soul and his talk (the angel’s), which is of necessary virtue, is friendly and persuasive, something in this fashion : ‘ See, there is still this to go and that to do and the other to leave off’: orderly counsel and plain and the soul finds peace in complying with his words. The devil. talks virtue too, but he urges superfluous virtues : too much fasting and watching and kneeling, too much weeping, and his counsels are more in the nature of commands, as thus : * Do this or that or thou art damned,’ or ‘ art not good nor perfect.’ An orgy of uncontrolled virtues with no definite aim, ‘that is his cue and the soul is affrighted within her and gleans no satisfaction from his words.—But God’s talk is not of virtue though it is wonderful talk. The burden of it a fair Word that is passing good to hear. The Holy Ghost goes before the angel and embracing the soul prepares her to receive what the angel has to say; and the Son gives wisdom and order to the words and God the Father help and consummation to that which is spoken in the soul. Thus God does not talk virtue in the soul ; he forestalls the angel and prepares the soul, giving wisdom, order and achievement to the angelic utterance in the soul; the Holy Trinity all work together in her without speaking.
7. The statement that our Lord from time to time holds con- verse with good people and that they hear words or become im- pressed with the sense of certain sayings such as, ‘Thou art mine elect, or my beloved; thou shalt never leave me and I will never leave thee,’ and the like, things like this, I say, should be accepted with reserve and judged upon their merits for locutions of this kind are often due to a trick the soul has, when indulging in comfortable intuitions of divinity, of answering herself by a sort of reflex - action. When the soul, aflood with God, is void and free from sensible affections she grows apace in created light till nothing transcends her but intellect and essential knowledge. In this detachment the knower is the known ; out of her own light she creates what she desires. Such is the effect of the benignant
‘reign of essential understanding. Aristotle says in the third book of The Soul, ‘Every immaterial substance or isolated form is in itself both the knower and the known,’ and this is why the soul,
_eut off from the corporal things by the encircling flood of God, draws deiform truth out of her own self. It follows that anything in her of which she has a rational perception is not said by God : God’s speech is none other than the perfect image of divine truth wherein the spirit is caught up out of its selfhood, past under- standing, into intellect. There in unity she understands without understanding. é
8. To drag the hawthorn through the hay without a catch we must lop it well, like our Lord Jesus Christ, the tree of love, who
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dragged the hawthorn through the hay of this wicked world, so shorn of all its branches that no moving thing could cling thereto and so he gathered up nothing that was unstable. And to attain to him we must be too bare for things to cling to us or we to them. We take up our cross when stripping everything of self and self of everything we cling all pure and naked to the bare cross of Christ. 9. He who loves aright loves not nor is not loved. They love and are beloved who can be pleased and pained: they pour out themselves in love on creatures and creatures back on them. But they love not nor are they loved who are not moved by creature good and ill; these neither give nor do they take: they pour not out on creature nor creature back on them. They love not neither are they loved. ‘We ought to love God out of love. They love in love who love for why : who love him for some bodily or temporal good. But they love out of love who love without a why : who do not love for temporal good nor yet eternal: they love him merely for himself, for his own sake pure and simple apart from anything he gives. \ 10. We read of John the Baptist that he was a prophet. He was ‘more than prophet for when the Holy Ghost from time to time spake by the prophets they were thereafter as they were before, in sinful habit. Prophets are people who are now and then con- strained to play’ this part. While the Holy Ghost is speaking through them by actual infusion of his grace they are exereising virtue and thereafter they revert to their former habit: they are called virtuous as practising virtue intermittently : they do right and also wrong. Not so St John; he was more than prophet for he practised virtue not at intervals, it was his natural and settled wont. And those who follow him in this are not prophets either, they are more than prophets, seeing as they do in the clear light of God exactly what to do and what to leave undone and having given them the Godlike power to act up to their lights with effortless, spontaneous delight and delightful spontaneity. These are called virtuous not because they practise virtue intermittently : they are fixed and established in it. That thing is habitual which we do at one time and at another not; it is an alternation. That is not habitual which is continuous and without admixture. 11. A good man is known by three things. One is singleness of will: all we call nature his will is free from. The second is clear understanding : any mental knowledge that she has his soul has fully mastered : she either approfounds it here or yonder in the common ground during illumination. The third is peace of . mind : such images as may occur therein are no hindrance to the soul. 12. Three things distinguish the solitary soul. The first is,
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cessation of desire: no more wants or sense of deficieney. The second is, active love for and acquiescence in the will of God. The third is a lively feeling in the soul of the love of the Holy Ghost.
13. Divine good in.the singular no body or blood receives but it does receive God’s manifold goodness. It is simple divine good for the spirit to be rapt out of itself into God’s oneness, there to understand without sensible perception. But God’s manifold goodness means anything revealed to her in form and likeness, for this is all a matter of the mortal nature.—The heavenly Father gives his consolation to none but the man of peaceful heart. Christ said to his disciples, ‘ My peace I give unto you.’
14. Let no one claim to have received the perfect gift of the Holy Ghost, who can be shaken in his convictions by any arguments that are disquieting. I refer to things which are spoken contrary to our knowledge of eternal truth.
15. Nature comes with God into creature and driving God out remains alone in creature. Spirit goes with creature into God and driving creature out stays by itself in God. The most perfect mode of soul is one of self-oblivion in good works as a whole and the way thereto is the clear discernment of special imperfections. In the least of mortal quests there is at stake all natural creature appetite. Effortless achievements‘ are wiped out of the mind as though they had not been. It is true wisdom to recognise the folly of evil and the freedom of perfection.
18, Hosea the prophet, rapt in wonder, had a threefold marvel shown him. The first one was, how God is one in essence and three in Person. The second marvel, which, though somewhat less is still ineffable and incomprehensible to creature, is this: how two natures meet together in one Person. The third marvel is the marvel of marvels: how creator is creature and creature is creator. The prophet Hosea says, ‘ His going forth is prepared as the morning ; he shall come unto us as the soft evening rain.’ Here the morning light suggests the nearness of his coming: the dawn is the herald of the day. The day dawns thrice. First in the chamber of the Person of the Father. Next, in the chamber of the Person of the Son. Thirdly, in the world. The first dawn was the will of the Father; the second, the obedience of the Son ; the third one broke when their common Spirit caught the precious most pure blood-drops that ever flowed from the virgin heart of Mary. The fire of love once kindled, he no longer tarries: day is here.
20. Suppose a man insults me and I silence him by my retort, it is not I who conquer: I am conquered. I conquer if, in true humility, I hold my peace. Conquering we are conquered and being conquered conquer.
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21. It is a question if angels grow in heaven ? I declare they do. They go on growing till the day of judgment, waxing in knowledge and in love; by then the lowest is about as wise as the highest was when he was created. —* But tell me Sir, does the soul grow in heaven as well ? ’—I say, No.—‘ But why, Sir, should the angel grow and not the soul ?’—For this reason. The soul grows in the body and when she quits the body that is her judgment day: the highest she has reached by then is the nearest she will ever get to knowing God. But her growth is far nobler than an angel’s for what an angel has comes by no effort of his own; hers is the reward of toil so that one light of hers is worth ten of any angel’s.
22. Three kinds of progress take place in serious people. The first is natural; when, fought to a finish, man’s nature is van- quished and subdued, then at length he sees all random thoughts as things he can turn to his account and we to ours. Not a single notion but will serve to bring light to pious people, and this (light) is essential almost as much as natural ; essential, though by grace, a divine repugnance to all base inventions.—The second kind of progress is unconscious. ‘The man is spiritualised so that his words, his ways and his whole self enlighten other people with a realization of their own shortcomings. Nature sleeping, spirit wide awake, that I call light and she is a light not alone to other people but the devil quails before her.—‘ Sir, tell me, what is he afraid’ of ? ’—The devil does not know what is in the soul except what he can recognise by its outward form. Supposing her brimfull of light then divine light comes surging out of her and when the fiend sees this he is afraid and durst not test her with a notion, so the soul stays undisturbed. Which is to her credit though unbeknownst to her.—The third progress is spiritual. When such a soul is flooded with the influx of God’s spirit, love reinforces love, light light, giving a love which fires the soul and which she cannot fail to be aware of. The first growth is conscious, the third also is conscious and the middle one unconscious.
23. Plato says, ‘ The soul of all creatures is the Godhead.’ Then our Lord Jesus Christ is the soul of the elect.
24. The question is, what is the effect on man of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ ? I say that its effect on man is to clarify his nature and prevent him committing mortal sin. On the en- lightened it confers another boon, receptivity to the divine light and then though they die they will have nothing between.
27. ‘ Pray Sir, one to whom eternal light is given, suppose he were to die, would he have aught between ? ’—Once having had eternal light he never has anything between.
28. ‘Tell me, good Sir, what is divine light ? ’—With divine ©
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light the natural life is no obstacle to the eternal light, or in other words, there is no consenting to sin. When we are unable to act up to our lights that is a sign that we have not received eternal light. Knowledge with the power to apply it, that is eternal light. He who receives eternal light takes everything the same.