Meister Eckhart says, Likes love and unite with one another ;' unlikes hate and shun each other. According to one master, no two things are so unlike as earth and heaven. Earth knew itself by nature alien and unlike to heaven. Wherefore it fled from heaven to the lowest place and there bides still lest haply it draw night at all to heaven. And the celestial nature grew aware that earth had fled and had possessed itself of the lowest place. And that is how the heavens came to empty themselves out into the earth in fruitful wise, indeed the masters say the broad expanse of heaven does not withhold a needle-point in size, it brings itself forth every whit as fruitfulness on earth. So earth is the most fruitful of all mortal creatures.
Likewise I say about the man who has brought himself to naught in himself, in God and in all creatures. That man assumes - the lowest place and God is bound to empty himself whole into his soul, else would he not be God. I warrant you by God’s eternal truth, that into any man who is brought low God pours out his whole self in all his might, so utterly that neither of his life, his being, nor his nature, nay, nor of his perfect Godhead, does he keep aught back, he empties out the whole thereof as fruits into that wight who in abandonment to God assumes the lowest place.
To-day as I pursued my way pondering my discourse and wondering how to make you understand, I hit on an analogy. If ye can follow this my meaning will be plain and eke the drift of all my teaching. ‚The analogy is with my eye and wood. My eye when it is open is aneye. It is the same eye, shut; and the wood is neither more or less by reason of its seeing. Now mark me well. Suppose my eye, being one and single in itself, falls on the wood in seeing, then though each thing stops as it is, yet in the actual seeing they are so far the same that we can argue: my eye is the wood and the wood my eye. Now if the wood were free from matter and wholly immaterial, as my eyesight is, then we could truly say that in my actual vision wood and eye are essen- tially the same. If this is so with corporal things, then how much more with ghostly. Remember, my eye is far more one with some transoceanic sheep’s that I have never seen than with my ear, albeit with this it has organic union. The sheep’s eye works like mine, and therefore I impute to it more unity of action than I can do to eye and ear which have their different functions.
I have often spoken of the light within the soul, which is un- created and eke uncreaturely. It is this light I am so often hinting
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at in my discourses, it is the light which lays straight hold of God, bare and unveiled, as he is in himself; that is to say, it catches him in the act of self-begetting. Hence I can truly say this light is rather one with God than with any of my powers wherewith it has organic union. For know, this light within my soul is no better in its essence than the humblest, the grossest of my powers ; my sight or my hearing, for example, or any other sense which is the sport of heat and cold, hunger or thirst, seeing that essence is impartible.
Now I maintain, if thou dost turn from thine own self and from created things, then in what measure thou dost this thou dost attain to unity and happiness in thy soul-spark ; a thing which is. immune from time and space. This spark is opposed to creatures. It has no want but just God, God as he is in himself. Not enough for it the Father or the Son or Holy Ghost, nor even all three Persons, so far as they preserve their several properties. I trow this light would not be satisfied with the alone-begotten fruit of Deity. Nay, more, and even stranger to relate, I warrant you this light is not content with the changeless impartible essence of God, which neither gives nor takes, but wants to find its source; it wants to get into its simple ground, into the silent desert whereinto no distinct thing ever pryed, not Father, Son nor Holy Ghost. At the centre, where no one abides, there this light is quenched in still stronger light, wherein it is more one than in itself, for this ground is the impartible stillness, motionless in itself, and by this immobility all things are moved and all those have their life who, recollected in themselves, do live the life of mind. May we too live this intellectual life, So help us God. Amen.
THERE COMES FORTH A ROD OUT OF THE ROOT OF JESSE
Egredietur virga de radice Jesse et flos de radice ejus ascendet et requiescet super eum spiritus domini (Isaias 11,,,). We read to-day in the Mass that there comes forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and out of the root comes forth a flower, and on this flower there rests, reposes, the spirit of the Lord. Jesse means a brand, which is burning ; it signifies love in the abstract, where it is no more called love, where nothing adventitious exists, and in this ground where as yet nothing grows, it germinates just like, within the root, the coming shoot. The offshoot has three properties : likeness to what it shoots from, the nature of the same, and it is of exactly the same species ; thirdly, it is free from all attach- ments, simply an emanation. Thus the Son proceeded from the
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Father, as another Person with the Father, albeit in the Father essentially the same. Accordingly he says, * Out of the root came a rod and on the rod came a flower.’ My loving is a heavenly matter, for likes all end in same and the same is in the ground, and a thing that grows out of another is in every respect the same kind. An apple grafted on a pear-tree has the taste of both. It is not so here: this has the flavour of the one alone; itself is. not therein and yet it is therein. It could never come out were it not first within in the abstract, in brooding essence. The wine is in the vine: it is and it is not.
I say concerning God’s freedom that it yields no nature save one. God starts with the Son, and the Son is another than the Father who is power, and from them twain there blossoms forth the Holy Ghost. Our philosophers teach that the sun draws the flowers out of the roots through the stem, timelessly wellnigh and too subtly for any eye to follow. The soul, which has no nature in her ground, the ground of love, where she is love, emerges from this nature where she is stored in God. Whatever enters this being has much the same being. At the coming of the bride he devotes himself to her and works with all his might within his ground, in his innermost, where naught exists, where activity stops altogether. The tree of the Godhead grows in this ground and the Holy Ghost sprouts from its root. The flower that blossoms, love, is the Holy Ghost. In this Holy Ghost the soul flowers with the Father and the Son, and on this flower there rests and reposes the spirit of the Lord. He could not repose had he not rested first upon the Spirit. The Father and the Son rest on the Spirit, and the Spirit reposes upon them as on its cause, What is rest ? St Augustine says, rest is complete lack of motion : body and soul bereft of their own nature. One philosopher says, God’s idiosyncrasy is im- mutability. That is, all creatures. Man as transcending motion. ‚Jesse means a fire and a burning ; it signifies the ground of divine love and also the ground of the soul. Out of this ground the rod grows, 2.e. in the purest and highest ; it shoots up out of this virgin soil at the breaking forth of the Son. Upon the rod opens a flower, the flower of the Holy Ghost. We beseech the Lord our God that we may rest in him and he in us to his glory. So help us God. Amen.
What Manner of Child Shall This Be?
Puis puer iste erit? Etenim manus domini erat cum illo (Luc. 1gg)- ‘What manner of child shall this be? The hand of the Lord is with him.’ The hand of the Lord means the Holy Ghost, for two
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reasons. First, because work is wrought with the hand; and next, because it is one with the arm and with the body. All human actions start in the heart, extend to the limbs, and are done by the hand; so the seat of the soul being chiefly in the heart, in the heart is the mainspring of her energies. Likewise it is the Father who is the fount and origin of all divine activity, and the Son is represented by his arm; as it says in the Magnificat, ‘he hath shewed strength with his arm.’ Divine power proceeds from the body via the arm to the hand, whereby is signified the Holy Ghost, even-as the soul which courses through the body and in material things proclaims her ghostly properties. Wherefore we argue that the Holy Ghost is meant by the hand which wrought in this child.
Now mark the state of the soul wherein God is apt to work. He speaks of a child, suggesting pure joy, an unblemished state. The soul God works in must be pureand clean. A master says, ‘ The eternal wisdom tarries in Zion, her rest is in that pure city’; Zion meaning a height and a watch-tower (or resting-place). Again, she must be withdrawn from mortal, impermanent things. And thirdly, she must be on the watch for coming hindrances. God comes out of kindness because of the love he bears to the soul. He has endowed her with a godly light, the reflection of himself, so that he may be able freely to energise in her in his own likeness. Love cannot be without finding or making alike. Suppose I have bidden a man, unless he have gotten some liking for me, he will never willingly follow me. And so with the soul which follows ' God; God’s members must all do his bidding whether they want toorno. If they do it reluctantly, then it is painful to him ; no work is ever pleasant that is done without liking.
No creature can do more than in her lies. The soul makes headway solely by the light that God has given her, that being her own, presented her by God as a bridal gift. God comes in love with intent that the soul may arise, that in love she may energise above herself. For love cannot be without finding her like or. making alike, except in as far as God works in love passing soul. Soul does not ply the work of grace (since that is not her nature) till she is gotten yonder, where God is plying himself, where the work is as noble as the worker, his own nature, to wit. As with light, for example. In wood it produces its like: heat and fire, and the harder the wind blows the fiercer the flame. Now put love for the fire and the Holy Ghost for the wind: the stronger breathes the Holy Ghost the more all-consuming its fire, albeit not sudden; it keeps pace with the growth of the soul. If the whole man were consumed at once it would not be well, for one might live a thousand years and still go on waxing in love. Light
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acts upon flowers, making them grow and bear fruit; in living creatures it makes for life; in man it makes for happiness. This comes by the grace of God which raises the soul to a higher power ; for if the soul is to be like God she must transcend herself. Amen.