. The second doctor says: without means the eye would see nothing. If I cover my eyes with my hand I can see nothing of my hand. If I put it before me I see it quite distinctly. This is due to the dense nature of the hand which must be rarefied and rendered volatile in air and light and in effigy be carried to my eye. The same thing with a mirror. If thou hast it facing thee thy image is reflected in the glass. The eye, like the soul, is a mirror, and things presented to it all appear therein. I do not see the hand, the stone, itself: I see the image of the stone, but I do not see this image in a second image or by any other means: I see it without means and without image. This image is itself the means: image without image like motion without motion although causing motion and size which has no size though the principle of size. Even so the image is in this sense imageless that it is not seen in another image. The eternal Word is the means and the image itself which is without means and without image, so that the soul in the eternal Word conceives of God and knows him without image and with nothing between.
There is one power in the soul: intellect, of prime importance to the soul for making her aware of, for detecting, God. It has five properties. First, it is detached from here and now. Next, it is like nothing. Thirdly, it is pure and uncompounded.
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Fourthly, it is in itself active or self-searching. Fifthly, it is an image.
First, it is detached from here and now. Here and now, that, in other words, is time and place. Now is the minimum of time; not a fragment of time nor a fraction of time: a smack, a con- nection, an end of time. Small though it be it must go ; every- thing time touches has to go. Again, it is detached from here. And here means place. The spot I am standing on is small, but it must disappear before I can see God.
Secondly, it has no like. A philosopher says, God is a thing that nothing is like and that nothing can become like. But according to St John, ‘ we shall be called God’s children ’ and if we are God’s children we must resemble God. How then can this doctor say God is a thing that nothing is like? The answer is that in being like nothing this power is like God. God is like nothing and this power is like nothing. You must understand that all creatures are by nature endeavouring to be like God. The heavens would not revolve unless they followed on the track of God or of his likeness. If God were not in all things, nature would stop dead, not working and not wanting; for whether thou like it or no, whether thou know it or not, nature funda- mentally is seeking, though obscurely, and tending towards God. No man in his extremity of thirst but would refuse the proffered draught in which there was no God. Nature’s quarry is not meat or drink nor clothes nor comfort nor any things at all wherein is naught of God, but covertly she seeks and ever more hotly she pursues the trail of God therein.
Thirdly, it is pure and unmingled. By nature God can tolerate no mingling or admixture. Nor is there in this power any inter- mingling or admixture: it is free from impurity and nothing foreign can occur therein. To tell a comely person he is fair and dark would do him an injustice. The soul must be without admixture. If someone hangs something to my cloak or. sticks something on it then anyone who wears the cloak will wear too its attachments. If I go out hence, there will then go with me the whole of my attachments. What the spirit rests on, is attached to, takes the spirit with it.. The man who rests on nothing, is attached to nothing, though heaven and earth should fall, will remain unmoved.
Fourthly, it is ever seeking, travailing, within. God is such that he ever abides in the innermost. And intellect is ever seeking him. But will goes out to what it loves in him. So at the coming of my friend, suddenly my heart goes out to him and he is glad. St Paul declares, ‘ we shall know God as we are known.’ And according to St John, ‘ we shall see God as he is.’
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Now if I am coloured I must have something in me that will take the colour. I should never colour unless I had a colour nature. And I can only see God in what he sees himself in. St Paul declares that ‘God dwells in light inaccessible.’ It is not to be denied that keeping in the way, in the entry, though all well and good, is yet a long way from the truth, for it is not God. f
Fifthly, it is an image. Mark this, it is important: it gives you the whole sermon in a nutshell. Object and image are bound up with one another so that we cannot part them. We can think of fire apart from heat and heat without the fire. We can think of the sun apart from light and of light as independent ofthe sun. But we cannot part the object from its image. Isay more : Almighty God himself cannot disentangle them : they are born together and they die together. I do not die because my Father does. Suppose you die, then we no longer say, he is his son, we say, he was his son. Cloth that. is bleached is like all whiteness in its whiteness. But if you blacken it, it is dead to whiteness. And here itis the same. If the image, God’s likeness, disappeared, there would perish also its exemplar, God. One thing I would say: ye are become two, ye are become three. Now mark my words. Intellect peers in, it searches every corner of the Godhead and finding the Son in the heart of the Father, in his ground, it takes him and sets him in its own. Intellect presses in; she is not content with good or wisdom, nor with truth nor yet with God himself. She is no more content with God than with a tree, a stone. She never rests until she gets into the ground whence truth and good proceed and takes them in principio, in the beginning, the fount of truth and goodness, where they rise before their coming forth: a ground far higher than truth and goodness are. Her sister (will) contents herself with God as being good. But intellect, leaving this behind, goes in and breaks through to the root whence shoots the Son and whence the Holy Spirit blossoms forth. May we discover this and be for ever blest. So help us Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
XLIII! KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE
Meister Eckhart said: Doctors debate which is the nobler, knowledge or love. Some say that love is better than knowledge. I say it is not. Our best authorities declare that knowledge is nobler than love. Love and will take God as being good. If God were not good, will would have none of him ; if God were not
ı Jostes, No. 10,
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lovely, love would scout him. But understanding would not. Knowledge is not confined either to good or to love or to wisdom or lordship. By putting names to God the soul is only dressing him up and making a figure of God; nor is this the doing of knowledge. Though God were neither good nor wise, still under- standing would seize him; it strips everything off, not stopping either at wisdom or good, nor majesty nor power. It pierces to naked being and grasps God bare, ere he is clothed in thought with wisdom and goodness. Where the Son has his beatitude, there in the Father, understanding finds hers.
Now I am going to say something never read nor preached before.
At the College yesterday they admitted that there is a ground within the soul corresponding to the Father-nature. Just as the Father is bringing forth his Son in the Holy Ghost and these three are one God, so this ground is bringing forth understanding and will, one-power as God is one Word. Withal this ground is free from any taint of creature. All the things we attribute to the soul form a screen round this ground wherein God is looking at the soul and the soul is looking at God. According to St Paul, ‘ We beholding the vision of God’s splendour are changed in that same image from glory to glory.’ This image is too closely joined to God for creatures to dissever and God himself will not divide it. Alas! we reck so little of this image, we keep it not so bright as it was given us by God! Whatever we may do God is never satisfied unless we there abide in utter destitution and so enable God at all times without ceasing to bring his one-begotten Son to birth in this same ground. This birth befalls not once a year nor once a day nor once an hour, but all the time, above time, in the while which is neither here nor now. This is the ground I speak of. May we live in suchwise that God can energise in us, So help us God.
I have sometimes said that the soul is an imitation of God ; now I say that she is his image, and in the very same form the ‘Father has eternally formed, and the same that Christ is formed in.
According to Meister Eckhart, All creatures contain one re- flection: one, that is the denial of its being the other; the _ highest of the angels denies he is the lowest. God is the denial of denials: the one which is exclusive of all otherness. To call a tree a tree is not to name it, for all the species are con- fused. If we name it in its first eruption, in its perfection, we do not call it a tree, we call it pure divine nature. Another notion of it, rather better. The divine nature is the great divider. Meister Eckhart says, The Pharisee besought our Lord to eat with him. What is the Pharisee? He stands for detachment; a.
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Pharisee is one who is detached from all and united into one. The - rophet cries, ‘Lord have mercy on the work which is in thee.’ The highest work God ever wrought was done in mercy. Under- standing goes in deep enough to lay hold of being simply as being- in-itself, but where being is losing itself, drowned in itself, there understanding falls away.
Friar John says : It is a question among the theologians whether it lies with the soul, or with God, for her to be God. I say the power lies in the soul. Suppose the soul ready to be God, then God must work in that power and draw the power into himself: the energy then is in God and the capacity is in the soul. Were I wholly that I am I should be God; there would be for me neither time nor place nor change. There is nothing so easy to me, so possible, as to be God. To stay quiet requires no work, whereas if I change to another I must reduce myself to naught: but I remain as I am.
I say, no creature is so vile but it can boast of being; in proportion to its being is its power of being God, for whatever is being is God.
Bishop Albertus says, Man is divine above all as receiving unhindered the inflowing Deity. In the words of the saint, The light of my soul is never extinguished and my desire is ever in the beholding of God.
Xliv?
In omnibus requiem quesivi (Eccl. 24,,). In all things I seek rest.