By the two roast fishes (one fish is will, the other its fulfilment) we understand thorough subjection, the downright death of thy whole nature — the marrow of thy bones, blood in thy veins and whole concomitants of natural vigour — so that albeit having the will to sin, thou hast no power to. Doctors debate whether a man can reach the stage at which he is incapable of sinning in his body. The best authorities say ‘ Yes ’; alluding to souls so perfectly disciplined outwardly and inwanily that they have no propensity to sin.
The second fish we take to signify achievement of the virtues; virtue consummated to the pitch where it becomes instinctive; where virtue is our very being; where our knowledge and love transcend virtue. A man at this stage gives pure light.
Doctors describe four kinds of light. The first is natural, the light of natural man apt in affairs, which is less a help ihan a hindrance. The second is the light of grace. Whom this en- lightens has his natural light put out. It lights him on the road to his salvation, preserving him in grace so he follow it closely. The third light lightens the angels and man in his primitive innocence. For know, the man who with the angels receives all things from God is void of mundane things and creaturehood and naked as he was when he came out of God. Man can what angels cannot: in this light he can transcend the angels and receive all things from the source of divine truth. Then he is given divine light, the fourth light, and about this I am dumb. I keep that to myself.
Here the daughter comes to her revered confessor and says, ‘ Sir, I fear I shall never do it.’ — ‘ Why not? ’ said he. Said she, ‘ I still have all the virtues to cultivate. I ween I never brought one single virtue to the pitch required.’ Quoth he, ‘ Be satisfied to do thy best.’ — ‘ I have never done my best,’ she said, ‘ albeit I am well aware that I am thrice behoven unto God. My first behoof is to repair my faults.’— ‘ None can repair a fault if God MEISTER ECKHART MEISTER ECKHART forgive it not in love,’ said he. ‘ I wot of that,’ she said, ‘ but I must do my share and live in hopes of grace until I die.’
Quoth he, ‘ What is thy second accusation? ’ She answered, ‘ That, while fain to be in the joy of our Lord, I have not lived accordingly, albeit well aware that to enter there one has to live the perfect life in our Lord Jesus Christ.’ — ‘ That is so,’ he said.
‘ Tell me, what is thy third behoof? ’ She said, ‘ Though there were neither hell nor heaven, to follow him for true love all the same, as he prevented me: to follow him to the end without a why. 1 know my duty but mend not my ways as in duty bound.’ — ‘ What more wouldst thou do? ’ he asked. ‘ 'Fhou hast given up honour and possessions, and kith and kin and every comfort thou didst get from creatures.’ — ‘ True, sir, in letter,’ she said, ‘ but giving up all God ever created to leave it for God’s sake is giving up nothing; it is not mine to give. It is God’s. Anything in the shape of possessions is God’s. Wherefore I ween there is still something more for me to leave.’ — ‘ What must thou leave? ’ he asked.- - ‘ Myself,’ she answered. ‘ If I leave myself wherever 1 find myself I can say, I have left myself.’ — ‘ Thou art right,’ he cried, ^but I marvel, being so sensitive, thou canst brook the insults heaped upon thee.’ She said, ‘ God knows I feel none.’ Quoth he, ‘ Does it not touch thee that thy friends, spiritual as well as worldly, are so distressed on thy account, thinking thee most mistook in thy behaviour? ’ — ‘ What is that to me? ’ she said. ‘ For well I ween Christ knew, when he was sitting in the temple, that Joseph and his mother sought him sorrowing. The doctors told Christ: Thy father and thy mother are seeking thee. Christ answered: He who is kind to me, the same is my father and mother and sister and brother.’ — ‘ True,’ he said. ‘ I prithee, though, accept life’s necessaries when they are offered thee in the name of God.’ — ‘ Tell me,’ she queried, ‘ what are necessaries? ‘ Wouldst have me specify the bare necessities of life? ’ he asked. ‘ Aye,’ she replied. ‘ Bread, water, and a cloak,’ he said. ‘ These arc bare bodily necessities.’ Quoth she, ‘ Now tell me what is neces- sary? ’ And he made answer, ‘ To dwell in utter ignominy in Christ who alone lives.’ — ‘ Now God reward you! ’ she exclaimed. ‘ Pray God on my behalf to give all creatures licence to cry me down and persecute me to their topmost bent.’ Quoth he, ‘ Thou ’It get a plenty in thy vocation. A holy man has said, Did God know anyone willing to suffer the sum of human suffering, he would give it him to bear that his worth might be so much the greater in eternity. God will db this out of pure love to anyone he calls to him.’ Quoth she, ‘ A master says, He alone deserves suffering who dearly desires it.’ — ‘ True, daughter,’ he said. ‘ Prithee, an thou wilt, remain in these parts and busy thyself among us.’ — TRACTATES ‘ That will I not,’ she answered, ‘ I must be about my own business. I mean to live in exile, anywhere where I am persecuted. For you must know I have found more of God in the least desi)iscry than ever I did in the sweetness of ereatures.’ — ‘ I’ll not quarrel with that for it is true,’ he said. ‘ Christ proves it by those words to his disciples. Go ye into all places where they shall persecute you.’ Quoth she, ‘ God bless you for it, who have my homage betwixt me and God.’ — ‘ Come to me wheresoever thou shalt find me,’ he said. That will I gladly.’
St Paul affirms of the holy martyrs and friends of our Lord, ‘ They are dead.’ From this we argue that we have to be dead too. I hold that anyone who is not really dead has not the faintest notion of the sacred things revealed by God to his beloved. As long as thou still knowest wlio thy father and thy mother have been in time, thou art not dead with the real death. Further 1 hold: as long as it affects thee that no one will shrive tliee nor give thee God’s body nor sh(‘lter thee from the world’s scorn, as long as it is in thee to be moved by this, know that thou art a stranger to the true death. When thou art aware of nothing within thee: when, having escaped from earthly species and forgot thy honourable estate and all temporal happenings, thou hast emtered oblivion so deep that nothing formulates itself in thee and thou art sensible of naught save the sheer ascension of Ihy soul, then thou canst say that thou art really dead. lie who is dead thus is always the same; nothing affects him. Anent this St John says, ‘ Blessed are the dead that die in God.’ See then, my friends, how^ood it is to die in God. We can die gladly il' (iod will live and work in ns while we arc idle. We die, ’tis true, but ’tis a gentle death. Folks tell ns of the holy life, how they have suffered. To tell the tale of what our Lord’s friends suffered time would be all too short. T say: they did not suffer. The least suspi(*ion of God-eonseiousness and sufferings would be all forgot. This may well liappcn while the soul is in the body. I say more; while yet in the body a soul may reach oblivion of its trav^ail not to remember it again. Further 1 hold: to him who suffers not for love, to suffer is suffering and is hard to bear. But he who suffers for love does not suffer, and this suffering is fruitful in God’s sight. It follows, friends, that by contriving to die in (iod gladly, we go scot-free from suffering. To practise this is to be really dead. So to die in God, help us O Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Here the aforementioned daughter comes to her confessor, beseeching him, ‘ Sir, hear me for God’s sake.’ — ‘ Whence come you? ’ said he. ‘ From foreign parts,’ said she. He asked, ‘ Of what country art thou? ’ She answered, ‘ Sir, do you not know me? ’ ‘ Not I, God wot,’ quoth he. Quoth she, ‘ By the same MEISTER ECKHART token you have never known yourself.’ — ‘ True,’ he replied, ‘ for well I ween that if I knew myself as intimately as I ought, I should have perfect knowledge of all creatures.’ — ‘ You are right,’ she said; ‘ but a truce to this talk, sir. Hear me, in God’s name.’ — ‘ Willingly,’ he said. ‘ Say on.’
The daughter made confession to her revered confessor, as it was now in her to do, in a manner to rejoice his heart. Quoth he, ‘ Return ere long, daughter.’ — ‘ Gladly, God willing,’ quoth she.
Going off to his brethren he announces, ‘ I have just shriven someone, whether woman or angel I misdoubt, nay, I wot not. If woman, her soul powers dwell with tlic angels in heaven and her soul has received angelic nature. She knows and loves beyond anyone I ever met.’ ‘ Glory be to God,’ the brethren cry.
Seeking his daughter where he knows her to be, in the chapel, namely, her confessor earnestly entreats her to converse with him. — ‘ Do you not know me yet? ’ she asks, lie answers, ‘ No, God knows.’ — ‘ Then I Avill tell you for love. I am the poor soul you led to God.’ And she discovers to him her identity. — ‘ Alas, wretch that T am! ’ he cries. ‘ Shame on me in the sight of God that having spiritual light so long I am so unfamiliar with divinity. Prithee, my daugliter, for the love of God, recount to me thy life and doings since T last saw thee.’ Quoth she, ‘ That were a deal to tell.’ — ‘ Not more than I am fiiin to hear,’ he said. ‘ Know, I have been amazed by what you told me.’
Ere ^taking up her tale the daughter says to her confessor: ‘ You must never betray me while I live.’ — I give you my word,’ he answered, ‘ not to divulge thy confession during thy lifetime.’ Whereupon she embarks on such a wondrous story he marvels any human being could go through so much. Quoth she, ‘ Sir, still I fall short, I find that I have conquered all my heart’s desires save only that my faith be not assailed.’ — ‘ God be praised for making thee,’ he cried. ‘ Now rest content.’ — ‘ Never,’ she said, ‘ while my soul has no abiding place in eternity.’ Said he, ‘ I should be well content to have my soul ascend as thine does.’ She said, ‘ My soul ascends freely, but it makes no stay. To will does not content me; if only I might know the thing to do to establish me permanently in eternity! ’ He asked, ‘ Is the desire so strong? ’ She answered, ‘ Aye.’ — ‘ Be rid of it,’ he said, ‘ if thou wouldst be confirmed.’ Saying, ‘ ’Tis gladly done,’ she sinks into destitution. And God drawing her in his divine light she weens that she is one with God. While this continues she keeps beating back into herself with an overwhelming sense of deity, and keeps ejaculating, ‘ I am sure there is no escape for me.’
The confessor visits his daughter frequently, inquiring, ‘ Tell TRACTATES me, how goes it now with thee? ’ — ‘ 111,’ she replies. ‘ Heaven and earth are too confined for me.’ He entreats her to tell him something. She says, ‘ I have nothing whatever to tell.’ — ‘ Just a word, for God’s sake,’ he pleads, and wins it for the asking. She proceeds to reveal to him such profound and marvellous things concerning the pure perception of divine truth that he exclaims, ‘ Thou knowest this is not common knowledge, and were I not among those priests who have read it in theology, I had not known it either.’ — ‘ Much good it is to you,’ she said. ‘ I would you had a lively sense of it.’ Said he, ‘ I am this much alive to it, I feel as certain of it as of my having said the mass to-day. Natheless, this lack of actual experience docs trouble me.’
With the words, ‘ Pray God for me,’ the daughter returns into her solitude to enjoy God’s society. Ere long she appears at the door again, demanding her confessor, to whom she says, ‘ Sir, rejoice with me, I am God.’ — ‘ Glory be to God! ’ he cries. ‘ Retire again into thy solitude; all joy be thine an thou rernainest God.’
Obedient to her confessor, she goes into the chapel, into a secluded corner. There oblivion descended upon her, and she forgot everything named and was so far withdrawn from self and everything created that she had to be carried from the church and lay till the third day, surely accounted for dead. ‘ I misdoubt she is dead,’ quoth her confessor. Know, had there been no confessor they would have buried her. They essayed by all manner of means, but whether her soul was in her body they could not discover. They said, ‘ For sure she is dead.’ For sure she is not,’ said her confessor. On the third day the dau^^ter re- turned. ‘ Alas, me miserable, am I back! ’ she cried. Her confessor, who was already there, addressed her, saying, ‘ Permit me to taste divine truth in the revelation of thy experience.’ She said, ‘ God knows, I cannot. My exj^ericnce is ineffable.’ — ‘ Hast got now all thou wilt? ’ he asked. She answered, ‘ Aye. I am confirmed.’
Blest and praised be the name of our Lord Jesus Christ who showed us the way to conquer by grace what he is by nature. It needs a God-receptive man who treads beneath his feet self and all creatures. He has five deaths to die. The first is death to natural things. Being dead to nature spirit reigns. Never- theless he still may lapse into eternal death, as shown by Lucifer. Himself pure spirit, from himself he fell, falling eternally. We must die in spirit, our spirit being inspired into the spirit of truth. Now we begin to live in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, strictly obeying his precepts and example. Thus we die in our Lord Jesus Christ in the truth which is himself, even as he died in his humanity. And we rise in our Lord Jesus Christ to live again in MEISTER ECKHART MEISTER ECKHART the quick of life. We enter the Father in the Son. Humanity receives its coup de grace, pierced to the heart by light divine. Therein man learns to know himself. Forgot are all God’s gifts beknownst to him. Thought, word, will, act, lie strewn before him in the reflection of the divine light received from the Father. In this divine light the soul sees herself less than creature. She finds no place to dwell in. She deems herself the vilest thing God ever made. Lucifer is to her so meritorious that she ranks under him. Accordingly the masters say, ‘ Christ’s soul and Lucifer’s were made in the same light.’ Hence the soul’s grievance and self- condemnation. Christ’s soul was the wisest soul that ever was: she faced round in the creature and looked towards the creator. Wherefore the Father clad her in the divine garment and property of his own nature. Hut Lucifer looked away to the defieiency and thereby fell, falling eternally. So fall all they that turn from God to things corruptible. In this plight the soul now finds herself and is consumed within herself, there thinking to remain eternally, for it is she who is to blame.
The best authorities aver that from the very lowest angel of all those in heaven, there fell one drop upon Die highest heaven. This started the celestial revolutions, each heaven following the course nature laid down for carrying round the drop. From it all creatures get their life, those that have life in time; in it all creatures hie them back to their first source; in it the soul becomes aw'are that, so little has God become in time, our works must be wrought above time, in eternity. Christ taught us this. Ifis works arc all wrought in eternity. Did God perform one act outside himself, lie were not (iod. God’s works arc Avrought so that they remain in him. And our works which are wrought thus endure in eternity. Understand, we call viiue that which is in me, which none can take from me. —Here the soul is moved to exclaim: ‘ Alas, that 1 have Avrought so many works outside me! ’ Concerning nature, the masters speak as folloAvs: Nature and naturalness are not identical. The natural state is taken on in time; nature is in itself eternal. This touches the soul. Philo- sophers will tell you that thunder is merely the result of opposites. Clouds cannot bear being charged with opposites, Avhich crash together; hence lightning and the thunder. So with the wind; it blows till foreign matter is expelled, namely, the rain. Creatures in general will purify themselves from incompatiblcs.
Here the soul realizes that she has often harboured incompatibles. She says: ‘ Creatures all pointed me to my eternal happiness. They did not Lucifer: he fell from God for ever because of the unlikes he assumed. God kept me in himself. I had no mind to TRACTATES 827 see it, so I can never look for grace.’ And there she stops, failing to rise beyond herself.
Now theologians say, God is by nature bound to draw his likes out of their selfhood into himself just as the sun will draw up moisture. Then the soul, merged in the naked Godhead, is no more to be found than a wine-drop in mid-ocean. That soul can no more sin than God can. The man is said to be conformed to God. God is his active principle. He has real perception. Things are in him without images, for he is one with God in whom are all things. In this case it is true to say, all things arc in man formless. The masters say: ‘ To gauge the soul we must gauge her with God, for the ground of God and the ground of the soul are one nature.’ The part that gives life to the body is the least part of the soul. The man who realizes this has fresh and inexhaustible delight. What though he walks in time, he dwells in his eternal nature. He inhabits the truth. This man is known by five signs. First, he nevaT complains. Next, he never makes excuses: when accused, he leaves the facts to vindicate him. Thirdly, there is nothing he wants in earth or heaven but what God wills himself. Fourthly, he is not moved in time. Fifthly, he is never rejoiced: he is joy itself.
Here the trusty confessor comes seeking his daughter in an unknown land, earnestly entreating her to hold converse with him. She says, ‘ I can talk with you of outward things.’ — ‘ ’Twill serve,’ quoth he. ‘ Tell me, what, thinkest thou, made thee most ripe for the eternal truth? ’ She answered: ‘ Leaving myself wherever I found myself. Next, never excusing myself from accusations which concerned myself alone. Thirdly, whatever my y)ain, wanting still more and compelling myself to bear it equably. Fourth, being supple to insignificance, poverty and lack of creature comforts. Fifth, never seeing souls sin without rebuke and never hearing things against the gospel and the life of Christ without I fought them to the death. But know that it has been my habit rather to rebuke those persons whose sins I saw were doing them a mortal mischief. 1 never did it save purely out of love to God, being moved to pity for them. Many an insult they have hurled upon me. Sixth, never avoiding occasion of insult: I fled from honour but I stayed for shame. Seventh, never looking back when once I knew the way to my eternal happiness; and taking no man’s counsel, but plodding straight on. Eighth, being never content with present light nor present sight, which were as nothing to my certainty. Ninth, never resisting any use God chose to put me to. Tenth, rigid discipline, inward and outward.’
‘ God be praised,’ he said. ‘ Thou hast told me thy outward rule; now tell me thy inner.’ Quoth she, ‘ God wot, I fear it is MEISTER ECKHART beyond you.’ — ‘ But just a hint; deny me not,’ he urged. And she responded: ‘ At the moment of confirmation there existed in me all the works God ever wrought as a little thing inferior to heaven. My abode was heaven. I dwelt there with the inmates of the Trinity which to me was as familiar as to the householder the house he dwells in, and saw the partition between all creatures and God’s whole creation: it was as plain as the five fingers on my hand.’--‘ He said, ‘ Explain more fully.’ She replied, ‘ I will. I had assembled all my soul-powers. When I saw into myself 1 saw God in me and everything God ever made in earth and heaven. Let me explain it better. As you know right well, anyone wJio faces God in the mirror of truth sees everything depicted in that mirror: all things, that is to say. Such was my inner habit before confirmation. Do you quite take me? ’ — ‘ It must be so, of course,’ he said. ‘ Is that not thy rule now? ’ She answered, ‘ No, I have nothing to do with saints nor angels nor crea- tures nor anything created; it is all uniform: not merely nothing created but nothing uttered concerns me.’ — ‘ Explain,’ he said. She said, ‘ I will. I am confirmed in the naked Godhead, wherein is neither form or image.’— ‘ Art there for good? ’ he asked. She answered, ‘ Yes.’ Quoth he, ‘ Daughter, say on, this talk delights me.’ And she proceeded, ‘ As 1 am no creature can be, as creature.’ — ‘ Explain,’ he said. Quoth she, ‘ I am as I was before I was created: just God and God. No saint nor angel nor choir nor heaven. Eight heavens are often spoken of and nine choirs of angels; there is nothing of that where I am. You must know tljat expressions of that sort, which conjure up pictures in the mind, merely serve as allurements to God. In God there is nothing but God; no soul gets to God until she is God as she was before she was made.’
He said, ‘ You speak the truth, daughter. Now do for God’s sake counsel me as best thou canst how I may gain possession of this good.’— ‘ I will give you sure guidance,’ she said. ‘ As you are well aware, creatures were made from nothing and must return to nothing ere they reach their source.’ ‘True,’ he agreed. Quoth she, ‘ Enough said. Tell me now, what is nothing? ’ He replied, ‘ I know what is nothing and I know what is less than nothing. Imperfections, I take it, are nothing to God. So that anyone subject to imperfections is less than nothing.’ — ‘ How so? ’ — ‘ He is the servant of imperfection. Nothing is nothing. The servant of imperfection is less than nothing.’ Quoth she, ‘ Pre- cisely. The way then to obtain your good is to subordinate yourself to yourself and creatures till you can find no more to do towards God’s working in you.’ — ‘ You are right,’ he cried. ‘ One mastqr says. He who loves God as his God, and prays to God as TRACTATES his God and is therewith content, is to me as an unbeliever.’ — ‘ Blessed be the master who said that,’ quoth she. ‘ He knew the truth. For you must understand that anyone content with what can be expressed in words -God is a word, licaven is a word — whose soul-powers, love and knowledge, insist on nothing further than what can be expressed, is aptly styled an unbeliever. It is the lower senses or powers of the soul which grasp things uttered. The higher powers are not content with tliat: these keep on pressing forward till they strike the source from whence the soul flowed forth. The powers of the soul cannot enter her source. All nine powers of the soul serve the man of the soul; they draw him out of nether tilings and speed him to his source. When the soul stands before her eaus(‘, superior to things in iier main power, her powers remain without. Look you, it is the naked soul, naked of things namcable, one in the same, that progresses in the naked Godhead, like oil that creeps in cloth: so the soul goes creeping forward, flowing on and on so long as God ordains her to give life to the body in time. Know, whih* the good man lives on earth his soul is progressing in eternity, lienee the good like living.’ ‘ True daughter,’ he observed. ‘ One master says: Suppose there lay at point to die two men ecpially pl(‘asant in f lic eyes of God, and that both di(‘d, the one before the other but just long enough to give that other time to breathe one sigh for God, to east one thought to the least martyr that CJod ever led, the lightest word God ever spoke, this would entitle him to prcccdenee over the other who died first, while God remains eternal.’ — ‘ That is so,’ she said. ‘ Know also, as the good shall rise so fall the wicked who arc in sin.’ ’ ‘ Now prithee, daughter, tell me. We speak of heaven and hell and purgatory and read a vast amount about them. We also read that God is in everything and every thing in God.’ — ‘ And so it is,’ she said. — ‘ Then, for God’s sake,’ quoth he, ‘ acquaint me with the rightful view of it.’ - ‘ Gladly, so far as I can put it into words,’ she said. ‘ II(;11 is nothing but a state or being. Our being here is our eternal being; we are as it were grounded in it. Many people fondly imagine here to have crcaturely being and divine being yonder. That is not so. It is a popular delusion. Purgatory is a thing assumed, like penance, and comes to an end. Look at it like this. Some souls so reverence God and the friends of God that God is constrained to have mercy on them, be it only at their end that true repentance comes to them in love and knowledge and they rise out of themselves and everything created. Then true love is their being and did they go on living they would sin no more but suffer for true love’s sake all our Lord Jesus Christ suffered, and his beloved. These rise in grace. But people who MEISTER ECKHART go hence in their state of creaturehood are in that state eternally which is called hell. Likewise, there remains their state to those who suffer naught but God to be in them: God is their being and remains their being eternally.
‘ Again, touching the last day, people say, God shall ju^Jge. So he shall, but not as they think. Each^n^an is his own judge in this sense: the state he then appears in he is in eternally. People frequently assert: The body shall rise with the soul. So it shall. But not as they think. The being of the body and the being of the soul go to form one being. Those souls who all their days have spent their time in God till God has come to be their being, to them God stays their being, body and soul eternally. Not so the wicked who have squandered their time on creatures; what their state is it continues to be, and this eternal hq^sing from God and from his friends is called hell. Vet bear in mind that these same persons get their being from (iod or they would not be at all. So they are in God and Ciod is in them. You see, they have the being of God. Take it like this. They ani in God as ’tvvcrc a man with his life forfeit to some righteous lord whose honour he has stolen and whose friends, and plotted frequently against his life; and now his lord, who showed him only kindness in liopcs of his reform, is vexed to find that he declines to mend. Holding him in the grip of justice, his lord forbears to kill. He punishes the outrage on himself. First, bound hand and foot, the man is cast into the lowest donjon among toads and reptiles and the foul water which is wont to lie in deepest donjon-keeps. Fetched up from thence, he is disgraced before the world, that they may see his opCTi shame and he their joy. So much the more his torment. Insult after insult do they heap upon him, shame unthinkable; he is ever cast back into his donjon, ever in dread of execution. Even so it is permissible to say that man is at the court, for the donjon is the royal court as much as the hall is where the king stays with his friends; but conditions, you sec, are different. Though not with that celestial race we spoke of. Know that grief endures eternally. I marvel that anyone who hears these words should dare to sin. Purgatory is so grievous in itself that anyone who knows the rights of it would stay no time in sin. Purgatory you must know is temporal and notional. A soul which leaves the body, as I said, in faith and love and will to do all for God’s sake and eschew sin for God, that soul is in dire distress, unable to do anything but wait till God shall deign to take compassion on her. And though this happen not till doomsday, the hope is her life. Doomsday past, this is over. But souls in the divine condition are not affected in this sense: on quitting the body such a soul remains in a condition of divinity determined by her knowledge TRACTATES and love of God, and after the day of judgment the being of the body and the being of the soul arc one being in the divine actuality. According to the most reliable authorities, statements of theirs regarding creatures arc not to be construed to mean that John went body and soul to lieaven; no more did others of our Lord’s friends cither, of whom report says they are body and soul in God, transcending time in eternity. It is not possible. In God can be nothing but God, not nioutli nor nose nor hand nor foot nor any creature pertaining to the body. So tlicy cannot be held to have got there in the body. IVi' may reasonably suppose that when the time came for John to go, God caused to befall him what was due to happen on the day of judgment. Ih^ did this for true love’s sake, be(*ause he was so pure. The being of his soul, taking with it, God helping, the being of his body, was drawn u]). We juay take it that his body, which was destined to perisli Iutc on earth, was disintegrated in the air, so that Mien* enter(‘d into God only the being of the body, which would liave aecoinpanied tlu; soul at the last day. Thus it befell Mary and all of whom it is related that they attained to (iod in the body.’
‘ ’Tis well argued,’ he said. ‘ Hut you must kno\v the cpiestion is in hot dispute among the theologians.’ Said she, ‘ I will give you the key to its solution. Pass to our Lord Jesus Christ and see what happened at his ascension. He was at meat when he ascended. As you well know, the food was lost in transit, with everything adventitious that Christ had taken on, wliicdi all remained in time. He eould only take with him into the Father that which came out of the Father. Tlu‘ being of C}irif?^’s soul took with it the being of the noble manhood of our Lord.Tesus Christ in its divine actuality. The ])ersons subsist in th(‘ Father as one with the Father. Fven so are all thost* in th(‘ Father who eoncpier Ijy grace what Christ has by nature: not that they take with them the life of the body when they go hence; that waits till doomsday. The being of the body reverts to the b(‘ing of the soul only when all things have perished, according to the vulgar teaching. You doubtless know that whom (iod deigns to favour he treats as he treated St John.’ Quoth he, ‘ I wot that well. If I did as St Dominic, I should be as St Dominic. St Dominic sold his book and all he possessed and gave to the poor for God’s sake. We do not this, daughter, nor do we ])ractise numerous other virtues of St Dominie. We are as we are through pretending a priesthood we do not possess. St Francis was a simple soul wherefor God greatly favoured him. He approached Ckxl in