TRACTATES 299 soul which she conceives in wisdom than that which is common to mankind. The soul must serve God here with her lower powers and in eternity with her higher ones, for she is not made of time nor of eternity: she is made from naught of the nature of them both. Leaning to the temporal she is unstable; keeping to the eternal she is strong and stable and superior to change.
The bridegroom of the soul is the Lord Jesus of sevenfold like- ness. First, in his beauty with which the sun is nothing to compare, for it is not self-luminous: God provides the light wherewith it lights the air. And his bride should be the same in thought and word and deed. For this God lias to brighten all her tarnishes of sin, making luminous the place of her abode.- Secondly, her Lord is of noble lineage: in heaven he has a F ather but no mother and on earth a mother but no father, parentage too strange for any mind to grasp. And his bride, the soul, by birth adorns a rank higher than anything inferior to God. — Thirdly, her Lord is immensely rich: heaven and (‘arth belong to him with all the creatures in it. Accordingly his bride, the soul, may freely confide her every care to him and have no doubt of his providing, for lui is readier to give than we are to receive. — Fourthly, his wisdom is so lucid, it lights the ground of every heart and nothing is hidden from his eyes. Wherefore his bride, the soul, must be very cartTul not to do anything she thinks may be displeasing in his sight,- “F'ifthly, his power is prodigious; by it all things have come to be and arv preserved in being. And his bride, the soul, has corresponding ho])(i in times of trouble or in any kind of suffer- ing or struggle. For what she cannot do he can to wllom all things arc possible.- Sixthly, he is sweet-tem[)ercd. He is called in the scriptures a lamb without blemish, for he is free from anger and bears no resentment. Likewise the soul, his bride, must be gentle, kind and patient in whatever he shall send her to his glory. — Lastly, her Lord, Jesus Christ, has eternal health and dcatlilessncss. And the soul, his bride, should be cheerfully indifferent to disease, not caring for anything so much but she would always be as glad to do without as keep it, just as her bridegroom pleases, and finding no pain so hard to bear but she would suffer it as lief as not. God’s justice to her is as precious as his mercy. This soul is just as pleased with God’s gifts to others as herself.
It is written, ‘ The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God ’ who keeps them too tightly to his sides to be gotten out. Also he made them separate as his handiwork; their guerdon in eternal life, himself; for God alone did make the soul, unhelped by any crea- ture; in power according to his might; in intellect according to his wisdom and according to his goodness in her will, as he from MEISTER ECKHART eternity knew how to make her mighty in his power and blessed in his infinite good. The soul is not made of the nature of God but in the image of the Holy Trinity, and being bound to God by love alone she, seeking perfect rest in him, proclaims her fitness to be his pleasant temple. He went into his temple and drove out the buyers and the sellers, commanding them. Take these things hence. So he made it known that he would have the temple of the soul swept clean, with nothing in it but himself alone. The soul should take example by the angels who disregard all outward things and are without intention except to do the perfect will of God. So bent are they upon the will of God, upon its being done in them, that were it to pick nettles or anything like that, they would do it with a will, as though their whole happiness depended on it.
Any soul devoted thus to the will of God and seeking not her own Jesus takes delight and will work wonders in. When she goes out of her own will all things go in with.Jesus and she becomes so full of light that God alone rivals her in splendour. For though the angels do to some extent resemble the soul in the joys of the hereafter, they have a limit set which they cannot pass beyond. The soul can transcend it in good works, and having once, in grace, drawn level here with the highest angel, her will, free now from all good works, carries her incalculably higher than the angels, provided she can leave her body.
The uncreated God alone is free and the soul’s virgin nature is the same but not her creature nature: it was she who chose to come to ‘naught, but it is left to God to fetch her back. For Jesus to be in the soul she has to recollect herself and be quiet and listen to his Word. When her spirit is receiving power in the Son her every word is pregnant of purity and virtue and perfection. Such a soul nothing can disturb: she stands firm and unshaken as in the power of God.
And Jesus reveals himself in the soul in his infinite wisdom wherein the Father knows himself in all his fatherly authority, to- gether with his Word which is wisdom’s self and all that therein is and the oneness of it. When this same wisdom is embodied in the soul, doubt, error, obstacles of all sorts fade away and leave her in the clear, pure light which is God himself. God in this soul is seen with God: she knows herself and all things with his wisdom. — Also Jesus manifests himself with passing sweetness in the power of the Holy Ghost, and with him the soul flows into herself and beyond herself and transcending all things in grace, plunges directly into her first cause.
Richardus says, commenting upon the Book of Virtue; When the divine light strikes into the soul she finds her own activities TRACTATES exceedingly insipid, and unable to tolerate herself in her own powers she confines herself to enjoying God. Now St Augustine says, ‘ My soul is where she loves rather than where she is giving life.* At this rate God is nearer me than I am to myself; and any loving soul who follows God so far as to rise above herself, nor rests with pleasure in herself or any creature, such a soul, I say, will have no pleasure either in God’s gifts: what she desires is God himself. When the soul is rid of things she has certain knowledge of and is nothing lacking in the image of God, her mind is wide open to the eternal truth. The eternal sun sheds its light into this soul and permeates her powers, each separate faculty feeling the physical contingency of the visitation according to its individual nature. And the light of the eternal sun raises all the soul-powers to the power of itself in the wholly intelligible image. When the soul undergoes this operation, as it is per- formed by God, in essential understanding, then the soul’s under- standing becomes the light (or knowledge) of all God is bringing about in her by grace. And her mind being enhanced, as we have said, her faculties are raised above the things of time, so that come what may her powers arc unhindered by anything infernal and are always being augmented, never getting less. For divine understanding we depend upon God’s bounty; but it is his nature to give himself to us and the soul’s nature is to give herself to him who gives himself to her, thus giver and gift, doer and deed are one. The Lord Jesus said, ‘ I go to him that sent me.* And the soul too may say in her ascent to God, ‘ I go to him I came from.* She goes to the Father, first, in her fixed intention no longer to disobey his will by cumbering herself with untoward creatures. Secondly, she goes the perfect way of answering every call God makes upon her; and thirdly, she goes in the sweet savour of God’s love wherein her suffering is no suffering. Fourthly, she goes in the four cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice, over time and creatures. And she goes in the three virtues of faith, hope and charity, without which no one gets to God. Who knows to what wonders the soul may not attain by committing herself into the hands of God? Every blessed soul keeps open heart to God’s consolation, and such as she receives from him she passes on to her inferior powers wherewith she knows not God else were he dishonoured in the weak intelligence of these lower faculties. And because all souls have not the same aptitude for God, the vision of God is not enjoyed the same by all any more than the sunshine affects all eyes alike.
It is written, ‘ There shall come forth a stem out of the root of Jesse.* Here let us consider three things: what this root is out of which God is born in the soul, and what and what measure MEISTER ECKHART of profit does it bring? ‘ Root of Jesse ’ is a term for the fiery nature whieh attracts and transmutes all comers to itself. It is the fiery nature of God: drawing the soul it converts her into itself and she is spiritually born in understanding; for the soul has in common with the angels a light wherein she can see God, and this light she is provided with is her intellect which is cease- lessly conveying God’s wisdom to the soul. But it darkens when poured into the body.
We read of three kings bringing Christ their offerings. These we take to mean the three inferior powers of the soul, things by rights at the disposal of her superior powers. I am going now to speak of these superior powers, showing how they are the kings and what gifts of lower powers it is they bring.
The first king is memory, bearing the produce of his kingdom. When the soul calls to mind how noble God has made her there flows from this perception a passionate desire which ascends to God, flinging behind it all the things of tiiiK*. Then indeed King Memory conies offering the gold of love to God, together with surrender of all else. The second king of the soul is understanding. This corresponds with her other power, reason or judgment. When the soul sees that by grace she is enabled to fulfil the will of God, she is never weary of subjugating creatures to please God and each one the more in proportion to the merit she acquires from God. Understanding then, comes rich with patience and grateful acceptance of whatever lot God destines for her in the body here and with this she has the fruit of incense, the union of all virtues, so that what would otherwise be hard and difficult her love makes feasible and easy. — The soid’s third king is will. When in the flower of his strength he brings the soul the fire of love, which tries her through and through and consumes away all the sinful affections of her nature, then she is fixed, and neither life nor death nor any creature can separate her from the love of God. So they bring her myrrh to keep her from the rot of temiwral things which to the soul arc a fertile source of evil. St Ambrose says, ‘ Gk)d pours forth the soul creating and pouring forth he creates her.’ And when she is in love with him, immediately he comes to her, as his spiritual bride admits where she says in the Book of Love, ‘ While I was at rest upon my bed my love came tapping at my window and he put in his hand and touched me.’ This suggests that when the soul comes to know herself she withdraws from all the things which are present to her here, for she herself is of greater worth and higher status than any of the other things in time. When now the loving soul has gone out of all creatures and herself, then the eternal truth comes forth as well to meet the loving soul and touch her understanding and exalt it with his TRACTATES 808 light which more enriches her than all the knowledge of material things hitherto amassed by her own nature. St Augustine says, ‘ As the sun shines through glass and makes its contents plain, so is the soul’s intelligence illumined by the light of God with the recog- nition of her divine abilities.* Then the soul is seen in her poverty and God in his purity. Indeed Dionysius says as much when he speaks of ‘ the naked soul, one with her naked God, resting in the desert of the Godhead.’ It may well be called a desert, for crea- ture never looked therein by grace. Ignorance of these matters is just cause for shame. Yet if one of the chief angels should descend and, with creatures all as w^ise as he, discourse of human happiness, they might talk till doomsday and not tell the tale of all God has in store for every loving soul in life eternal. But the soul must not seek God for any reason except God himself. The emptier she keeps the more God fills her and the more ])erfectly he does his work in her; besides, it is the safest way, for then at any moment she will be prepared to quit the body at God’s instance rather than remain there at her own. And being so poor of self she will find naught but God both here and yonder. There is no call for such a soul to look outside herself: the Holy Ghost will teach her the elements of bliss in the school of her own heart. She cherishes the gift wherewith God has endowed his best beloved. And the better to fulfil God’s will in everything she does she trains herself never to be without pure consciousness so that the heavenly Father can go on ever giving birth in her to his eternal Word, Jesus Christ his Son. For at her highest point my soul is not in time and does not work in time and is just as neaf td things a thousand miles away as to this spot I stand on.
J^hcorctically speaking, nothing that takes shape or is touched by time can get into the soul, and not only time but likeness. The head of the soul is her highest power, and from the moment she was made she has never for an instant been without the boon of this divine light, this power in which the time God made the world in and the judgment day are just as present to the soul as this time wherein I speak. Being in the power of her head the soul enjoys the benefit of participation in the grace and happiness common to all saints as though they were her own. It is certainly the fact that anyone actually in this head never commits sin and knows so much about eternal bliss and is so well informed that he needs no sermons. Wherefore erecting the head of the soul let us gather ourselves up into the breadth and freedom of a power like this and depart from temporal to eternal things when, in this same power, God suddenly gives birth to all he is in might and truth and wisdom in the soul. Verily the soul in whom this grace is found is absolutely pure and every whit like God. For anything MEISTER ECKHART MEISTER ECKHART well-pleasing to the Father or which makes for our profit or our weal, must be well-pleasing to him in his Son, because apart from him he has no likes whatever. This then is the nobility which God has implanted in the soul, her beatific nature which is receptive to the grace of God, so that in this grace the light of God’s pure nature can shine into the soul and the Word of the Trinity be spoken in her mind and the life of eternity energise in her.
Theologians say the soul is a suspended force in the power of the Father and a reflected light in the wisdom of the Son and a circulation in the sweetness of the Holy Ghost. According to St Augustine, the soul comes from the heavenly land, out of the paternal heart; the offspring of God’s love and scion of the noble house of the holy Trinity, she is the heir to heaven, the mistress of all creatures and the proprietor of all the joys God gives in his eternity. She is the image of God and the noblest creature that ever God conceived. For God gripped in between his divine nature and his Godhood, into his eternal essence, and produced the soul from nothing, just as he made from nothing heaven and earth and all things. If you ask how big the soul is, know, she is too big for heaven and earth to fill, or even God himself whom the heavens cannot comprehend. To measure the soul you must gauge her with God. And she is so beautiful as long as she is in the grace of God and not deformed by sin, the highest angels, Seraphim and Cherubim and all the saints try in vain to copy her in form and likeness, for she is God’s image. As to her life in time, she is flowing back to her natural source whence she issued forth; and the freer she has kept herself from temporal forms and creatures the kinder her return to God, for God is absolutely free from matter, mode and form. For the soul to compare with the abstract spirit of God she must be free from the smallest trace of sensible affection and quite without attachment to anything not God. That such perfect freedom is not known to every spirit is due solely to our undiscovered life and our untaught senses. All the potential good in creatures the soul will find in God together with inestimable joy. St Augustine says, ‘ When everything was still that existed in me God spake a silent Word within my soul, which no one understood but me.’ And to whatever soul this Word is said she will forget all modes and forms and become an in-dweller with God. Thus St Paul relates, ‘ From the moment the eternal Word was revealed within my soul I no linger lived for flesh and blood.’ Inasmuch as she is selfless she is self-possessed and strong. The faithful, loving soul is like the bee, sipping from all kinds of flowers the sweets to make its honey. And even so the soul culls from the flowers of virtue somewhat of each one to heal and fortify her. It is a crying need for she has three mortal TRACTATES 805 foes: the world, the flesh and the devil, hanging all together like three cherries on one stem. Of these three foes the deadliest is the body, wherein the soul is clapt as into prison: not that she may pander to its vicious appetites but to say them nay and by this resistance daily to augment her reward in heaven and here the love inpoured. It was Seneca, the heathen philosopher, who said, ‘ Man is his own worst enemy.’ Death stands at the door of evil appetites, and the pursuit of vice leads into paths which seem all right to us but sometimes they debouch in the pit of hell. If the soul, the mistress of the body, indulges its base appetites and fails to check its sins she has herself to blame when either here or yonder she must pay for it to God. And that there may be no escaping from God’s justice for them that kill the soul with sin and end in fleshly lusts, he says in the prophet Amos, ‘ My wrath shall drive over you like a chariot, cracking with its weight; my anger the swift shall not outrun nor the valiant turn aside nor yet the strong man conquer with his strength. Not one shall escape me, how fair or strong or mighty soever he may be.’ And seeing that the soul has such a high and heavenly destiny, therefore Meister Elckhart of Paris, at the end of the aforesaid things, which are taken from his writings, sets the following prayer: O Sovran Riches of Divine Nature, show me thy way which thou in thy wisdom hast ordained and open to me thy most precious treasure whereto thou hast called me: to know with supercreaturely intelligence, to love with the angels, to enjoy with thy only Son our Lord Jesus Christ and to be thine heir to Sternal wisdom and by thy help to be preserved from evil. For thou hast exalted me above all creatures and hast sealed me with the seal of thine eternal image and put my soul beyond the grasp of creatures and hast made nothing liker to thyself than man is in his soul. Teach me to live so that I never want thee; so as never to hinder the working of thy love-stream in me; so as never to lend myself to any outward pleasure without thee nor occupy my mind more with any creature than with thee. Lord thou art spirit and incomprehensible to creature; thou dost inspire the soul and raise her to an order above creature so that she can do thy will, O Eternal Wisdom, and in grace be free from inroad of unbidden images. Thou hast made the soul to suit thyself in her nature and her laws and she maintains she has no room for anyone but thee. O Almighty and Most Merciful Creator and dear Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner and help me to overcome all pitfalls with their lures to idle pleasure; to shun in thought and act what thou forbiddest and both to do and keep all thy commands; help me to believe, to hope, to love; to live and feel exactly as 20 MEISTER ECKHART 20 MEISTER ECKHART thou wilt and as much as thou wilt and what thou wilt. Lord, grant me the sorrow of the humble; a mind escaped from mortal body; to love, to laud and to behold thee and cherish every act and thought that is toward thee. Grant me a clear and sober and genuinely prayerful mind with real intuition of thy will, together with the love and joy which make it easy to perform. Lord, vouchsafe me always modest progress towards better things and never to backslide. And, O my Lord, condemn me not, as I deserve, to rely on my own powers or on human weak- ness and unwisdom but on thy good providence alone. Direct me Lord to The Good itself, my every thought and act to thine own liking, so that on my part, in me, thy will is always being done and I being saved from evil and brought to thy eternal life where thou art three in Person and one in the essence of thy divine nature: Father, Son and Holy Ghost and ever blest almighty God. Amen.
IV THE SOUL’S PERFECTION!
Speaking of the final perfection of the soul theologians ask. What is meant by saying that the spirit in its understanding has become the intellectual existence of the eternal essence in the perennial now with nothing between? That is the first question. The second question is. How can the spirit make good its intellectual return into the unchanging, and have the eternal image in perfect clearness and essential intimacy and in the interior freedom of the spirit? The third question is about the highest flight of the spirit, its nearest approach of all to the divine presence and whether its own powers are equal to the task?
First, we must remember how the divine being proceeded forth in the present now, with falling man, the gist of it, immediate in his spiritual prototype in virtue of its nearness and also by reason of the inherent now of its light of glory and intellectual image from which the intellect sees back quite clearly to the un-proceeded splendour of its eternally immanent spiritual exemplar wherein it is nameless and beyond all words which are creaturely. The word is in the eternal Word and one presence with it and God with his whole nature and the full range of his power can make out of his essence nothing more resembling the divine species in the ground divine nature and reflecting him so well. He who receives the light of the spirit as it is the image of God, wherein is no part, that is the medium of perfection, for therein his spirit is one with divine nature.
1 See also Jostes, No. 34, of which this tractate forms the middle portion.
TRACTATES 80 T As to the second question, you must understand that although the intelligible image of God in the spirit partakes in its nature and purity more of the perfection of the content of its immanent essence than of the emanation of itself, nevertheless it is therein essence that has become. Take the spirit in its nearest ground, abiding within in its endless image and eternal image. As the endless image it is always within and in its eternal image it presents itself as an eternal question. As Christ asks, ‘ Whose is this image and this superscription? ’ Mark the difference between this image and its superscription. In the image exists God, and all his output in spirit and in nature — the human mind (or spirit) with all it is able to afford, — these are in uniformity so exact and close that the image of divine glory shines in all its detail in the spirit and this image in the spirit is perfectly reflected back into its indwelling essence. So much for the image of God. And what of the superscription? That is the unspeakable species of the divine nature, which in its whole ground, actual and essential, is a naked and immediate presence in the spirit, in virtue of which the spirit in its free nature and intellectual image suffers all God’s super-rational operation. The limit comes where the divine freedom seizes the spirit’s freedom and turns it into foolishness and at this point all scientific knowledge fails; there is no further progress to be made by natural creature-knowledge but only in spirit by experiencing God.
Now to answer the third question. Philosophers say that one’s own is ever innate and can be had at will. It follows.thfit the spirit can rise to the supreme perfection of its divine nature for it can stand in its first now, in that wherein it was not. And that is the answer to the third query.
Then there is the question, can God leave man’s spirit to itself or not? I say, No, it would be against the justice of his nature and against his truth and would make a travesty of God’s whole creation. God must cither let the spirit be God extra to himself or else he must merge it in himself, when it has left all things. This will not outrage God, for the spirit is too haughty and touches too closely the honour of God for him to be able to make aught but himself the end of its perfection. It has this unique property: its ground can overleap all spirits into his super-intelligible spirit, namely, the indwelling essence of divine nature.
A man was asked, What dost thou lack? He said. Nothing, except poverty of spirit. — And though I have a will no bigger than a grain of mustard seed I am no poor man, and if God were to ask me. Art thou a poor man? I should reply that, be my will as good as God’s yet am I not poor, not even if with that same will I do as much as God, And why? Because God and God’s will MEISTER ECKHART MEISTER ECKHART are one, I and my will are two, for I am a man and not God and if I mean to do real work entirely without or free from will then I must emulate the stone which lies in the water and the water Hows over it but enters not into the stone. Even so if I were a poor man I should do my works in such a way that they entered not into my will any more than the water does into the stone: I should do them simply at the will of God. And if again God asked me, whether I was poor and if I replied, ‘ I have abandoned my own will and did I know the will of God that would I do,’ I might be assuming something not my own, for no one knoweth who we are, though we are not the truth for God can change^^our knowledge, not his knowledge, because he is the truth and we are not.
Perhaps someone will say, How can I do my work like this, will -free? The answer is, I ought to do my work as though no one existed, no one lived, no one had ever come upon the earth. Then if God asked me once again. Art thou a poor man? and if I replied, ‘ I am unworthy of that knowing,’ that were the barest poverty that ever I heard tell of or went through: the deepest, direst poverty. Yet all the while I have within enough of place for God to do his work in me, to give his gift to me, all that while I am not a poor man for all that while 1 am expecting God. — What more can I do? — Thus shalt thou do: thou shalt leave all willing and knowing and receiving of things and at the very point where thou hast left all things there God has given thee all things; he durst, not give thee more nor any more work with thee nor canst thou take in more, but thou shalt simply leave thyself. That is poverty of spirit the most near of all, for none is downright poor but he who wills not, knows not, has not, whether within or without. To the eternal truth, God help us. Amen.
V THE BOOK OF GODLY COMFORT Benedictus deus et pater domini nostri Jesu Christi etc, {2 Cor. I 3 ). That great teacher St Paul says in his epistle, ‘ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who cornforteth us in all our tribulation.’ Three kinds of tribulation may fall upon a man and plunge him in distress. First, misfortune to exterior belongings. Next, to our dearest friends. Lastly, to ourselves: shame, hardship, pain of body and distress of mind.
So 1 purpose in this book to impart some teachings apt to console a man in all adversity, unhappiness and suffering. And TRACTATES 809 having therein and therefrom culled sundry general truths to com- fort him in any trouble, he will find thereafter thirty rules or maxims each of which alone is sufficient for his solace; and after that again, in the third part of the book, he will find precepts and examples, theoretical and practical, the sayings and doings of the wise in times of tribulation.^ 1