Our Lord says, ‘I came forth from the Father and am come into this world,’ into the light-world, that is. The soul, true reflection of the divine world, into her enters the Son ; just as he falls from the Father he is born in the soul. In this very same birth he is born in the world, in the soul, and bearing her up brings her to birth in the Father. As he says, ‘again I leave the world,’ the outer world, ‘and re-ascend to my Father,’ with the light- world of the soul, copy of the world divine, made on the same last, in the same likeness. He carries her up to his Father, into the first, into the ground whence the Son comes out and strikes down from the Father.
There is another meaning in his words, ‘I came forth from the Father,’ ‘which is this: the Father goes into his Son in all his deity, for he is wholly intellectual.. He goes clean into 'his Son. Had he more sons they would get naught ; he could never have but one Son for he is none other than his understanding. Had he a thousand sons they must needs be all the same Son. ‘
Our Lord says, ‘I came forth from the Father and am come into the world. Again I leave the world and return to my Father.’ He implies that his going out is his going into the soul. But her going in is her going out. The soul goes out of her outermost into her innermost, out of her own into the Son’s. Her being caught up to the Father is his quitting the outer world and, with the soul, ascending once more to his Father. Mark tells of some- one addressing our Lord as ‘ Good Master.’ He replied, ‘ There is none good but God,’ for in coming forth he falls clean into the soul with all he is. No creature exists that can give itself whole ; it goes out in kindness and work but itself stays at home. His
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exit is his entrance. His passage out of the Father is his passage into the soul. His emanation verily is God giving himself once for all in his Son. We say : the only-begotten Son who proceeds from the Father is the same as himself. From the moment the Father launches forth in all his might in the Son, he (the Father) reverts to pure essence. He has no other course seeing he has spent all his substance on his Son. Were there no time nor place nor matter, nothing left at all, the begetter would be as the begotten. It follows that the Son so called, must be the only Son and be one with the Father who utters in one single Word
“the whole of what he knows, the whole of what he can afford, in one single instant, and that instant is eternal.
Now our doctors say: natural acts make for unity. God vouchsafes himself, gives himself, as a whole to the soul in order that she may be one with him. Moreover, his first issue is his only Son. Again, our doctors teach that the highest of the angels is pure yet he forms a part of nature. But the only Son never entered any nature, he remained superior to nature: in pure being he went into the Father. The second eruption into nature, so our masters say, the highest spirit, remained by nature simplex, one in proportion to the nearness of his nature (to its origin). He broke in to let us out: his exit thence is his entrance here. Hence his words, ‘ Let. . . .’
He Sought to See ... Who He Was
Et querebat videre Jesum, quis esset etc. (Luc. 193). St Luke relates that when our Lord walked upon earth in human nature ‘there was a rich man who sought to see him, and could not for the press for he was small of stature.’ According to a holy man, Only he is rich who has plenty of God and virtue. To be well off for goods and stinted for God makes one poor and not rich, for things are as nothing to God. Hence the protest of that seigneur whom his retainers lauded for his power and his riches. Quoth he, ‘I trow they laud not me one whit who have forgot my strongest claim to praise, my power over my body to demand of it what I will.’ This man who sought to see Jesus did outrun the crowd and climbed up into a tree in order to see him. And Jesus said, “Make haste and come down, for to-day I abide at thine house.’ Whoso would see Jesus must outrun all things. What does it show when a man does not hasten past things ? It shows he has not tasted God. If he had tasted God he would hasten to pass by all things, and not pass by merely but break through all creatures. What his love is ready to leave he breaks
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through. If we fail to see God that is due to our feeble desire no less than the concourse of creatures. Aim high, be high. To see God needs high aspiration. Know, ardent desire and abject humility work wonders. I vow God is omnipotent, but he is impotent to thwart the humble soul with towering aspiration. And where I cannot master God and bend him to my will it is because I fail either in will or meekness. I say, and I would stake my life upon it, that by will a man might pierce a wall of steel, and accordingly we read about St Peter that on catching sight of Jesus he walked upon the water in his eagerness to meet him.
Look you: a thing that grows in the filling will never get full. Take a vessel, a stoup; if you pour a stoup in and it stretches thereby then it will not be full. And so with the soul: the more she demands the more she is given; the more she receives the bigger she grows. Who is Jesus? He has no name. Where do we see God? Where there is no yesterday nor morrow : where it is now and to-day, there we see God. What is God? One master says, If I were forced to tell of God then I should say, God is a thing no mind can reach or grasp and that is all I know about him. Another master says, He who knows of God that he is unknown, that man knows God. Then comes St Augustine with his dietum, God is something sovran, supreme, which is common to all partakers. He means that God is somewhat wherein every creature must be; for if he fall out of the hand of the mercy of God he will fall back into the hand of the justice of God. He must ever be in him. Needs must a man have his being in God and have enjoyment in God withal, aye in God himself, an he will. But he who does not find eternal satisfaction and enjoyment in God himself must get it out of things, things that are base, far lower than his footstool; yet creatures without exception get their being from God, even the damned in hell persist on somewhat of his being. Though they dwell not in God in felicity, still they must go on without him, against their will, in damnation. What folly it is to refuse to be with him we cannot be without !
St Augustine says, ‘What is God? He is something we cannot conceive any better.’ But I say, God is better than anything we can conceive; I say, God is somewhat, I know not what, verily I know not. He is all that is being rather than not-being, existent more than non-existent ; our highest aspirations are but grovelling things falling hopelessly short of God. He transcends heart’s desire. When I preached at Paris I declared, and I durst now repeat, that not a man at Paris can conceive with all his learning ‚what God is in the very meanest creature, not even in a fly. More- over, I now say that the whole world is powerless to conceive it
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What God is in himself no man can tell except he be ravished into the light that God is himself. What God is in the angels is very remote and nobody knows. What God is in the God-loving soul not a soul knows but the soul he is in. What God is in these nether things, I know to some extent but very little. What time God comes within our ken the natural faculties vanish. May we be rapt away into the light that. is God himself and therein be forever blest. So help us God. Amen.
The Good Housewife
Consideravit domum etc. ‘The good housewife looks well to the ways of her house, not eating the bread of idleness.’ This house represents the soul as a whole, and the ways of the house are the powers.of the soul. An ancient philosopher says the soul is made in between one and two. The one is eternity, ever alone and without variation. The two is time, changing and given to multiplication. He means to convey that the soul in her higher powers touches eternity, God to wit, while her lower powers being in contact with time make her subject to change and biased towards bodily things, which degrade her. Could the soul know God as well as the angels do she would never have come into body. If she could know God without the world the world would not have been made for her sake. The world was contrived on her account for training and bracing the eye of the soul to endure divine light. The sunshine falling on the earth-is dimmed first in the air and diffused on various things, for no human eye can support the sun. And even so the light of God is over strong and bright for the soul’s eye to bear, without being fixed and given up by matter _ and reflection which accustom it to dwelling in the light divine.
In her superior powers the soul is in contact with God; so she takes after God. God takes after himself; he has gotten his form from himself and from no one beside. His form is that of perfect self-knowledge, absolute light. When the soul comes in contact with him in real understanding, then she is like him in form. Suppose you press a seal into green wax or red, or into cloth, just enough for the seal, the seal being stamped right into the wax so that none of the wax is left over unsealed, then it is one and the same with the seal. In just the same way the soul is wholly united with God in image and form when she is in contact with him in actual gnosis. St Augustine says the soul is of more noble build than any other creature, and that is why no mortal thing, _ destined to perish at the latter day, can hold communication with
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or eke affect the soul save from a distance and by messengers. Such are the eyes and ears and the five senses: these are the soul’s ways out into the world, and by these ways the world gets back into the soul. According to one master, the powers of the soul flow back into the soul laden with fruits; they never go out but they bring something back. So beware lest thine eyes bring back aught to hurt thy soul. My firm conviction is that everything a good man sees must better him. On seeing evil he thanks God for saving him therefrom and prays God to convert him to what he is. On seeing good his great desire will be to have it perfected in him.
This seeing serves two purposes : it scotches what is mischievous and makes us forthwith remedy our faults. Many a time I have laid it down that great workers, great fasters, great vigil-keepers, if they fail to mend their wicked ways, wherein true progress lies, do cheat themselves and are the devil’s laughing-stock. A man - once had an arrow he grew rich on. He was neighbour to a sower. When the arrow was in use a breeze from any quarter would catch it by the head and turn its tail into the wind. So this man approached the sower and quoth he, ‘ What will you give me to tell you the way of the wind?’ Thus he sold his arrow and waxed rich thereby. And so might we become right rich in virtue by finding out our frailties, and then, in rue, setting ourselves to cure them.