are as near God’s day, to-day, as is yesterday. Why ? Because time yonder is in the present now. The heavens revolve, hence time ; day started when the heavens began to spin. Yonder the soul’s day is passing in the present, in her natural light where all things are, where there is perfect day, God’s day, day and night in one. Yonder in the day of eternity the soul is in the essential now ; there the Father is begetting his (one-begotten Son) in the here and now, there the soul is being reborn in God. As often as this birth takes place she is giving birth to the only Son. Full many arc the sons of virgins born who travail in eternity, superior to time. But however many sons the soul gives birth to in eternity she has no more than the one Son, for it is supcrtemporal ; it comes to pass in the eternal day.

Just indeed is he who lives in virtue and in virtuous deeds ; who seeketh not his own in any thing, iicithcr in God nor creature. That man dwells in God and (iod in him. He takes delight in flouting and getting rid of things, in being done with things as far as that is possible. St John says, ‘ God is love and love is God and he who dwells in love dwells in God.’ Doubtless he is well lodged as heir to God, and he in whom God dwells has a good lodger. One of the masters says, God gives the soul a gift which moves her lo interior things. And it has been explained that the soul is moved directly by the Holy Ghost, for in the love wherein God loves himself, in that same love he is loving me, and the soul loves God in the same love wherein he loves himself; and were there not this love wherein God loves himself there would be no Holy Ghost at all. It is the heat, the blowing of his holy Breath that the soul loves God in. In one of the Evangelists we read, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’ In another we read, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom all things please me.’ And in a third we find, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleasing to myself.’ Whatever pleases God is pleasing to him in his only Son : whatever God loves he is loving in his only Son. So it

behoves a man to live so that he is one with his only Son, so that he is his only Son. Between the only Son and the soul there is no difference. Between the servant and his lord there is no like love. As long as I am servant I remain unlike, remote from his only Son. If T could see God with my eyes the same as I see colours, that would not be right, for that which is visible is temporal. The temporal taken according to time is taken at its lowest value. Noxv is time and place in itself. While man has time and place, number and quantity, he is not as he should be, is not just, and God is remote and not his own. Our Lord says, ‘ Whosoever would be my disciple let him forsake himself,’ as though to say, no one can hearken to my teaching till he is rid of his own self. All creatures in themselves are naught, ami that is why I counsel you to abandon naught and enjoy the perfect state where the will is just. His own will once relinquished man relishes my doctrine and can listen to my word. One master says, All creatures have their being straight from God, therefore by nature God must love them better than they do themselves. Did the soul know its own detachment it would not stoop to any thing.

We say about this bishop, ‘ He was well-])leasing to him in his days.’ The soul’s day and God’s day arc different. In her natural day the soul knows all things above time and place ; nothing is far or near. And that is why 1 say, this day all things are of equal rank. To talk about the world as being made by God to-morrow, yesterday, would be talking nonsense. God makes the world and all things in this present now. Time gone a thousand years ago is now as present and as near to God as this very instant. The soul who is in the here and now, in her the Father bears his one-begotten Son and in that same birth the soul is born back into God. It is one birth ; as fast as she is reborn into God the Father is begetting his only Son in her. I have spoken about one power in the soul ; in her first issue she lays hold of God not as being good nor yet as truth : delving deeper still she grasps him in his loneliness, in his solitude ; she finds him in his desert, in his actual ground. But being still unsatisfied, on she goes in quest of what it is that is in his Godhead, of the special property of his peculiar nature. They say no property (or, union) is closer than that of the three Persons being one God. And next they put the union of the soul with God. When the soul, being kissed by God, is in absolute perfection and in bliss, then at last she knows the embrace of unity, then at the touch of God she is made uncreaturely, then, with God’s motion, the soul is as noble as God is himself. God moves the soul afte his own fashion. God contemplating creature gives it life ; creature finds life in contemplating God. The soul has intelligent,

noetic being, and therefore where God is there is the soul and where the soul is there is God. Of this saint we say, ‘ he was found just.’ Just means equable, alike in joy and sorrow, in bitter and in sweet ; one to whom nothing comes amiss, whom nothing keeps from feeling himself one in righteousness. Like to like. Love loves its like alway and God loves the just man like himself. May we find that we arc in this case in the time, in the day of understanding, in the day of wisdom, in the day of beatitude. So help us O undivided Trinity. Amen. Quasi Stella matutina in medio nehulce etc, {EccL 50^), ‘ Like the morning star in the midst of a cloud and as the moon at the full and as the sun in his glory, so did he shine in the temple of God.’ These words are commonly applied to aJl the saints and teachers who in their virtuous lives and knowledge of God have been a shining light to worldly hearts which, caught with creatures in the fog and cloud of darkness or ignorance, are straying like blind men from the way of eternal liberation, but more especially do they apply to the holy father we celebrate to-day, St Dominic by name, a mainstay of Christendom and founder of the Preaching Order which he started and established to propagate God’s word and to help poor sinners.

He shone like the morning star in the temple of God. What is God and what is the temple of God ? Four and twenty doctors met together to settle what God is, and they could not do it. Thereafter at a time appointed again they came together bringing each his verdict. Of these I will pick out two or three. One says : God is something to which all changing, temporal things are nothing ; all that has being is from him and is insignificant compared with him. Another says : God is somewhat that transcends being, that in itself needs none and that all things need. A third says : God is the intelligence wliich occupies itself solely in understanding itself. Passing over the first and the third I will speak of the second ; God transcends being. Nothing that has being, time or place is proper to God, he is above them ; his being in all creatures shows him superior to them, for that which is the same in many things . must be prior to them. According to some doctors, the soul is in the heart alone. Not so ; it is an error some eminent Scholastics make. The soul is whole and undivided at once in foot and eye and in each member of the body. Again, I take a span of ^ Sermon on St Dominic’s Day. See also Jostes, No^ 31.

time, which need not be to-day ov yesterday. But if I take the now that includes all time. The now wherein God made the world is as near this time as the now I am speaking in this moment, and the last day is as near this now as was yesterday. One of the doctors says : ‘ God is impartible, eternally energising in himself, immanent, uriindigent of instrument or aid, in need of none but what all things need and to which all things tend as to their final goal.’ To this goal there is no way, it is beyond all ways, debouching in the open. St Bernard says, ‘ Divine love is a wont without a way.’ I'he physi(‘ian wlio sets out to make a sick man whole has no particular mode of lu'altJi in view ; he has a mode whereby he hoj)cs to make him well, but how well he hopes to make him is not sjiccilied : he will make him as well as he can. How shall wc love God then ? As well as we can ; without measure. Each thing works after its own fashion ; things do not work in natures superior to their own ; fire, for examjde, only works in wood. God works above all natures, in the unconditioned ; wherever he can stir he is at work in modeless mode. Before ever there was being God was working : he wrought in non-existent being. Advamted theology lays down that God is abstract being : he is as mucli above being as an angel is above a fly. I hold it is as wrong for me to say that God is being as to say the sun is black or white. God is neither this nor that. As St Dionysius says, * He who thinks that he sees (iod, if he sees aught sees naught of God.’ But when I say God is not being, is superior to being, I do not witli that deny him being : I dignify and exalt it in him. If I find some copper in the gold, as existing there it is in a nobler being than itself. St Augustine says : God is mode-free mode, power-free power, good-free good.

In the elements of the Scholastic teaching, wc find being divided into ten modes (or categories), all ol’ which arc denied to God. God is subject to none of these mod(‘s nor is he deficient in any. The first, which has most being of them all, wherein all things have being, is substance ; and the last, which has least being, is called relatio, and in God it is the same as the first one is, which has most being. In God all things have the same form (idea), though this is the form of very different things. The most exalted angel, the soul, the fly, have all the same prototype in God. God is not being nor yet goodness. Goodness cleaves to being and does not go beyond it : if there were no being there would be no goodness. Being is purer than good. In God is no good nor better nor best. To say that God is good is to do him wrong ; as well say that the sun is black. But our Lord himself declares, ‘ None is good but God alone.’ What is good ? That which communicates itself. Him we call a good man who

gives himself and is of use to people. And hence the dictum of a heathen doctor, * A hermit is neither good nor bad, in the sense of giving himself and helping other people.’ God par excellence communicates himself. No thing gives of its own being, for creatures arc not of themselves. What they give they have gotten from another. Nor do they give themselves. The sun gives light, no more ; the fire gives heat, the fire itself remains ; but God does give his own, for it is from himself he is and in all the gifts he gives he first and foremost gives himself. In all his gifts he gives himself: God, as he is, so far as the recipient will allow. St James says, ‘ Ev^ery good gift comes down from above from the Father ol‘ lights.’ When we take God in his being we take him in the forecourt of his habitation, for quiddity or mode is the way into his temple. Then where is God in his temple ? Intellect is the temple of God wherein he is shining in his glory. Nowhere does God dwell more really than in the temple of his intellectual nature, where he is in his stillness by himself, all undisturbed. As one of the doctors says, God in his self-perception is perceiving himself in himself.

Now turning to the soul, she has a drop of intellectual nature, a spark, a ray, and she has sundry powers which function in the body. One is the power of digestion, more active by night than in the day, whereby man grows and thrives. And the soul has a power in the eyes which makes the eye so sensitive and delicate and too fastidious to accept things in the coarse-grained mode they have themselves, but they must first be filtered and refined by light and air, owing to the presence in it of the soul. Another power in the soul is that wherewith she thinks. This power is able to picture in itself things which are not there, so that I can see the things as well as I see them with my eyes, or even better. I can see a rose in winter when there are no roses, therefore with this power the soul produces things from the non-existent, like God who creates things out of nothing. A heathen philosopher observes that the soul who loves God takes him under the veil of goodness ; and so far 1 have quoted mainly from the heathen doctors who know in the light of nature merely. I have yet to come to the sayings of the saints who see in a light far more exalted. He says then, that the soul in loving God is taking him under the veil of goodness. Intellect draws this veil from God and takes him bare, stripped of goodness, of being and of every name.

At the School [the College of St Jacob] I used to teach that intellect is higher than the will, both as belonging to this light. Another theologian at the other School put will before the intellect on the ground that will enjoys things as they are in themselves, whereas intellect enjoys them as they are in it. That is quite true. The eye in itself is a better thing than the eye as painted on the wall. Nevertheless, 1 still maintain that intellect is higher than the will. Will takes God under the garment of good. Intellect seizes him naked, divested of good and of being. Goodness is a garnxent under which God is concealed and will takes God in this garment of goodness. If God had no goodness my will would repudiate God. It would be unseemly to robe a king in drab on his coronation day. I am not hap])y by reason of God’s goodness. Never should I think of asking God to beatify me with his goodness, for he could not do it. Goodness is his vesture. My beatitude lies wholly and solely in the fact that God is knowable and in my knowing him. A philosopher says, The intellecit of God is what angelic being is suspended from.

It is a question where the image really has its being : in the mirror or the object it proceeds from ? My image is in me, of me, mine. While the mirror faces me, it is my image in it; if the mirror falls it is my image which has been destroyed. Angelic being likewise depends upon the presence of God’s intellectual nature wherein he secs himself like a morning star enveloped in the mist. I always have before my mind this little word quasi, like : indeed, it is the burden of my entire teaching. What at school the children call a mock, a by-word. The truest thing that man can predicate of God is word-andtruth. God calls himself a word. And St John says, ‘ In the beginning was the Word,’ meaning that man is a word with the eternal Word. Like Venus, Fria’s star, which Friday is named after and which has many names. When it is earlier than the sun and is uj) before it then it is called the morning star ; when it rises later than the sun and the sun sets lirst then it is called the evening star. Now it is above and now IxJow the sun, hut of all the stars it best keeps its distance from the sun, never going far away, and the moral of this is that any man who would attain to God must stay by, in the presence of, God the whole time and refuse to let God be put out of his mind by fortune or misfortune or by any creature whatsoever.

And he says, ‘ like the moon at the full in his days.’ The moon is the ruler of moist nature. The moon is never nearer to the sun than at the full, and then it gets its light at first-hand from the sun, but owing to the fact that of all the stars it is the nearest to the earth, it suffers from two drawbacks : being pale and mottled and also being liable to lose its light. It is never so potent as when it is furthest from the earth, and in that position it tells most upon the sea ; when it is on the wane its effect gets less and less. And the higher the soul rises above earthly things the more powerful she grows. Merely creature-lore will place a man beyond the need of sermons. For every single creature is a book. But anyone who means to get to that whereof we speak, to where my arguments all tend, must be as the morning star : a man in the presence of God, always with him, equally near him and exalted above mundane things : a word by the Word. There is one word both thought and spoken : angels, the soul and all creatures. Another Word, thought but unspoken, I can conceive. And there is still another Word unthought of and unspoken which never proceeds forth but is eternally in him who speaks it : in the Fatlier, for it is he who speaks it, it is eternally proceeding and abiding. Intellect is intrinsically active and more and more outwardly effective in proportion as it is directed inwards. God’s ha])piness consists in its operation. And here again the soul should be an ad -verb. As the intellect of the soul turns more inwards, the more closely, more minutely is it identified with what it knows. The more powerful it is the more clearly it reflects and is atoned with God. That is not the case with corporal things : the stronger they arc tlic more external is their action. God’s happiness lies in the subjective working of the intellect wherein his Word abides. It is this eternal Word the soul should be a word with and, doing one work with God, she will find her happiness in self-perception : in the very thing that God is happy in. May we ever be a word with this Word, So help us the Father and this same Word and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Mandaturn novum do vobis etc. {Joh. In the Gospel of St John wc find our Lord’s words to his diseq^les, ‘ A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you. By this shall all know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another.’ We know of three kinds of love that our Lord had, and in this we must be like him. One is natural, the second gracious and the third divine. In God there is notJiing not God ; in ourselves, however, we may consider them as an ascending scale, from good to better and from better to perfection. But in God is neither more nor less, he is just the simple, pure, essential truth. The first love God has, in this wc learn how his divine goodness has constrained him to create all creatures, wherewith he has been big eternally in his ideal preconception, intending them to enjoy ^ Soo also Wackernagel, No. 66. his goodness with him. And among all his creatures he bears no more love to one than to another : as each is able to receive he pours his love therein. Were my soul as capacious, as roomy, as a Seraph’s, who has nothing in him, God would pour out into me the same as he does into that angel. If you describe a circle, a ring of dots with one point in the middle, from this point all the dots will be equidistant ; for one dot to get nearer it will have to be displaced, for the middle point is constant at the centre. So with divine being : it is not questing round about but abiding altogether in itself. In order to receive from it a creature must infallibly be moved out of itself. And when wx talk of man we arc talking of all creatures ; Christ himself exhorted his disciples, ‘ Go forth and preach the gospel to all creatures,’ for creatures all culminate in man. Not but what, as being, God is pouring himself out into all creatures, to each as much as it can take. Which is a lessoix to us to love all creatures equally with what we have received from God (though some are nearer to us by kinship or by natural friendship), as wc are favoured equally with the boon of divine love. I sometimes seem to like one better than another, and yet I have the same goodwill towards that other person whom I have never seen, only, by asking more of me, this one enables me to give him myself more. God loves creatures all alike and fills them with his being. And we too should pour forth ourselves in love upon all creatures. Wc often find the heathen arriving at this amiable state in virtue of their natural understanding. As the heathen philosopher observes, man is by nature a kindly animal.

The second love of God, the spiritual, he is llowing with into the soul and into the angels, and it is by this light which is supernatural that, as I was saying, creature is rapt away out of itself. Creatures are so enamoured of their own natural light, it needs a strong inducement to take them out of it into the light of grace. In his natural light man enjoys himself, but the light of grace, which is unspeakably more ]>owerful, robs him of his self-enjoyment and draws him into itself. As the soul says in the Book of Love, ‘ Draw me after thee in thy sweet savour.’ Now we cannot love God without first knowing him, but the essential point of God is in the centre, equally far from and near to all creatures, and the only way of getting closer to it is for my natural intellect to be displaced by a light more intense than itself. Supposing, for example, that my eye were a light and strong enough to bear the sunlight in its glory and unite therewith, its interior state would then be due not to itself alone but to the sunlight as well. So with the mind. The intellect is a light, and if I turn it right away from things and in the direction

of God then, since God is perennially flowing with grace, my mind is illumined and united with love and therein knows and loves God as he is in himself. Here we have the explanation of how God is flowing out into rational creatures in his light of grace and how we with our intellect approaching this gracious light are rapt out of ourselves and ascend into the light of God himself. The third love of God : in this it is granted us to learn how God has been begetting his one-begotten Son and is giving birth to him, as the Doctor says, now and eternally, he, like any woman, being brought to bed in every virtuous soul who has embarked on the interior life. This birth is his understanding, perennially up-springing in his paternal heart, wherein he has gotten all his bliss. All he has to give he expends on understanding : it is his progeny, his only pride. His entire happiness is centred in his Son ; he loves nothing but his Son and all he finds in him ; his Son is the light that has been for ever burning in his paternal heart. To enter there we shall have to climb by way of natural light into the light of grace and therein wax into the light that is the Son himself. There in the Son we are loved by the Father with his love (his Holy Spirit) which has its eternal source in him and having blossomed forth to his eternal birth (namely the second Person) is wafted by the Son back to the Father as the love of both. The Doctor says, I sometimes think of what the angel said to Mary, ‘ Hail, full of grace ! ’ what is the good to me of Mary’s being full of grace if I am not full also ? What does it profit me the F ather’s giving his Son birth unless I bear him too ? God begets his Son in the perfect soul and is brought to bed therein that she may bring him forth in all her works. Thus we, by the love of the Holy Ghost, being unified into his Son, shall know the Father with the Son and love ourselves in him and him in us with their mutual love.

Whoever would achieve this triple love must needs have four things. The first is, real dispassion towards creatures. The second, the true life of Leah, that is to say, the active life which is set in motion in the ground of the soul by the action of the Holy Spirit. The third thing is, the true life of Rachel, the contemplative life. The fourth is, an aspiring soul. A master was once questioned by his pupil about the angelic order. He answered him and said, Go hence and withdraw into thyself until thou understandest : give thy whole self up to it, then look, refusing to see anything but what thou findcst there. It will seem to thee at first as though thou art the angels with them and as thou dost surrender to their collective being thou shalt think thyself the angels as a whole with the whole company of angels. The pupil went away and withdrew into himself until he found all this in truth in his own ground. Then returning to his master he gave him thanks and said : It was as you foretold. On giving my whole mind to the subject of the angels and aspiring to their estate, at first it seemed to me that I was all the angels with the angels. You see then, said his master, that as you draw a little nearer to the source, wonder after wonder is wrought upon the soul ; for while a man is still on the ascent and receiving through the medium of creatures, he has not come to rest. But once he has climbed up into God, there in the Son he will be receiving with the Son the whole of what God has to give. May wc, ascending in this way from one love to another, be united into God and there in bliss abide eternally. So help us God. Amen.

Detachment has four steps. The first breaks in and makes away with all a man’s })crishable things. The second one deprives him of them altogether. The third not only takes them but makes them all forgotten as though they had not been, and all about them. The fourth degree is right in (k)d and is God himself. When wc get to this stage the King is desirous of our beauty.

Beati pauper es spiritu quia ipsorum est regnuui coelorum (Matt, 53). Beatitude itself opened its mouth of wisdom and said, ‘ Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Angels and saints and everything that was ever born, all must keep silence when the eternal wisdom of the Father speaks ; for the wisdom of the angels and all creatures is mere naught compared with the wisdom of God which is unfathomable. This wisdom has declared that the poor are blessed. There are two kinds of poverty. One is outward poverty, and this is good and much to be commended in him who makes a voluntary practice of it for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose wont it was on earth. About this poverty I shall say no more. But there is another poverty, an interior poverty, whereto refers this saying of our Lord, ‘ Blessed arc the poor in spirit or poor of spirit.’ And I would urge you now to be this same if ye ^ Authorship doubtful. Excerpt only. would understand my argument, for I do assure you by the eternal truth, excepting yc are like this truth we speak of it is not possible for you to follow me. Several people have asked me what poverty is ? This we will now try to answer.

Bishop Albcrtus says, ‘ By a poor man is meant one who is not satisfied with anything God ever made,’ and this is well said. But, taking poverty in a higher sense, we say better still, a poor man is one who wills nothing, knows nothing, has nothing. It is on these three heads that 1 propose to speak. Jn the first place, a poor man wills nothing. Some folks mistake the sense of this ; those, for example, who win personal repute by penanees and outward disei})lincs (arul arc highly esteemed, God ’a merey, though knowing so little of God’s truth !), To all outward ap})earanee these are holy, but they arc fools within and ignorant of the divine reality. These peo])Ie define a poor man to be one who wills nothing. Explaining this to mean that he never follows his own will at all, but is bent on carrying out the will of God. In this thej^ are not bad ; their intention is good, and we commend them for it : (iod keep them in his mercy. But 1 trow that these are not poor men nor are they the least like them. They arc much admired by those' who know no better, but I say they are fools with no understanding of God’s truth. Peradventure heaven is theirs by good intention, but of the poverty in question they have no idea.

Supposing someone asked nu\ What then is a poor man who wills nothing ? I should answer this. As long as it can be said of a man that it is in his will, that it is his will, to do the will of God, that man has not the poverty that I am speaking of, because he has a will, to satisfy the will of God, which is not as it should be. If he is genuinely poor a man is as free from his created will as he was when he was not. I tell you by the eternal truth, as long as yc possess the will to do the will of God and have the least desire for eternity and God, ye are not really poor : the poor man wills nothing, knows nothing, wants nothing. While 1 yet stood in my first cause I had no God and I was my own ; I willed not, I wanted not, for I was conditionless being, the knower of myself in divine truth ; then I wanted myself and wanted nothing else ; what I willed I was and what I was I willed. I was free from God and all things. But when I escaped from my free will to take on my created nature, then I got me a God ; for before creatures were, God was not God : he was that he was. When creatures became and started ereaturehood, God was not God in himself but he was Gk)d in creatures. Now we contend that God as God is not the final goal of creature nor such great riches as the least creature has in God. If a flea had intellect and could

intellectually plumb the eternal abysm of God’s bein^r out of which it came, then, so wc maintain, not God and all God is could fulfil and satisfy that flea. Wherefore we pray we may be quit of God and get the truth and enjoy eternity, for tJie highest angel and the soul are all the same yonder where I was and willed that I was and was that I willed. Thus sliall a man be poor of will, as little willing and desiring as he willed and wanted when he was not. And in this wise a man is poor who wills nothing. Secondly, a poor man is one who knows notliing. Wc have sometimes laid it doAvn that a man ought to live as though he lived not, Avhether for himself, or truth, or God. But now we change our ground and declare withal, that a person in this poverty has gotten all he was when he lived not in any wise, not to himself, nor truth, nor (iod : he is so quit, so free of any kind of knowledge that no idea of God is alive in him ; for while man stood in the eternal species (iod, there lived none other in him : what lived there was himself. And so wc say this man is as free from his own knowledge as he was when he was not ; he Jets God travail as he will while he himself stands idle as ^vhen he came from God.

Now the question is. Wherein does ha])piness lie most of all ? Some masters say it lies in love. Others, it lies in knowledge and in love, and these come nearer to the im^rk. We, again, contend it neither lies in knowledge nor in love, hut there is in the soul one thing from which both knowledge and love flow and which itself does neither know nor love like the powers of the soul. Who knows this knows the scat of happiness. This has no before nor after nor is it expecting anything to come, for it can neither gain nor lose. It is wanting, in the sense that it knows nothing about working in itself; but, it just is itself, enjoying itself Godfashion. And in this sense I say man ought to be idle and free, all unwitting, unaware, of what God is doing in him, that is the way to be poor. According to the masters, God is being, intellectual being which knows all things. But 1 say, (iod is not being nor yet intellect nor knows not this nor that. God is exempt from all things and he is all things. Being ])oor in spirit means being poor of all particular knowledge, even as one who wots not anything, not God nor creature nor himself. Here there is no question of a man desiring to know or recognise the way of God. In this wise may a man be poor in knowledge of himself.

Thirdly, the poor man has nothing. It has been often said that perfection means not having the mortal things of earth, and haply this is true in one particular case, namely, when it is voluntary. But this is not the sense I mean it in. I have already said, the poor man is not he who wants to do the will of God but he who lives in such a way as to be free from his own will and from the will of God, even as he was when he was not. Of this poverty we say, it is the deepest poverty. Secondly, we say, that man is poor who has no knowledge of God’s work in him. Being as free of knowing and perceiving as God is of all things is the barest poverty. But the third poverty, the straitest I am about to tell of, ix, having nothing. Here I would remind you how I have often said, and eminent authorities have said the same, that one must be devoid of things and of activities, both inwardly and outwardly, if one would be a fitting place for God to work in. Now we say something else. Granting a man is bare of everything, of creatures, of himself, of God, yet if it is still in him to provide God with the room to work in, then we do affirm : as long as this is in the man he is not poor with the strictest poverty. God does not purpose in his work that man should have in him the place God does his work in ; poverty of spirit means freedom from God and all his works, so that if God chooses to travail in the soul lie must be his own workshop, as he likes to be. Finding so poor a man, then God is his own patient and he is his own operating room, since God is in himself the operation. Here in this indigence man is obeying his eternal nature, that he has been and that he is now and that he shall be for ever.

There is the question of those words of St Paul, ‘ All that I am I am by the grace of God.’ Here the argument soars above grace, above understanding and above desire. The answer is that St Paul’s words are true ; not that grace was in him ; the grace of God wrought in him perfecting him to unity and then the work of grace was done. Grace hav ing done its work there remained Paul as he was. As we should say, he was a man too poor to have or be a place for God to work in. To preserve place is to preserve distinction. Why I pray God to rid me of God is because conditionless being is above God and above distinction : it was therein I was myself, therein I willed myself and knew myself to make this* man and in this sense I am my own cause, both of my nature which is eternal and of my nature which is temporal. For this am I born, and as to my birth which is eternal I can never die. In my eternal mode of birth I have always been, am now, and shall eternally remain. That which I am in time shall die and come to naught, for it is of the day and passes with the day. In my birth all things were born, and I was the cause of mine own self and all things, and had I willed it I had never been, nor any thing, and if I had not been then God had not been either. To understand this is not necessary.

One learned doctor says, his breaking- through is nobler than his emanation. When I flowed out of God then all things said. There is a God. Withal this eaufiot make me blest, for in it I acknowledge myself creature ; hut in my breaking-through, 1 hen as standing passive in the will of God, free of the will of God and all his works and eke of God himself, I transcend all creatures and am neither God nor creature : I am that I was and that I shall remain now and for ever. Then I receive an impulse which carries me above all angels. In this impulse I conceive such passing riches that I am not content with God as being God, as being all his godly works, for in this breaking- through I find that God and I are both the same. Then I am what I was, I neither wax nor wane, for I am the motionless cause that is moving all things. Now God can find no place in man, for man has gotten by his poverty that he has been eternally and ever shall abide. Here in the spirit God is one, that is tlic straitest poverty a man can know.

Whoso is unable to follow this discourse, let him never mind. While he is not like this truth he shall not see my argument, for it is the naked truth straight from the* heart of God. May we so live as to experience it eternally. So help us God. Amen.

Ave, gratia plena ^ dorninus tecum / {Luc, log)- ‘ Hail, full of grace, the I.ord is with thee ! The Holy Ghost shall descend into thee from above, from the lofty light-throne of the eternal Father.’ Here there are three things to be understood. First, the radiant nature of the angel ; secondly, that he knew himself unworthy to behold God’s motlicr ; thirdly, that he was speaking not alone to her but to a goodly multitude, to every virtuous soul desiring God. I say : had Mary not borne God in ghostly fashion first, he never had been born of her in flesh. The woman said to Christ, ‘ Blessed is the womb which bare thee.’ To which Christ replied, ‘ Blessed not alone the womb which bare me : blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.’ It is more worth to God his being brought forth ghostly in the individual virgin or good soul than that he was born of Mary bodily. This involves the notion of our being the only Son whom the Father has eternally begotten. When the Father begat all creatures he was begetting me ; I flowed out with all creatures while remaining within in the Father. Like what I am now saying ;

it springs up within me, then I pause in the idea, and thirdly I speak it out, and all of you receive it : but really it is in me all the while. So am I abiding in the Father. In the Father is the exemplar of all creatures. This exalted nature has its intellectual prototype in God. And not merely intellectual but intellect itself. The best God ever did for man w’^as to be man himself. I will tell you a story to illustrate my point. Once upon a time there was a rich man and his wife. The lady by mischance did lose an eye whereat she grieved excessively. Then came her lord to her and said, ‘ O wife, why so distressed ? ’ Quoth she, ‘ My lord, ’tis not my eye I mourne ; I monrne for fear lest you should love me less.’ — ‘ Nay wife, I love thee,’ he replied. Afterwards, not over long, he put out one of his own eyes, and going to his wife he said, ‘ Lady, so you may know I love you I have made myself like you : now I too have only one eye.’

According to the philosophers, creatures arc all striving to bring forth and emulate the Father. Another doctor says that every active cause works solely for the sake of its result, to find rest and peace in its end. This is mankind, who scarce could credit God’s great love for him till God did put out one of his own eyes by taking human nature. This was made flesh. Said our Lady, ‘ How shall this be ? ’ The angel replied, ‘ The Holy Ghost shall come down into ihcc from on high, from the lofty throne of the Father of eternal light.’ In 'principio. Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given.’ Child in his frail humanity. Son in his eternal deity. One philosopher declares that creatures are all striving after their ])rimitivc pure nature, after their supreme perfection. Fire as lire docs not burn : it is too intangible, too pure to burn at all ; it is tlie firc-nature which will burn, infusing into the dry wood its nature and its light according to its own most high perfection. God has done the same. He has made the soul according to his own most perfect nature, pouring into her the whole of his own light in all its pristine purity, while he himself remains all undefiled.

Now you must know that I lately said : When God created all creatures he had surely gotten first something uncreated setting forth the general idea of creatures : to wit, the spark, which is so nearly God that it is a single, impartible one, bearing the form of all creatures, formless and above form. Yesterday in the schools there was a theological discussion. I said I was astonished at no one being able to give the solution of my question : If I am the only Son whom the Father has eternally begotten, have I eternally been Son ? I say, yea and nay. Son, yes, inasmuch as the Father has eternally begotten me ; not Son in my unbegotten nature. In principio. We are given to understand that we arc the only Son whom the Father has been bringing forth for aye out of liis arcane understanding of the eternal mystery of the first beginning of his primitive light-nature which is the end of all perfection. There I have been at rest for aye, asleep in the dormant understanding of the eternal Father, immanent, unspoken. I trow, seen in that light, any bit of stick would be an angel and would be intelligent, and not alone intelligent : it would be pure intellect in that first pure nature which is the perfection of enlightenment. Out of his light-nature he has been eternally begetting me his one ])egotten Son in the express image of his eternal Fatherhood to the c-nd that I may be the Father and beget him of whom I am begotten. liike one who stands before some lofty peak hailing, ‘ Art there ? ’ And echo answers back, ‘ Art there ? ’ He (*ries, ‘ Come forth 1 ’ — ‘ Come forth ! ’ the voice replies. This is what God does : he begets his Son into the summit of the soul. By the fact of his bearing his Son into me I bear him back into the Father. It was nothing else, God’s virgin birth, than his getting his Son back again.

I used to wonder (it is many years ago) whether I should be asked why one blade of grass is so unlike another ; and as it happened I was asked why they are so different. 1 said, it is more marvellous they are so mucli alike. One philosopher says that the blades of grass arc all different owing to the superfluity of the goodness of God which he pours out abundantly into all creatures the more to show his majesty. 1 said it is move wonderful how much the grass-blades are alike, ex[)laining that just as all the angels are the sanu^ in their original pure nature so all the grasses arc the same and all things arc identical. I was thinking as I came along that one might here in time succeed in mastering God. Supposing I were up on high and told him, ‘ Come up hither,’ that would be diflieult. Rut if I said, ‘ Bide down below,’ that would be very easy. That is what God does. If a man is lowly God is unable to withhold his goodness ; he is obliged to sink himself, to pour himself, into that lowly soul, on the lowest of the lowly bestowing himself most of all and bestowing himself wholly. What God bestows is his nature, and his nature is his goodness and his goodness is his love. All joy and sorrow come from love.

I was thinking on the way as I was walking licre, T should not have come were I not prepared to get wet for friendship’s sake. If you have all got wet let me get wet too. Good and ill both come from love. Man should not be afraid of God. Some fear is harmful. The right sort of fear is the fear of losing God. It behoves man to love God since God loves man consummately. The masters say that all things arc in travail, labouring to beget themselves in the image of the Father. They talk of earth as fleeing from the heavens ; of her fleeing down and reaching heaven downwards ; of her escaping upwards to encounter the lowest of the heavens. Earth has no escape from heaven : flee she up or flee she down heaven still invades her, energising her, fructifying her whether for her weal or for her woe. God treats man the same : weening to escape him we run into his arms, for all corners are exposed to him. God will give birth to his Son in thee whether thou like it or loathe it ; whether thou sleepest or wakest God goes on with his work. That we have no sense of it is because our tongue is furred with the slime of creatures and possesses not the salt of divine affection. If we had godly love we should savour God and all the works God ever wrought and receive all things from God and be doing the same work as he docs. In this sameness we are all his only Son.

God created the soul according to his own most perfect nature that she might be the bride of his only- begotten Son. He knowing this full well decided to go fortJi out of the private chamber of his eternal Fatherhood where he has slept for aye and be proclaimed abroad while inwardly abiding in the lirst beginning of his primitive light-nature. So lifting up the tent of his eternal glory the Son proceeded out of the Most High to go and fetch his lady whom his Father had eternally given him to wife and restore her to her former high estate. For this reason he went forth and comes leaping like a love-impassioned swain. He came forth only to return again into his chamber, into the silent darkness of his mysterious Fatherhood. He proceeded out of the supreme in order to go in again accompanied by his bride and show her the hidden mystery of his secret Godhead, where he is at peace with himself and with all creatures. /n yrincipio signifies, in the beginning of all things. It also means the end of all things, since the first beginning is because of the last end. I trow that God himself is not at rest as being the first beginning : he is at rest where he is the end and cessation of existence, not that existence is then brought to naught : it is brought to its ultimate perfection. What is the last end ? It is the mystery of the darkness of the eternal Godhead which is unknown and never has been known and never shall be known. Therein God abides to himvSelf unknown, and the light of the eternal Father has been shining there for aye, and the darkness docs not comprehend the light. May we find this truth, So help us the truth whereof we speak. Amen.

Christ said, ‘ Blessed is the man who hears God’s Word and keeps it.’ The Father himself hears nothing, sees nothing, says nothing, begets nothing excepting his own Word, and in this Word the Father sees and hears and brings forth himself, even this Word and all things, his godhood in principle and himself in nature ; this Word with the same nature in another Person. Observe his mode of speech. The Father, fructifying, brings forth his own nature all at once, as understanding, in his eternal Word ; not at will nor as an act of will. That which is done or spoken by the power of his will he can in that same power refrain from if he will. Not so with the Father and his eternal Word ; whether he would or no he is obliged to speak his Word, to procreate unceasingly : this is rooted, so to say, in the Father-nature as deeply as the Father is himself. The Father speaks his Word then, willingly but not from will, naturally, not from nature. In this Word the Father speaks my and thy and every individual human soul as this same Word. In this utterance thou and I are the natural Son of God like the Word itself. As I have already said, the Father knows nothing but this Word and himself and all divine nature and all things in this Word, and everything he knows therein is like the Word and is the Word itself in nature and in truth.

When the Father gives thee, reveals to thee, this gnosis, he is giving thee his life, his being and his deity, really and truly, all together. The human father shares his nature with his son but not his life or being. You can prove this by the fact that if the father dies the son may go on living or the son may die and the father go on living. With a common life and being they would live or die together. They are separate individuals as regards their life and being, and in this they differ from the heavenly Father and his Son. If I take a light from one place and put it in another these lights, as lights, are separate things, for one may go on burning while the other has gone out, and vice versa. Thus they are neither one nor yet eternal. But, as I was saying, the heavenly Father gives thee his eternal Word, and in that Word he gives thee his own life, his being and his godhood, all at once ; for the Father and the Word are two Persons and one life, one being, undivided. When the Father finds thee mentally seeing into this same light, this light itself in its own proper nature, as he sees himself and all things in his paternal power in his Word this very Word in utterance and in

^ Fragment. Pfeiffer’s text seems to be a compound of several sermons. truth, then he gives to thee the power of begetting, with himself, thyself and all things and his own power in the shape of this same Word. Then with the Father thou art ever giving birth to thyself and all things in the here and now. In this light, as I have said, the Fatlier sees no difference between thee and him ; no more inequality, whether more or less, than between himself and his own Word. For in this light the Father and the soul and all things and the Word itself are one. 2. THE WORD OF THE SOUL i — Which of the words my soul speaks is most like the eternal Word ? — There are two words which most fully reveal the eternal Word as well as the love that flows therefrom, so St Augustine says. One word is the Word of (iod and the other is the word of herself which the soul speaks. — How does she speak the Word of God ? — See, God is in all things, therefore God is also in thy memory ; and when the soul in her understanding gives birth to the image of God, as it lies in her memory, then God is the word of thy soul, and when' this word proceeds into the will it becomes love therein. Thus God Father is in thy memory and God Word in thy intellect and (iod Spirit in thy love, though but one God.

— May we say then, generally, that God speaks his own Word in the soul ? — Ves, for when God speaks his Word in himself the Word acquires true distinction of Person ; but when our heart speaks the Word of God from memory, the word spoken by God does not acquire true distinction of real Persons, it is only a likeness and reflection of the eternal Word. — When the Word of God is born in him and his memory speaks this Word, how can it be said : God speaks his Word in the soul ? — To say, God speaks his Word in the soul is true ; and to say the soul speaks this Word in her intellect is also true, for God and man speak the Word of God together in our life. As a woman cannot bear her child before she has conceived it, so memory must first be big with the child she bears. Elizabeth impletum est teinpm pariendi et peperit filium {Luc. I57). ‘ Now Elizabeth’s full time came that she should be delivered and ^ See Greith, p. 102. she brought forth a son and called him John. Then said the people, What manner of child shall this be, for the hand of the Lord is with him.’ One scripture says, ‘ The greatest gift is that we are God’s child ’ : that he begets his Son in us. The soul who is God’s child, in whom the Son of God is born, in her shall nothing else be brought to birth. God’s ultimate purpose is birth. He is not content until he brings his Son to birth in us. Nor is the soul content until the Son of God is born in her. It is thence grace springs. Grace is infused therein, grace doing nothing : its work is its becoming. It flows out of the essence of God and into the essence of the soul, not into her powers.

When the time was fully come grace was born. Time is fulfilled when time is done. He who in time has his heart established in eternity and in whom all temporal things are dead, in him is the fullness of time. ‘ Rejoice in God all the time,’ says St Paul. He rejoices all the time who rejoices above time and apart from time. Three things prevent a man from knowing God at all. The first is time, the second body, and the third is multiplicity or number. As long as these three things are in me God is not in me nor is he working in me really. St Augustine says, ‘ Because the soul is greedy, because she wants to have and hold so much, therefore she reaches into time and, snatching at the things of time and number, loses what she already has.’ While there is more and less in thee God cannot dwell nor work in thee. These things must go out for God to come in ; except thou have them in a higher, better way : multitude summed up to one in thee. Then the more of multiplicity the more there is of unity, for the one is changed into the other.

I said on one occasion, unity unifies multiplicity but multiplicity unites not unity. Once having gotten over things, everything in us raised up to a higher power, we sliall never be cast down. If I minded God and God alone, had nothing over me but God, then nothing would be hard and surely nothing troublesome. St Augustine says, ‘ Lord, when I turn to thee, all hardship, suffering and toil are taken from me.* Once gotten beyond time and temporalities we are free and joyous all the time ; then is the fullness of time, then the Son of God is born in thee. I once said that in the fullness of time God sent his Son. If aught is born in thee except the Son thou hast gotten nothing of the Holy Ghost and neither is grace working in thee. The origin of the Holy Ghost is the Son. Were there no Son there would be no Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost does not proceed, it cannot blossom forth, except where the Father is in travail with his Son. Then he gives him all he has, natural and essential. It is in this giving that the holy Breath wells out. And it is God’s intention to give

himself entirely to us. As fire, to consume the wood must penetrate the wood, finding the wood unlike. That is a matter of time. First it makes it warm, then hot, then it smokes and crackles, on account of its unlikencss ; and the hotter the wood grows the quieter and stiller it becomes, and the liker to the fire the more peaceful it becomes till at last it turns to fire altogether. For fire to consume the wood there must be no unlikeness. In truth, which is God, if thou intendest aught but God or seekest aught but God alone, the work thou doest is not thine nor is it God’s. Thy intention in thy work that also is thy work. That which energises in me is my father and I am subordinate to him. It is impossible in nature that one should have two fathers : in nature one father is the rule. When other things are all fulfilled and done with, then there is this birth. A thing that fills is everywhere in contact with its boundary, nowhere falling short ; it has length, breadth, height and depth. If it had height and no length, breadth or depth it would not fill. St Paul says, ‘ Pray that ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the height, breadth, length and depth.*

These three things stand for three kinds of knowledge. The first is sensible. The eye sees from afar what is outside it. The second is rational and is a great deal higher. The third corresponds to an exalted power of the soul, a power so high and noble it is able to see God face to face in his own self. This power has naught in common with naught, it knows no yesterday or day before, no morrow or day after (for in eternity there is no yesterday or morrow) : therein it is the present now ; the happenings of a thousand years ago, a thousand years to come, are there in the present and the antipodes the same as here. This power descries God in his vestibule. ‘ In him, over him, through him,’ says the scripture. In means, in the Father ; over him is in the Son ; through him, in the Holy Ghost. There is no truth but contains the whole of truth, as St Augustine says. This power knows all things in the truth. From this power nothing is veiled. According to the scriptures, men’s heads should be bare, the women’s covered. The women are the lower powers, which are veiled. The man is the power which is bare and face to face.

‘ What wonders shall come from this child ? ’ Speaking lately to some people who are very likely here to-day, I said, nothing is so hidden but it shall be revealed. All that is naught shall be done away, hidden and not thought of any more. We shall know nothing of naught, shall have nothing in common with naught. All creatures are a mere naught. That which is not here or there, which is an oblivion of all creatures, that is fullness of being. I told them how nothing that is in us shall be hid, that we shall disclose and give up to God everything we find within ourselves, willing or unwilling, good or bad, whatever we are prone to we shall die to in the truth. If we discover everything to God he shall discover to us in return everything he has : he shall hide from us in truth absolutely nothing of all that he has gotten, not wisdom, truth nor holiness nor deity nor nothing whatsoever. As God lives this is in truth the ease. If we disclose nothing to him, no wonder if he reveals nothing to us : we must both do the same, as we to him so he to us.

It is lamentable how some people think themselves so far advanced, so one with God, although they have not yet abandoned self at all but hug themselves, like trivial things, in fortune and misfortune. They are precious far from what they think. They are full of notions and intentions. I sometimes say, if a man who seeks nothing finds nothing, what right htus he to con\plain ? After all, he has found what he sought. To seek or purpose aught is to seek or purpose naught and to pray for aught is to get nothing. But a man with no ulterior motive, who sets his mind on God and God alone, to that man God unbosoms himself wholly and gives him all the things concealed within his heart and for his very own as they arc God’s own, no more nor less, provided he is after God and not things in between. What wonder if a sick man does not relish meat and wine ? He cannot taste the meat and wine ; his tongue wherewith he tastes is covered with a coating which is nasty and bitter by reason of the sickness of the man : he does not taste the proper flavour, everything tastes bitter. He is right ; things are rendered bitter by means and hindrances. When the hindrance is removed he tastes things properly. As long as there is anything between, God will never taste like himself to us and life will seem very hard and bitter.

I once said that virgins follow the lamb wherever it goes, close behind. Some are virgins, some arc not, whatever they appear. Wherever this lamb goes the virgins follow, some only while it leads them in the pleasant places that they like. When it takes them into suffering, travail and discomfort they turn back and refuse to follow, and these are not virgins for all they seem to be. Some say. Lord, I want to go in honour, riches, comfort. Well, if the lamb has led you by that way I wish you well in following his footsteps. True virgins will follow the lamb through the highways and byways, whithersoever it may lead, and have no pity on themselves, befall what may. ‘ In the fullness of time there was born John,* that is, grace, as I have explained. May all things be fulfilled in us and grace be born in us, So help us God. Amen. Laudate coeli et exultet terra {Is. Ego sum lux mundi {Joh. 8^2)- I quote two Latin texts : one from the lesson, the words of Isaiah the prophet, ‘ Rejoice, O heavens and earth, God hath comforted his people and will have mercy on his poor ones.’ The other comes out of the gospel. Our Lord’s saying, * I am the light of the world : he that followeth me walketh not in darkness ; he shall find and have the light of life.’

First take the words of the prophet, ‘ Rejoice, O heavens and earth.’ Verily, verily, by God, by God and as God liveth, at the least good deed, the least good will, the least good desire, all the saints in heaven as well as all the angels rejoice with such great joy as all the joys of this world cannot equal. With the saints, the higher the more joyful, and all their joy combined is but a speck to the delight that God takes in this act. God plays and laughs in this good work, whereas all other works, those which redound not to God’s glory, are dust and ashes in God’s sight. Therefore he cries, ‘ Ye heavens, rejoice ! God has comforted his people.’ Consider the words, ‘ God has comforted his ])eople and will have mercy on his poor.’ ‘ His poor,’ he says. The poor arc left to God alone, for no one troubles about them. Anyone who has a friend, a poor one, if he docs not forget him and if he has possessions and is wise, will say ‘ Thou art my servant,’ and he is soon forgot; but to the beggar he will fliiig, ‘ God guard thee,’ and be ashamed of him. The poor are left to God : wherever they go they may come upon God and have God in all places ; God takes them in charge, for they are abandoned to him. Wherefore he says in the gospel, ‘ Blessed are the poor.’

Now take the words, ‘ I am the light of the world.’ ‘ I am,’ that touches the essence. According to philosophers, all creatures can say ‘I,’ for the word is common property ; but the word sum, am, none can really say but God alone. Smn signifies one thing which is big with good things as a whole, and it is denied to creatures that any one of them should have all human consolation. If I had my heart’s desire but my finger hurt me, then I should have it not, for with a wounded finger, while it hurts me, I lack entire comfort. Bread comforts a man when he is hungry, whereas if he is thirsty bread wifi give him no more comfort than a stone ; and the same with clothes, when he is cold, but being hot no clothes will comfort him ; and this applies to creatures, hence all creatures have a certain bitterness of heart. True, creatures have this comfort for their souls, that none can deprive them of their rights. Their property is all in God whatever possessions they may have in creatures. As it is written in the Book of Wisdom, ‘ In thee all good belongs to my soul.’ Creature comfort is imperfect, it has innate defect. But God’s comfort is complete, with no shortcoming ; it is whole and perfect and he needs must give it thee, for he cannot work unless he gives thee himself first. God is foolishly in love with us, it seems he has forgotten heaven and earth and all his happiness and deity, his entire business seems with me alone, to give me everything to comfort me ; he gives it to me suddenly, he gives it to me wholly, he gives it to me perfect, he gives it all the time and he gives it to all creatures.

‘ He that folio weth me walketh not in darkness.’ Philosophers attribute three powers to the soul. The first power ever seeks the sweetest. The second ever seeks the highest. The third one ever seeks the best, and the soul is too noble ever to rest anywhere but in her source whence drops what goodness is made out of. Behold, so sweet God’s consolation, all creatures go in quest of him, hunting after him. Nay, I say more : it is creature’s life and being, this searching after God, this hunting for him. Peradventure ye will say. Where is this God all ereatures are in quest of and whence they get their being and their life ? (Fain would I speak of the Godhead whence comes all our happiness.) The Father says, ‘ Son, this day do I beget thee in the reflection of the saints.’ Where is this God ? Where the saints leave off there I begin. Where is this God ? In the Father. Where is this God ? In eternity. No man ever found God. As the wise man says, ‘ Lord, thou art a liidden God.’ Where is this God ? Su))pose a man in liiding and he stirs, he shows his whereabouts thereby and God does the same. No one could ever have found God ; he gave himself away. One of the saints has said, ‘ I sometimes experience such sweetness in me that, forgetting creatures altogether, I dissolve right into thee. But when I try to embrace thee Lord, lo, thou art fled. What wouldst thou then ? Why draw me on only to run away ? If thou dost love me wherefore dost thou shun me ? Nay, Lord, it is to make me more eager to obtain.’ The prophet says, ‘ my God.’ — ‘ Who told thee that I am thy God ? ’ — ‘ Lord, I cannot rest except in thee, I have no well-being but in thee.’ May we thus seek God and also find him, So help us God. Amen.

Posui VOS ut eatis et fructum afferatis (Joh. Christ said to his disciples, ‘ I have set you to go and bring forth fruit.’ God spake to them and to us all who are in darkness. Being in the dark we need a light to walk by. But Christ says : ‘ I am the light of the world.’ If we keep in the true love of our head we shall be lighted by Christ. For a taper goes on burning at the tip in virtue of its contact with the flame which consumes the matter it supplies and changes it into itself. Observe. When Christ said to his disciples, ‘ I have set you to go,’ he referred to our being taken up into the light of grace. The prophet says, ‘ I was sitting when he took me up into himself.’ Sitting, we stop groping and, in the light, can see our way. To wit, the way of virtue. That is the meaning of Christ’s words, ‘ I have set you to go.’ Sitting is not going. We cannot go the right way without first sitting in the light of contemplation and making out the way to take ; all our works must be a light to lighten our neighbour’s darkness.

Now Dionysius says : ‘ These, who have thus gone out of themselves and are living in the light of truth, these (I say) are the christened, they arc god-children and godfathers.’ Bishop Albertus expounds this as follows : God-children are they who, reading or hearing the holy scriptures read, take them to heart and show them forth in good works whereby they ultimately find the truth in God. The christened again arc dead in God, there is no longer anything alive in them but God. As St Paul says, ‘ We are dead and our life is hid with Christ in God.’ But the most perfect of all are the godfathers, who are drowned in the unfathomableness of God ; not only does God live in them but they are alive in God and there is now in them the beginning of eternal life. Consider now those who arc god-children. Comprehending the scriptures in the light of faith they come into the dew of grace and in this gracious dew inhale the fragrance of the path of life eternal. As saith the Bride in the Book of Love, ‘ Take me along with thee, out in thy desert, within in thy fastness.’ Out in the desert means detached from creatures ; the inner fastness is the subjective certainty of truth which tieither life nor death can alter. Such are these god-children, sons of power and wisdom and goodness. To them our Lord cries in the Book of Love, ‘ How beautiful arc thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter ! ’ The shoes being the holy life put on the feet of love and knowledge in the desire to walk

therein. But the christened are in mystical union with God and are actually leading the life of God. What shall I say of these ? In their eating and drinking, their sleeping and their entire wont there is nothing found but God, did we but know it. Burn them, they yield but the test of divinity, the sweetness of the Holy Ghost, wherein they are gotten full of sap. But this none knoweth save the children of true light and him they dwell in, namely God. The children of darkness know it not, whose hearts are filled with the poison of everlasting death. Wherefore the light is turned to darkness in them and the eternal sweet to bitterness. God light us with the light we used to bask in in his Son eternally, so shall we escape from darkness into the true light ! But the third class, yclept godfathers, these climbing hill and mountain have followed the track of the true sons with will and knowledge, and the flaming heat of the Holy Ghost having burnt up all their matter, they show now only the one light in God. In this light they have come to rest, at peace after their labours, the peace of absolute eonseiousness, a j)ea(?e which is never disturbed. Thought fails in speaking of these fathers, for they have received all good and perfect gifts from the Father of lights and have reached the goal of virtue. This goal set John, the soaring eagle, wondering in the Apocalypse. And Christ answered him, saying, ‘ I am the first without beginning and the last that has no end.’ Amen.

Ejchibite membra vestra servire justituv iti sanctificationem (Rom, 619). St Paul says, ‘ Yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness, for the wages of sin is death but the reward of virtue is eternal life.’ The soul has but two members to offer for service of the sort acceptable to God, these are will and understanding. One master says, God exerts the whole force of his will in loving the soul. But my point is that God’s sole object in loving the soul is to make her love him in return. Again, I contend that God devotes his divine nature to pleasing the soul, to making her like him and enjoy his society and be friendly with him and love him. Thirdly, I hold that this love which comes up in the ground of the soul, sprouting out of the ground of the Godhead, that this (I say) is the self-same love wherewith God loves his one-begotten Son, and nothing less. And fourthly, if so be that man is planted in God as he is in creature, then I maintain it is in the very ground of the Holy Ghost’s being and becoming, the very ground where the Holy Ghost is coming out in blossom.

St Paul does well to say, ‘ Yield your members.’ For intellect, albeit natural, is too exalted to be moved by mundane things. Yet, rendered to the source whence it proceeded forth it is absorbed in God, and that which absorbs it it becomes. Will, that is will proper, is as such omnipotent. But thousands die without acquiring this genuine will. Doubtless they had desires and inclinations like other animals. One man does something trifling, does it just once and sends it on the wings of praise and thankfulness up to its source. Another one does some important work which occupies him long and constantly, and yet this little thing done once is more acceptable to God than the other man’s great work which cost him so much time and trouble. Why ? I will tell you. Because the trivial act was carried up past time into the now of eternity, therefore it was to God’s entire satisfaction. Though one should live through all the time from Adam and all the time to come before the judgment day doing good works, yet he who, energising in his highest, purest part, crosses from time into eternity, verily in the sight of God this man conceives and does far more than anyone who lives throughout all past and future time, because this now includes the whole of time.

One master says that in this crossing over time into the now, each power of the soul will sur{>ass itself. The five powers must pass into her collective power (or common sense), and common sense will vanish into the formless power wherein nothing forms. Intellect and will are transcended. True, grace is a creature, but by no means altogether. The soul has no inherent grace excepting in her ground, and above this ground of the soul grace is indigenous. Therein grace docs nothing, although it is effective in the uses of her powers ,* but in the ground of the soul grace, happiness and God’s ground are one and the same life wherein God is living. There the power behind the eye is as noble as the understanding ; there foot and eye rank equal. What the soul is in her ground has never been determined. But Paul says, ‘ The grace of God is eternal life.’ Paul also says, ‘The wages of sin is death.’ The deaths men die arc all of them as nothing to the death of the soul who is divorced from God, from which may God preserve us. Amen. St Paul says, ‘ Put off self, put on Christ.’ In abandoning ourself we initiate Christ and holiness and happiness and are ennobled.

The prophet marvelled at two things. First, at God’s doings with the sun and moon and stars. And secondly he marvelled at the soul, at the prodigious things God does and has done with her and for her sake, yet do what prodigies he may she still preserves the absolute dispassion which befits one of her noble lineage. Mark the nobility of her descent. I make a letter of the alphabet like the image of that letter in my mind, not like my mind itself. And so with God. God makes things in general like the universal image of them in himself, not like himself. Certain things he has speeially made like emanations of his own, such as goodness, wisdom and other so-called attributes of God. lint the soul he has made not merely like the image in himself nor like anything proceeding from himself that is predicated of him, but he made her like himself, nay, like he is, all told : like his nature, his essence, his emanating-immanent activity, his ground wherein he is subsisting in himself, wherein he is begetting his alone -begotten Son and where the Holy Ghost comes into flower : in the likeness of his in-dwelling out-going w^ork did God make the soul.

It is a law of nature that fluids nm downhill into anything adapted to receive them ; the higher not receiving from the lower but the lower from the higher. Now God is higher than the soul, and hence there is a constant flow of God into the soul, which cannot miss her. The soul may well miss it, but as long as a man keeps right under God he immediately catches this divine influence straight out of God. Nor is he subject to aught else, not fear nor pain nor pleasure nor anything that is not God. Put thyself therefore right under God and thou shalt receive his inflowing divinity wholly and solely. The soul does not receive from God as from a stranger, as the air docs the light of the sun, which it takes as a foreign intrusion. The soul receives her God not as a stranger nor as inferior to God, for inferior is both different and distant. Philosophers say the soul receives as a light from the light, wherein is nothing foreign or remote. There is something in the soul wherein God simply is, and according to philosophers this is a nameless thing and has no proper name. It neither has nor is a definite entity, for it is not this or that nor here nor there ; what it is it is from another wherewith it is the same ; the one streams into it and it into the one. Hence the exhortation ‘ Enter into God in holiness,’ for here is the source of the soul’s whole life and being. This (light) is wholly in God and her other without him, so in this one the soul is ever in God, provided she smother it not and extinguish it in her.

Philosophers say this (light) is present in God and never goes out in him and God is ever in it. I say, God has ever been in it and of it eternally. The union of man and God is not a matter of grace (for grace is creature and creature has nothing to do with it), except in the ground of divinity, where the three Persons are one in nature and it (grace) is that nature itself. Wherefore an thou wilt, God and the universe are thine. That is, if thou wilt put off self and things : doff the habit of thy personality and take thyself in thy divinity. The philosophers say that human nature has nothing to do with time ; that it is deeper-seated and more firmly rooted in a man than he is in himself. God took on human nature and united it with his own Person. Thus human nature was God who donned man’s nature only, not any individual man. Would ’st thou be very Christ and God ? Put off, then, whatever the eternal Word did not put on. The eternal Word never put on a person. So do thou strip thyself of everything personal and selfish and keep just thy bare humanity ; thus thou shalt be to the eternal Word exactly what his human nature is to him. Thy human nature is no different from his : they are identical : what it is in him it is in thee. And hence 1 said at Paris that every prophecy of holy scripture is fulfilled in the just man ; for being perfect, the whole promise of the old and new testaments is accomplished in thee.

How to be perfect ? There are two aspects of the question. The prophet says, ‘ In the fullness of time the Son was sent.’ Now fullness of time is of two kinds. In the first place a thing is fulfilled when it is done, as day is done at eventide. So when time drops from thee thy time is fulfilled. Again, time is fulfilled when it is finished, that is, in eternity. Time ends when there is no before and after : when all that is is here and now and thou scest at a glance all that has ever happened and shall ever happen. Here there is no before nor after ; everything is present, and in this immediate vision I possess all things. This is the perfection of time, and I am perfect and I am truly the only Son and Christ. May we attain to this fullness of time. So help us God. Amen. Eratis enim. aliquando tenebrWy nunc autem Ixlk in domino {Ephes* 5g). St Paul says, ‘ For ye were sometimes darkness but now the light in God.’ The prophets walking in the light perceived and knew the truth umbraged in the procession of the Holy Ghost. Sometimes they were moved to return to the world and speak of things they knew to be conducive to our happiness, thinking

to teach us to know God. Whereupon they would fall dumb, becoming tongue-tied and for three reasons. First, because the good they knew by sight in God was too immense and too mysterious to take definite shape in their understanding. Such ideas as formed were so unlike what they had seen in God, were such a travesty of the reality, that they held their peace for fear of lying. Another reason was, that what they had gotten in God rivalled God’s very self in its immensity and sublimity and yielded no idea nor any form for them to express. Thirdly, they were dumb because the hidden truth they saw in God, the mystery they found there, was ineffable. So it befell from time to time that, coming back and speaking of these things, they slipped, through lapses from the tnith, into gross matter and tried to teach us to know God by means of infernal creature things. Paul says, ‘ but now the light in God.’ Aliquando, to those who are instructed, is the same as tvhen and expresses time, which is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time. He means not time alone but temporalities ; not only temporal things but temporal affections ; not only temporal affections but the very taint and aroma of time ; for as, where an apple has lain the smell lingers, so with the contact of time. According to our best authorities the visible heavens and the sun and stars have nothing to do with time beyond bare contact with it. This I cite as showing that the soul, which towers high above the heavens, has, at her very summit, no connection with time at all. Many times I have explained about the act in God, the birth wherein the Father bears his one-begotten Son whose proeession causes the interior blossoming of the Holy Ghost, that the Spirit proceeds from both and that in this procession the soul comes leaping forth, the image of the Godhead being sealed into the soul in this procession ; and that in the return of the three Persons the soul goes back, re-informed into her primitive and formless form. Or as Paul puts it, ‘ now the light in God.’ He does not say, ‘ Ye are the light ’ but ‘ now the light.’ Meaning, as I have often said, that to know things (really) we must know them in their cause. The philosophers tell us that things are suspended in their birth as in a look-out over their existence. The Father gives birth to his Son now. In this eternal birth wherein the Father generates his Son, the soul comes into her existence which is the image of the Godhead imprinted in her soul.

It was mooted in the schools and maintained by some of the professors, that God imprints his image in the soul as a picture is painted upon canvas, and it fades. This was refuted. Others suggested with more truth, that God leaves in the soul a permanent impression of the nature of an abiding intention, as thus ; my wish of to-day is my purpose of to-morrow, the idea of which is kept alive by my actual thinking of it, just as, they said, God’s works are done. For if the carpenter were perfect at his work he would not need materials : he would no sooner think a house than, lo, it would be made. And so with works in God : he thinks them and behold they are. Then came a third professor who spoke most truly of them all. He pointed out that yonder no work is done at all : it is the now, being without becoming, newness without renewing, and this existence is his essence. God’s content is too subtile for renewal. And also in the soul there is a subtile nature too fine and rare to be renewed. In God it is all the here and now ; unrenewable.

There are four points I had intended to discuss ; the subtile nature of God, the subtile nature of the soul, the work of God and the work of the soul. These I must leave over for the present. Qui audit me non confundetur (Eccl, 2430). The eternal wisdom of the Father says, ‘ He that heareth me is not ashamed. (If he is ashamed he is ashamed of his shame.) He that worketh in me does not sin. He that reveals me and fears me shall have everlasting life.’ I will consider first these words of the eternal wisdom, ‘He that heareth me is not ashamed (or, confounded).’ To hear the eternal wisdom of the Father he must be within, at home and by himself. Three things prevent our hearing the eternal Word. The first is body, the second number, and the third is time. If wc were rid of these three things we should be living in eternity and in the spirit, solitaries in the desert listening to the eternal Word. But our Lord says, ‘ No man heareth my word or my teaching till he be free from self.’ ,To hear God’s Word demands absolute selfsurrender. Hearer and heard are one in the eternal Word. The subject the eternal Father teaches is his essence, his nature, his whole godhood, w^hich he divulges to us altogether in his Son, teaching us to be the Son himself.

A man who has gone out of himself and is the only-begotten Son owns what is proper to the only Son. God’s work and teaching are all done in his Son. God works with the sole object of getting us to be his only Son. As soon as he perceives that we are his only Son, God makes for us impetuously ; he comes wellnigh to shattering his essence, naughting his very self, in his rash haste to show us the whole abysm of his Godhead, the fullness of his essential nature. God flies to make this ours as it is his. Here God enjoys and delights in his plenitude. And this man who is within God’s love and ken is none other than what God is himself. Loving thyself thou lovest all men as thyself. While thou lovest anyone less than thine own self thou dost not love thyself in truth : not till thou lovest all men as thyself, all men in one man who is both God and man. The man who loves himself and all men as himself is righteous, absolutely just. Sometimes people say, ‘ I like my friends and benefactors better than other people.’ But I say that is wrong, imperfect. True, we must make shift with it as we have to do with a side wind to cross the sea : it will take us over. Like our preference for one man above another, it is natural. To love another as myself means that I would as lief his fate for good and ill, for life and death, happened to me as him, which would amount to perfect understanding.

As bearing on this subject St Paul says, ‘ I would I were divorced from God for ever, for God and for my friends’ sake.’ And as you know, to leave God for an instant is to leave God eternally and to leave God at all is hell torment. What does St Paul mean then by wishing to be divorced from God ? Doctors debate whether St Paul was upon the way to his perfection or whether he was perfect ? I say he was perfect, otherwise he could not have said this. I will put into plain words what St Paul means by wishing to depart from God. Man’s last and highest leave-taking is leaving God for God. St Paul left God for Gixl : he left everything he could give or take of God, every concept of God. In leaving these he left God for God since God remained to him in his essential self ; not as a concept of himself, nor yet as an acquired thing, but God in his essential actuality. This is no case of give and take between himself and God : it is the one and perfect union. Here man is the true man whom suffering can no more befall than it can befall the divine essence, for, as I have said before, there is something in the soul so nearly kin to God that it is one and not united. It is one ; it has naught in common with naught and is naught to aught. Anything created is naught. It is remote and alien from creature. If man were wholly this he would be wholly uncreated and uncreaturely ; if everything temporal were so, were comprehended in this one, it would be nothing else than the unity itself. Were I to find myself but for a single instant in this case, I should esteem myself of no more moment than a worm.

God gives to everything alike, and as flowing forth from God things are all equal ; angels, man and creatures all proceed from God alike in their first emanation. To take things in their primal emanation is to take them all alike. If here in time they are alike, in God in eternity they are much more so. Any flea as it is in God is nobler than the highest of the angels in himself. Things are all the same in God : they are God himself. God delights so in this likeness that he pours out his whole nature, his whole substance into it, in his own self. The joy and satisfaction of it are ineffable. It is like a horse turned loose in a lush meadow giving vent to his horse-nature by galloping fulltilt about the field : he enjoys it, and it is his nature. And just in the same way God’s joy and satisfaction in his likes finds vent in his pouring out his entire nature and his being into this likeness, for he is this likeness himself. It is a question whether those angels who are dwelling here with us to serve and guard us have less likeness in their joys than the ones abiding in eternity : is it in any sense a drawback to them to be serving and protecting us ? No, not at all. Their joy is undiminished, so is too their likeness ; for the work of the angels is the will of God and the will of God is the work of the angels. Neither in their joy, their likeness nor their work arc these angels handicapped. If God should bid an angel go pick the caterpillars off a tree, the angel would obey him readily, nay, since it is God’s will it would be his happiness.

Being established in God’s will, a man will want what is God and what is God’s will and nothing else. If he is sick he will not be wanting to be well. To him all pain is pleasure, multitude is pure and single, provided he is really in the will of God. Aye, though it were the pains of hell it would be joy and happiness to him. He has left himself and he is free, passive to all impressions. My eye can see colour because it is free to be coloured. When I see blue or white, my eye which is seeing the colour is taking the colour that it sees. The eye wherein I see God is the same eye wherein God sees me ; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one vision, one knowing, one love. Man being thus in the love of God is dead to self and all created things, and no more mindful of himself than one a thousand miles away. This man abides in likeness, in unity, and there is no unlikeness in him. This man has left the world and himself as well. Supposing some man owned the world and for God’s sake gave it up just as he had gotten it ; then God would give him back the world and eternal life to boot. And if there were a second man possessing merely the good will, who thought ; Lord were this whole world mine, nay two of them (or any number he may choose), I would resign it and myself as well, entire as I received it from

thee : him would God recompense no less than if it had been given by his hand. Another man with nothing to resign, bodily or ghostly, would be the most resigned of all. He who for one instant wholly resigns self, to him shall all be given. To leave himself for twenty years and then to have self back again, an instant, is never to have left himself at all. He who both has and is resigned, nor ever casts one glance at what he has resigned but remains firm and unshaken and motionless in himself, that man is free. May we remain steadfast and immoveable, like the eternal Father, So help us God and his eternal Wisdom. Amen. Homo quidam erat dives etc, (Ltic, IC^^). ‘ There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day and he had no name.’ This will equally apply to the causeless Deity and to the loving soul. ‘ There was a rich man.’ Man means a rational entity. A heathen philosopher says, ‘ By man in the scriptures we mean God.’ And St Gregory says, if there were in God one thing nobler than another we should say it is his understanding ; for in understanding God is manifested to himself ; in understanding God is proceeding in himself ; in understanding God is proceeding forth into all things. Were there no understanding in God there would be no Trinity and no emanation of creatures.

He had no name. And so is the threefold nature of God nameless ; such names as the soul gives him are gotten of her own understanding. As the heathen philosopher says in his book, The Light of Lights, ‘ God is superessential and super- rational and unintelligible,’ that is, to the natural understanding. I speak not of gracious understanding, for by grace we may be brought to know as much as St Paul did, who was caught up into the third heaven where he saw those things that he neither would nor could express. He could not express them as he saw them, for when we know a thing we know it either in its cause or in its mode or by its activity. God remains unknown because he is the first {i,e, he has no cause), he is unconditioned (i,e, unknowable) and he is inactive (in his hidden stillness). He is without the names that are applied to him. Moses enquired his name. God answered and said, ‘ He who is hath sent thee.’ He could not understand it in any other form. God as he is in himself he cannot give creatures to understand, not that he cannot do it but creature cannot understand. As

the heathen philosopher says, ‘ God is beyond nature, beyond praise, beyond reason and beyond understanding.’ ‘ This man was rich.’ And so is God rich in himself and in all things. Mark the plenitude of God. It is fivefold. First, he is the prime cause, so he pervades all things. — Next, he is essentially one, so he is universal. — Thirdly, he is the fountain-head, so he is flowing into all things. — Fourthly, he is unchangeable, so he is most desirable. — Fifthly, he is perfect, so he is most incomprehensible. Being the first cause he imparts himself. As tlie heathen philosopher observes, ‘ The First Cause pours into causes in general more than these secondary causes pour into their causes.’ Again, he is indivisible. Bishop Albcrtus says a thing is impartible which is intrinsically one without a second. And the sum of all partiblcs amounts to what he is. In him creatures are one in the same, they are God in God. In themselves they are naught. — Thirdly, being the fountain-head he is overflowing into all things. Bishop Albertus says : ‘ Into things in general he flows in three ways : in being, in life and in light ; and into the rational soul in particular as the potentiality of all things, the bringing back of creatures to their original source.’ To wit, the light of lights : ‘ All gifts and perfections flow from the Father of lights,’ as St James says. — Fourthly, being unchangeable he is most comfortable. Here note that God unites with things while keeping his intrinsic oneness, and all things are one in him. Hence Christ’s words, ‘ Ye shall be turned into me and I into you.’ Owing to his unchangeableness and the littleness of creatures. For as the prophet says, all things arc to God as a drop to the ocean. And as the drop becomes the ocean not the ocean the drop so the soul imbibing God turns into God, not God into the soul. There the sold loses her name, her power and lier activity but not her existence. The soul abides in God as God is abiding in himself. Anent which Bishop Albertus declares that the will a man dies in he abides in eternally. — Fifthly, being perfect he is most incomprehensible. God is self-perfect and omni-perfect. What is perfection in God ? It means that he is brim-full of himself and is the sole good of all things. And because he is good he is the desired of all things.

Videus Jesus turbas ascendit in montem etc, (Matt. 5^). We read in the gospel that our Lord departed from the multitude and ascended into the mountain. There he opened his mouth and taught them about the kingdom of God. St Augustine says, ‘ The student of this subject sets his stool in heaven.’ The student of God must rise above things scattered : these he must eschew. To take in God’s instruction he must gather himself together and withdraw into himself, turning his back on care and the pursuit of nether things and on his powers so many and so various. He must leave all these behind, even as existing in his thought, not but what thought works wonders in itself. These thoughts must be transcended if God is to speak into the powers which are inseparate. Again : ‘ He went up into the mountain ’ implies that God is imparting the sublimity and sweetness of his nature. In this intuition wherein there must needs fall away everything that is creature, he is aware of nothing but God and himself as the image of God. Tliirdly : his asegnt into the mountain betokens his exaltation (what is high is near to God) and concerns the powers trenching on divinity. Upon one occasion our Lord took three of his disciples and led them up into a mountain where he appeared before them in that same light-body wherein we shall see him in eternal life. Our Lord said to the children of Israel, ‘ Remember what I told you about heaven : ye see there neither image nor form nor any likeness.’ When a man does leave the multitude God comes into his soul without image or likeness.