1 See also Wackernagel, No. lix, from which the last sentence is added.
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I have lent him yet not trust in theman. So if aman believes in God why will he not trust him to repay what he lends his poor? . He who gives up all things gets back an hundredfold. If he. expects his hundredfold he shall get nothing : he is not giving up the things but getting more, an hundredfold. Our Lord repays an hundredfold the man who leaves all things. Letting go all things he gets an hundredfold return and eternal life. If it happens to a man in the course of riddance to get again the very same he gave, then, not giving all, he shall get nothing. Anyone who looks to find anything in God, knowledge, understanding or devotion or whatever it may be, even if he find it will not be finding God but knowledge, understanding or devotion : all things I heartily commend; but to him not lasting.
Seek nothing at all, not understanding nor gnosis nor piety nor inwardness nor peace but only God’s will. The soul who is as she by rights should be, would not be satisfied even if God gave her his whole Godhead; it would no more console her than his giving her a fly. God-knowledge is vain apart from God-will. In God’s will are all things, eternal and perfect and pleasant to God ; but out of God’s will things are all of them naught and not pleasant to God and not perfect. Never pray for any mortal thing; if thou must pray for anything at all, pray for God’s will and nothing else for therein thou hast all. To ask for aught beside means getting nothing. In him is naught but one and one is indivisible and aught save one is part, not one. God is one and anything extra that is sought or found is not God but a fraction. Peace, intuition or anything elsé than simply God’s will is for self-love and is naught; but if he seeks God’s naked will then whatever he may find or have revealed to him therein that man may take as a gift of God without ever thinking or looking to see if it is of nature or of grace or from whence or in what wise it may be: he need have no anxiety whatever on that score; he is going the right way and while following the broad lines of the christian life there is no need to scrutinize each detail. He can just take each thing from God, and whatever comes accept it as the best for him, and have no fear of meeting on his lonely road with anything, do what he may, that hinders his awareness of the love of God, which to him is all that matters. :
People have a way of saying, when it falls to them to do or suffer something, ‘ If only I knew it was the will of God I would gladly suffer and put up with it.’ Dear God! what a question . for a sick man to ask, does God intend me to be ill? He ought to know it is the will of God by the very fact of being ill. And so with other things. Whatever comes accept it as God’s will, pure and simple. Some, when things prosper with them, inwardly
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or outwardly, praise God and have faith in him. They will say, for instance, ‘I have gotten four quarters of corn this year and as many of wine: I put my trust in God.’ Nay, I say thou dost trust in the corn and the wine.
The soul is created for good so great, so high, that she cannot rest in any mode; all the time she is hastening past modes to the eternal good, to God who is her goal. This is not won in the heat of the assault, in the stress and strain of action or of passion, but by gentleness and true humility and self-abnegation in that and everything that may betide. A man should not dragoon himself : ‘ Thou shalt do this at whatever cost,’ that would be wrong for so he lends importance to himself. If anything should chance to grieve or trouble or disquiet him, again he would be wrong for that means giving way to self. When out of the depths of humilia- tion he calls on God for counsel and bending low before him accepts with quiet faith whatever he may send, then he is right. It all depends, in teaching and advising, if a man will listen, disregarding everything but God. Many and,various are the ways of putting this, but it promotes the proper play of conscience to refuse attention to casual happenings and for a man when he is by himself to make an offering of his will to God and then proceed to take each thing alike from God, grace or whatever comes, inward or outward.
Whoso sees aught of God’s sees naught of God. The righteous man does not need God. What I have I am not in need of. He serves for naught, he cares for naught, he has God and that is all he needs. As God is higher than man so is he readier to give than man is to receive. Not by fasting and good works can we gauge our progress in the virtuous life, but a sure sign of growth is a waxing love for the eternal and a waning interest in temporal things. The man who owns an hundred crowns and gives them all in the name of God to found a cloister is doing a good work. And yet I say, it were a better to despise and naught himself for love of God. It behoves a man in all he does to turn his will in God’s direction and keeping only God in view to forge ahead without a qualm, not wondering, am I right or am I doing something wrong? If the painter had to plan out every brush-mark before he made his first he would not paint at all. And if, going to some place, we had first to settle how to put the front foot down, we should never get there. Follow your principles and keep straight on; you will come to the right place, that is the way.
This is a collation of Meister Eckhart’s.
142 Meister Eckhart
The Emanation and Return
Nolite timere eos qui corpus occidunt, animum autem occidere non possunt (Matt. 10,,). ‘Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul.’ Spirit does not kill spirit ; spirit gives life to spirit. ‘Them which kill you’ are flesh and blood which die by one another. Man’s most precious possession is blood, when it is well-liking. The most mischievous thing in man is blood when it is ill-liking. When the blood rules the flesh, the person is humble and patient and chaste and has all the virtues. But where the flesh has the upper hand he is supercilious, hasty, and lascivious and has all the vices. Praised be St John the glorified of God himself.
Now mark. I will say something I never said before. When God created the heavens and the earth and all creatures, God did no work; he had no work to do; there was no activity in him. God said: ‘We will make a likeness.’ To create is easy : we do it when and as we will. But what I make, I make myself, with myself and in myself, imprinting my image clearly in it. ‘We will make a likeness’: not the Father nor the Son nor the Holy Ghost: we, the holy Trinity in concert, we will make a likeness.
When God made man he wrought in the soul his like work, his ever-cherished, his working work. This work was a great one, no less than the soul: she was the work of God. God’s nature, his being and his godhood depend upon his working in the soul. God be praised, God be praised! God works in the soul; he is in love with his work. The work is love and the love is God. God loves himself and his nature, his essence and his Godhead. In the love wherein he loves himself therein God loves all creatures. With the love wherewith God loves himself therewith he loves all creatures, not as creatures: creatures as God. In the love wherein God loves himself therein he loves all things.
Again I say what I have never said before. God enjoys him- self. In the joy wherein God enjoys himself therein he enjoys all creatures. With the joy wherewith God enjoys himself he enjoys all creatures, not as creatures : creatures as God. In the joy wherein God enjoys himself, therein he enjoys all things. And mark. All creatures tend towards their ultimate perfection. Apprehend me, I beseech you, by the eternal ever-valid truth and by my soul. For yet again I say a thing I never said before : God and Godhead are as different as earth is from heaven. More- over I declare: the outward and the inward man are as different, too, as earth and heaven. God is higher, many thousand miles.
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Yet God comes and goes. But to resume my argument: God enjoys himself in all things. The sun sheds his light upon all creatures, and anything he sheds his beams upon absorbs them, yet he loses nothing of his brightness. All creatures sacrifice their life for being. Creatures all come into my mind and are rational in me. I alone prepare all creatures to return to God. Beware, all of you, what ye do.
To return to my inner and my outer man. I see the lilies in the field, their gaiety, their colour, all their leaves. But I do not see their fragrance.. Why ? Because what I give out is in me. What I am saying is in me and I speak it forth of me. My outward man relishes creatures as creatures, as wine and bread and meat. But my inner man relishes things not as creature but as the gift of God. And again to my innermost man they savour not of God’s gift but'of ever and aye. I take a bowl of water and place a mirror in it and set it in the sun. The sun sends forth his light-rays both from his disc and also from the bottom of the bowl, suffering thereby no diminution. The reflection of the mirror in the sun is in the sun. The sun and it are thus what it is. And so with God. God is in the soul with his nature, his essence and his Godhood, but he is not on that account the soul. The soul’s reflection is in God. God and she are thus what she is. There God is all creatures. There God’s utterance is God.
While I subsisted in the ground, in the bottom, in the river and fount of Godhead, no one asked me where I was going or what I was doing: there was no one to ask me. When I was flowing all creatures spake God. If I am asked, Brother Eckhart, when went ye out of your house? Then I must have been in. Even so do all creatures speak God. And why do they not speak the Godhead? Everything in the Godhead is one, and of that there is nothing to be said. God works, the Godhead does no work, there is nothing to do; in it is no activity. It never envisaged any work. God and Godhead are as different as active and. inactive. On my return to God, where I am formless, my breaking through will be far nobler than my emanation. I alone take all creatures out of their sense into my mind and make them one in me. When I go back into the ground, into the depths, into the well-spring of the Godhead, no one will ask me whence I came or ~ whither I went. No one missed me: God passes away.
All happiness to those who have listened to this sermon. Had there been no one here I must have preached it to the poor-box. -. Some poor souls will go back home and say, I shall settle down and seat my bread and serve God. Verily I say, they persist in error, - “and will never have the power to strive for or to win what those others do who follow Christ in poverty and exile. Amen.
144 Meister Eckhart
Such Is the Nature of God
A master cries, Dear God, how well for me did my love bear fruit !