You are familiar with Christ’s words, ‘ Where two are gathered together in my name I will be with them.’ Here Christ is referring to the harmonious union of the body and the soul, where body wants nothing except what the soul wills. God is with these: they are the people we have been speaking of. Here the man of the soul is in actual possession of his eternal happiness, and, being docked of all her powers, the soul encounters no sort of opposition. I warn you, you must keep a sharp look out, for they are difficult to tell; thus if they should need it, while other people fast they will be eating, while other people watch they will be sleeping, while other folks are praying they will hold their peace. In short, the things they say and do seem unaccountable, for what God makes obvious to persons on the way to their eternal happiness is foreign to those that have arrived there. These have no wants whatever: they are rich in the possession of a city of their own. I call that my own which is mine eternally and no one can take from me. These people, you must know, do most valuable work. They work within, you understand,*in the man of the soul. Blessed is the kingdom wherein dwells one of them; in an instant they will do more lasting good than all the outward actions ever done. See ye withhold not aught of theirs. May we recognise these people and loving God in them, with them possess the city they have won. So help us God. Amen.
XXXVITI PEACE
Stetit Jesus in medio discipulorum et dieit: pax etc. (Luc. 2455, Joh. 20,,). St John tells us in his gospel that ‘ on the first day of
Sermons and Collations ~ 103
the week, at evening, when the doors were shut, came our Lord and stood in the midst of the disciples and said : Peace be unto you ! 4 and again, ‘Peace be unto you!’ and a third time, Receive ye the Holy Ghost!’ Now the evening never comes unless morning and midday have gone before. We say that the middle of the day is warmer than the evening. But in so far as evening takes in middle-day and stores up its heat, it is the warmer, when, too, before the evening there goes a whole bright day. Late in the year, again, after the summer solstice, when the sun is drawing nigh to earth, the evenings will grow warm. But ‘midday never comes till morning goes nor evening until noon has passed away. The moral of which is, that when the divine light breaks forth in the soul, getting brighter and brighter unto the perfect day, then morning does not vanish before noon nor noon ere eventide: they close up to one. So the evening is warm. There is perfect day in the soul when all the soul is full of light divine. But it is evening in the soul, as I have said before, when the light of this world fades and the soul goes in to rest.
God. said, ‘ Peace!’ and ‘ Peace!’ again, and ‘ Receive ye the Holy Ghost!’ Jacob the patriarch cäme to a place, in the evening, and putting underneath his head some stones which lay about, he sank to rest. In his sleep he saw a ladder reaching up to heaven with angels ascending and descending and God leaning down over the top of the ladder. This place Jacob slept in had no name. Which is as much as to say: the God- head alone is the place of the soul, and is nameless. Concerning this our doctors say: a thing which is another’s place must be above it; as heaven is the place of all things and fire is the place of air and air the place of water and water, partially, the place of earth and earth is not a place. An angel is a heavenly place, and any angel who has got the least drop more of God than any other is the place, the habitation, of that other, the most exalted angel being the place, the room, the measure of the rest while he himself is without measure. But although he is without measure, natheless God is his measure.
Jacob rested in the place which is nameless. By not naming it it is named. On getting to this nameless place the soul will rest : where all things are being God in God, there shall she rest. The abode of the soul, which God is, is unnamed. I say, God is unspoken. But St Augustine says that God is not unspoken ; were he unspoken, that even would be speech and he is more silence than speech. One of our most ancient philosophers who found the truth long, long before God’s birth, ere ever there was Christian faith at all as it is now, to him (I say) it seemed that what he could manage to utter of things only conjured up within nim
Dr
104 Meister Eckhart
something monstrous and unreal and therefore he refused to speak at all. Not even would he say, give me meat or give me drink. He declined to mention things because he could not say them as perfect as they sprang from their first cause: he chose rather to be dumb and to make known his wants by pointing with his finger. How much more does it beseem us, if he knew not the way to talk of things, to be absolutely mute concerning him
' who is the origin of all things.
So
Ag
We say that God is a spirit. Not so. If God were really a spirit he would be spoken. According to St Gregory, we cannot rightly speak of God at all. Anything we say of him is bound to be a stammering. This place which is not named, wherein all creatures thrive and bloom in orderly array, this habitat of all creatures, is gotten suddenly out of the ground of this orderly place, the seat of the soul proceeding out of this ground.
Jacob wanted to rest: mark you, he wanted to rest. Whoso resteth in God his rest is will-free. We say that will is without habit. Will is free, it takes nothing from matter. In this sense it is freer than intellect, and some rash people pouncing upon this would put it above knowledge. That is not so. Intellect also is free despite that intellect does take from matter and from corporal things in the locality of soul, for, as I pointed out on Easter Eve, various of the soul-powers are in link with the five senses, for in- stance, sight and hearing, which convey to them the things we know. A master says: ‘God would never choose that eye or ear should sense what crowns the summit of the soul: none other than the nameless place, which is the place of all things.’ It gives a fair reflection, and is useful in that way, but is marred by colour and by sound and corporal things. It is only by the senses that the soul is roused and the idea of wisdom naturally imprinted in her. Plato says, and with him St Augustine: The soul has all know- ledge within, and all we can do from without is but an awakening of knowledge.—Jacob rested in the evening. Let us pray ever for the now; ’tis but a little thing we ask, just for one evening. May it be granted us, So help us God. Amen.
Every Good Gift
Omne datum optimum et omne donum perfectum descendit a patre luminum (Jac. 1,,). My Latin quotation is from the Epistle of St James. He says, ‘Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above from the Father of lights. With him is no variableness nor shadow of time (or, temporal -
Sermons and Collations 105
reflection).’ These two terms he uses, good gift and perfect gift, refer to different things, so our masters say. Datum befalls in time; donum has no thought of time. Datum is a matter of self-seeking, but donum is free and unconditioned and wholly without why. A perfect gift is one betokening nothing but good- will. The perfect gift is therefore free and unconditional. The perfect gift is a friendly offering, essentially a giving albeit not bestowed. According to our masters, gifts are perfect in so far as they are love-bearers ; but good gifts are like hucksters and have ever their price. In the words of one of the saints, ‘ Blood of the Holy Ghost and its glow is in one sense eternal and in another temporal.’ If my face were eternal and were held before a mirror it would be received in the mirror as a temporal thing albeit eternal in itself. The Holy Ghost has its glow. The eternal glow of his eternal blood is the perfect gift; when the soul is worthy and receives the same it turns to the good gift. Meaning to say that this gift which is temporal in us is in itself eternal. God would give us not only his good gift; he is ready to bestow on us his perfect gift as well, to wit, the Holy Ghost itself. Hence his words, ‘ Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above from the Father of lights.’
From another point of view he means, so it appears to me, that the Holy Ghost is the perfect gift only as working in the intellect. As proceeding forth in the practice of good works, albeit godly, or withal in thought, it becomes good gift. It is the perfect gift so far as the soul is living in God, immanent in the light and savour of God, hanging motionless in his perfect light-nature. As St Paul says, ‘ Ye shall taste the things that are above.’ The Holy Ghost is the Gift wherein ye abide in the perfection of light. The soul suspended in pure intellectual light is enjoying the things that are above. Our masters teach that corporeal things are called matter. We say, the light of intellect shuns matter, but albeit in itself wholly devoid of things it still has potentiality and that for matter. He says, ‘ Taste the things that are above,’ not, that are above the earth. We have a saying, So far from matter so far pure intelligence. When in the light the grey tint of the cloth assails my eye, I see it. If it were intellect I should see nothing. We recognise another power as being far removed from matter. How so? Suppose I saw a man twenty years ago, he may now be dead, but still I have a likeness of his form as though he stood before my eyes. This power needs no matter, but it has the imperfection of receiving from matter—in forms, that is to say. On the other hand, the light, intelligence, transcends what is already matter or is so potentially. While the soul abides in God, suspended in his
106 Meister Eckhart
intellectual light she has no material objectivity nor likeness nor potentiality. He says, ‘Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above from the Father of lights.’
What does he mean by calling it ‘ good gift?’ Betwixt those things whose being-and-doing is in eternity and the things whose being and doing are in time there needs must be some middle term. He means that it is God, this thing whose being-and-doing is the perfect gift ; so the being-and-doing of the perfect gift is in eternity. But the being-and-doing of the good gift are in time; which of course must mean that the soul is on the way to eternal life. Why does he promise both good and perfect gifts ? When God bestows the Holy Ghost itself, whose being-and-activity is in eternity, that is his perfect gift which, peering forth in thought, is his good gift.
\ St Augustine says, and the masters too, the soul has some
\.capacity which is open towards God and into which he alone can
Hope whereas creature speaks into another. Into this highest power, which is addressed by God alone, he utters wisdom, which is his perfect gift. But the other one that creature speaks to is satisfied with reason. The same gift is perfeet, being timeless, and good as perfecting the things of time. What is temporal in us is eternal in God. Datum in us is donum in God. What is mixed and temporal and good in us becomes, if we follow it up, perfect in God. What we are able to receive of him is infinitely small compared to what he is. Whatever else one may know one does not know God.