He went to a city. I say, that means the soul which is well ordered and fortified in the Holy Ghost and, having set a watch for sin and shut out multiplicity, is safe and sound in Jesus: en- compassed and walled round by the light of God. As the prophet hath it, ‘ God is the wall round Zion.’ The eternal wisdom says, ‘In the holy and in the sanctified city I shall have like repose.’ Nothing is so restful, so unifying, as like; hence same and in and near and by. That soul is holy in whom is God alone and wherein no creature finds rest. He says, ‘I shall have like repose in the holy and in the sanctified city.’ All sanctity is of the Holy Ghost. This nature nothing transcends: beginning with-the lowest it works it up into the highest. Philosophers say air only turns to fire when it is rarefied and hot. The Holy Ghost seizes the soul and clarifying her in its light and grace draws her up to the supreme. He says, ‘In the sanctified city I shall alike repose.’ As the soul rests in God so God reposes in her. If she rests partly in him then he rests partly in her; if she rests wholly in him he rests wholly in her. That is why the eternal wisdom says, ‘I shall repose alike (or equally).’
According to philosophers, the green and yellow colours of the rainbow merge into one another too gradually for any eye to follow, however keen its sight. And nature works so gradually when it resolves itself into the first effusion, this is so homogeneous with the angels, that Moses durst not write thereof for fear of the faint- hearted, lest they should worship them : so much the same they are with the first emanation. One high authority definitely states _ that the topmost angel is so nigh the first eruption, he has in him so much of God’s likeness and God’s might, that he it is who cares
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for and looks after this whole world as well as all the angels who areunder him. The moral of which is, that God the high, the pure, and the impartible is operative in his highest creature who exerts his power, as a viceroy rules the land in the name of the king. He says, ‘ In the holy and in the sanctified city alike do I repose.’
As I was saying lately, the gate or door that, melting, God flows out by, is goodness. Essence is self-absorbed: not an effusion but an inner fusion. And unity is one and self-contained : aloof from everything and free from outside intercourse. But goodness is the melting and running out of God : his diffusion to the whole of creatures. Essence is the Father, unity the Son, and goodness is the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost seizes the soul (the sanctified city) at its purest, at its highest, and hales it up into its first source, which is the Son, and the Son bears it on into his source, his Father namely, into the ground, into the first, where the Son has his being ; where the eternal wisdom is in like repose in the holy and in the sanctified city, in the innermost.
He says our Lord ‘ went to a city called Naim.’ Naim means son of a dove, which suggests simplicity. The soul shall never rest in her potential power (or nature) till she is simplified to God. It also signifies a flow of water and implies passivity of soul towards sin and imperfection. The disciples symbolise the divine light which shall flow in and flood the soul. The ‘ much people’ are the virtues whereof I lately spoke. The soul shall ascend in fiery aspiration and pass above the manifold merit of the angels to the greater virtues. So she comes ‘under the gate’ and enters into love and unity: the gate whence they bore out the youth, the widow’s son. ‘Our Lord came and touched the bier whereon the body lay.’ How he came and how he touched I will not dwell upon but upon the words, ‘ Young man, Arise ! ’
He was the son of a widow: her man was dead. Hence dead too was her son, the only son of the soul, the will and all the powers of the soul, for all these are one in the innermost mind, and mind (i.e. intellect) is the man in the soul. Her husband was dead, therefore her son was dead also. ‘Young man, I say unto thee, Arise!’ When the Word addresses the soul and the soul replies in the living Word, then the Son is alive in the soul.
Philosophers ask which is the better, the power of plants or the power of words or the power of stones? Let us consider. Words derive their power from the original Word. But the abuse and multiplication of words impairs their force. Plants possess great power. I have heard that a serpent was fighting with a weasel when the weasel ran off and fetched a little plant which, wrapping in another plant, it launched upon the serpent and, breaking asunder, the serpent lay dead. What endowed the
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weasel with this wisdom? The virtue of plant-lore. Therein lies much wisdom. Words, too, have prodigious power: with words we can do wonders. And stones again are very potent in virtue of the likeness wrought in them by the starry and celestial force. Like works in like most mightily, and that is why the soul, by raising herself up in the natural light, can get into angelic light and in the angelic light enter the light divine and so stand in the three lights, at the cross-ways, at the vertex, where the lights run into one. There the eternal Word is saying life in her, and there the soul is living and gainsaying in the Word. So may we be gainsayers in the eternal Word, God helping us. Amen.
Young Man, Arise!
Adolescens, tibi dico: surge (Luc. 7,4). We read in the gospel that a woman came to our Lord Jesus Christ. She said, ‘Sir, I am a widow, and had an only son who is dead.’ Our Lord said, ‘Young man, Arise!’
The widow, this woman whose husband was dead, and her only son. By this woman is meant the understanding, her husband is the man of the soul, and the youth the highest intellect, for that is the young man. When the soul is dead in imperfection, the higher mind awakening into understanding cries to God for grace. Then God gives it divine light and it becomes self-knowing. Therein it sees God. I said, intellect alone can receive divine light. The other powers of the soul are instruments and agents for raising the intellect to its maximum lucidity.
It is a question with the theologians, which ranks higher, under- standing or love? One school says understanding, the other school, love. It is a lively subject of debate. Understanding says: How canst thou love a thing thou dost not know? Love says: What avails thee thy knowledge without love? Loveless, thou shalt never find eternal happiness. Understanding says : I am born in the clear light of self-knowledge. Love says: Great knowledge without love is vain. Understanding says: Give place, thou are only my slave: thou dost help me to rise and remainest. Love says: I am the good that God is himself. Knowledge says: High is thy claim: without me thou dost fall to the ground. Love says: It would be well for thee to bear me more in mind. Understanding says: I can rise higher not fettered to thee; my vision is clearer, nay, I want none of thee. I have what I will the while I know what hitherto I have descried and into which I now have flowed to.sbide for aye in perfect
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unity. Here, I am above love and transcend all activity. Here I have intuition; and my real knowledge of all things, all I believed, iS now come true. Faith and hope and all the powers of the soul remain, they can go no further. True love says : I must abide with thee, for I am eternal. Our sisters stay behind, that is but meet : they are our servants who have brought thee to the actual enjoyment of thy eternal happiness.—Now comes the highest intellect, that which receives all things direct from God, and says: I have conceived the sovran good wherein is naught save unity. Intuition says: I shall cleave to thee, my place is at thy side. Intellect says: Knowledge and love must remain behind. Intui- tion says : It is meet I should enjoy what I have divined. Highest intellect replies: What you have brought me to and which I hitherto have known, now knows itself in me. Wherefore I find I need none else. All created things must remain behind with all I ever was. I stand before my cause.
To go back to the widow and our Lord’s command, ‘ Young man, Arise!’ we must bear in mind that anything not far from birth is young. Thus it is with intellect as standing in the presence of its cause ; oblivious of the aids to its ascent it fondly weens it has been there for aye and there shall eternally remain. That may not be.
Then take the words: ‘ by the widow is meant the understand- ing, by her son the intellect, and by her husband the man of the soul.” Now you must know, when the man of the soul begins to rise, the masters say it is another man. By which you must not understand it is another soul: it is another being of the soul; the old mode is done, it is dead. The soul assuming her real mode stands in her virgin innocence. The man of the soul; transcending his angelic mode and guided by the intellect, pierces to the source whence flowed the soul. Intellect itself is left outside with all named things. So the soul is merged into pure unity. This we calf the man of the soul, and, having reached this consummation, he has no need of any help. What he did here- tofore God now does in him. God knows him as he knew him, God loves him as he loved him. God is doing all the work and the man of the soul is absolutely idle.
When a man has reached this point we may well say, this man is God and man. All Christ has by nature he has won by grace.. His body is filled with the noble nature of the soul, which she receives from God, with divine light, wherefore we may truly cry, Behold, a man divine! Pity them, my children, they are from home and no one knows them. Let those in quest of God be careful lest appearances deceive them in these people who are peculiar and hard to place ; no one rightly knows them but those in whom the
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same light shines. Namely, the light of truth. Yet it may well be that wayfarers to that same good, but who have not yet reached it, will come across these perfect of whom we have been speaking. Believe me, did I know one such, and had a convent-full of gold and precious stones, I would give the whole of it for a single fowl for him to eat. Further I declare, if all the things God ever made were mine, I would forwith give them all for the enjoyment of that man, and rightly, for they are all his. Nay, more I say: his, too, is God in the fullness of his power, and if there stood before me all who in imperfection are anhungered, I would not withhold from that man’s need a single feather of the fowl, though I might saa that multitude. For, you must remember, with one in imperfec- tion, anything he eats or drinks will drag him down and make him prone to sin. But not the virtuous man: what he eats and drinks he raises up in Christ to the Father. So look well to yourselves.