which goes to prove that God being spirit, the least of spiritual things excels the best of corporal things. Soul is more excellent than anything bodily. Soul is contained in a place, as it were, betwixt time and eternity, touching them both. With her higher powers she is in touch with eternity; in her inferior powers she is in contact with time. Thus, mark you, in time she does not function according to time but in her eternal nature which she has in common with the angels. Spirit is a subtle thing, bringing life to all the limbs in virtue of the close accord of soul with body. Albeit spirit is rational, and does the entire work, yet we do not say, my soul does so and so, for both of them together are a man. This fact I may make bold to state: because of the intimate union of the body and the soul the soul is in the smallest member as much as in the body as a whole. St Augustine says, ‘ The union of body and soul may be close, but closer still is the union that spirit has with spirit.’ Lo, he is Lord and spirit, may he beatify us by uniting us with him. ER
It is a puzzling question how the soul survives when God imprints himself in her. Consider. Were God to give her any)
outward being she would scorn it; but when he gives her himself \_ in himself she receives and suffers in his and not in her own, his /
being hers: he has fetched her out of her own so his is now hers \
and hers really is his. So she suffers in union with God. This is
the:spirit of the Lord which has filled the whole world. Amen.
St John Saw in a Vision
St John saw in a vision a lamb standing on Mount Sion and with him stood forty and four who were not of this world nor had they wifely names. These were all virgins who stood next the lamb, and when the lamb inclined they inclined with him, singing with the lamb a new song and having their names and the name of their Father written in their foreheads.
John says, ‘I looked and lo, a lamb stood on the mountain.’ I say, John himself was that mountain whereon he saw the lamb, and whoso sees the Lamb of God must himself be the mountain, ascending to his highest, purest part.
Again. He says he saw a lamb standing upon a mountain:
when one thing stands upon another its lowest point touches the other’s highest. God touches all things and remains untouched. God is above all things standing in himself and his instance sus- tains all creatures. Creatures have an uppermost and undermost.
God has not. God is over everything and is not touched by -
74 Meister Eckhart
anything. All creatures seek outside themselves, in one another, what they lack. God does not. God does not look outside him- self: everything that creatures have God has entire in him; he is the floor, the roof of creatures. True, one is prior to another down to the very last, one being born before another: though creature gives not of her being to him, yet she keeps some of his. God is a simple presence, a stay-at-home in himself. With any creature, as regards her noble nature, the more she sits at home the more of herself she gives out. A common stone, like limestone, for example, gives itself out a stone and nothing more. But a precious stone, this has great power because of something in it, some interior fastness wherein it rears its head and, so to speak, peers out. According to the masters, no ‘creature is so stay-at- home as body and soul, nor goes so far afield as the soul’s highest art.
i He says, ‘I saw a lamb standing.’ From which we learn four things. First, the lamb is fed and clothed and that in goodly fashion, which to our mind looks as though we, having gotten so much from God and that so goodly, are bound to seek in all we do only his honour and his glory. Again, the lamb stood. . It is good for friend to stand by friend. God stands by us, is standing by us, steady and unmoved. He says: ‘ There stood with him a multi- tude, each having written in his forehead his name and the name of his Father.’ Let at least God’s name be written in us. We must bear God’s image in us and his light must lighten us, if we would be John.
; XXV THE LORD HATH SENT HIS ANGEL
Nunc scio vere, quia misit dominus angelum suum (Act. 12,,)- Freed from his prison bonds by the power of the supreme God, Peter exclaims, ‘ Now I know of a surety that the Lord hath sent his angel and hath delivered me out of the power of Herod, out of the hand of the enemy.’ *
We will reverse the words and say, ‘ The Lord hath sent his angel, therefore I know of a surety.’ Peter symbolises intuition. As I have often said, intuition and intellect do not unify the soul in God. Intellect is a matter of pure being. Intuition, its fore- runner, goes ahead and penetrates to what is born there: God’s one-begotten Son. Our Lord declares, in Matthew, that no one knows the Father but the Son. Now, philosophers say under- standing lies in likeness. Some of them say the soul is made of all things since she is capable of understanding all things. That sounds ridiculous, but it is true. They say that anything I know must
Sermons and Collations 75
be wholly present to me in the likeness of my understanding.
But according to the saints, power is in the Father, likeness in
the Son and union in the Holy Ghost. Hence, if the Father is all
present to the Son and the Son is all-to like him, therefore no one - knows the Father but the Son.
Peter says, ‘ Now I know of a surety.’ Why does he know of a surety? Because it is divine light which does not deceive. And because we see in it quite clearly without anything to hide the view. Paul says concerning it: ‘God dwells in light inacces- sible.’ Doctors declare that the wisdom we learn here stays with us yonder. St Paul says it will go. A philosopher once said, * Real knowledge, even in this body, is intrinsically so delightful that the sum-total of created things is nothing to the joys of pure perception.’ Yet noble though it be, it is but contingent; as one small word to all the world even thus insignificant is all the wisdom we learn here compared with the whole and perfect truth. Look you. Paul says it goes. And even if it stayed it would turn to foolishness and be as nothing to the actual truth we see. Thirdly, we surely know, for things seen here as changing we see _as changeless there where we get them as.a-whole.and indivisible,
_ approximately one, things.widely.sundered. here being close together there where all things are at hand : both the first day-and-the last % _are._happening-at‘the-present instant-yonder. Gh »‘ Now I know of a surety that the Lord hath sent his angel.’ When the Lord sends his angel to the soul she becomes sure- knowing. Not unjustly God ordained Peter should keep the .key. For Peter stands for intuition, and it is intuition with the key that unlocks and goes in and finds God face to face, whereupon she notifies her find to her partner, will, she having had the will before, for what I will I seek. Perception leads the way. It is the princess seeking the prince upon the mountain-top, in virgin realms ; she proclaims him to the soul and soul to nature and nature to the passions of the body. So noble is the soul at her highest and her best, the doctors cannot find her any name. They call her anima because she animates the body.
Theologians say that next to the first emanation of the Godhead, when the Son breaks out of the Father, his angel is most like to God. True, soul is like to God in her highest part, but this angel is even more like God. All that belongs to this angel is godlike. The angel was sent to the soul to bring her back to the very same form wherein he is formed, for knowledge comes by likeness. The soul is capable of knowing all things and she never rests till she attains her original form wherein all things are one ; it is there she rests, in God. In God one creature is no better than another. According to the masters, being and knowing.are-the.same, Soba
\A oy
76 Meister Eckhart
things that are not are not known and things that are most are
most known. God has transcendent being, so he transcends all
knowing, as I said in my first sermon two days back. The soul,
informed with primitive light, sealed with the seal of pure being,
smacking of God prior to truth and gnosis, with every named nature, sloughed away : the soul (I say) at this stage of all-perfect know-
ledge has gotten being to match. As St Paul says, ‘ God dwells
in light inaccessible.’ He hangs suspended in his own pure being
whereto naught is attached. He is merely a presence in himself,
where neither this nor that exists, for what is in God is God.
A heathen says, They that hang under God are hanging in God, and while having real subsistence in themselves do yet impend in him who has neither end nor beginning, for in God nothing alien betides. Heaven affords us an example. It never takes in aliens as aliens. And by the same token, what gets to God is changed : however vile it be, on bringing it to God it sheds its self. For in- stance, I may have wisdom but not be it. I can gain wisdom and can also lose it. But what is God’s is God; it cannot leave him. It is implanted in God’s nature; God’s nature being so stable that anything to do with it is settled in it once for all or always stops outside. Now reflect and marvel! If God converts vile things into himself, how ween ye he will treat the soul, which he has dignified with his own image ?
wi THE FEAST OF THE VIRGIN
x“ Aimulor enim vos dei emulatione etc. (2 Cor. 11,). In the name
‘So of our Lord. We read on the Feast of the Virgin the words of St
NY Paul, ‘I have espoused you to one husband, Christ, rejuvenant.’
The masters ask, ‘Has the Son been born?’ We say, no! he masters ask, ‘Is the Son going to be born?’ We say, no! he masters are answered : the Son is fully born, he is being born new unceasingly. St Paul says, ‘ Christ is the power of God and
the wisdom of God.’ His power is his wisdom and his wisdom is his
power. Christ is the man whose youth is perennially renewed. ‘Now St Paul says, ‘To this man I have espoused you.’ For as marriage between man and wife is binding, so there is eternal marriage between your souls and God. A maid is given to a man hoping to bear his child. And God did make the soul intending __ her to bear in her his one-begotten Son. The happening of this birth in Mary ghostly was to God better pleasing than his being - born of her in flesh. And this same birth to-day in the God-loving soul delights God more than his creation of the heavens and earth.