Again, he says, ‘ a little and ye shall not see me.’ While time and world, which is little, is within you, ye shall not see me. The angel swore on his eternal life that when this life is done there shall be no more time. And in his gospel St John quite plainly states, ‘ the world was made by him and they knew him not.’ In line then, to quote a heathen doctor, world -and -time is a little thing. It is out of world-and-time that we see God.
Thirdly. He said, ‘ a little and ye see me not,’ as though to say: the very smallest thing that is foreign to the soul will prevent her seeing God. For heaven is shut to strangers; even an angel from another heaven would not succeed in getting in, for it is not his. Why has my mouth, my ear, no sense of heaven? Because they are not like it. St Bernard says, ‘ My eye is like the heavens in being round and clear and placed high in the body, nor can it brook the entry of any foreign matter.’ Before my eye can see the painting on the wall this must be filtered through the air and in a still more tenuous form be borne into my phantasy, to be assimilated by my understanding. These properties, both, the soul must needs possess; and this likeness, how subtile soever it may be, with its suggestiveness, its hint of sin, the soul rejects as foreign to herself. If God himself were foreign to the soul she would have none of him. What the eye perceives has to be conveyed to it by means, in images. If there were no means we MEISTER ECKHART MEISTER ECKHART should see nothing. If an angel sees another angel or anything that God has made, he does so by some means. But himself and God he sees immediately. If my soul knows an angel she knows him by some means and in an image, an image imageless, not in an image such as they are here. Soul and angel are material things compared with God. Angelic knowledge, anything created, is a means. Which God wholly lacks: he is known without means, without little. For my soul to know God with nothing between thou must be with me and I with thee.
I will now suggest a meaning quite other than these three. ‘ While ye are little ye do not see me. To see me ye have to grow great.’ Intellect is great indeed, yet small compared with the light of God. Our Lord upbraided his apostles saying, ‘ There is still in you but a little light.’ They were not devoid of light, but it was weak, the light of grace, the brightest thing God ever made or ever could have made. And after all the soul is small so long as she is still in grace. Sometime or other the soul must rise in grace. If grace is not yet overcome, the soul has still to ascend in grace and, being perfected, to transcend grace: then she sees God.
Fourthly, ‘ and ye shall not see me ’: being poor in light and grace ye cannot see God. One must abound in light and grace before one can see God. Grace is a surpassing light, superangelic. In grace we can sec God but from afar. While grace exists in us as grace we are not able to see God. ‘ Ye do not sec me because I am going to my Father.’ While the soul progresses God remains unseen. While we are on the way to God we have not gotten him. With finding God all progress ends, as our Lord said to St Mary Magdalene, ‘ Touch me not, I am not yet ascended in thee to my Father.’ While God is ascending in the soul and has not reached the zenith, we are unable to see God. St Paul says, ‘ God dwells in light inaccessible.’ And one saint declares, ‘ No man ever saw God.’ St Paul tells us ‘ We shall know God as we are known.’ As God knows himself so we shall know him; as he sees all things in himself so we shall see all things in him. ‘ We shall know as we are known,’ St Paul says. The little being cleared away, I shall see as I am seen, as he sees himself, without little, with nothing between; all in himself and in him all things, nothing outside him; and we too shall know without little and without means. We shall know in his Son. The Son is the image of the Godhead, not the Godhead itself: he is the idea of God the Father. The Father’s reflection is his only Son. In that idea where nothing exists, in that image we shall be reflected in the Son and by the Son reflected back into the Father: in that image, all the same, where there is no this nor that, we shall know SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 118 God with God’s only Son. May the little depart from us and allow us to know thee the one true God. So help us God. Amen.
XLII THE IMAGE AND ITS OBJECT Modicum etjam non videbitis (Joh, My Latin quotation is from the Gospel of St John which wc read on Sunday. It is what our Lord said to his disciples, ‘ A modicum, a little, and ye see me not.’ Anything, however small, adhering to the soul prevents your seeing me. St Augustine being asked the meaning of eternal life answered and said: Dost thou ask me what is eternal life? Ask eternal life, see what it says itself. None knows what heat is like the hot, nor wisdom like the wise, none knows the meaning of eternal life so well as the eternal life itself. Our Lord Jesus Christ says, ‘ This is eternal life, to know thee God, the one true God.’
‘ A modicum, a little, and lo! ye see me not.’ Now you must understand that if the soul saw God even from afar, or in some intervening thing, as in a cloud, an instant, she would not turn away from him, not for all the world. What think ye then would happen if she saw God in himself, as he is, face to face in his naked essence? All creatures God has ever made or could make if he would amount to very little, a mere nothing as compared with God himself. The heavens are big, so vast indeed, were I to tell ye would not credit me. If you could take a needle and prick the heavens with it, that needle-point of heaven, as compared with the whole heavens plus this entire world, would be greater than this universe compared with God. Well and truly then it may be said, ‘ a trifle, a little, and ye shall not sec me.’ Whilst thou seest aught of creature thou seest naught of God; however little, it must go. Says the soul in the Book of Love, ‘ I ran about and sought him whom my soul loveth and I found him not.’ She met with angels and many things besides, but she found not him whom her soul loved. Then she goes on to say, ‘ It was but a little I passed from them and I found him whom my soul loveth,’ just as though to say: when I had gotten beyond creatures (little things and of small account) I came on him whom my soul loveth. The soul must pass beyond, she must transcend, all creatures before she can find God.
Now you must know, God loves the soul so mightily, he who should rob God of loving the soul would rob him of his very life and being: would kill God, if one may so say; for the very love wherewith God loves the soul is what his Holy Breath is blowing in.
8 114 MEISTER ECKHART But if God loves the soul so much the soul must be a most important thing.
The philosopher says in his book On the Soul: If there were no means the eye could see a gnat, an ant, in heaven. And he was right, referring to the air and fire, etc. that intervene between the eye and heaven. Another philosopher declares that without means no eye could see at all. Both are expressing the same truth.
The first one says that if there were no means the eye could see an ant in heaven. And that is true. If nothing intervened between God and the soul she would see God every whit, for God himself is wholly free from means and brooks no sort of intervention. If the soul were stripped of all her sheaths, God would be discovered all naked to her view and would give himself to her, withholding nothing. As long as the soul has not thrown off all her veils, however thin, she is unable to see God. Any medium, but a hair’s-breadth, in betwixt the body and the soul stops actual union. That is true of corporal things and how much more of ghostly. Boethius says, Wouldst know the naked truth? Then cast off joy and fear and trust and hope and pain. Joy is a means, fear is a means, faith and hope and pain, they all are means. While thou regardest them and they have regard to thee thou canst not see God.
The second doctor says: without means the eye would see nothing. If I cover my eyes with my hand I can see nothing of my hand. If I put it before me I sec it quite distinctly. This is due to the dense nature of the hand which must be rarefied and rendered volatile in air and light and in effigy be carried to my eye. The same thing with a mirror. If thou hast it facing thee thy image is reflected in the glass. The eye, like the soul, is a mirror, and things presented to it all appear therein. I do not see the hand, the stone, itself: I see the image of the stone, but I do not see this image in a second image or by any other means: I see it without means and without image. This image is itself the means: image without image like motion without motion although causing motion and size which has no size though the principle of size. Even so the image is in this sense imageless that it is not seen in another image. The eternal Word is the means and the image itself which is without means and without image, so that the soul in the eternal Word conceives of God and knows him without image and with nothing between.
There is one power in the soul; intellect, of prime importance to the soul for making her aware of, for detecting, God. It has five properties. First, it is detached from here and now. Next, it is like nothing. Thirdly, it is pure and uncompounded.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 115 Fourthly, it is in itself active or self-searching. Fifthly, it is an image.
First, it is detached from here and now. Here and now, that, in other words, is time and place. Now is the minimum of time; not a fragment of time nor a fraction of time: a smack, a con- nection, an end of time. Small though it be it must go; every- thing time touches has to go. Again, it is detached from here. And here means place. The spot I am standing on is small, but it must disappear before I can see God.
Secondly, it has no like. A philosopher says, God is a thing that nothing is like and that nothing can become like. But according to St John, ‘ we shall be called God’s children ’ and if we are God’s children we must resemble God. How then can this doctor say God is a thing that nothing is like? The answer is that in being like nothing this power is like God. God is like nothing and this power is like nothing. You must understand that all creatures are by nature endeavouring to be like God. The heavens would not revolve unless they followed on the track of God or of his likeness. If God were not in all things, nature would stop dead, not working and not wanting; for whether thou like it or no, whether thou know it or not, nature funda- mentally is seeking, though obscurely, and tending towards God. No man in his extremity of thirst but would refuse the proffered draught in which there was no God. Nature’s quarry is not meat or drink nor clothes nor comfort nor any things at all wherein is naught of God, but covertly she seeks and ever more hotly she pursues the trail of God therein.
Thirdly, it is pure and unmingled. By nature God can tolerate no mingling or admixture. Nor is there in this power any inter- mingling or admixture: it is free from impurity and nothing foreign can occur therein. To tell a comely person he is fair and dark would do him an injustice. The soul must be without admixture. If someone hangs something to my cloak or sticks something on it then anyone who wears the eloak will wear too its attachments. If I go out hence, there will then go with me the whole of my attachments. What the spirit rests on, is attached to, takes the spirit wdth it. The man who rests on nothing, is attached to nothing, though heaven and earth should fall, will remain unmoved.
Fourthly, it is ever seeking, travailing, within. God is such that he ever abides in the innermost. And intellect is ever seeking him. But will goes out to what it loves in him. So at the coming of my friend, suddenly my heart goes out to him and he is glad. St Paul declares, ‘ we shall know God as we are known.’ And according to St John, ‘ we shall see God as he is.* MEISTER ECKHART Now if I am coloured I must have something in me that will take the colour. I should never colour unless I had a colour nature. And I can only see God in what he sees himself in. St Paul declares that ‘ God dwells in light inaccessible.’ It is not to be denied that keeping in the way, in the entry, though all well and good, is yet a long way from the truth, for it is not God.
Fifthly, it is an image. Mark this, it is important: it gives you the whole sermon in a nutshell. Object and image are bound up with one another so that we cannot part them. We can think of fire apart from heat and heat without the fire. We can think of the sun apart from light and of light as independent of the sun. But we cannot part the object from its image. I say more: Almighty God himself cannot disentangle them: they are born together and they die together. 1 do not die because my Father does. Suppose you die, then we no longer say, he is his son, we say, he was his son. Cloth that is bleached is like all whiteness in its whiteness. But if you blacken it, it is dead to whiteness. And here it is the same. If the image, God’s likeness, disappeared, there would perish also its exemplar, God. One thing I would say: ye arc become two, ye are become three. Now mark my words. Intellect peers in, it searches every corner of the Godhead and finding the Son in the heart of the Father, in his ground, it takes him and sets him in its own. Intellect presses in; she is not content with good or wisdom, nor with trutli nor yet with God himself. She is no more content with God than with a tree, a stone. She never rests until she gets into the ground whence truth and good proceed and takes them in principio, in the beginning, the fount of truth and goodness, where they rise before their coming forth: a ground far higher than truth and goodness arc. Her sister (will) contents herself with God as being good. But intellect, leaving this behind, goes in and breaks through to the root whence shoots the Son and whence the Holy Spirit blossoms forth. May we discover this and be for ever blest. So help us Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
XLIIIi KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE Meistcr Eckhart said: Doctors debate which is the nobler, knowledge or love. Some say that love is better than knowledge. I say it is not. Our best authorities declare that knowledge is nobler than. love. Love and will take God as being good. If God were not good, will would have none of him; if God were not ^ Jostes, No. 10.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS lovely, love would scout him. But understanding would not. Knowledge is not confined either to good or to love or to wisdom or lordship. By putting names to God the soul is only dressing him up and making a figure of Gk)d; nor is this the doing of knowledge. Though God were neither good nor wise, still under- standing would seize him; it strips everything off, not stopping either at wisdom or good, nor majesty nor power. It pierces to naked being and grasps God bare, ere he is clothed in thought with wisdom and goodness. Where the Son has his beatitude, there in the Father, understanding finds hers.
Now I am going to say something never read nor preached before.
At the College yesterday they admitted that there is a ground within the soul corresponding to the Father-nature. Just as the Father is bringing forth his Son in the Holy Ghost and these three are one God, so this ground is bringing forth understanding and will, one power as God is one Word. Withal this ground is free from any taint of creature. All the things we attribute to the soul form a screen round this ground wherein God is looking at the soul and the soul is looking at God. According to St Paul, ‘ We beholding the vision of God’s splendour arc changed in that same image from glory to glory.’ This image is too closely joined to God for creatures to dissever and God himself will not divide it. Alas! we reck so little of this image, we keep it not so bright as it was given us by God! Whatever wc may do God is never satisfied unless we there abide in utter destitution and so enable God at all times without ceasing to bring his one -begotten Son to birth in this same ground. This birth befalls not once a year nor once a day nor once an hour, but all the time, above time, in the while which is neither here nor now. This is the ground I speak of. May we live in suchwise that God can energise in us. So help us God.
I have sometimes said that the soul is an imitation of God; now I say that she is his image, and in the very same form the Father has eternally formed, and the same that Christ is formed in.
According to Meister Eckhart, All creatures contain one re- flection: one, that is the denial of its being the other; the highest of the angels denies he is the lowest. Gk)d is the denial of denials: the one which is exclusive of all otherness. To call a tree a tree is not to name it, for all the species are con- fused. If we name it in its first eruption, in its perfection, we do not call it a tree, we call it pure divine nature. Another notion of it, rather better. The divine nature is the great divider. Meister Eckhart says, The Pharisee besought our Lord to eat with him. What is the Pharisee? He stands for detachment; a MEISTER ECKHART Pharisee is one who is detached from all and united into one. The prophet cries, ‘ Lord have mercy on the work which is in thee.’ The highest work God ever wrought was done in mercy. Under- standing goes in deep enough to lay hold of being simply as being- in-itself, but where being is losing itself, drowned in itself, there understanding falls away.
Friar John says: It is a question among the theologians whether it lies with the soul, or with God, for her to be God. I say the power lies in the soul. Suppose the soul ready to be God, then God must work in that power and draw the power into himself: the energy then is in God and the capacity is in the soul. Were I wholly that I am I should be God; there would be for me neither time nor place nor change. There is nothing so easy to me, so possible, as to be God. To stay quiet requires no work, whereas if I change to another I must reduce myself to naught: but I remain as I am.
I say, no creature is so vile but it can boast of being; in proportion to its being is its power of being God, for whatever is being is God.
Bishop Albertus says, Man is divine above all as receiving unhindered the inflowing Deity. In the words of the saint, The light of my soul is never extinguished and my desire is ever in the beholding of God.
XLIVi IN ALL THINGS I SEEK REST In omnibus requiem queesivi (EccL 24iji). things I seek rest.
The masters tell us that God made the powers of the soul by nature receptive to their likes, thus the car is always hearing and the eye is always seeing. What my eye sees is one with it, just like the air with light. The nature of the eye is to see colour, otherwise it would not be an eye. And conversely with colour, by nature it affects the eye or it would not be colour. To think of it as colour yet incommunicable to the eye would be to deny that it is colour. I can see the minster. But no one sees it in me. For a thing to be visible in me, it must be so placed that its reflection can be seen in me. Standing in front of me and face to face a man could see his image in my eye. Stand over flowing water and you cannot see yourself. But supposing it is clear, then where it is collected and still enough for a reflection you can see your form in it. They say glass is transparent, like a crystal. But cover it with lead or wax and it reflects: it gives an image of whatever stands before it, perfect in every detail.
^ See also Wackemagel, No. Ixiii.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS God made the soul, her highest power, her best, in order to beget himself therein. There, says a philosopher, begetter and begotten are the same and there is neither time nor place nor matter. Matter means gross bodily things; it is intractable and hinders. Hence it has been said that if the Father could he would make himself. But he cannot, so he makes his like.
Our Lord said, ‘ I dwell in Jacob and I rest in Israel.’ Jacob stands for riddance. God is gotten nowhere excepting in the soul that has put all creatures under her feet. St Augustine says, God is being born within the soul the whole time without ceasing, but not born to us to whom he is not manifest but hidden. As long as God is hidden in the soul by aught, he is not born to us, and you may be quite sure that God is never born to any soul excepting she has put all creatures under her feet: where there is no other there God begets himself, not his likeness, his own self: God and God. Well and truly then the Son may say, ‘ I dwell in Jacob and in Israel 1 rest. And said he: ‘ My Father sent me and he engendered in me that which is my nature: that I am being born all the time within the soul who is pure enough for him to see himself in.’ There God is at rest and the soul reposes in God. To deprive God of resting in the soul would be to deprive him of his deity. To rob him of it even in one’s thoughts is to rob him of his Godhood, since he is pleased to rest in all things. David says: ‘ My Lord said to my heart: thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee in the reflection of the Holy Ghost,’ and again he said: ‘ I have begotten thee in my innermost heart, in the depths of my soul; I have spread my roots, I have estab- lished myself in the city of Zion and my power in Jerusalem.’ The soul in Zion, who has transcended things and is dwelling in her central depth, in her docs God give birth to his inmost self. The heavenly Father said to his only Son: As I begat thee in my inmost heart, even so I charge thee by thy divine nature that thou comest not to birth save in tl\c innermost recesses of the soul. — ^Whosoever would deny to God that he should beget himself in this way in the soul would deny him his God-nature. May God thus beget himself in us, So help us God. Amen.
XLV IN ALL THINGS I SEEK REST In omnibus requiem queesivi {Eccl, 24^]^). We find this in the Book of Wisdom. We may imagine Wisdom in friendly MEISTER ECKHART conversation with the soul, saying, ‘In all things I sought rest.’ To which the soul replies, ‘ He who created me rested in my tent.’ And Wisdom says again, ‘ My rest is in the holy city.’ If I were asked to say to what end the creator has created creatures, I should answer: rest. And were I asked a second time, what are all creatures seeking so eagerly by nature? I should answer: rest. And if a third time I were asked what the soul seeks in all her agitations, once more I should say: rest.
Look how the face of divine nature turns foolish and demented all the powers of the soul with longing for it, so as to draw them to itself. God likes this so well, it pleases him so much that his entire God-nature is turned into this bent. He says, ‘ In the holy place likewise I repose.’ As the soul rests in God so God reposes in her. If she rests partly in God he rests partly in her. If she rests wholly in him he rests altogether in her. In those limpid souls where God can see the reflection of himself, God is reposing in the soul and the soul is reposing in God. To deprive God of this, though but in thought, is to deprive him, to deny to him, his Godhood who is seeking rest in all things, for God’s nature is rest.
Fourthly, whether they know it or not, creatures are all in search of rest. No one can shut or open his eyes without seeking rest: he is ridding himself of some hindrance or finding some- where to rest. These arc the two motives of all human action. As I often say, my love is placed where I most clearly see God’s likeness. But rest is more like God than any creature.
Mark how the soul must be for God to rest in her. She must be pure. What makes the soul pure? Keeping to spiritual things. She is exalted too by these. The more she is exalted the purer she becomes in her intention and the more efficient in her work. As the philosopher says about the stars: they become less potent as they near the earth, being out of their true course In their proper orbit, though they are invisible on earth, they have more pull upon it. St Anselm apostrophises the soul, ‘ Withdraw thyself a little from the tumult of external things.’ And again, ‘ Flee away and hide thee from the rush of inner thoughts which cause such great disquiet to the soul.’
We can ask of God no better thing than rest. All God wants of man is a peaceful heart; then he performs within the sqpl an act too Godlike for creature to attain to or yet see. The divine Wisdom is discreetly fond and lets no creature watch. As our Lord says, ‘ I will lead my bride into the desert and will speak to her in her heart/ into a solitude, that is, away from creatures.
Fourthly, he says the soul must rest in God. God cannot do divine work in the soul, for in the soul things are all ruled by SERMONS AND COLLATIONS measure. Measure means limit, within and without. There is none of this in God’s operations, which are infinite: openly enclosed in God’s revelation. David says, ‘ God sits above the Cherubim. He docs not say, above the Seraphim. Cherubim means wisdom, knowledge which brings God to the soul and leads the soul to God. But not into God. Not in her own intelligence does God perform his godly operation, because in her this is ruled by measure; but he uses it as being God, divine. The highest power steps forth (that is, the will) and breaking into God, leads in the soul with her intelligence and all her powers and makes her one with God. Here God is acting above the power of the soul: not as in the soul but as in God. The soul now dowsed in God and in divine nature, receives divine life; now she is subject to the law of God and is of the order of God. To take an illustration from natural philosophy. At the moment of conception the child in its mother’s womb has neither limbs nor colour. But when the soul is poured into the body it takes form and colour and becomes an entity (in virtue of the soul), with the created nature of the soul and the appearance of a living being. And the soul, when perfectly atoned with God and dowsed in his divinity, loses all her hindrances, her feebleness and instability, and suddenly renewed with divine life grows orderly in all her ways and virtues. Look at a light, the nearer the wick the duller and denser the glow; as the flame shoots up from the wick it gets brighter and brighter. The more exalted the soul the better God can do in her his divine work in his own likeness. Like a mountain rising up two leagues above the earth, graven with magic runes and sacred characters which defy the winds and rain. Even so the really holy soul is uplifted into perfect calm, absolute and changeless in divine activity. That religious has good cause for shame who is moved so readily to glo#m or anger or desire. He is no true religious.
Lastly, creatures are all seeking rest whether they know it or not. Never is the stone bereft of motion while it is not lying on the ground. And similarly fire. All creatures also: they seek their natural place. The loving soul finds rest nowhere except in God. David says, ‘ God has ordained to everything its place: to fish the water, birds the air and beasts the earth and to the soul the Godhead.’ And Job declares in the same strain, ‘What is in God he gives us for our joy and bliss.’ God grant us peace and rest in him, So help us the eternal truth, which is himself. Amen^ MEISTER ECKHART XL VII POVERTY The really virtuous man does not want God. What I have I want not. He makes no plans, he sets no store by things. As God is higher than man so is he readier to give than man is to receive. Not by his fasts and vigils and his many outward works does a man prove his progress in the virtuous life, but it is a sure sign of his growth if he finds eternal things more and more attrac- tive than the things that pass. The man who has a thousand marks of gold and gives it all away for love of God is doing a fine thing; yet I say, it were far finer and far better for him to despise it, setting it at naught on God’s account.
A man should orient his will and all his works to God and having only God in view go forward unafraid, not thinking, am I right or am I wrong? One who worked out all the chances ere starting his first fight would never fight at all. And if, going to some place, we must think how to set the front foot down we shall never get there. It is our duty to do the next thing: go straight on, that is the right way.
There are five kinds of poverty. The first is devilish poverty; the second, golden poverty; the third is willing poverty; the fourth is spiritual poverty; the fifth, divine poverty.
The first, or devilish poverty, applies to all who have not what they fain would have, outward or inward. That is their hell.
The second, golden poverty, is theirs who in the midst of goods and properties pass empty out and in. If everything they own was burnt the effect on them would be to leave them quite un- moved. Heaven must needs be theirs and they would have no less.
The third is willing poverty and belongs to those who, renouncing goods and honours, body and soul, leave everything with right good grace. These give judgment with the twelve apostles and by pronouncing judgment it is their judgment day who, knowing what they leave, yet set another in their heart and mightily bestir themselves about their own departure. Such are the willing poor.
The fourth are spiritual poor. These have forsaken friends and kindred, not merely goods and honour, body and soul; further, they are quit of all good works: the eternal Word does all their work while they are idle and exempt from all activity. And since in the eternal Word is neither bad nor good, therefore they are absolutely empty.
The fifth are godly poor, for God can find no place in them to ^ Jostes, No. 34.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS work in. Theirs is riddance without and within for they are bare and free from all contingent form. This is the man: in this man all men are one man and that man is Christ. Of him one master says, ‘ Earth was never worthy of this man who looks on heaven and earth the same.’ This man is object-free in time and in eternity.
Now enough of those who have no object in eternity, but one thing more of those who are objectless in time. What is meant by object? There are two objects: one is otherness (not I); the other is a man’s own proper self (his 1).
The first otherness is becomings all that has come into existence; such things breed otherness and pass away. This applies to the passage of time.