But he who worships God for worldly goods, worships not God : he worships what he worships God for and employs God as his servant for the getting of it. As St Augustine puts it, ‘ What thou dost love thou dost worship; true prayer, real prayer is nothing but loving: what one loves that one prays to. Hence no one prays to God aright but he that prays to God for God without a thought of aught but God.
Meister Eckhart says and so do other masters, Whoso wants a virtue ought to seek it at the source, in God to wit, where we find all the virtues added up to virtue. The man who finds a single virtue thus discovers every virtue in the one and, attaining to the unity where all virtues are virtue, the soul sees God and God looks on the soul. Soul is caressed by God who, talking with her in familiar fashion, teaches her universal wisdom and God and man now fully reconciled, man is the lord of every creature, of all the good things that have flowed from God; as it is written in the Book of Wisdom where the wise man says, ‘ All good have I gotten in thee alone’: in virtue have I gotten all the virtues.
According to Meister Eckhart, God is not only the Father of all good things but he is the mother of all things to boot. He is Father for he is the cause of all things and their creator. He is the mother of all things as well, for when creatures have gotten their being from him he still stays with creatures to keep them in being. If God did not remain with creatures after they had started their own life they would most speedily fall out of being. Falling from God means falling from being into nothingness. It is not so with other causes, they can with safety quit the things they cause when these have gotten being of their own. When the house is in being its builder can depart and for the reason that it is not the builder alone that makes the house: the materials thereof he draws from nature. But God provides creature with the whole of what it is, with form as well as matter, so he is bound to stay with it or it will promptly drop out of existence.
Meister Eckhart says, the man who doing some good deed does it not wholly for God’s sake and without any thought save God, - that man darkens God’s glory. All good works are God’s. Hence _ if a man in his good work harbours intent towards aught but God
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he gives thereto the honour of the work and robs God of his glory and all such works are sterile and unfruitful.
The question is, Does the virtue of prayer increase with the outward practice of it? Meister Eckhart says that the external habit adds little or nothing to the value of prayer. Prayer is a good thing in itself. Now a thing that is good in virtue of its muchness is not good in virtue of itself. One groat has little value all alone but if thou hadst a thousand groats that were a handsome property, solely by reason ofthenumber. Groats have small value in themselves apart from number. And so it is with outward practices: number adds little to the good of prayer; one Ave coming freely from the heart has greater power and virtue than a thousand from the lips. And by the same token, no virtue dwells in number of good works; virtue is every whit as fine, as good, in one least act of virtue rightly done as in a thousand. Virtue is not enhanced by multiplying outward acts of virtue, for were it good from number it would not then be good in its own right. A thing good in itself is good in its oneness not in its multi- plication. True virtue means virtuous works wrought virtuously. Who gives an alms in God’s name but gives it grudgingly and not with cheerful heart, what though he do a virtuous deed, he does not do it virtuously. And so with prayer or any other virtue: done rightly it is virtue but not else. Take patience for example. External suffering does not make one patient : it merely tries one’s patience, as fire will try a penny whether it be of silver or of copper. The patient man is patient still though outward suffering n’er befall. And prayer the same. The man of pure heart Godward turned who never does a stroke of outward work is natheless in good case for hearts are not made pure by outward prayers: ‘prayer rises pure from out pure hearts.
Doctors declare that God moves all things, 7.e. all creatures, but creatures cannot move God. God can move creatures for he has created all creatures and it is he who keeps them in existence. But creatures cannot move God: no creature can affect God, according to the universal law that the lower does not flow into the higher. Now creatures are inferior to God so they do not influence God, ergo, they do not move God.
In this connection some enquirers ask how God can move creatures and not be defiled by creatures which are full of fault ? The masters answer, If, as we see, the sun can shine on mire and
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filth without contamination then how much more can God protect himself from any taint of creature. But Meister Eckhart argues in a different fashion. He says God is in all things but so as to be wholly outside things, hence faults in creatures will not affect God. Just as we see the soul whole in the eye and at the same time whole outside the eye for she is whole in every limb; no blemish of the eye can touch the soul which is in suchwise wholly in the eye as to be independent of the eye. Even so God in creature
is wholly without creature, untouched and untainted by creature. _ There is another answer Meister Eckhart gives: God is only in the essence (or being) of a creature. His argument runs thus. Kssence is without defect, defect being nothing but a lapse from being. Now seeing no defect can touch the essence and God is only in the essence of a creature therefore God is unaffected by the defects of creature. Regarding this amazing fact of deity John Chrysostom observes: ‘ That God is in all creatures we know and declare but how and in what manner we do not understand.’ Yet Meister Eckhart says it is quite plain if for the word God we put the word being. We see and have abundant proof that being is in all things. But if actual being is God it follows then that God must be in all things.
Thus saith the wise man in the Book of Wisdom, ‘ Eternal wisdom is omnipotent for it is one.’ Upon which Meister Eckhart com- ments thus. The simpler a thing is the more powerful and effective it is. We can demonstrate it thus. In a thing made of parts the power of the thing resides in its parts. In a house made of walls, foundations and roof, the whole force of the house consists in these parts. If the house could but draw from its oneness the virtue it gets from its walls then it need have no walls. Now God is the simplest possible good wherein all things are one and as one he is therefore omnipotent. Again, the heathen doctors say that power dispersed is dissipated. It is so with the mind. Scattered in multitudinous creature it is’so much more feeble and infirm toward God. But when the mind gets rid of creatures, when all the senses vanish into mind, then mind and passions being met in one the mind is strong enough to wrest from God whatever it desires. When man does what is in him not even God can say him nay.
In one of his sermons Meister Eckhart said, It is my humility that gives God his divinity and the proof of it is this. God’s peculiar property is giving. But God cannot give if he has nothing to receive his gifts. Now I make myself receptive to his gifts by
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my humility so I by my humility do make God giver and since giving is God’s own peculiar property I do by my humility give God his property. The would-be giver must needs find a taker ; without a taker he cannot be a giver for it is the taker by his taking that makes the man a giver. So God, to be the giver, must discover a receiver. Now none but the humble can receive the gift of God. So God, to use his godlike power of giving, will eke need my humility ; without humility he cannot give me aught for I without humility cannot accept his gift. Thus it is true that I by my humility do give God his divinity.
Meister Eckhart also said, My lowliness raises up God and the lower I humble myself the higher do I exalt God and the higher I do exalt God the more gently and sweetly he pours into me his divine gift, his divine influx. For the higher the inflowing thing the more easy and smooth is its flow. How God is raised upon my lowliness I argue thus : the more I abase and keep myself down the higher God towers above me. The deeper the trough the higher the crest. In just the same way, the more I abase and humble myself the higher God goes and the better and easier he pours into me his divine influx. So it is true that I exalt God by my lowliness.
Meister Eckhart says, We ought not to have to ask God for his grace, his divine goodness, we ought to contrive to take it ourselves without asking. God has gotten himself in his divine outflow just as the flowing. . . .
Meister Eckhart points out how Isaias says, ‘ Thy light is come to thee, the light which is eternal, unchangeable and new and inconceivable, free and thine own; well may thy heart both wonder and rejoice.’
The question is, how is it light if it is inconceivable ?_ How does it come if it is immoveable ? How be called thine if it is free ? I answer first, That light is God which is light in itself and which is light in all created things and wherein all creatures are light. For to begin with I contend that light has the peculiar property of being clear and luminous in itself and in others revelation. But this belongs exclusively to God. Wherefore I say the light in itself is God. The second point is argued thus. If everything caused is a manifestation of the first cause then light of intellect in us is surely God ; no mind can see the naked truth in a created
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light for nothing gives what it has not got. Augustine says, * Our mind can only see the naked truth in light which is perfectly simple and pure, God, to wit.’ The third is proved as follows. If creature is light and God is light, as has been shown before, then creaturely being is merely a light in light-being. But one light in another produces but one light, so it is true.
— Talking of light, now if so be that in this life our minds can see the naked truth by means of the light that is God, then it is also true that man may here see God and needs must it be true withal that man is here beatified.’
I answer that, albeit here a man may see the truth by means of the light that is God natheless he sees not what God is, using this light as a means. I say, what though he see God as he is, he is not yet beatified for God as a means is germane to creature. Look you, God beatifies not as being the beginning (when he is of the nature of all things), not yet as being the mean (where he is of the nature. of a creature), nor even as the end (for then again he is all things), neither does he beatify as being all of these but he beatifies just inasmuch as he transcends them all ; he beatifies as being God impartible, as being simply pure light in itself.