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 docs is wrought by him in spirit, and any temporal or mundane thing obstniets 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 discipic's 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 })resencc; 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 wc cannot in this body perfectly attain thereto any more than Moses could reach the burning bush. But wc must regulate our lives so as to get to Christ our Lord when time is done.
4 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 pco))le 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 hack on God. Also, there are some who arc 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 arc 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, mauy pious souls are hindered by scrupulosity in 13 MEISTER ECKHART 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 kec^p 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 witlial 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 (rhost 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 wc are in sight of the divine reality wc 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 unncccssitous, 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 herself into the desert of the Godhead where neither act nor form exists, she is SERMONS AND COLTATIONS 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 in the tomb. 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 dcj)art from all that is not God nor rest until she grasps the uncreated God. So help ns 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.
LXXVIli THE IMAGE IN THE SOUL Faciamus honiineni ad imaginem el similitudinein nostrarn {Gen, Igo)* 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 ‘ I.et us work? ’ Doing is an outward act beseeming not the inward man. Work (*omcs 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 ' See also Greith, pp. 99-104, etc.
MEISTER ECKHART MEISTER ECKHART Moses, Adam was the first man that God ever made. And I say that Christ was the lirst 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 tJic 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 the New Philosophers declare that in this lies impartible memory, intellect and will, and these three are inseparatc, i.e. the hidden image answers to God’s essence. The divine being ((xod) 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.
LXXVIII 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 SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 197 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 rnattcr-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. VVliat more is there to tell? It means our outAvard 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 tlic Doctor says, when this that wc are siicaking of befalls, the highest power of the soul secs God in her own power. As St Dionysius puts it. Then the soul is not called soul, she is the sovran power of God.
The second thing is a free mind. Freedom means not being in any way bound; our being as free and clear and unalloyed as we were in our first emanation when wc were loosed in the Holy Ghost.
The third is the speculative mind. Herein the soul sees God. What does the soul see when she sees God? Dionysius says she sees the one power. This unique power makes her one with it. She sees in him also the good passing good, embraeing all good things. He wants to entice us out of ourselves, to make us unwilling to stay in ourselves. As the heathen philosopher says. The arch delight, all delights excelling, attracts the soul out of all enjoyments into the sovran truth where all things end. And the same master says, Why arc we unaware of this? B(*causc wc are bent on louver things. Supposing that we find ourselves desirous of God before all else, tlien God has touched this highest power. By this touch she is moved out of herself and into him; not that she is moved by grace as one thing moves another, for she has no body to her deity. St Dionysius says that the motion of the soul is as in a circle, since she never varies from her centre.
He says too, God is splendid, and this by reason of three things. He is clear, he is a mutual illumination, he is one and the same. What docs clear mean? Free from admixture of body; persisting in his purity or light-nature. According to the scriptures, the soul is sevenfold clearer than the sun. The sun is clear albeit a corporal thing. But I declare the soul to be an hundredfold clearer than the sun, for the sun is bodily whereas the soul is ghostly. And her surpassing clarity is due to the ascendency of spirit over matter. Now if the soul is clear like this then God must be infinitely 198 MEISTER ECKHART clearer, for he created her, and the cause is more than its creature has.
lie is also a mutual illumination, for all that is in God is God. And St Augustine says the Father and the Son shine into each other in the Holy Ghost, who is the tie between them. And the three hypostases, which arc the three Persons, have one nature, like three lights with one shine. So too with us there should be unanimity, all multiplicity focussed to the highest power and this sovran power cast into God there to abide without reflection.
Thirdly, he is one and the same, this being characteristic of divinity, which is the same as unity. This is not said of creature, for it cannot be maintained of any creatures that it is from them- selves they have their being. St Paul says, ‘ What we have we have received from the unique good, God namely, from whom are all good things.’ Things are not from themselves. That which is from itself and from which all things are, is God. It is expressly taught that God is one and the same. And it is for us to be like him. When we have parted from ourselves then we are not-being rather than being. May we, being planted in the likeness of God, attain to higher and truer vision, So help us God. Amen.
LXXIX THE SON OF THE WIDOW Adolescens, tihi dico: surge {Luc, 7^^). To-day we read in the gospel about the widow with an only son who had died. And our Lord came to him and said, ‘ Young man, arise! ’ And he sat up.
By the widow we understand the soul; her husband was dead, so her son was dead also. Her son we take to mean her intellectual nature. Our I^ord, sitting by the well, said to the woman, ‘ Go home and fetch me thine husband.’ Not hers that living water which is the Holy Ghost; that is vouchsafed alone to those who are quickened in their understanding. Intellect is the summit of the soul. It has fellowship and intercourse with the angels in angelic nature. Angelic nature no time can touch, nor can time touch the intellec^tual nature. Unless she lives in this her son will die. She was a widow. No creature lives but has some good and some shortcomings. She was a widow in this sense: intellect was dead in her, and with it perished also the fruit of it, the Son.
Widow, in another sense, suggests abandonment, one who is forsaken. Even so must we abandon creatures and forsake them utterly. The prophet says, ‘ The woman who is barren, more in number are her children than hers who is fruitful.’ So with the SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 19& soul who travails ghostly: manifold are her offspring, instantly does she bear fruit. The soul that has gotten God is bringing forth fruit all the time. God must needs accomplish his work. God is ever at work in the eternal now, and his work is the beget- ting of his Son; he is bringing him forth all the while. In his birth all things have proceeded forth, and so great is his pleasure in this birth that he spends his whole energy upon it. God bears himself out of himself into himself; the more perfect this birth is the more docs it bear. I say that God is all one, he knows nothing but himself alone. God cannot know himself without knowing all creaturcis. God gives himself birth all at once in his Son; he says all things in him. He says, ‘ Young man, arise I ’ God exerts all his power in his Son so as to quicken the soul back to God. And hell-torment really means the frequent lapsing of the soul fiorn the purpose of God’s effort, which is, to bring the soul to life again. God makes all creatures in a word, but in order to vivify the soul the whole of his power is expended in his Son with intent for the soul to be brought back therein. In his birth she comes to life, and God bears his Son into the soul so as to quicken her. God speaks himself in his Son. In the word wherein he speaks himself in himself he speaks himself into the soul. It belongs to all creatures to be born. A creature without birth would not be at all. According to one master, it is a sign of the divine birth that all creatures are wrought in it. Hence his words, ‘ Young man, arise! ’ The soul has nothing God can speak into excepting her intelli- gence. Some powers are too vile for God to speak to. He could of course address them, only they would not hear. Will as will is not receptive, not in any wise; will consists in aspiratioji. So he says, ‘ Young man, arise! ’ The powers of the soul age not, they say. Not so the corporal faculties, which How ])ast and decay. The more a man knows the better he knows, and this ennobles the soul. But the corporal powers do not have this result, so his words, ‘ Young man, arise! ’ have reference to the noble powers of the soul.
Philosophers define as young things which are near to their beginning. Man has perennial youth in his intellectual nature; the more he is in his active (intellect) the nearer he is to his birth, and a thing near its birth is young. The first issue of the soul is her intellectual nature, next follows will and then all the rest of her powers. Now he says, ‘ Young man, arise! ’ The soul herself is one indivisible work; what is wrought by God in the impartible light of the soul is more lovely and fair than the whole of his work in creatures. Yet foolish folk take bad for good and good for bad. To him who understands aright the unitiue work.
600 MEISTER ECKHART of God in the soul is better and nobler and higher than the whole world.
Above this light comes grace. Grace enters neither into intellect nor will. For grace to enter into intellect and will, intellect and will must transcend themselves. A master says, There is I know not what, wholly mysterious, above them,’ meaning the spark of the soul, the only part of her which is God- receptive. Here in this minute spark, called the spirit of the soul, there occurs true union between the soul and God. Grace never did any virtuous work: it has never done any work at all albeit good works are the outcome of it. Grace does not unify by works. Grace is the inhabiting and co-habiting of the soul in God. Work of whatever kind, external or internal, is beneath it. All creatures are searching for the Godlike. The more vile they are the more they search outside. Air and water, for example, flow away, but heaven steadily goes round and in its course is bringing forth all creatures; therein being godlike so far as in it lies. Moreover, in its motion it is seeking rest. Heaven never condescends to serve inferior creatures. And in this it is very much like God. God’s birth of himself in his Son is denied to creatures. But heaven is striving after this act which God performs in himself. And if heaven does this, and also other creatures much baser than the soul, then it is thankless and shameful of her to make such scant effort to compass such things as resemble the works God does in eternity.
According to philosophers, the soul can give birth to herself in herself and bear herself out of herself back into herself. In her natural light she works wonders; she is able to separate one. Fire and heat are one; in her intellect she divides them. Wisdom and goodness arc one in God: in her intellect wisdom is never envisaged as goodness. Why? Because wisdom enters more into God. The soul brings forth in her God out of God into God; she is with young in her very self, and this by dint of her nearness to God, of her being the image of God.
As I have often said, image as image, ix. as a reflection, is an inseparable thing. Soul as living in the reflection of God has real union no creature can sever. Not God himself, not angels, nor any sort of creature is able to disjoin the soul who is in the image of God. That is true union, and therein lies true happiness. Various philosophers are in search of happiness. My verdict is, that happiness lies neither in intellect nor will: happiness lies above them both, and it is there as happiness and not as intellection, and God is there as God and soul as the image of God. May he unite us to him in this sense. So help us God. Amen.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS LXXX THERE IS ONE POWER IN THE SOUL Adolescens, tihi dico: surge {Luc. 7^4). We read in St Luke’s gospel about a youth who was dead. And our Lord came and took compassion on him and touched him and said, ‘ Young man, I say unto thee, I command thee. Arise! ’ Now you must know that in all good people God is present all at once and there is something in the soul wherein God lives and something in the soul where the soul lives in God, and if the soul turns outwards towards external things she dies and God dies also in the soul. But he does not die in himself at all and he is alive to himself. Just as, when the soul leaves the body the body dies and the soul lives on in herself, so (iod may be dead to the soul and be alive to himself. Andknow, there is one power in the soul wider than wide heaven, which is so incredibly extensive that we are unable to define it, and yet this power is much vaster still.
Mark now. In this exalted power the Father is saying to his one-begotten Son, ‘ Young man, arise! ’ It is God, and the closeness of its union with the soul is past belief, for God is so lofty in himself that nothing whatsoever can attain thereto by under- standing. It is wider than the heavens, aye than all the angels, albeit one angelic spark is the cause of all the life on earth. Desire is far-reaching, limitless. All that mind can conceive, all that heart can desire, that is not God. Where desire and understanding end, in the darkness, there shines God.
Quoth our Lord, ‘ Young man, I say unto thee. Arise! ’ If I am to hear God speaking in me I must be wholly estranged from all that is mine, as strange as I am to things under the sea, and especially from time. The soul is as young in herself as when she was made, for age as relating to her is an affair of the body, affecting iier use of its senses. As one philosopher observes, an old man with the eyes of youth would sec just as well as a boy. I made a statement yesterday which seems almost incredible, I said that Jerusalem is as near my soul as the ground I stand on now. ‘ Aye, in good sooth, a thousand leagues beyond Jerusalem is every whit as nigh my soul as my own body is, of that I am as sure as of my being a man, and to any learned clerk it is not hard to understand.’ Know then that my soul is as young as when I was created, aye, much younger. And I tell you, I should be ashamed were she not younger to-morrow than to-day.
The soul has two powers which have nothing whatever to do with the body, namely intellect and will, which function above time. Oh, if only the soul’s eyes were opened so that her under- MEISTER ECKHART standing might behold the truth! Then it would be as easy to a man to give up everything as to give up peas and lentils, aye upon my soul, to him all things would be but vanity. There are some who give up things for love albeit greatly prizing what they leave. But to this man who knows in truth, it matters not one whit that he should leave himself and everything, for anyone who takes this course has all things for his own in truth.
There is one power in the soul to which all things are alike sweet; the very worst and the very best arc all the same in this power which takes things above here and now. Now meaning time and here meaning place. This place I arn in now, suppose 1 went out of myself and were entirely empty, why then I ween the heavenly Sire would bear his only Son within my mind so clearly that my spirit would bear him back again. Verily, were my spirit as ready as the wsoul of our Lord.Jesus Christ then would the Father energise in me as perfectly as in his onc-begotten Son, no less, seeing that he loves me with the selfsame love wherewith he loves himself.
St John said, ‘ In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’ Now to lu‘ar this Word in the Father (where it is absolutely silent), a man must be quite quiet and wholly free from images, aye, and forms as well. A man must be so true to God that nothing whatever can gladden him or sadden him. lie must sec all things in God, as they are there.
He says, ‘ Young man, I say unto thee, Arise! ’ Meaning to effect this thing himself. If someone tells me to carry one stone he may as well tell me a hundred if he is going to do it himself. If he orders a hundredweight load he may just as well make it a thousand if it is for his own back. And God will do this work himself if onl}^ we will wait and not resist. If the soul would but stay within, she would have everything there. There is one power in the soul and that not merely power but being; and not merely being: it radiates life, and is so pure, so high and so innately noble that creatures cannot live in it; none but God can abide therein. Nay, even God himself is forbidden there so far as he is subject to condition. God cannot enter there in any guise: God is only there in his absolute divinity.
Then, the fact of his speaking the words, ‘ Young man, I say unto thee.’ What is God’s speaking? It is his working, and God’s work is so noble, so sublime, that God alone can do it. You must understand then, that our whole perfection, our entire happiness, will lie in traversing and transcending all creatureliness, all time and all limitation and getting into the cause which is causeless. We pray thee O Lord, that we may be one and indwelling. So help us God. Amen.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS LXXXI I HAVE CHOSEN YOU Ego elegi vos de mundo (Joh. 15^^). These words wliich I quote in the Latin are from the gospel of to-day, the feast of one of the saints, Barnabas by naTiic, who is commonly referred to in the scriptures as being an apostle. Our Lord says, ‘ I have elected you, selected you, chosen you out of the world, from all created things, that ye should bring forth much fruit and that your fruit should remain,’ for it is very good to bring forth fruit and for the fruit to remain, and the fruit does remain if we dwell in love. At the end of this gospel our Lord says, ‘ Love one another as I have ever loved you; my Father hath loved me eternally and so have I loved you; keep my commandments, so shall ye remain in my love.’
All God’s commandments come from love, from the kindness of his nature; did they not come from love they would not be God’s law, for God’s law is the goodness of his nature and his nature his benignant law. Whoso dwells in love dwells in the goodness of his nature: he dwells in God’s love, and love is without why. Suppose I had a friend and loved him for benefits received and because of getting my own way, I should not love my friend, 1 should be loving my own self. I ought to love my friend on his own account, for his virtues, for his own intrinsic worth: 1 love my friend aright loving him like this. And so with the man abiding in God’s love, seeking not his own in God nor in himself nor in any thing but loving God sim})ly for his kindness, for the goodness of his nature, for what he is in himself: tliat is true love. Love of virtue is the flower, the ornament of virtue, aye, the motJier of all virtue, all perfection and all happiness: it is God, for God is the fruit of virtue, and it is this fruit wliich remains to man. When a man works for fruit and the fruit remains to him he rejoices greatly. Sup])osc he has a vineyard or a field and makes it over to his man to work while keeping all the produce; he may give into the bargain all the things thereto belonging and still be much rejoiced to have the fruits remain in pa)unent. Even so a man rejoices in the fruit of virtue; he has no worries, no vexations, because he has made over himself and everything.
Our Lord says, ‘ Whoso shall leave anything for me and for my name’s sake, to him will I restore an hundredfold and eternal life to boot.’ But if thou leave it for that hundredfold and for the sake of eternal life, thou art leaving nothing; nay, so thou leave it for a thousandfold reward thou art leaving nothing: leave thyself, give up self altogether, that is real riddance. A man once came MEISTER ECKHART to me (it was not long ago), and told me he had given up a quantity of land and goods to save his soul. Alack! I thought, how paltry, how inadequate, the things thou hast resigned. It is blindness and folly so long as thou dost care a jot for what thou hast forsworn. Forswear thyself, that is true resignation.
The man who has resigned himself is so impartial, this world will have none of him, as I said here not long ago. The devotee of justice is given up to justice, seized of justice, identified with justice. I once wrote in my book: The just man serves neither God nor creature: he is free; and the more he is just the more he is free and the more he is freedom itself. Nothing created is free. While tlierc is aught above me, excepting God himself, it must constrain me, however small it be or however (great); even love and knowledge, so far as it is creature and not actually God, confines me with its limits. The unjust man, whether he would or no, is the servant of illusion: serving the world and creature he is the bondman of sin.
1 was thinking lately; that I am a man belongs to other men in common with myself; I see and hear and eat and drink like any other animal; but that 1 am belongs to no one but myself, not to man nor angel, no, nor yet to God excepting in so far as I am one with him. All God’s work he puts into his one replica of him- self, and though radically differing in their operation, (creatures) all tend to reproduce themselves. In my father nature took its normal course. In the course of nature I should be a father like himself. The tendency is ever towards self-repetition, towards the preservation of the species: it is every man’s intention that his work should be himself. Any shifting or hindering of his nature and the result is woman: thus where nature stops God begins to work and to create; for without woman there would be no men. The child as conceived within its mother’s womb has shape and colour and material being; so much is wrought by nature. That lasts for forty days and forty nights, and on the fortieth day God creates the soul in much less than the twinkling of an eye. Now ends the work of nature, all nature can contrive in colour, form and matter. The activity of nature goes out altogether, and as the natural energy is finally withdrawn it is restored intact in the rational soul. This then is the work of nature and the creation of God. In created things (as I have said repeatedly) there is no truth.
There is something, transcending the soul’s created nature, not accessible to creature, non-existent; no angel has gotten it, for his is a clear (intelligible) nature, and clear and overt things have no concern with this. It is akin to Deity, intrinsically one, having naught in common with naught. Many a priest finds SERMONS AND COLLATIONS it a baffling thing. It is one; rather unnamed than named, rather unknown than known. If thou couldst naught thyself an instant, less than an instant, I should say, all that this is in itself would belong to thcc. But while thou dost mind thyself at all thou knowest no more of God than my mouth docs of colour or my eye of taste: so little thou knowest, thou discernest, what God is.