Now mark the fruits borne by a man when he is one with God: together with God he is V)earing all creatures and big with beatitude for every creature in virtue of being one with him.
The other text from the epistle says, ‘ Blessed is the man that continues in wisdom.’ He says, ‘in wisdom,’ wisdom being a feminine noun and feminine nouns denote passivity. Now in God we posit both action and passion, for the Father is doing and the Son is suffering, this being characteristic of born natures. Eternal born wisdom, wherein all things stand distinct, is the Son, and that is why he says, ‘ Blessed is the man that continues in wisdom.’ ‘ Blessed is the man,’ he says. Now as I have often told you, there are two powers in the soul: one is the man and the other is MEISTER ECKHART MEISTER ECKHART the woman. He says, ‘ Blessed is the man.’ The faculty of soul we call the man is the chief power of the soul, wherein God is a naked light; for nothing but God enters into this power and this power is ever in God: the man who has gotten all things in this power has gotten them not as being things, he has them as being in God. We ought to abide all the time in this power because in this power all things arc the same. Thus abiding in all things alike and knowing them all in God as the same, man possesses all things; he has discarded their grossest part and has gotten them now in their good and desirable nature. In this wise he possesses them yonder for God in his own nature is unable to forbear, he is obliged to give thee everything he ever made and his own self to boot. Blessed is the man who abides all the time in this power, he is ever-abiding in God. May we abide at all times in God, So help us our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
LXIV THE SWIFT RIVER Fluminis impetus Iwtificat civitatern del: sanctijicavit tabernacu- turn suurn altissimus {Psalm 455). ‘ The sudden or swift river makes glad the city of God.’ Here we must note three things. First, the swift stream; next, the city it serves; thirdly, the benefit it brings.
The prophet knows not how to stem the torrent of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost flows into the soul as fast as she is poured forth in humility and so far as she has gotten the capacity. He fills all the room he can find. Consider, next, what city it is it flows through. It is really the soul. A city is something enclosed and centred within. And so must the soul be whereinto God flows. She must be safe from outside alarms, her forces assembled within. According to St John, the twelve apostles were gathered together when they received the Holy Ghost. Even so the soul must be gathered and brought to herself in order to welcome this divine stream which fills to the full her cup of delight.
I sometimes say, beginners of the virtuous life shoiild do as he does who describes a circle: the starting-point once fixed, he keeps it so and then the trace is good. In other words, learn first to fix the heart on God, on good and on good works. Great deeds performed with shifting heart profit but little if at all. There were once two doctors. One of them declared that the good man cannot be moved. The other disagreed. What I say is, the good man may forsooth be moved, but he cannot be SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 159 changed for the worse. I trow the good man is not easily hindered. But if aught can worsen him he is not perfect.
Thirdly, the good of it. Which is, the prophet says, that ‘ God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.’ It is the soul he means. Soul would not that God wrought with her aught that is mixed with creature. Some things God does with help of creature and some unaided. If the grace which is a help and which is coming through my words could enter your heart without means, as though spoken by God, your soul would forthwith be converted and she could not help it. By pronouncing God’s word I become a co-worker with God and grace is mingled in me, God speaking it through me, and since I am to you as the means, it is not received intact in your soul. But the grace which is uttered by the Holy Ghost itself is received direct and imprinted unaltered in the soul what time the soul is recollected into the single power which has intuition of God. Grace springs up in the heart of the Father and flows into his Son, and in their mutual love it proceeds from the wisdom of the Son into the gift of the Holy Ghost and in the Holy Ghost is sent into the soul; and this grace is the face of God and is sealed in the soul by the Spirit of God, without means and unchanged, making the soul like God. This God does by himself unaided by creature.
No creature is noble enough to help in this work; God has not graced their nature with such excellence. But he can do it easily enough in his own perfect nature. God will not let a creature assist him in this work, so for the nonce he elevates the soul to a much higher level than lier natural habitat, where she is out of reach of any creature. It were well within the compass of an angel’s noble nature, provided God would let an angel serve. But that would offend the soul for in that hour she disdains the slightest taint of creature; even the light of grace wherein she is atoned would be flouted by the soul did she not know she cannot pass it by. After all, it is not natural to her, it is quite supernatural, her flouting at that moment everything that is not God, for God leads forth his bride out of creaturely values into hiinself and speaks with her in her heart, that is, he makes her like himself in grace. For this exalted act the soul must recollect herself.
The powers of the soul arc filled full of delight by this pure infusion of grace. Grace is to God as the shine to the sun; it is one with him and it carries the soul into God and makes her exactly the same as God and as such she enjoys God’s perfection. I’o the soul that has gotten and enjoyed divine perfection all that is not God has a bitter, nauseous savour. Then again, the soul wants the highest of all, so she cannot abide aught above her. I say, aye, and I durst maintain, she cannot even bear God being MEISTER ECKHART above her and I can prove it thus. For if the soul were spirited away far beyond things to perfect freedom from them and came in touch with God in his abstract divinity, natheless she would never rest till, thrusting into that, he shall have drowned her in himself and drowned himself in her alone. What though God be far above her in nobility of nature, she cannot rest till she has gotten God, so far as it is possible to creature to conceive him. The greatest happiness in earth or heaven lies in likeness to God, which divine nature makes in the highest degree: to wit, the image of itself. And this is what the soul is striving for seeing no so^il can throughly follow God without having in her the image of God. It is for us to sec whether the grace we have received is every whit divine, whether it smacks of God’s perfection, whether it is in common with and is emanating in his grace into whatever can receive it. Even so ought man to be flowing out into whatever can receive him. So help us God. Amen.
LXV THE JUST LIVE FOR EVER Jicsti autem in perpetuum vivent et apud dorninwn est merces eorum {Sap, 5 ^q), ‘ The just (or righteous) live for ever and their reward is with God.’ Let us look at this carefully. It sounds quite trite and commonplace, whereas it is, in fact, a most remarkable and precious dictum. ‘ The just live.’ Who arc the just? One scripture says. That man is just who gives to each his own. So the just are they that give to God his due and to the saints and angels theirs and to his fellow what is his. God’s is glory. Who are they that glorify God? Those who having gone out of them- selves seek not their own in anything whatever it may be, or great or small; who look for nothing over them nor under them nor yet beside them; not mindful of possessions, of honours, comfort, pleasure, nor inwardness nor holiness nor of reward nor heaven. They have finished with all that is theirs. God glorifies them and they truly glorify God and render him what is his due.
We ought to give the saints and angels joy. Wonder of wonders! Can a man in this life give joy to those in life eternal? Aye, surely. Marvellous, incredible to tell, every saint rejoices, takes ineffable delight in each virtuous deed, each good desire or inten- tion; their joy no tongue is able to express nor any heart conceive, as I have said. And why? Because their love to God is so immeasurably great, they hold him so right dear, that his glory is to them more than their happiness. Not alone the saints and angels, but very God himself is as much pleased thereat as though SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 161 it touched his^pwn felicity and was vital to him, to his own delight and satisfaction. Remember then, even if we serve God for no other reason than for the exceeding joy of those in life eternal and of God himself, yet we ought to do so gladly and with all diligence. Also, we ought to help those that are in hell and succour those still living.
A man of this sort is in one way just, but in another sense the just are they that take everything alike from God no matter what it is, big and little, good and bad, all the same, no more nor less, but one thing like another. If one thing is to thee of more moment than another then thou art unjust. Thou must be rid of own-will altogether.
I was thinking just now: if God does not will what I do then I must will what he docs. Some folks always want their own way; that is bad, that way lies sin. Those others are a trifle better who would like to do God’s will and have no mind to go against it, yet when they are sick they wish God would choose to make them well. These people would have God, then, con- forming to their will rather than they to his. We condone this although it is wrong. The just have no will at all; whatever God wills, it is all one to them, regardless of the hardship.
The just are so set on justice that were God not just they would not care a fig for God; they are so stauneh to right, so perfectly indifferent to self, they reck not of the pains of hell nor of the joys of heaven nor anything whatever. Were all the pangs of those in hell and all the pain borne or to bear on earth to be the fruits of justice, they would not mind one jot, so true they are to God and right. To the just man nothing gives more pain, there is no greater hardship, than what is contrary to just- ness, equipoise. — How so? —If one thing can cheer and another can depress, you are not equable; to be cheerful one moment and less or not at all so in the next is uneven-tempered. But the devotee of right is so stable that what he loves is his very life, nothing can upset him, nor docs he care for aught beside. St Augustine says, Where the soul loves there she is, rather than where she gives life. — Our text sounds plain and commonplace enough, but there are few who realize the actual meaning of it. One who grasps the import of justice and the just will understand all I have to say.
‘ The just live.’ There is nothing in the world so dear as life or so desirable. No life so bad or hard but man would go on living. It is written, the nearer to death the greater the pain. But however distressful life is there is still the desire to live. Why dost thou eat? Why sleep? To live. Why long for good or glory? That knowest thou right well. But wherefore 11 MEISTER ECKHART 11 MEISTER ECKHART live? For the sake of living, albeit thou ignorest for what reason thou dost live. Life is so desirable in itself, we want it for its own sake. Those who are in hell in eternal pain have no desire to lose their life, whether fiend or soul; their life is such a noble thing, llowing as it does straight from God to them. That is the reason why they want to live. What is life? God’s exist- ence is my life. If my life is God’s existence then God’s being is my being and God’s is-ness is my is-ness, neither more nor less. They live eternally with God, on a par with him, not below him nor above. All their works are wrought with God and God’s with them. St John says, ‘ the Word was with God.’ It was exactly like and side by side with him, neither under nor over but equal.
When God created man he took the woman out of the man’s side that she might be his equal. Not out of his head nor out of his feet did he make her, ix, neither man nor woman, but his peer. So the just soul is like to God, by the side of God, on a level with him, not under nor yet over.
Who are they that are his like? They that are nothing like, they alone are Godlike. God’s essence nothing is like, therein is no image nor form. Those souls who are his equals, to them the Father gives as equals withholding nothing from them. All the Father has to give he bestows upon this soul, provided she is just and no more to herself than to another. Her own honour, her own profit, aught of hers, she neither wants nor thinks of more than any stranger’s. Personal belongings are repugnant to her, alien and remote, be they bad or good. All love of this world is based on love of self. Leave this and thou hast left the world.
In eternity the Father is bringing forth his Son just like himself. ‘ The Word was with God and the Word was God ’: the same in the same nature. I say, moreover: he has brought him forth in my soul. Not merely is she with him and he equally with her but he is in her: the Father gives birth to his Son in the soul in the very same way as he gives him birth in eternity, and in none other. He must do, willy-nilly. The Father is begetting his Son un- ceasingly, and furthermore, I say, he begets me his Son, as his very own Son. Moreover I declare, not only does he beget me his Son, he begets me himself and himself me: me his essence and his nature. In his nethermost deep I come welling up in his holy Breath, where there is one life, one being and one act. God’s activity is one; he begets me his Son then without difference. My bodily father is not my real father except for one small portion of his nature and I am different from him: he may be dead and I alive. My heavenly Father is my real father; I am his and all I have I get from him; I airi the son of him and of none other. Since the Father performs a single act therefore he SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 168 makes me his Son without any distinction. As St Paul says, ‘We are wholly transformed into God and changed.’
Take an illustration. In the sacrament the bread is changed into the body of our Lord, and however much bread there is it becomes no more than the one body. Likewise were the bread to be changed into my finger it would make no more than the one finger. But suppose my finger is changed back to the bread, then the one is as much as the other; for when one thing changes to another it is identical therewith. Even so if I be changed into him and he makes me one and the same with himself, then by the living God it is also true that there is no distinction. The Father gives birth to his Son without ceasing. Once the Son is born he takes nothing from the Father, for he has it all; but while in the act of being born he is receiving from the Father.
The moral of this is that it is not right of us to ask from God as from a stranger. ‘ I call you not servants but friends,’ said our Lord. The servant asks, tlie master pays. I was wondering lately whether I am willing to ask or to accept anything from God. I must take earnest counsel with myself, for by accepting anything from God I make myself inferior to God, like a servant to his master, in respect of giving. That is not the case with us in eternal life, I once said here, and it is very true: When a man goes out of himself to find or fetch God, he is wrong. I do not find God outside myself nor conceive him excepting as my own and in me. A man ought not to work for any why, not for God nor for his glory nor for anything at all that is outside him, but only for that which is his being, his very life within him.
Some simple folk fondly imagine they are going to see God as it were standing there and they here. Not so. God and I are one in knowing. When I take God into me in loving I am going into God. Some say that happiness does not lie in knowledge but in will alone. They are wrong; if it were merely a matter of will it would not be one. Working and becoming are the same. When the carpenter stops working the house will stop becoming. Still the axe and stoj) the growth. God and I are one in operation: he works and I become. Fire changes to itself the fuel cast upon it, which is converted to its nature. The wood does not assimilate the fire, the fire assimilates the wood. ‘ We shall be changed into God so that we shall know him as he is,’ says St Paul. And the manner of our knowing shall be this, I him as he me, not more or less: just the same. ‘ The just live eternally, and their reward is with God ’: identity with him, as I have said. Let us love justice for its own sake and God without a why, So help us God. Amen.
MEISTER ECKHART LXVI PUBLISH THE WORD Prccdica verhum (2 Tim. 42 ). St Dominic says, translating the words of St Paul, ‘ Publish, proclaim, bring forth and propagate the Word.’ It is remarkable that anything should come forth and at the same time stay within. That the Word should come forth and still remain within is very wonderful; that all creatures should come forth and remain within is very wonderful; what God gives and promises to give is most wonderful, it is incomprehensible, incredible. That is as it should be; if it were comprehensible and credible it would not be appropriate to him. God is in all things. The more he is in things the more he is out of things: the more he is within the more he is without. I have often said, God is creating the whole world now this instant. Everything God made six thousand years ago and more when he made the world, God makes now all at once. God is in all things; but as God is divine and intelligible, therefore God is nowhere so much as in the soul, and the angels if you will, in tlie innermost soul, in the summit of the soul. And when I say the innermost 1 mean the highest and when I say the highest I mean the innermost. In the depths, at the summit of the soul, they arc both the same. Where time has never entered and no form was ever seen, at the centre, the summit, of the soul, there God is creating the whole world. All God’s creation of six thousand years ago, all his creation of a thousand years to come, if the world lasts so long, is wrought by God in the innem\ost recesses, at the apex of the soul. All the past and future is con- trived by God at the summit of the soul. The Father bears his Son in the innermost recesses of the soul and begets thee with his only Son, no less. But if I am Son then I must be Son the same as he is Son, and in no other way. If I am a man I am a man man- fashion. If I am the Man I am the Man Man-fashion. As St John says, ‘ Ye are God’s sons,’ ‘ Speak the Word, tell it abroad, pronounce it, bring forth and propagate the Word.’ ‘ Tell it forth! ’ What is spoken in from without is a gross, objective thing. ‘ Tell it forth! ’ That implies that thou hast it in thee. The prophet says, ‘ God spake one and I heard two.’ True, God did speak but once. His utterance is but one. In his Word he speaks his Son and the Holy Ghost and the whole of creatures, all of which are but one utterance in God. But, ‘ I heard two,’ the prophet says. Meaning, I understood it to be God and creature. Yonder where God speaks it it is God; but here it is creature. People fondly think that God became man yonder. No; Gk)d was made man here as well as there, and he SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 165 was made man for one purpose only: to beget thee his one-begotten Son.
Yesterday I quoted from the Paternoster the words, ‘ thy will be done.’ Better his will than mine. That I should do it, is what the Paternoster means. First, by being (oblivious or) asleep to things, ignoring time and images and ereaiurcs. Philosophers will tell you that being in deep sleep a man might pass a hundred years oblivious of creatures, time and images and yet aware of God at work within him. As the soul says in the Book of Love, ‘ I sleep, but my heart waketh.’ So when all creatures are asleep in thee thou durst be awake to God’s doings in thee.
‘ Labour in all things ’ says our text, and this is open to three interpretations. It means, turn all to good account, or, see God in everything, for God is everywhere. St Augustine says, God created all things not that he might leave them and go on his own way: no, he is still in them. People imagine they have more if they have' things plus God than if they have God without the things. They are mistaken. All things plus God amount to nothing more than God alone; and he who fondly weens that if he has the Son and tJie Father wdth him he has more than if he had the Son without the Father, is mistaken too. The Father plus the Son is no more than the Son is by himself and the Son plus the Father is no more than the Father by himself. To find God in all things is a sign that he has begotten thee his only Son, no less.
Again, turn everything to good account, means, love God the same in poverty as wealth, hold him as dear in sickness as in health; as dear in trials and in sufferings as in immunity from sufferings. The heavier to bear the lighter to bear: like two buckets, the heavier the one the lighter tlie otJier, and so the more one gets rid the easier the riddance. The God-lovcr parts with the world as cheerfully as with an egg. The more he gives up the easier it grows.
Thirdly, ‘ labour in all things ’ means: where thou findest thyself about manifold things, at variance wdth pure and simple essence, let that be thy work: ‘ work in all things ’ and ‘ fulfil thy destiny.’ It also means, lift up thy head, and this is twofold in its implication. The first meaning is: part with all that is thine and appropriate God; then God will be thine as he is his own; he will be God to thee as he is God to his very self, no less. What is mine I get from no one. If 1 get it from another it is not mine hut his from whom I got it. The other meaning is, dedicate all fhy acts to God. Many people cannot understand this, and I am not surprised; to know the meaning of it the soul must be in MEISTER ECKHART great detachment and uplifted over all these things. May we attain to this perfection. So help us God. Amen.
LXVII 1 THE POWERS OF HEAVEN SHALL BE MOVED Virtutes cadorum movebantur {Luc, 21 20 ). This is a gospel- saying of our Lord, and the translation runs, ‘ The powers of heaven shall be moved.’ Heaven is suggestive of some mysterious or hidden thing, God being so mysteriously coneealed by the light of his divine splendour that no man may by dint of his own intellect attain to the beatific vision of his godly countenance. As Job exclaims, ‘ Who can by searching find out the things in heaven? ’ As though to say, no one in the world. The sage laments this, crying, ‘ Alas! O Lord, thou art a hidden God! ’ According to St Augustine, ‘ God hides in the recesses of the soul, disguised in the workings of grace wherein he shows himself to the soul covertly, so that none may know except the soul wherein he is thus privily concealed.’ And St Paul says, ‘ Everything, which is in the soul, is hidden.’ The soul then is the godly heaven '^and ghostly where in unbroken stillness God does his perfect work. As God spake by the prophets, ‘ Behold, I create in you a new heaven.’
It is the stirring of the powers of these incarnate heavens by the light of God’s glory shining on them which Christ refers to when he says, ‘ The powers of heaven arc shaken.’ These words betoken to us the good works of the soul whereto she is wont what time God being hid in her makes her the heaven of his incomprehensible divinity. For every act proceeds from power and power proceeds from essence. So from these words we learn three things about the noble nature of the soul. First, her transcendent being. |, (Thus he speaks of heaven,) Next, her powerful faculties. (Hence i j the word powers,) Thirdly, her fruitful operation. (Hence the ' word moved,) Now to begin with let us note that if the soul has got a heavenly being she must possess three heavenly properties. First, the innate eternity of heaven. Secondly, its motion in a circle...Thirdly, its overflowing into creatures underneath. These three! things I demonstrate as follows: The first, that heaven is eternal, I explain in this way. The heavens have an incorporeal, immaterial nature in corporeal guise. No outside semblance is admitted. Colour is excluded, and no variable force can ply therein, hence its state is one of fixed abiding. Then the circular motion of the ^ See also Spamer’s Texte^ A. 6, for a longer version.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 167 heavens is argued thus. Anything that travels in a circle comes back to its start; and anything that comes back to its start travels in a circle. Now the philosopher says the mover of the heavens is in the East where the sun rises. We see with our own eyes that every day the sun dawns in the East and sets into the West to rise again next day at the place where, the philosopher says, the mover resides. It returns each day to its start. Ergo, the sun goes round. This is not to be confused with the sun’s own period of revolution. The starting-point of its own path is not reached in one day: it takes it a whole year, three hundred and sixty-five days, that is to say. Rather we must take this as referring to the heavens altogether, with the sun in their train. The sun doing yearly what they accomplish daily. Thirdly, the heavenly downpour into creatures I argue from the fact that everything subject to birth and decay is unstable and lacking in celestial power. As the philosopher observes in the book of The Celestial Nature, ‘ Heaven is to all inferior things the influx of being and of life.’
Now for the soul to be this ghostly heaven she must return to her eternal being, to the circular motion of her cause and to her highest nature streaming down into her lower powers. First and foremost let me say that as she goes it does behove the soul to turn to her eternal being and diligently note how by God’s grace she is immortal in her nature which he has rendered meet to share in his eternal bliss. She is an incorporeal nature in corporeal ' guise, spirit not following body in its fleshly birth, so no extrane- ous semblance can invade her, provided she is ever on her guard against the fading of her own exemplar wherein she is reflecting and manifesting God in his own proper nature. Nor may she brook the entrance of any naughtiness to oust her from her heavenly perfection and cast her into suffering, for she suffers without suffering in the power of God whereby she is fortified in suffering. Withal no other power can ply in her; she is so secure in God who is immutable stability that neither death nor life nor depth nor height nor any creature can part her from his fixed and changeless deity. So with King David she may say, ‘ In cleaving to God lies the gift of immortal felicity.’
Secondly, the soul progresses in a circle, for she rises with the rising sun, in her eternal nature, to wit, in her heavenly Father’s heart, where there is ever dawning the true Son, his self-begotten Son, the light and shine of his eternal sufficiency. And she returns into the Father’s mind where she is spoken in celestial wise, as the prophet hath it, ‘ God fashioned the heavens in his understanding.’ This intelligible heaven means the soul returned intact to God as to her source. For he speaks into her his eternal MEISTER ECKHART Word, and confirms her in all heavenly perfection; as the prophet cries on becoming the heaven of the Deity, ‘ By God’s Word are the heavens, fixed and established.’
Thirdly, this spiritual heaven of the soul drips divine grace and consolation. Just as the angel-mover rolls the heavens round and gives them energy, furnishing the heavens with the power of his might for heaven to pass on and thus supply all things with their being and activity and life, even so God dispenses to the soul his godly power with all its grace, which wells up in the Father’s heart, so giving her the means of growing vigorous and strong in his own proper motion wherein she gives her being and activity and life to all her lower powers, to the members of her body and to all their operations, till they, grown living in God’s eyes, do bring forth fruit of life eternal. This was the draught the prophet craved when, mindful that the Holy Ghost was troubling the deep waters of his heart and that his highest power was receiving and conceiving the dearest power of divinity, Isaias cried, ‘ Drop dew, ye heavens from above,’ meaning to say, pour into all my powers, all my members, all my works, the sweet celestial dew which ye have gotten into you from God.’
Further we must note how he has decked the natural heavens with seven planets, seven noble stars which arc nearer tq^ than the rest. I’lie first is SaMrn, then comes.Jiipiter, tfien Mars and then the Siiif; after that comes Venus and then Mercury and then the Moon. Now when th<i soul becomes a spiritual heaven our Lord will deck her with these same stars ghostly, as.John saw in his apocalypse when he espied the King of Kings seated upon the throne of the majesty of (Jod and hav ing seven stars in his hand. Know that the first star, Saturn, is the purger; Jupiter, the second, the well-wisher; the third one. Mars, is him of wrath; the fourth, the Sun, the light-giver; the lifth one, Venus, is the lover; the sixth one. Mercury, the winner; the seventh is the . Moon, the runner.
In the heaven of the soul Saturn becomes angelic purity, bring- ing as reward the vision of God, as our Lord says, ‘ Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall sec God.^ After him comes Jupiter, the gracious, whose reward is the possession of the earth; not the one we wear by way of body, nor that we tread on with our feet; but the one we are in eager search of: that earth which ^is flowing with the milk of humanity and the honey of divinity. ^ Ht is of this our Lord declares, ‘ Blessed are the meek in heart for they shall inherit the earth.’ Next follows Mars, of grim, determined nature and passionate suffering for God, bringing reward of the kingdom of heaven, as our Lord says, ‘ Blessed are they that suffer persecution for God’s sake for the heavenly SERMONS AND COLLATIONS kingdom is theirs.’ And after him the sun of light bringing as its guerdon to the soul, with knowledge of the truth the habit of right-doing and of giving unto everyone his own; and she being God’s by creation and adoption docs therefore give herself to God withal. According to the words of our Lord, ‘ Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.’ Then comes Venus, the lover, bringing reward of union with God; as our Lord said, ‘ He that loveth me is beloved of my Father; such conic unto him and abide with him.’ From her, too, comes reward of consolation, since love sets the loving heart lamenting and mourning for her love. As our Lord says, ‘ Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.’ After her comes Mercury, the winner, directly the soul forgoes everything for God, bearing as his prize the palm of deity, including the kingdom of heaven. According to the words of our Lord, ‘ Blessed are the spiritual poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Last comes the Moon, the runner, with her meed of happiness attained, as St Paul says, ‘ So run that ye may obtain.’ Now the soul attains God best by running to him with a tranquil heart, for his abode is in peace. Our God chooses peace for his children, and his child is lieir to his eternal bliss, as our Lord says, ‘ Blessed are the peaceful for they shall be called the children of God.’
Beyond these planetary stars there is the heaven where the fixed stars are which shine by night, the signals of the works wrought by the soul. In the night of the shadow of this world these shine before men, according to the words of our Lord, ‘ Let your light so shine before men that they may sec your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.’ The other stars all get their light from the radiance of the sun. Venus as well, the love-star, which shines brightest of them all. Accordingly, the works we do arc pregnant most with power and brightest light when we have wholly gotten us the nalurc of the amiable Venus, star of love, whose nature is receptive to the sunshine of the true and intelligible Deity.
LXVIII^ THE POWERS OF THE SOUL Igitur perfecti stmt cceli et terra et ornnis ornatus eorurn (Gen. 2^). ‘ Thus the heavens and the earth were linished and all the adorn- ment of them.’ Even so the heavens of the innef man are finished and all the ornaments thereof. In the passage where Christ speaks of ‘ the powers,’ wc construe these to mean the sovran powers of the soul. For the soul has got three powers ip her spiritual mind ^ No. 07 (2) in Pfoifler’s text.
MEISTER ECKHART which are heavenly inasmuch as they are capable of doing heavenly work, for every heavenly power is of the breath of the mouth of our God. ^ ^ ^