The first is in the name Moses, which means, taken from the water, and so shall we be taken out of instability, rescued from the storm of the world-flow. Next, all our animal passions, with their agitations, must be herded up into the very topmost, the ghostly
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power of the soul. Unless the soul is raised to a higher power, from temporal to celestial things, the Holy Ghost cannot enter in to do its work in her. The work God does is wrought by him in spirit, and any temporal or mundane thing obstructs the flow of God. On this account Christ said to his disciples, ‘ It is expe- dient for you that I should go away,’ for his disciples loved him as a man and mortal, so that despite his being the most perfect good God ever sent or that could become, yet he was a hindrance to his followers by his bodily presence ; how much more then must gross temporal things be hindrances to us? The soul must rise above herself and above this time if she wants God to do his work in her. However well we see and understand the act of divine love we cannot in this body perfectly attain thereto any more than Moses could reach the burning bush. But we must regulate our lives so as to get to Christ our Lord when time is done.
Hindrances
When the disciples knew their Lord was leaving them he said, “ It is expedient for you that I should go away, for unless I go away ye will not receive the Holy Ghost.’ Three kinds of people are hindered from so doing.
First, sinners who by using creatures at their godless pleasure hinder their soul’s beatitude. These are wanderers in the way of God. Concerning them St Augustine says, ‘ Accursed are they that wander in God’s way.’ I will not here discuss them further ; following their animal passions they turn their back on God. Also, there are some who are over-fond of ministering to their outward wants. Touching these our Lord Jesus said, ‘He that loveth his soul shall lose it’ (or, in other words, to pander to the body is to lose the soul), ‘and he that hateth his soul shall keep it’ (meaning those that follow not their own inordinate desires).
Secondly, a number of good people are hindered by the seven sacraments. Sacramentum means a sign, and anyone who rests content merely with the sign will never get to the interior truth. But the seven sacred rites all point us to the unique reality. Marriage, for example, is a symbol of divine and human nature, an earnest of the union of the soul with God. And anyone who lingers in the mere illusion is kept from the eternal fact. It is no true marriage when a man and woman indulge their sensual passions and live according to their fleshly lusts; married life involves keeping the marriage rule with its seven times and its works of mercy.
Thirdly, many pious souls are hindered by scrupulosity in
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confession and repentance, the outward forms thereof, but they take no trouble about the truth itself. Jesus says of these,‘ He that has bathed needs but to wash his feet ’; once cleansed, that is, by genuine sorrow and confession, no man has need to re-confess old sins ; but he should wash the feet of his desire and purify his conscience by shriving from new faults. And devout souls are hindered too from spiritual attainment by indulgence in sheer physical enjoyment of the humanity of Christ. When our Lord said to his disciples, ‘It is expedient for you that I should go away,’ he was addressing not them only but all who in the days to come should try to follow him to high achievement. For these there is a hindrance in his manhood if, regardless of his Godhood, they content themselves with that. We ought to follow God in all his ways, not keep to his humanity as distinct from his divinity.
The Lord Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh to the Father but by me, and whoso shall enter by any other door the same is a thief and a robber.’ He also said he was not from himself. The Eternal Wisdom said, ‘ He that created me is resting in my tent ’ and withal is uncreated. Christ is the born wisdom and power of the Father. His wisdom is the Son and his goodness is the Holy Ghost, they being of one nature and distinct in Person. And this tent that Wisdom speaks of is the humanity of Christ wherein the Father reposes with his Son and with the Holy Ghost who are alike in nature and are God in Person. Wherefore let us worship this tent of his humanity solely in its oneness with his deity. For man is truly God and God is truly man. Nor ought we to encumber ourselves with any creature excepting Jesus Christ, who is our saving way to his heavenly Father and apart from whom there is no other way. But albeit we have taken leave of creature and entered the true path, which is Jesus Christ, we are not wholly blest. Though we are in sight of the divine reality we are not yet the same as what we see. St Augustine says, No soul can get to God who goes not minus creature to find God minus likeness. And this finds warrant in Christ’s words, ‘ Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye then thou canst take the mote out of thy brother’s eye.’ Whence we draw the moral that any temporal thing is a beam in the eye of the soul and prevents divine oneness. It follows that the soul will have to cast herself out of herself and stand all bare of creature and wholly unnecessitous, for so she puts herself upon a par with God who,'naked and unindigent of things, goes absolutely free from matter. Thus at length the soul enters the union of the Holy Trinity to be wholly blest when, casting hersélf into the desert of the Godhead where neither act nor form exists, she is
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lost to self’ in the rapture of reunion : as self she comes to naught and has no more to do with things than she had when she was not. Now dead to self she is alive in God. But the dead perish inthetomb. So perishes the soul as such, entombed in the desert of the Godhead. Of such St Paul declares, ‘ Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’ According to Dionysius, burial in God is nothing but the crossing over into uncreated life. This crossing is beyond the ken of multitudinous knowledge.
Such is the nature of the soul that where she is she is entire : where this nature exists it exists as a whole in each member; and by the same token, God is in all places and in every creature, for what lives in the soul is none other than God. So leaving every- thing to him let her depart from all that is not God nor rest until she grasps the uncreated God. So help us our Lord Jesus Christ who, as though to-day, ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of the Father with whom and with the Holy Ghost he is the working of the Deity. Amen.
LXXVII! THE IMAGE IN THE SOUL
Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram (Gen. 1,,). God said, ‘Let us make man in our image.’ What is God’s speaking ? The Father observing himself with impartible perception perceives the impartible purity of his own essence. There he sees the image of creatures as a whole, there he speaks himself. His Word is his clear perception and that is his Son. God’s speaking is his begetting.
-God said, ‘Let us make.’ Theologians ask: Why did not God say, ‘Let us do’ or ‘Let us work?’ Doing is an outward act beseeming not the inward man. Work comes from the outward and from the inward man, but the innermost man takes no part in it. In making a thing the very innermost self of a man comes into outwardness.
When God made man the innermost heart. of the Godhead was concerned in his making. A heathen philosopher says, God made all things with wisdom. The Doctor says, ‘ The Son is the wisdom or love of the Father wherewith he made all things.’
God said, ‘ Let us make man.’ Why did God not say, * Let us make manhood,’ for it was manhood that Christ took ? Man and manhood differ. Talking of man we mean a person ; talking of manhood we mean human nature. Philosophers define what nature is. It is the thing that essence can receive. Hence God assumed manhood and not man. It is written in the book of
1 See also Greith, pp. 99-104, etc.
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Moses, Adam was the first man that God ever made. And I say that Christ was the first man God made. How so? The philosopher says, what is first in intention is last in execution. When a carpenter builds a house his first intention is the roof and that is the finish of the house.
God said, ‘Let us make man.’ Whereby he gave it to be
understood that he is more than one: three in Person, one in essence. St Augustine relates that when he was looking for the image in the soul he sought it in the outward man, and there he found four likenesses and three links and two faces. He found nothing of the image. Then he hunted for it in the inner man, and there he found one thing which answered to the simple essence in its simplicity and to the various Persons in its trinity of powers. He found two faces to it. One working downwards and the other upwards. With the lower face she knows herself and outward things. The upper face has two activities; with one she knows God and his goodness and his emanation ; with this she loves and knows him to-day and not to-morrow. I love God to-day and not to-morrow. Now the image will not lie in her three powers, by reason of their instability. Another power is in the highest face, which is concealed ; in this concealment lies the image. .' The image has five properties. First, it is made by another. Secondly, it answers to that same. Thirdly, it has emanated from it; not that it is the divine nature but it is a substance subsisting in itself; it is the pure light that emanates from God and only differs from him in understanding God. Fifthly, it tends towards what it came from. Two things adorn this image. One is, it is according to him; the other, there is somewhat of eternity therein. The soul has three powers: the image does not lie in them ; but she has one power: the actual (or active) intellect.
Now St Augustine and thé New Philosophers declare that in this lies impartible memory, intellect and will, and these three are inseparate, t.e. the hidden image answers to God’s essence. The divine being (God) is shining straight into this image, and the image shines straight into God with nothing between.
May God come into us and we into him and be united with him, So help us God. Amen.
The Speculative Intellect
St Paul reminds us that we being planted in the likeness of God may attain to higher and truer vision. For this St Dionysius says we require three things. The first is, possession of one’s
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mind. The second is, a mind that is free. The third is, a mind that can see. How can we acquire this speculative mind ? By a habit of mental concentration.
The soul has a ghostly spot in her where she has all things matter-free just as the first cause harbours in itself all things immaterially. The soul has also a light in her with which she creates all things. When this light and this spot coincide so that each is the seat of the other, then, only then, one is in full posses- sion of one’s mind.. What more is there to tell? It means our outward man’s farewell to all satisfaction in creatures and the inner man’s being so meet for God that nothing arises within him that he would have changed : then, not till then, a man is self-possessed. This cannot happen here for, as the Doctor says, when this that we are speaking of befalls, the highest power of the soul sees God in her own power. As St Dionysius puts it, Then the soul is not called soul, she is the sovran power of God.