Now I w^ould have you understand me. I am going to give an explanation I have never given before. The worthy Dionysius says: ‘ When God exists not for the spirit there exists not for it either the eternal image, its eternal origin.’ I have said before and say again that God has wrought one act eternally in which act he made the soul in his own [likeness], and out of which act and by means of which act the soul issued forth into her created MEISTER ECKHART existence, becoming unlike God and estranged from h€l^own proto- type, and in her creation she made God, who was not before the soul was made. At various times I have declared: I am the cause that God is God. God is gotten of the soul, his Godhead of him- self; before creatures were, God was not God albeit he was Godhead which he gets not from the soul. Now when God finds a naughted soul whose self and whose activity have been brought to naught by means of grace, God works his eternal work in her above grace, raising her out of her created nature. Here God naughts himself in the soul and then neither God nor soul is left. Be sure that this is God indeed. When the soul is capable of conceiving God’s work she is in the state of no longer having any God at all; the soul is then the eternal image as which God has always seen her, his eternal Word. When, therefore, St Dionysius says that God no longer exists for the spirit, he means what I have just explained.
Now it may be asked whether the soul as here seen in the guise of the eternal image is the light meant by David wherein we shall see eternal light?
We answer, no. Not in this light will the soul sec the eternal light that shall beatify her; for, says the worthy Dionysius, ‘neither will the eternal image exist for the spirit.’ What' he means is that, when the spirit has accomplished its transcendental flight, its creaturely nature is brought to naught, whereby it loses God as I have already explained, and then the soul, in the eternal image, breaks through the eternal image into the essential image of the Father. Thus saith the Scriptures: ‘ Everything flows back in the soul into the Father who is the beginning of the eternal Word and of all creatures.’
It may be questioned whether this is the light, the Father namely, in which the spirit sees the eternal light?
I answer, no. Now mark my words. God works and has created all things; the Godhead docs not work, it knows nothing of creation. In my eternal prototype the soul is God for there God works and my soul has equality with the Father, for my eternal prototype, which is the Son in the Godhead, is in all respects equal with the Father. One scripture says: ‘ Naught is equal with God; to be equal with God, then, the soul must be naught.’ That interpretation is just. We would say, however: where there is equality there is no unity for equal is a privation of unity; and where there is unity there is no equality for equality resides in multiplicity and separation. Where there is equality there cannot be unity.. ^ 1 am not equal to myself. I am the same as myself. Hence the Son in the Godhead, inasmuch as he is Son, is equal with the Father but he is not one with the Father. There TRACTATES 411 TRACTATES 411 is no equality where Father and Son are one; that is, in the unity of the divine essence. In this unity the Father knows no Son nor does the Son know any Father, for there there is neither Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost. When the soul enters into the Son, her eternal prototype wherein she is equal with the Father, then, breaking through her eternal prototype, she, with the Son, tran- scends equality and possesses unity with the three Persons in the unity of the essence. David says: ‘ Lord in thy light shall we see light,’ that is: in the light of the impartible divine essence shall we sec the divine essence and the whole ])crfection of the divine essence as revealed in the variety of the Persons and the unity of their nature. St Paul says: ‘ We shall be changed from one brightness into the other and shall become like unto him,’ meaning: we shall be changed from created light into the un- created splendour of the divine nature and shall become like it; that is, we shall be that it is.
St John says: ‘ All things live in him.’ In that the Father contemplates the Son all creatures take living shape in the Son, that being the real life of creatures. Put in another passage St John says: ‘ Blessed are the dead that have died in God.’ — It seems passing strange that it should be possible to die in him who himself said that he is the life! — But see: the soul, breaking through her eternal prototype, is plunged in the absolute nothing- ness of her eternal prototype. This is the death of the spirit; for dying is nothing but deprivation of life. When the soul realizes that any thing throws her eternal prototype into separation and negation of unity, the spirit puts its own self to death to its eternal prototype, and breaking through its eternal prototype remains in the unity of the divine nature. These are the blessed dead that are dead in God. No one can be buried and beatified in the Godhead who has not died to God, that is, in his eternal prototype, as I have explained.
Our creed says: Christ rose from the dead: Christ rose out of God into the Godhead, into the unity of the divine essence. That is to say that Christ’s soul and all rational souls, being dead to their exemplar, rise from that divine death to taste the joys above it, namely the riches of the divine natqrc wherein the spirit is beatified.
Now consider the fact of happiness. God is happy in him- self; and all creatures, which God must make happy, will be so in the same happiness that God is happy in, and after the same fashion that he is happy. Be sure that in this unity the spirit transcends every mode, even its own eternal being, and everything created as well as the equality which, in the eternal image, it has with the Father, and together with the Father soars up into the MEISTER ECKHART MEISTER ECKHART unity of the divine nature where God conceives himself in absolute simplicity. There, in that act, the spirit is no longer creature, it is the same as happiness itself, the nature and substance of the Godhead, the beatitude of its own self and of all creatures. Further, I hold that if God did what he is impotent to do, granted the soul while still a creature the knowledge and enjoyment of actual beatitude^ then, were the soul to be and to remain happy, it were impossible for God to remain God. Anyone in heaven knowing the saints according to their happiness, would not have anything to say of any saint but only of God; for happiness is God and all those who are happy arc, in the act of happiness, God and the divine nature and substance of God. St Paul says: ‘ He who being naught, thinketh himself aught, deceiveth himself.’ In the act of happiness he is brought to naught and no creaturehood exists for him. As the worthy Dionysius says: ‘ Lord lead me to where thou art a nothingness,’ meaning: lead me, Lord, to where thou transcendest every created intellect; for as St Paul declares: ‘ God dwells in a light that no man can approach unto ’; that is: God is not to be discerned in any created light whatever.
St Dionysius says: ‘ God is nothing,’ and this is also implied by St Augustine when he says: ‘ God is everything,’ meaning: nothing is God’s. So that by saying ‘ God is nothing ’ Dionysius signifies that there is no thing in his presence. It follows that the spirit must advance beyond things and thingliness, shape and shapenness, existence and existences: then will dawn in it the actuality of happiness which is the essential possession of the actual intellect.
I ^ave sometimes said that man sees God in this life in the same perfection and is happy in the same perfect fashion as in the life to come. Many people are astonished at this. Let us try there- fore to understand what it means. Real intellect emanates from the eternal truth as intelligence and contains in itself intelligibly all that God contains. This noble divinity, the active intellect, conceives itself in itself after the manner of God in its emanation, and in its essential content it is downright God; but it is creature according to the motion of its nature. This intellect is to the full as noble in us now as in the after life.
Now the question may be asked: How then does this life differ from the life to come?
I answer that, this intellect which is happy in exactly the same way as God is, is at present latent in us. In this life we know God only according to potentiality. In the after life, when we are quit of body, our pptentiality will be all transfigured into the act of happiness which belongs to the active intellect. This trans- figuration will render the fact of happiness no more perfect than it TRACTATES 418 is now; for active intellect has no accidents nor any capacity to receive more than it contains innately. It follows that when wc are beatified we shall be completely deprived of potentiality and shall conceive happiness only actually, after the manner of the divine nature. As David says: ‘ Lord in tliy light shall we see light ’: with the divine nature we shall conceive the perfection of the divine nature, which alone is our entire felicity, here in grace and there in perfect happiness.
Ill SAYINGS 1 THIS IS MEISTER ECKHART FROM WHOM GOD NOTHING HID Meister Eckhart said in a sermon. The work wrought by God in the God-loving soul which he finds empty and detaclied enough for him to bring himself to spiritual birth in her, this work, he said, gives God greater pleasure than any w^ork he ever did with any creature and is far nobler than the creation of all things from nothing.
On being asked the reason why this work gives God such pleas- ure, he said it was because God has no creature but the soul of large enough capacity for him to empty his entire might, the whole ground of his being in, as he docs in this act of begetting himself ghostly in the soul.
When asked what God’s birth is, he said, God’s being born within the soul is nothing else than God’s self-revelation to the soul in some new knowledge and in some new mode.
Anon they asked him. Does the soul’s chief happiness consist in this act whereby God gets himself in her in ghostly fashion? Quoth he, Though it is true that God takes greater pleasure in this act than in any other deed he ever did concerning creature, natheless the soul is happier being re-born into God. God being born in her makes her not wholly blessed: she is beatified when, in love and praise, she follows this wisdom whercinto she is bom, back to the source from whence it came and in their common origin, holding to what is his lets go her own, she being happy not in hers but his.
2 Meister Eckhart said, A man of godly love and godly fear and perfect faith may, an he will, receive God’s body every day at the priest’s hands.
3 The question is, what does God do in heaven? The answer given by the saint is this, He crowns his own work: the works God crowns his saints for he wrought in them himself.
27 MEISTER ECKHART Meister Eckhart says, I have Jjeen asked what God is doiiig in heaven? I answer, He has been giving his Son birth eternally, is giving him birth now and will go on giving him birth for ever, the Father being in childbed in every virtuous soul. Blessed, thrice blessed is the man within whose soul the heavenly Father is thus brought to bed. All she surrenders to him here she shall enjoy from him in life eternal. God made the soul on purpose for her to bear his one-begotten Son. His birth in Mary ghostly was to God better pleasing than his nativity of her in flesh. When this birth happens nowadays in the good loving soul it gives God greater pleasure than his creation of the heavens and earth.
4 Meister Eckhart says. He who is evcrjrvvhere at home is God- worthy; to him who is ever the same is God present and in him in whom creatures arc stilled God bears his one-begotten Son.
5 Meister Eckhart says, Holy scripture cries aloud for freedom from self. Self-free is self-controlled and self-controlled is self-possessed and self-possession is God-possession and possession of everything God ever made. I tell thee, as true as God is God and I a man, wert thou quite free from self, free from the highest angel, then were the highest angel thine as well as thine own self. This method gives self-mastery.
6 According to Meister Eckhart, Grace comes not otherwise than with the Holy Ghost. It bears the Holy Ghost upon its back. Grace is no stationary thing, it is ever-becoming. It is flowing straight out of God’s heart. Grace does nothing but re-form and convey into God. Grace makes the soul deiform. God, the ground of the soul and grace go together.
7 7 Query, does God pour his grace into a power of the soul or into her essence, for no creature is allowed in the essence of the soul? The answer is that grace is a matter of the soul and naught beside and grace without soul is not grace at all. It is immaterial for it is not true creature, it is creaturely. Grace to be grace must • have the soul for substance for if God poured his grace into a power of the soul that power alone would benefit. Not so: he instils it into her essence and essence works by grace in all her powers.
SAYINGS 8 Meister Eckhart says, Practice is better than precept; but the practice and precept of eternal God is a counsel of perfection. If 1 wanted a teacher of theology I should go for one to Paris, to its learned university. But if I came to ask about the perfect life, why then he could not tell me. Where then am I to turn? To pure and abstract nature, nowhere else: that can solve thy anxious queries. Why, good people, search among dead bones? Why not seek the living sacrum that gives eternal life? The dead give not nor do they take. An angel seeking God as God would look not anywhere for him except in a quiet, solitary creature. The essence of perfection lies in bearing poverty, misery, despisery, adversity and every hardship that befalls, willingly, gladly, freely, eagerly, calm and unmoved and persisting unto death without a why.
9 9 Meister Eckhart said, Whatever it be that lights devotion in man’s heart and knits him closest unto God, that is the best thing for him here in time.
Again he says. To be the heavenly Father’s Son one has to be a stranger to the world, remote from self, heartwhole and having the mind purified.
O man, renounce thyself and so with toil-free virtue win the prize or, cleaving to thyself, with toilful virtues lose it.
10 Meister Eckhart says. He who is ever alone is Godworthy and to him who is ever at home is God present and in him who stands ever in the present now does God the Father bear his Son unceasingly.
11 Meister Eckhart says, He to whom (God) is different in one thing from another and to whom God is dearer in one thing than another, that man is a barbarian, still in the wilds, a child. He to whom God is the same in everything has come to man’s estate. But he to whom creatures all mean want and exile has come into his own.
He was also asked: Does the man who goes out of himself need to trouble at all about his nature? He answered, God’s yoke is easy and his burden is light: No, only about his will; %vhat the tyro fears is the expert’s delight. The kingdom of God is for none but the thoroughly dead.
MEISTER ECKHART 12 God’s every infliction is a lure. I give no thanks to God for loving me because he eannot help it, it is his nature to; what I do thank him for is that he cannot of his goodness leave off loving me.
13 The highest the soul can get to in this life is a settled habitation without all in all. Being without all means being detached, perfectly free from self and things. Being in all means a state of perpetual rest: poise in her eternal idea, in the omniform image shining impartible.
14 Eckhart said, There are people upon earth that bear our Lord in spirit as his mother did in flesh.
They asked him who these were? He answered. They being free from things do see in the mirror of truth whereto they are gotten all unknowing; on earth, their dwelling is in heaven and they arc at peace; they go as little children.
15 Meister Eckhart said. Better to my mind is the man who in the cause of charity will lend himself to taking dole of bread than he who gives an hundred marks for charity. How do I make that out? I argue thus. Doctors agree that honour is of far more worth than temporal goods. Now he who gives an hundred mar^Ls for charity gets back in praise and honour more than his hundred marks’ worth. The hand he stretches forth with gifts collects both more and better than it gave. But the beggar reaching out his hand for bread is bartering his honour; the giver buys honour but the taker sells it.
Another thing advantages the beggar who receives over the donor of the hundred marks to God: the giver glories in and gratifies his nature*, the beggar is subduing his and flouting it; the giver is made much of for his gifts, the beggar scorned and shunned fo^ taking them.
16 Meister Eckhart said, I never ask God to give himself to me: I beg of him to purify, to empty, me. If I am empty, God of his very nature is obliged to give himself to me to fill me.
How to be pure? By steadfast longing for the one good, God to wit. How to acquire this longing? By self-denial and dislike to creatures; self-knowledge is the way for creatures are all naught, they come to naught with lamentation and bitterness.
SAYINGS 421 God being in himself pure good can nowhere dwell except in the pure soul: he overflows into her, whole he flows into her. What does emptiness mean? It means a turning from creatures: the heart uplifted to the perfect good so that creatures are no comfort nor is there any want of them save inasmuch as the perfect good, God namely, is to be grasped therein. The clear eye tolerates the mote no more than does the pure soul aught that clouds, that comes between. Creatures as she enjoys them are all pure for she enjoys creatures in God and God in creatures. She is so limpid she sees through herself; nor is God far to seek: she finds him in herself when in her natural purity she flows into the supernatural pure Godhead where she is in God and God in her and what she does she does in God and God does it in her.
17 Meister Eckhart said, To die the death in love and knowledge, k that is more noble and more worth than all the good works put I together that holy Christendom has done in love and knowledge from its beginning until now and ever shall do till the judgment day. These do but serve to bring this dcatli about, this death wherein springs life eternal.
18 18 Meister Eckhart says, We fail to get our way with God because we lack two things: profound humility and a telling will. Upon my life I swear that God in his divinity is capable of all things but this he cannot do, he cannot leave unsatisfied the soul with these two things. Wherefore vex not yourselves with trivialities; ye were not made for trivial things and the glory of the world is but a travesty of truth, only a heresy of happiness.
la Meister Eckhart being questioned as to God’s greatest gift to him answered. There are three. First, cessation of carnal desires and pleasures. Secondly, divine light enlightens me in everything I do. Thirdly, daily I grow and am renewed in virtue, grace and happiness.
20 Meister Eckhart says, Lofty aim is lofty nature. The vision of. God is a high endeavour, I say, God is omnipotent, but he is powerless to thwart the man of meek and mighty aspiration, and any failure on my side to get my way with God is due to lack either of will or meekness.
# MEISTER ECKHART 21 Meister Eckhart says. As a man gets to be like God and God gets dear enough for him to disregard himself and not seek what is his in time or in eternity, he is released from all his sins and purgatorial pains, yea though he have committed every sin on earth. And this life is attainable while yet he eats and drinks. Further he declares, To be the heavenly Father’s Son we must be strangers to the world, remote from self, pure-hearted, inward minded.
22 22 On one occasion Brother Eckhart said, Five things there be which in whomsoever has them are sure sign that he will never lapse from God. First, though most grievous things befall this man from God or creature, never a murmur does he make: no word but praise and thanks is ever heard. Again, at the most trying times he never says one word in his excuse. Thirdly, this man desires of God what God will freely give and nothing else: he leaves it all to him. Fourthly, nothing in heaven or earth can ruffle him: so settled is his calm that heaven and earth in topsy- turveydom would leave him quite content in God. Fifth, nothing in heaven or earth can cheer him; for having reached the point where naught in heaven or earth can sadden him so neither can it gladden him, except as trifles can.
A man remote and far from his own self as the chief angel of the Seraphim from him, would have that angel for his own as he is GodJs and God is his. And that is the bare truth, as God is God.
St Paul says: ‘ The whole world is the cross to me and I the cross to you.’
24 . Said Meister Eckhart the preacher. There is no greater valour [nor no sterner fight than that for self-effacement, self-oblivion.
25 Brother Eckhart said, Not all suffering is rewarded; only what is cheerfully consented to. A man hanged on the gallows, suffering unwillingly, were better pleased that it had been another. There is no reward for that. Other sufferings the same. It is not the suffering that counts, it is the virtue. — I say, to him who suffers not for love to suffer is suffering and is hard to bear. But one who suffers for love suffers not and his suffering is fruitful in God’s sight.
SAYINGS 26 SAYINGS 26 According to Meister Eckhart^ Every sign, every holiness, every perfection possible to creature our Lady had par excellence. To take her holiness, it was so prodigious that our Lady never sinned. Of signs, again, she had the chief one, that of being God’s mother; albeit our theologians do contend that our Lady was far happier uniting God to Godhead than she was in giving carnal birth to God. As to the overfullness our Lady got from deity, she was worthy of it, bearing as she did God in the flesh. Soul over- brimming like this overflows into the body and makes the body like it, thus she was God’s carnal mother. Accordingly some doctors do affirm that mental concepts tell upon the body more than physicians do with all their drugs. God is never born except in souls which have put creatures under their feet. Our philo- sophers say, Perfect rest is freedom from all motion.
27 On St Peter’s words, ‘ We have abandoned all things,’ Meister Eckhart comments thus: Thou hast well said, for laden thou couldst not follow him. It is no profitless exchange, giving up all for God: by him all things are given and having gotten him he stands in lieu of all.
28 Meister Eckhart said. What our Lord did was done with this intent, and this alone, that he might be with us and we with him.
29 Brother Eckhart preached saying, St Peter said, ‘ We have left all things.’ St James said, ‘ We have given up all things.’ St John said, ‘ We have nothing left.’ Whereupon Brother Eckhart asks, When do we leave all things? When we leave everything conceivable, everything expressible, everything audible, everything visible, then and then only we give up all things. When in this^ sense we give up all we grow aflood with light, passing bright with God.
80 He that would be what he ought must stop being what he is. When God made the angels the first sight they saw was that of the Father with the Son sprouting out of his Father’s heart like a green shoot out of a tree. This blissful vision they have had more than six thousand years and how it comes they wot as well MEISTER ECKttART to-day as when they were first made. This owing to their keen perception; the more we know the less we understand.
81 In the Book of Wisdom it is writ, ‘ All men are fools in whom is no knowledge of God for men are mortal without God.’ Without divine wisdom we are without Gk)d and to be without God is to be without truth for God it is who inculcates the truth. Not being in God means being in lies and without wisdom. One may be worldly-wise without being Godly-wise but this is folly in God’s sight; wisdom wisdomless, more foolishness than wisdom. The question is, who has this heavenly wisdom? Meister Eckhart says, He who in deep and real humility so yields himself to God that his will is wholly God’s will and God’s will is his, as saith Isaiah the prophet, God teaches true wisdom to none but the Jhumble.’ And in the Book of Wisdom too we read, ‘ Where there is meekness there is true wisdom.’ Also the heathen doctor Ptolemeus says, ‘ Among wise men the humblest are the wisest.’ According to Meister Eekhart, with humility goes love: lowliness without love is dead indeed for the virtues are virtue in virtue of love.
82 82 — ‘ And so shall a man order his life if he would be perfect.’ Anent this Meister Eekhart says. Works wrought from within are pleasant both to God and man; they are benign and living works. They are Godworthy for he alone it is who does in man works wrought from within, as saith the prophet Isaiah, ‘ Lord all our works thou hast wrought in us,’ and Christ too said, ‘ My Father who is in me he doeth that I do.’ Such works are both easy and pleasant to man for all deeds are agreeable and pleasant to man in which body and soul are harmonious. This is the case in all these works. Again, these works are living works: the dead beast differs from the living one in that the dead is moved from outside only; it must be pulled or pushed, to wit, and its works are all dead works. The live beast moves itself where’er it will; its motive power is within and its works are living yorks. In the same way those works of men which have their source within j where God moves by himself, essential products, these are our iworks, divine works, useful works. But works which come from some external cause and not from inner being, these works I say are dead, they are not godly works nor are they ours. Meister Eckhart also says, Works wrought from within are willing works. But that which is willing is sweet, therefore works from within are all pleasant whereas works due to any outward cause are SAYINGS 426 SAYINGS 426 unwilling and slavish for were there nothing moving from without no work were done at all, so that it is reluctant, menial, bitter.
38 Meister Eekhart said, No person x'^an in this life reach the point at which he is excused from outward works. What though one lead the contemplative life, one cannot altogether keep fromj flowing out and mingling in the life of action. Even as a man without a groat may still be generous in the will to give, whereas a man of means in giving nothing cannot be called generous, so no one can have virtues without exercising virtue at the proper time and place. Hence those who lead the contemplative life and do no outward works, are most mistaken and all on the wrong tack. What I say is that he who lives the contemplative life may, nay he must, be absolutely free from outward works what time he is in act of contemplation but afterwards his duty lies in doing oub.vard works; for none can live the contemplative life without a l-reak and active jife bridges the gaps in the life of contemplation.
84 84 Meister Eekhart says and so do other masters, that there are two things in God: essence and regard, ix, relatio. According to these doctors, not in the Godhead does the Father bear his Son; the Father in his essence does but see into his naked essence where he discerns himself in all his power: himself by himself, without the Son and without the Holy Ghost; naught sees he there but the unity of his own essence. But the Father being minded to regard himself, to reflect upon himself in another Person, by this act of retrospection is begetting his Son; and being well contented with himself in this regard and finding his reflection most delightful he must, since all joy is his eternally, keep on looking back eternally. So the Son is as eternal as the Father, and from the mutual liking and the love betwixt the Father and the Son there comes the Holy Ghost and since this love between the Father and the Son has been for aye therefore the Holy Ghost is as eternal as the Father and the Son and these three Persons have one simple essence and are distinct as Persons only: the Father’s Person never was the Son’s nor the Holy Ghost’s Person; all three have each their own Person albeit they are one in essence.
35 Meister Eekhart says and so do other masters. No man has any merit apart from his intention and the why of a man’s action/ MEISTER ECKHART feives the measure of his merit, naught beside. Hence anyone ^tending, anyone striving, for something less than God is not worthy of God unless as the lover of creature, whatever it be, in God.. God-lovers have no guerdon but God; them God rewards with himself.
86 Meister Eckhart says, and so do other masters, that in the course of nature it is really the higher which is ever more ready to pour its power out into the lower than the lower is ready to receive it. The highest heaven, for instance, is turning far more rapidly than the rest which run against it. However fast the lower heavens race against the upper, in order to receive the influx from it, the highest heaven will go harder still both as to pace and influx. So God is vastly quicker to pour out his grace than man to take it in. There is no dearth of God with us; what dearth there is is wholly ours who make not ready to receive his grace.
37 The question is, When do the passions perforce obey the mind?
( The answer Meister Eckhart gives is this. What time the mind is fixed on God and there abides, the senses arc obedient to the mind. As one should hang a needle to a magnet and then another needle on to that, until there are four needles, say, depending from the magnet. As long as the first needle stays clinging to the magnet all the other needles will keep clinging on to that but when the leader drops the rest will go as well. So, while the mind keeps«fixed on God the senses arc subservient to it but if the mind should wander off from God the passions will escape and be unruly.
38 Why is it, Meister Eckhart asks, that people are so slow to look for God in earnest? His comment is: When one is looking for a thing and finds no trace of its existence one hunts half-heartedly and in distress. But lighting on some vestige of the quarry, the chase grows lively, blithe and keen. The man in quest of fire, cheered when he feels the heat looks for its source with eagerness and pleasure. And so it is with those in quest of God: feeling none of the sweetness of God they grow listless but sensing the sweetness of divinity they blithely pursue their search for God.
39 Meister Eckhart asks. Whose are the prayers God always hears? And Meister Eckhart answers. Who worships God as God God hears.
SAYINGS But he who worships God for worldly goods, worships not Gk>d: he worships what he worships God for and employs God as his servant for the getting of it. As St Augustine puts it, ‘ What thou dost love thou dost worship; true prayer, real prayer is nothing but^ loving: what one loves that one prays ^oV^'ffence no diie praysTo God aright but he that prays to God for God without a thought of aught but God, 40 Meister Eckhart says and so do other masters, Whoso wants a virtue ought to seek it at the souree, in God to wit, where we find all the virtues added up to virtue. The man who finds a single virtue thus diseovers every virtue in the one and, attaining to the unity where all virtues are virtue, the soul sees God and God looks on the soul. Soul is caressed by God who, talking with her in familiar fashion, teaehes her universal wisdom and God and man now fully reeonciled, man is the lord of every ereature, of all the good things that have flowed from God; as it is written in the Book of Wisdom where the wise man says, ‘ All good have I gotten in thee alone ’: in virtue have 1 gotten all the virtues.
41 41 According to Meister Eckhart, God is not only the Father of all good things but he is the mother of all things to boot. He is Father for he is the cause of all things and their creator. He is the mother of all things as well, for when creatures have gotten their being from him he still stays with creatures to keep them in being. If God did not remain with creatures after they had started their own life they would most speedily fall out of being. Falling from God means falling from being into nothingness. It is not so with other causes, they can with safety quit the things they cause when these have gotten being of their own. When the house is in being its builder can depart and for the reason that it is not the builder alone that makes the house: the materials thereof he draws from nature. But God provides creature with the whole of what it is, with form as well as matter, so he is bound to stay with it or it will promptly drop out of existence.
42 Meister Eckhart says, the man who doing some good deed does it not wholly for God’s sake and without any thought save God, that man darkens God’s glory. All good works are God’s. Hence if a man in his good work harbours intent towards aught but God 428 MEISTER ECKHART he gives thereto the honour of the work and robs God of his glory and all such works are sterile and unfruitful.
43