way. One as} power, says that it is in this power the soul becomes all things, ideally. In her actuality she is, like the Father, making all things new. It pleased God to seal her in the nature of all creatures: before the world when she existed not. God wrought this whole world ghostly in every single angel before he made the world itself. An angel has two understandings. The one is morning light, the other is the evening light. In the morning light he sees everything in God. In the evening light he sees things in the light of his own nature. When he goes out into things it grows night. So long as he remains within he has the evening light. We say that the angels rejoice when a man becomes good... But, our best doctors ask, do the angels also repine when a man commits sin? We say : No; they see into the justice of God and enjoy all things therein
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as they are in God. Therefore they do not repine. Intellect in its potential power is like the angel’s natural light, ö.e. the evening light. With her actual power she raises all things up into God, where all things are bathed in the morning light.
Quoth the woman, ‘ The creditors are come to seize my two sons for their slaves.’ Then said the prophet, ‘Go borrow empty vessels from thy neighbours.’ These neighbours mean all creatures and the five senses and the powers of the soul with her interior faculties which work in secret and are angels. From all these neighbours borrow empty vessels. Let us borrow empty vessels; these filled with heavenly wisdom will give us means to pay our debt and, on the rest, to live eternally, So help us God. Amen.
XXXII? THE SOUL SPARK
Homo quidam fecit cenam magnum (Luc. 14,,). St Luke relates in his gospel how ‘a certain man gave a great supper or evening entertainment.’ Who makes it? A certain man. What does he mean by calling it a supper? One master says this betokens great affection, seeing none are bidden save the intimates of God. * When we give a morning party all and sundry are invited but to an evening meal we invite important people, the people that we like and our own familiar friends.* Secondly, he has in mind how perfect are those souls who enjoy this evening meal. The evening never comes without a whole day having gone before. Were there no sun there were no day. Sunrise, that is morning light which goes on getting brighter up to middle-day. Just as the divine light rising in the soul gradually eclipses the powers of the soul until the advent of the noon. No day, no spiritual day, at all
‚ can dawn within the soul except she receive divine light. * Divine light breaks into the soul and makes her morning, and the soul mounts up in this light into space, to the zenith at high noon.* Thirdly, he implies that to take this supper worthily we have to come at evening. When the light of this world fails it is the evening. As King David sings, ‘ He riseth in the evening and His name it is the Lord!’ So Jacob at eventide did lay him down to sleep. This betokens peace of mind. Fourthly, he remembers, as St Gregory points out, that after supper there comes no other meal. * When the spark in the soul takes in divine light ; it needs no other sustenance but keeps ever to this divine light.* A
1 See also Jostes, Nos. 1 and 6; and Spamer’s Texte, A. i which the starred passages are added. h SE Wie ao
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To whom God grants this provender, so fragrant, so delicious, that soul shall never relish any other fare.
‚St Augustine says, ‘ God is of such a nature that once embracing him we can never rest elsewhere.’ St Augustine says, ‘ Lord, so thou take from us thyself, grant us then another thee or we shall have no rest; we have no mind for aught but thee.’ One holy man says of the God-loving soul, that she gets out of God whatsoever she will, befooling him so thoroughly he can deny her not a thing there is. He took himself in one way and gave himself another way :.he took himself God-and-man and gave himself God-and-. Man, another self in a mystic vessel. Very precious hallows are not wantonly exposed to public gaze and touch. So he clad him- Self in the frock of the appearance of bread, even as my bodily food is altered in my soul, which is not in my nature for an instant without combining with it. For there is a power in nature which Separates the base and throws it out, and the high invades the low to the last needle-point and is embodied in it. The things I ate a fortnight. since are every bit as much united with my soul as what I did receive within my mother’s womb. Whoso takes this food fasting becomes as truly one therewith as flesh and blood
. are with my soul.
/ There was a certain man; the man had not a name because \ ___ >
\ this man is God. | / The philosopher affırms concerning the first cause that it transcends speech. All words fail. Because of the surpassing pureness of its nature. We have but three ways of speaking about © things : first, in terms of things above them; second, of their likes ; and thirdly, of the works of the things. To give you an example. The power of the sun draws up the precious sap out of the roots into the shoots and brings it out in flower, here the solar power being above it. *As we say of the tree, so we say of the things above the tree; of the sun, for example, which is working in the tree.* Likewise I say the divine light is working in the soul. * The spark in the soul being drawn up in this: light and in the Holy Ghost and borne aloft to its first source. But nothing true can be spoken of God, because there is nothing above him.* That the soul expresses God does not in anywise affect his real intrinsic being: no one can express what he actually is. Some- times we say one thing is like another. * We can say nothing of ‘God because nothing is like him.* Creatures enclose a mere nothing of God wherefore they cannot disclose him. The painter who has painted a good portrait therein shows his art: it is not himself that it reveals to us. Creatures can no more give out God than they can take in exactly what he is. 2 The God-and-Man a prepared this supper, the ineffable man .
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who is wordless. According to St Augustine, what we say about God is not true and the things that we say not are true. Things we say that God is he is not; what we say he is not that he N rather than what we say that Bas is.
Who has prepared this repast ? A man, the man who is God King David says, ‘O Lord, how great and manifold is thy enter- tainment, the sweets that are laid up for them that love thee!’ (Not ‘them that fear thee.’) St Augustine meditating on this food, regarded it with loathing and distaste, when lo! he heard - voice from within, ‘I am the food of the great, wax and grow great * eating me; nor ween not that I shall be turned into thee: thou shalt be turned into me.* When God works in the fiery heat ‘the diverse things within the soul sublime and burn away. By
- the absolute truth ! soul enters more into God than any food into
us; nay, the soul is changed into God. There is a power in the soul which splits off what is base and is absorbed into God.
_ To wit, the spark of the soul. My soul becomes more one with God
‚than food does with my soul. , Who has prepared this evening meal? A man. Dost know ‘his name? *Not I. His name is not spoken. He is more ‘silence than speech. He is above name. What food has he prepared for this feast? Himself, no less than himselt.*/ (What does the servant mean ?) According to St Gregory the servant means preachers. And in another sense the servant means the angels, *the angels ever calling us with interior voice.* Thirdly, methinks this servant, is the spark of the soul, which is sent there by God and is his light striking down from above, the reflection (or image) of his divine nature and ever opposed ‘to anything ungodly: not a power of the soul, as some theologians ‚make it, but a permanent tendency to good ; aye, even in hell it is ‘inclined to good. According to the masters, this light is of the nature of unceasing effort ; it is called synderesis, that is to say, a joining to and turning from. It has two works. One is remorse for imperfection. The other work consists in ever more invoking good and bringing it direct into the soul, even though she be in |hell. It is a great supper. He said to the servant, ‘Go out and |compel them to come in, those that are bidden, for all things are ınow ready.’ All that he is the soul receives. What the soul desires is now prepared. The things God gives have always | been. Behold them new and fresh and all at once in the eternal “now. A great philosopher declares that anything I see comes into my eyes purified and ghostly, and the light that comes into my eyes
_ would never get into my soul but for a power above it. * There
is a power in sight which is superior to the eyes set in the head
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and more far-reaching than the heavens and earth. This power seizes all the things that come into the eyes and bears them up into the soul.* St Augustine says the spark comes nigher to the truth than any human knowledge. Light burns. They say that one is lighted from another. If so, the light is higher than the thing that burns. For instance, take a taper, extinguished but still glimmering and smoking, and hold it to the light; this will glance down and light the other. They say one fire burns another. But Itraversethat. Fire, I ween, does burn itself. For one thing ‚to burn another it must needs be above it, like heaven, for example, which burns not and is cold ; natheless it sets on fire and that by dint of contact with the angels. For this the soul prepares by practice. Then she is fired from above. By the angelic light. He says to the servant, ‘Go out and say to them that were bidden, Come, for all things are now ready.’ Then one said, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, I cannot come.’ These are they who still have worldly cares; they never taste this supper. A second said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen.’ These five yoke, I fancy, stand for the five senses, for each sense is self
and other and the very tongue is double. So in my story yesterday,