A man who has gone out of himself and is the only-begotten Son owns what is proper to the only Son. God’s work and teach- ing are all done in his Son. God works with the sole object of getting us to be his only Son. As soon as he perceives that we
' are his only Son, God makes for us impetuously ; he comes well- nigh to shattering his essence, naughting his very self, in his
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rash haste to show us the whole abysm of his Godhead, the fullness of his essential nature. God flies to make this ours. as it is his. Here God enjoys and delights in his plenitude. And this man who is within God’s love and ken is none other than what God is him- self. Loving thyself thou lovest all men as thyself. While thou lovest anyone less than thine own self thou dost not love thyself in truth : not till thou lovest all men as thyself, all men in one man who is both God and man. The man who loves himself and all men as himself is righteous, absolutely just.
Sometimes people say, ‘I like my friends and _ benefactors better than other people.’ But I say that is wrong, imperfect. True, we must make shift with it as we have to do with a side wind to cross the sea: it will take us over. Like our preference for one man above another, it is natural. To love another as myself means that I would as lief his fate for good and ill, for life and death, happened to me as him, which would amount to perfect understanding.
As bearing on this subject St Paul says, ‘ I would I were divorced from God for ever, for God and for my friends’ sake.’ And as you know, to leave God for an instant is to leave God eternally and to leave God at all is hell torment. What does St Paul mean then by wishing to be divorced from God? Doctors debate whether St Paul was upon the way to his perfection or whether he was perfect ? I say he was perfect, otherwise he could not have said this.
I will put into plain words what St Paul means by wishing to depart from God. Man’s last and highest leave-taking is leaving God for God. St Paul left God for God: he left everything he could give or take of God, every concept of God. In leaving these he left God for God since God remained to him in his essential self; not as a concept of himself, nor yet as an acquired thing, but God in his essential actuality. This is no case of give and take between himself and God: it is the one and perfect union. Here man is the true man whom suffering can no more befall than it can befall the divine essence, for, as I have said before, there is something in the soul so nearly kin to God that it is one and not united. It is one; it has naught in common with naught and is naught to aught. Anything created is naught. It is remote and alien from creature. If man were wholly this he would be wholly uncreated and uncreaturely; if everything temporal were so, were comprehended in this one, it would be nothing else than the unity itself. Were I to find myself but for a single instant in this case, I should esteem myself of no more moment than a worm.
God gives to everything alike, and as flowing forth from God
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things are all equal; angels, man and creatures all proceed from God alike in their first emanation. To take things in their primal emanation is to take them all alike. If here in time they are alike, in God in eternity they are much more so. Any flea as it is in God is nobler than the highest of the angels in himself. Things are all the same in God : they are God himself.
God delights so in this likeness that he pours out his whole nature, his whole substance into it, in his own self. The joy and satisfaction of it are ineffable. It is like a horse turned loose in a lush meadow giving vent to his horse-nature by galloping full- tilt about the field: he enjoys it, and it is his nature. And just in the same way God’s joy and satisfaction in his likes finds vent in his pouring out his entire nature and his being into this likeness, for he is this likeness himself.
It is a question whether those angels who are dwelling here with us to serve and guard us have less likeness in their joys than the ones abiding in eternity : is it in any sense a drawback to them to . be serving and protecting us? No, not at all. Their joy is undiminished, so is too their likeness ; for the work of the angels is the will of God and the will of God is the work of the angels. Neither in their joy, their likeness nor their work are these angels handicapped. If God should bid an angel go pick the cater- pillars off a tree, the angel would obey him readily, nay, since it is God’s will it would be his happiness.
Being established in God’s will, a man will want what is God and what is God’s will and nothing else. If he is sick he will not be wanting to be well. To him all pain is pleasure, multitude is pure and single, provided he is really in the will of God. Aye, though it were the pains of hell it would be joy and happiness to him. He has left himself and he is free, passive to all impressions. My eye can see colour because it is free to be coloured. When I see blue or white, my eye which is seeing the colour is taking the colour that it sees. The eye wherein I see God is the same eye \ wherein God sees me: my eye and God’s eye are one eve, one vision, one knowing, one love.
Man being thus in the love of God is dead to self and all created ' things, and no more mindful of himself than one a thousand miles away. This man abides in likeness, in unity, and there is no unlikeness in him. This man has left the world and himself as well. Supposing some man owned the world and for God’s sake gave it up just as he had gotten it¢ then God would give him back the world and eternal life to boot. And if there were a second man possessing merely the good will, who thought: Lord were this whole world mine, nay two of them (or any number he may choose), I would resign it and myself as well, entire as I received it from
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thee : him would God recompense no less than if it had been given by his hand. Another man with nothing to resign, bodily or ghostly, would be the most resigned of all. He who for one instant wholly resigns self, to him shall all be given. To leave himself for twenty years and then to have self back again, an instant, is. never to have left himself at all. He who both has and is resigned, nor ever casts one glance at what he has resigned but remains firm and unshaken and motionless in himself, that man is free. May we remain steadfast and immoveable, like the eternal Father, So help us God and his eternal Wisdom. Amen.
Dives
Homo quidam erat dives etc. (Luc. 16,,). ‘ There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day and he had no name.’
This will equally apply to the causeless Deity and to the loving soul. ‘There was a rich man.’ Man means a rational entity. A heathen philosopher says, ‘ By man in the scriptures we mean God.’ And St Gregory says, if there were in God one thing nobler than another we should say it is his understanding ; for in under- standing God is manifested to himself; in understanding God is proceeding in himself; in understanding God is proceeding forth into all things. Were there no understanding in God there would be no Trinity and no emanation of creatures.
He had no name. And so is the threefold nature of God name- less ; such names as the soul gives him are gotten of her own understanding. As the heathen philosopher says in his book, The Light of Lights, * God is superessential and super-rational and unintelligible,’ that is, to the natural understanding. I speak not of gracious understanding, for by grace we may be brought to know as much as St Paul did, who was caught up into the third heaven where he saw those things that he neither would nor could express. He could not express them as he saw them, for when we know a thing we know it either in its cause or in its mode or by its activity. God remains unknown because he is the first (7.e. he has no cause), he is unconditioned (i.e. unknowable) and he is inactive (in his hidden stillness). He is without the names that are applied to him. Moses enquired hisname. God answered and said, ‘ He who is hath sent thee.’ He could not understand it in any other form. God as he is in himself he cannot give creatures to understand, . not that he cannot do it but creature cannot understand. As
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the heathen philosopher says, ‘God is beyond nature, beyond praise, beyond reason and beyond understanding.’
‘This man was rich.’ And so is God rich in himself and in all things. Mark the plenitude of God. It is fivefold. First, he is the prime cause, so he pervades all things.—Next, he is essentially one, so he is universal.—Thirdly, he is the fountain-head, so he is flowing into all things.—Fourthly, he is unchangeable, so he is most desirable.—Fifthly, he is perfect, so he is most incomprehensible.
Being the first cause he imparts himself. As the heathen philosopher observes, ‘The First Cause pours into causes in general more than these secondary causes pour into their causes.’ Again, he is indivisible. Bishop Albertus says a thing is impartible which is intrinsically one without a second. And the sum of all partibles amounts to what he is. In him creatures are one in the same, they are God in God. In themselves they are naught.—Thirdly, being the fountain-head he is overflowing into all things. Bishop Albertus says: ‘Into things in general he flows in three ways: in being, in life and in light ; and into the rational soul in particular as the potentiality of all things, the bringing back of creatures to their original source.’ To wit, the light of lights : ‘ All gifts and perfections flow from the Father of lights,’ as St James says.—Fourthly, being unchangeable he is most comfortable. Here note that God unites with things while keeping his intrinsic oneness, and all things are one in him. Hence Christ’s- words, ‘ Ye shall be turned into me and I into you.’ Owing to his unchangeableness and the littleness of creatures. For as the prophet says, all things are to God as a drop to the ocean. And as the drop becomes the ocean not the ocean the drop so the soul imbibing God turns into God, not God into the soul. There the soul loses her name, her power and her activity but not her existence. The soul abides in God as God is abiding in himself. Anent which Bishop Albertus declares that the will a man dies in he abides in eternally.—Fifthly, being perfect he is most incom- prehensible. God is self-perfeet and omni-perfect. What is perfection in God ? It means that he is brim-full of himself and is the sole good of all things. And because he is good he is the desired of all things.
He Went Up Into a Mountain
Videus Jesus turbas ascendit in montem etc. (Matt. 5,). We read in the gospel that our Lord departed from the multitude and ascended into the mountain. There he opened his mouth and taught them about the kingdom of God.