went away and withdrew into himself until he found all this in truth in his own ground. Then returning to his master he gave him thanks and said: It was as you foretold. On giving my whole mind to the subject of the angels and aspiring to their estate, at first it seemed to me that I was all the angels with the angels. You see then, said his master, that as you draw a little nearer to the source, wonder after wonder is wrought upon the soul; for while a man is still on the ascent and receiving through the medium of creatures, he has not come to rest. But once he has climbed up into God, there in the Son he will be receiving with the Son the whole of what God has to give. May wc, ascend- ing in this way from one love to another, be united into God and there in bliss abide eternally. So help us God. Amen.
LXXXVI^ DETACHMENT HAS FOUR STEPS Detachment has four steps. The first breaks in and makes away with all a man’s })crishable things. The second one deprives him of them altogether. The third not only takes them but makes them all forgotten as though they had not been, and all about them. The fourth degree is right in (k)d and is God himself. When wc get to this stage the King is desirous of our beauty.
LXXXVII THE POOR IN SPIRIT Beati pauper es spiritu quia ipsorum est regnuui coelorum (Matt, 53). Beatitude itself opened its mouth of wisdom and said, ‘ Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Angels and saints and everything that was ever born, all must keep silence when the eternal wisdom of the Father speaks; for the wisdom of the angels and all creatures is mere naught compared with the wisdom of God which is unfathomable. This wisdom has declared that the poor are blessed.
There are two kinds of poverty. One is outward poverty, and this is good and much to be commended in him who makes a voluntary practice of it for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose wont it was on earth. About this poverty I shall say no more. But there is another poverty, an interior poverty, whereto refers this saying of our Lord, ‘ Blessed arc the poor in spirit or poor of spirit.’ And I would urge you now to be this same if ye ^ Authorship doubtful. Excerpt only.
MEISTER ECKHART would understand my argument, for I do assure you by the eternal truth, excepting yc are like this truth we speak of it is not possible for you to follow me. Several people have asked me what poverty is? This we will now try to answer.
Bishop Albcrtus says, ‘ By a poor man is meant one who is not satisfied with anything God ever made,’ and this is well said. But, taking poverty in a higher sense, we say better still, a poor man is one who wills nothing, knows nothing, has nothing. It is on these three heads that 1 propose to speak.
Jn the first place, a poor man wills nothing. Some folks mistake the sense of this; those, for example, who win personal repute by penanees and outward disei})lincs (arul arc highly esteemed, God ’a merey, though knowing so little of God’s truth!), To all outward ap})earanee these are holy, but they arc fools within and ignorant of the divine reality. These peo])Ie define a poor man to be one who wills nothing. Explaining this to mean that he never follows his own will at all, but is bent on carrying out the will of God. In this thej^ are not bad; their intention is good, and we commend them for it: (iod keep them in his mercy. But 1 trow that these are not poor men nor are they the least like them. They arc much admired by those' who know no better, but I say they are fools with no understanding of God’s truth. Peradventure heaven is theirs by good intention, but of the poverty in question they have no idea.
Supposing someone asked nu\ What then is a poor man who wills nothing? I should answer this. As long as it can be said of a man that it is in his will, that it is his will, to do the will of God, that man has not the poverty that I am speaking of, because he has a will, to satisfy the will of God, which is not as it should be. If he is genuinely poor a man is as free from his created will as he was when he was not. I tell you by the eternal truth, as long as yc possess the will to do the will of God and have the least desire for eternity and God, ye are not really poor: the poor man wills nothing, knows nothing, wants nothing.
While 1 yet stood in my first cause I had no God and I was my own; I willed not, I wanted not, for I was conditionless being, the knower of myself in divine truth; then I wanted myself and wanted nothing else; what I willed I was and what I was I willed. I was free from God and all things. But when I escaped from my free will to take on my created nature, then I got me a God; for before creatures were, God was not God: he was that he was. When creatures became and started ereaturehood, God was not God in himself but he was Gk)d in creatures. Now we contend that God as God is not the final goal of creature nor such great riches as the least creature has in God. If a flea had intellect and could SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 219 intellectually plumb the eternal abysm of God’s bein^r out of which it came, then, so wc maintain, not God and all God is could fulfil and satisfy that flea. Wherefore we pray we may be quit of God and get the truth and enjoy eternity, for tJie highest angel and the soul are all the same yonder where I was and willed that I was and was that I willed. Thus sliall a man be poor of will, as little willing and desiring as he willed and wanted when he was not. And in this wise a man is poor who wills nothing.
Secondly, a poor man is one who knows notliing. Wc have sometimes laid it doAvn that a man ought to live as though he lived not, Avhether for himself, or truth, or God. But now we change our ground and declare withal, that a person in this poverty has gotten all he was when he lived not in any wise, not to himself, nor truth, nor (iod: he is so quit, so free of any kind of knowledge that no idea of God is alive in him; for while man stood in the eternal species (iod, there lived none other in him: what lived there was himself. And so wc say this man is as free from his own knowledge as he was when he was not; he Jets God travail as he will while he himself stands idle as ^vhen he came from God.
Now the question is. Wherein does ha])piness lie most of all? Some masters say it lies in love. Others, it lies in knowledge and in love, and these come nearer to the im^rk. We, again, contend it neither lies in knowledge nor in love, hut there is in the soul one thing from which both knowledge and love flow and which itself does neither know nor love like the powers of the soul. Who knows this knows the scat of happiness. This has no before nor after nor is it expecting anything to come, for it can neither gain nor lose. It is wanting, in the sense that it knows nothing about working in itself; but, it just is itself, enjoying itself God- fashion. And in this sense I say man ought to be idle and free, all unwitting, unaware, of what God is doing in him, that is the way to be poor. According to the masters, God is being, intel- lectual being which knows all things. But 1 say, (iod is not being nor yet intellect nor knows not this nor that. God is exempt from all things and he is all things. Being ])oor in spirit means being poor of all particular knowledge, even as one who wots not anything, not God nor creature nor himself. Here there is no question of a man desiring to know or recognise the way of God. In this wise may a man be poor in knowledge of himself.
Thirdly, the poor man has nothing. It has been often said that perfection means not having the mortal things of earth, and haply this is true in one particular case, namely, when it is volun- tary. But this is not the sense I mean it in. I have already 220 MEISTER ECKHART said, the poor man is not he who wants to do the will of God but he who lives in such a way as to be free from his own will and from the will of God, even as he was when he was not. Of this poverty we say, it is the deepest poverty. Secondly, we say, that man is poor who has no knowledge of God’s work in him. Being as free of knowing and perceiving as God is of all things is the barest poverty. But the third poverty, the straitest I am about to tell of, ix, having nothing.
Here I would remind you how I have often said, and eminent authorities have said the same, that one must be devoid of things and of activities, both inwardly and outwardly, if one would be a fitting place for God to work in. Now we say something else. Granting a man is bare of everything, of creatures, of himself, of God, yet if it is still in him to provide God with the room to work in, then we do affirm: as long as this is in the man he is not poor with the strictest poverty. God does not purpose in his work that man should have in him the place God does his work in; poverty of spirit means freedom from God and all his works, so that if God chooses to travail in the soul lie must be his own workshop, as he likes to be. Finding so poor a man, then God is his own patient and he is his own operating room, since God is in himself the operation. Here in this indigence man is obeying his eternal nature, that he has been and that he is now and that he shall be for ever.
There is the question of those words of St Paul, ‘ All that I am I am by the grace of God.’ Here the argument soars above grace, above understanding and above desire. The answer is that St Paul’s words are true; not that grace was in him; the grace of God wrought in him perfecting him to unity and then the work of grace was done. Grace hav ing done its work there re- mained Paul as he was. As we should say, he was a man too poor to have or be a place for God to work in. To preserve place is to preserve distinction. Why I pray God to rid me of God is because conditionless being is above God and above distinction: it was therein I was myself, therein I willed myself and knew myself to make this* man and in this sense I am my own cause, both of my nature which is eternal and of my nature which is temporal. For this am I born, and as to my birth which is eternal I can never die. In my eternal mode of birth I have always been, am now, and shall eternally remain. That which I am in time shall die and come to naught, for it is of the day and passes with the day. In my birth all things were born, and I was the cause of mine own self and all things, and had I willed it I had never been, nor any thing, and if I had not been then God had not been either. To understand this is not necessary.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 221 One learned doctor says, his breaking- through is nobler than his emanation. When I flowed out of God then all things said. There is a God. Withal this eaufiot make me blest, for in it I acknowledge myself creature; hut in my breaking-through, 1 hen as standing passive in the will of God, free of the will of God and all his works and eke of God himself, I transcend all creatures and am neither God nor creature: I am that I was and that I shall remain now and for ever. Then I receive an impulse which carries me above all angels. In this impulse I conceive such passing riches that I am not content with God as being God, as being all his godly works, for in this breaking- through I find that God and I are both the same. Then I am what I was, I neither wax nor wane, for I am the motionless cause that is moving all things. Now God can find no place in man, for man has gotten by his poverty that he has been eternally and ever shall abide. Here in the spirit God is one, that is tlic straitest poverty a man can know.
Whoso is unable to follow this discourse, let him never mind. While he is not like this truth he shall not see my argument, for it is the naked truth straight from the* heart of God. May we so live as to experience it eternally. So help us God. Amen.
LXXXVIII THE VIRGIN BIRTH Ave, gratia plena ^ dorninus tecum / {Luc, log)- ‘ Hail, full of grace, the I.ord is with thee! The Holy Ghost shall descend into thee from above, from the lofty light-throne of the eternal Father.’ Here there are three things to be understood. First, the radiant nature of the angel; secondly, that he knew himself unworthy to behold God’s motlicr; thirdly, that he was speaking not alone to her but to a goodly multitude, to every virtuous soul desiring God.
I say: had Mary not borne God in ghostly fashion first, he never had been born of her in flesh. The woman said to Christ, ‘ Blessed is the womb which bare thee.’ To which Christ replied, ‘ Blessed not alone the womb which bare me: blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.’ It is more worth to God his being brought forth ghostly in the individual virgin or good soul than that he was born of Mary bodily.
This involves the notion of our being the only Son whom the Father has eternally begotten. When the Father begat all creatures he was begetting me; I flowed out with all creatures while remaining within in the Father. Like what I am now saying; MEISTER ECKHART it springs up within me, then I pause in the idea, and thirdly I speak it out, and all of you receive it: but really it is in me all the while. So am I abiding in the Father. In the Father is the exemplar of all creatures. This exalted nature has its intellectual prototype in God. And not merely intellectual but intellect itself. The best God ever did for man w’^as to be man himself. I will tell you a story to illustrate my point. Once upon a time there was a rich man and his wife. The lady by mischance did lose an eye whereat she grieved excessively. Then came her lord to her and said, ‘ O wife, why so distressed? ’ Quoth she, ‘ My lord, ’tis not my eye I mourne; I monrne for fear lest you should love me less.’ — ‘ Nay wife, I love thee,’ he replied. After- wards, not over long, he put out one of his own eyes, and going to his wife he said, ‘ Lady, so you may know I love you I have made myself like you: now I too have only one eye.’
According to the philosophers, creatures arc all striving to bring forth and emulate the Father. Another doctor says that every active cause works solely for the sake of its result, to find rest and peace in its end. This is mankind, who scarce could credit God’s great love for him till God did put out one of his own eyes by taking human nature. This was made flesh.
Said our Lady, ‘ How shall this be? ’ The angel replied, ‘ The Holy Ghost shall come down into ihcc from on high, from the lofty throne of the Father of eternal light.’ In 'principio. Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given.’ Child in his frail humanity. Son in his eternal deity. One philosopher declares that creatures are all striving after their ])rimitivc pure nature, after their supreme perfection. Fire as lire docs not burn: it is too intangible, too pure to burn at all; it is tlie firc-nature which will burn, infusing into the dry wood its nature and its light according to its own most high perfection. God has done the same. He has made the soul according to his own most perfect nature, pouring into her the whole of his own light in all its pristine purity, while he himself remains all undefiled.
Now you must know that I lately said: When God created all creatures he had surely gotten first something uncreated setting forth the general idea of creatures: to wit, the spark, which is so nearly God that it is a single, impartible one, bearing the form of all creatures, formless and above form.
Yesterday in the schools there was a theological discussion. I said I was astonished at no one being able to give the solution of my question: If I am the only Son whom the Father has eternally begotten, have I eternally been Son? I say, yea and nay. Son, yes, inasmuch as the Father has eternally begotten me; not Son in my unbegotten nature. In principio. We are given to SERMONS AND COLLATIONS understand that we arc the only Son whom the Father has been bringing forth for aye out of liis arcane understanding of the eternal mystery of the first beginning of his primitive light-nature which is the end of all perfection. There I have been at rest for aye, asleep in the dormant understanding of the eternal Father, immanent, unspoken. I trow, seen in that light, any bit of stick would be an angel and would be intelligent, and not alone intel- ligent: it would be pure intellect in that first pure nature which is the perfection of enlightenment. Out of his light-nature he has been eternally begetting me his one ])egotten Son in the express image of his eternal Fatherhood to the c-nd that I may be the Father and beget him of whom I am begotten. liike one who stands before some lofty peak hailing, ‘ Art there? ’ And echo answers back, ‘ Art there? ’ He (*ries, ‘ Come forth 1 ’ — ‘ Come forth! ’ the voice replies. This is what God does: he begets his Son into the summit of the soul. By the fact of his bearing his Son into me I bear him back into the Father. It was nothing else, God’s virgin birth, than his getting his Son back again.
I used to wonder (it is many years ago) whether I should be asked why one blade of grass is so unlike another; and as it happened I was asked why they are so different. 1 said, it is more marvellous they are so mucli alike. One philosopher says that the blades of grass arc all different owing to the superfluity of the goodness of God which he pours out abundantly into all crea- tures the more to show his majesty. 1 said it is move wonderful how much the grass-blades are alike, ex[)laining that just as all the angels are the sanu^ in their original pure nature so all the grasses arc the same and all things arc identical.
I was thinking as I came along that one might here in time succeed in mastering God. Supposing I were up on high and told him, ‘ Come up hither,’ that would be diflieult. Rut if I said, ‘ Bide down below,’ that would be very easy. That is what God does. If a man is lowly God is unable to withhold his goodness; he is obliged to sink himself, to pour himself, into that lowly soul, on the lowest of the lowly bestowing himself most of all and bestowing himself wholly. What God bestows is his nature, and his nature is his goodness and his goodness is his love. All joy and sorrow come from love.
I was thinking on the way as I was walking licre, T should not have come were I not prepared to get wet for friendship’s sake. If you have all got wet let me get wet too. Good and ill both come from love. Man should not be afraid of God. Some fear is harmful. The right sort of fear is the fear of losing God. It behoves man to love God since God loves man consummately. The masters say that all things arc in travail, labouring to beget MEISTER ECKHART themselves in the image of the Father. They talk of earth as fleeing from the heavens; of her fleeing down and reaching heaven downwards; of her escaping upwards to encounter the lowest of the heavens. Earth has no escape from heaven: flee she up or flee she down heaven still invades her, energising her, fructi- fying her whether for her weal or for her woe. God treats man the same: weening to escape him we run into his arms, for all corners are exposed to him. God will give birth to his Son in thee whether thou like it or loathe it; whether thou sleepest or wakest God goes on with his work. That we have no sense of it is because our tongue is furred with the slime of creatures and possesses not the salt of divine affection. If we had godly love we should savour God and all the works God ever wrought and receive all things from God and be doing the same work as he docs. In this sameness we are all his only Son.
God created the soul according to his own most perfect nature that she might be the bride of his only- begotten Son. He know- ing this full well decided to go fortJi out of the private chamber of his eternal Fatherhood where he has slept for aye and be proclaimed abroad while inwardly abiding in the lirst beginning of his primitive light-nature. So lifting up the tent of his eternal glory the Son proceeded out of the Most High to go and fetch his lady whom his Father had eternally given him to wife and restore her to her former high estate. For this reason he went forth and comes leaping like a love-impassioned swain. He came forth only to return again into his chamber, into the silent darkness of his mysterious Fatherhood. He proceeded out of the supreme in order to go in again accompanied by his bride and show her the hidden mystery of his secret Godhead, where he is at peace with himself and with all creatures.
/n yrincipio signifies, in the beginning of all things. It also means the end of all things, since the first beginning is because of the last end. I trow that God himself is not at rest as being the first beginning: he is at rest where he is the end and cessation of existence, not that existence is then brought to naught: it is brought to its ultimate perfection. What is the last end? It is the mystery of the darkness of the eternal Godhead which is unknown and never has been known and never shall be known. Therein God abides to himvSelf unknown, and the light of the eternal Father has been shining there for aye, and the darkness docs not comprehend the light. May we find this truth, So help us the truth whereof we speak. Amen.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS LXXXIXi 1. THE WORD OF GOD Christ said, ‘ Blessed is the man who hears God’s Word and keeps it.’ The Father himself hears nothing, sees nothing, says nothing, begets nothing excepting his own Word, and in this Word the Father sees and hears and brings forth himself, even this Word and all things, his godhood in principle and himself in nature; this Word with the same nature in another Person. Observe his mode of speech. The Father, fructifying, brings forth his own nature all at once, as understanding, in his eternal Word; not at will nor as an act of will. That which is done or spoken by the power of his will he can in that same power refrain from if he will. Not so with the Father and his eternal Word; whether he would or no he is obliged to speak his Word, to procreate unceas- ingly: this is rooted, so to say, in the Father-nature as deeply as the Father is himself. The Father speaks his Word then, willingly but not from will, naturally, not from nature. In this Word the Father speaks my and thy and every individual human soul as this same Word. In this utterance thou and I are the natural Son of God like the Word itself. As I have already said, the Father knows nothing but this Word and himself and all divine nature and all things in this Word, and everything he knows therein is like the Word and is the Word itself in nature and in truth.
When the Father gives thee, reveals to thee, this gnosis, he is giving thee his life, his being and his deity, really and truly, all together. The human father shares his nature with his son but not his life or being. You can prove this by the fact that if the father dies the son may go on living or the son may die and the father go on living. With a common life and being they would live or die together. They are separate individuals as regards their life and being, and in this they differ from the heavenly Father and his Son. If I take a light from one place and put it in another these lights, as lights, are separate things, for one may go on burning while the other has gone out, and vice versa. Thus they are neither one nor yet eternal.
But, as I was saying, the heavenly Father gives thee his eternal Word, and in that Word he gives thee his own life, his being and his godhood, all at once; for the Father and the Word are two Persons and one life, one being, undivided. When the Father finds thee mentally seeing into this same light, this light itself in its own proper nature, as he sees himself and all things in his paternal power in his Word this very Word in utterance and in ^ Fragment. Pfeiffer’s text seems to be a compound of several sermons.
16 MEISTER ECKHART truth, then he gives to thee the power of begetting, with himself, thyself and all things and his own power in the shape of this same Word. Then with the Father thou art ever giving birth to thyself and all things in the here and now. In this light, as I have said, the Fatlier sees no difference between thee and him; no more inequality, whether more or less, than between himself and his own Word. For in this light the Father and the soul and all things and the Word itself are one.
2. THE WORD OF THE SOUL i — Which of the words my soul speaks is most like the eternal Word?
— There are two words which most fully reveal the eternal Word as well as the love that flows therefrom, so St Augustine says. One word is the Word of (iod and the other is the word of herself which the soul speaks.
— How does she speak the Word of God?
— See, God is in all things, therefore God is also in thy memory; and when the soul in her understanding gives birth to the image of God, as it lies in her memory, then God is the word of thy soul, and when' this word proceeds into the will it becomes love therein. Thus God Father is in thy memory and God Word in thy intellect and (iod Spirit in thy love, though but one God.
— May we say then, generally, that God speaks his own Word in the soul?
— Ves, for when God speaks his Word in himself the Word acquires true distinction of Person; but when our heart speaks the Word of God from memory, the word spoken by God does not acquire true distinction of real Persons, it is only a likeness and reflection of the eternal Word.
— When the Word of God is born in him and his memory speaks this Word, how can it be said: God speaks his Word in the soul?
— To say, God speaks his Word in the soul is true; and to say the soul speaks this Word in her intellect is also true, for God and man speak the Word of God together in our life. As a woman cannot bear her child before she has conceived it, so memory must first be big with the child she bears.
XC ELIZABETH’S FULL TIME CAME Elizabeth impletum est teinpm pariendi et peperit filium {Luc. I57). ‘ Now Elizabeth’s full time came that she should be delivered and ^ See Greith, p. 102.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS she brought forth a son and called him John. Then said the people, What manner of child shall this be, for the hand of the Lord is with him.’ One scripture says, ‘ The greatest gift is that we are God’s child ’: that he begets his Son in us. The soul who is God’s child, in whom the Son of God is born, in her shall nothing else be brought to birth. God’s ultimate purpose is birth. He is not content until he brings his Son to birth in us. Nor is the soul content until the Son of God is born in her. It is thence grace springs. Grace is infused therein, grace doing nothing: its work is its becoming. It flows out of the essence of God and into the essence of the soul, not into her powers.
When the time was fully come grace was born. Time is ful- filled when time is done. He who in time has his heart established in eternity and in whom all temporal things are dead, in him is the fullness of time. ‘ Rejoice in God all the time,’ says St Paul. He rejoices all the time who rejoices above time and apart from time. Three things prevent a man from knowing God at all. The first is time, the second body, and the third is multiplicity or number. As long as these three things are in me God is not in me nor is he working in me really. St Augustine says, ‘ Because the soul is greedy, because she wants to have and hold so much, therefore she reaches into time and, snatching at the things of time and number, loses what she already has.’ While there is more and less in thee God cannot dwell nor work in thee. These things must go out for God to come in; except thou have them in a higher, better way: multitude summed up to one in thee. Then the more of multiplicity the more there is of unity, for the one is changed into the other.
I said on one occasion, unity unifies multiplicity but multi- plicity unites not unity. Once having gotten over things, every- thing in us raised up to a higher power, we sliall never be cast down. If I minded God and God alone, had nothing over me but God, then nothing would be hard and surely nothing troublesome. St Augustine says, ‘ Lord, when I turn to thee, all hardship, suffer- ing and toil are taken from me.* Once gotten beyond time and temporalities we are free and joyous all the time; then is the fullness of time, then the Son of God is born in thee. I once said that in the fullness of time God sent his Son. If aught is born in thee except the Son thou hast gotten nothing of the Holy Ghost and neither is grace working in thee. The origin of the Holy Ghost is the Son. Were there no Son there would be no Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost does not proceed, it cannot blossom forth, except where the Father is in travail with his Son. Then he gives him all he has, natural and essential. It is in this giving that the holy Breath wells out. And it is God’s intention to give MEISTER ECKHART MEISTER ECKHART himself entirely to us. As fire, to consume the wood must pene- trate the wood, finding the wood unlike. That is a matter of time. First it makes it warm, then hot, then it smokes and crackles, on account of its unlikencss; and the hotter the wood grows the quieter and stiller it becomes, and the liker to the fire the more peaceful it becomes till at last it turns to fire altogether. For fire to consume the wood there must be no unlikeness.
In truth, which is God, if thou intendest aught but God or seekest aught but God alone, the work thou doest is not thine nor is it God’s. Thy intention in thy work that also is thy work. That which energises in me is my father and I am subordinate to him. It is impossible in nature that one should have two fathers: in nature one father is the rule. When other things are all ful- filled and done with, then there is this birth. A thing that fills is everywhere in contact with its boundary, nowhere falling short; it has length, breadth, height and depth. If it had height and no length, breadth or depth it would not fill. St Paul says, ‘ Pray that ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the height, breadth, length and depth.* These three things stand for three kinds of knowledge. The first is sensible. The eye sees from afar what is outside it. The second is rational and is a great deal higher. The third corre- sponds to an exalted power of the soul, a power so high and noble it is able to see God face to face in his own self. This power has naught in common with naught, it knows no yesterday or day before, no morrow or day after (for in eternity there is no yester- day or morrow): therein it is the present now; the happenings of a thousand years ago, a thousand years to come, are there in the present and the antipodes the same as here. This power descries God in his vestibule. ‘ In him, over him, through him,’ says the scripture. In means, in the Father; over him is in the Son; through him, in the Holy Ghost. There is no truth but contains the whole of truth, as St Augustine says. This power knows all things in the truth. From this power nothing is veiled. According to the scriptures, men’s heads should be bare, the women’s covered. The women are the lower powers, which are veiled. The man is the power which is bare and face to face.
‘ What wonders shall come from this child? ’ Speaking lately to some people who are very likely here to-day, I said, nothing is so hidden but it shall be revealed. All that is naught shall be done away, hidden and not thought of any more. We shall know nothing of naught, shall have nothing in common with naught. All creatures are a mere naught. That which is not here or there, which is an oblivion of all creatures, that is fullness of being. I told them how nothing that is in us shall be hid, that we shall SERMONS AND COLLATIONS disclose and give up to God everything we find within ourselves, willing or unwilling, good or bad, whatever we are prone to we shall die to in the truth. If we discover everything to God he shall discover to us in return everything he has: he shall hide from us in truth absolutely nothing of all that he has gotten, not wisdom, truth nor holiness nor deity nor nothing whatsoever. As God lives this is in truth the ease. If we disclose nothing to him, no wonder if he reveals nothing to us: we must both do the same, as we to him so he to us.