People often say to me: ‘ Pray for me.’ And I think to my- self: Why ever do ye go out? Why not stop at home and mine your own treasure? For indeed the whole truth is native in you.
May we be apt to stay thus in ourselves and to possess the entire truth immediately, impartibly, in real happiness. So help us God! Amen.
XIV LIKE A VASE OF GOLD Quasi vas auri soliduni ornatuin omni lapide pretioso {EccL SO^q), My quotation will apply to St Augustine or to any virtuous soul, such being likened to ‘ a golden vessel, massive and lirm, adorned with every precious stone.’ Because of the perfection of the saints we have no likeness to express them, and we therefore symbolise them by the trees, the sun, or moon. So here St Augustine is compared with a chalice of gold, solid and firm, all set with precious stones. Indeed I he same thing may be said of any saintly virtuous soul who, leaving all things here, enjoys them yonder where they are eternal. Whoso renounces things in their contingent sense possesses them as absolute and eternal.
Every cup has two things: it receives and holds. The spiritual vessel differs from the physical. The wine is in the cup, not the cup in the wine, though the wine is not in the cup as it is in the body; if it were in the cup as it is in the body we should not be able to drink it. It is different with the spiritual vessel. Every- SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 51 thing received in this is in the eup and the cup in it and is the cup itself. All this ghostly cup receives is its own nature. It is God’s nature to give himself to every virtuous soul, and it is the soul’s nature to receive God, and this we say referring to the soul in her loftiest capacity. There the soul bears the image of God and is godlike. No image can be without likeness, but likeness can be without image. Two eggs may be both alike white, but one is not the image of the other: for one to be the image of the other it must proceed out of its nature and be born of it and be like it.
An image has two properties. First, it rccciv es its being from the thing whose image it is, immediately and above will, for it is a natural product, sprouting out of its nature as a branch does out of a tree. Any face thrown on a mirror is, willy-nilly, imaged therein. But its nature does not appear in its looking-glass image: only the mouth, nose and eyes, just the features, are seen in the mirror. God reserves it to himself to display in his reflec- tions, at once his nature, all In^ is and all he can, and tliis above his will. His image is prior to his will, will following the image, for out of his nature there leaps first his image, focussing into itself the whole promise of his nature and liis essence, all his nature pouring out into his image the wliih' it abides intact within itself. Now the masters locate tliis iiiiage not in flir Holy Ghost but in the middle Person, for the Son, being the earliest issue of his nature, is therefore called his Father’s express image, and not the Holy Ghost; he is simply the flowering of the Father and the Son, and has one nature with them both. Will is not a mean between the nature and the image, nor, for that matter, can knowledge or per- ception, nay, nor wisdom, come betw’^een, for this image of God is the immediate product of his fecund nature. If there is means of wisdom here it is the image itself. Thus the Son in the Godhead is called the Wisdom of the Father.
Know, this impartible image of God which is stamped in the soul is sealed direct in her innermost nature; this most funda- mental, most noble part of her nature, is really what takes this soul-pattern, and that not by means cither of will or of wisdom. As I remarked just now, if wisdom comes in here at all it is (as) the pattern itself. God exists in this image without any means and the image subsists without means in God. But (iod is much more noble in the image than the image is in God. The image receives God not as being the creator; it conceives him in the guise of understanding, the summit of her nature actually taking on his form. This is the innate divine image which God has stamped in every soul by nature. I durst not give more to this image; to give it more would make it God himself, which it is not, or God would not be God.
52 MEISTER ECKHART 52 MEISTER ECKHART The second characteristic of an image we note in its likeness to its object. And here observe especially two things. First: an image is not itself, neither is it its own. So an image received into the eye is not the eye itself nor has it any real existence in the eye but is merely suspended from and tethered to the thing it is the image of, whereto it entirely belongs and wherefrom it gets its being and is being that same being. Note well my definition of an image. There are four points to bear in mind, and haply others will occur to you. An image is not itself, neither is it its own: it is solely that thing’s whose reflection it is, and it is due to this alone that it exists at all. Things apart from the thing whose image it is, it is not and does not belong to. The image takes its being direct from the thing whose image it is, having one nature therewith and being the very same being. This is not a subject for discussion in the schools, though one may well propound it from the professorial chair.
Ye are always asking how ye ought to live. Lay then to heart this answer: Just as the image is here said to do, even so it behoves thee to live. Be his and belonging to him, not thine own and belonging to thyself nor withal to anyone. Whoever has a well-beloved friend holds his belongings dear and anything against his friend he will object to. Take, for example, the dog, an irrational beast. So faithful is he to his master that he resents the things his master hates, while to his master’s friends he is most friendly. No count takes he of poverty or wealth; were some blind beggar his master’s bosom friend, he would be more affectionate to him than to the king or emperor who was his master’s enemy. I trow if it were possible the dog should be half faithless to his master, its other half were bound to hate itself. But then some folks complain of having no interior life, no devotion, no sweetness nor any suchlike godly consolation. Marry, these folk are all unrighteous still, and though they suffer it is not the best. Verily I say, as long as any image forms in thee which is not the eternal Word nor any shadowing forth of the eternal Word, be it never so good, in sooth it is wrong. That man alone is righteous who, having naughted all created things, stands facing straight along the unswerving line into the eternal Word, where, in the right, he is idealised and transformed. That man is gotten where the Son is gotten and is the Son himself..
According to the scriptures, ‘No man knoweth the Father but the Son,’ and hence, if ye desire to know God, ye have to be not merely like the Son, ye have to be the very Son himself. Some people think to see God with their eyes as they would see a cow, and they expect to love him as they would love a cow. This thou lovest for its milk and for its cheese: for its profit to thyself.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 58 Even so do they who love God with an eye to outward riches or interior consolation, not rightly loving God but their own i)ersonal advantage. I trow that any object thou shalt set before thy mind, except God in himself, how good soever it may be, is nothing but a barrier to the absolute truth. As I said just now that St Augustine is compared to a golden cup, closed on the underside and open to the sky, even so it behoves thee to be: if thou wouldst stand with St Augustine and in the communion of saints, then close thy heart to everything created and be open to God as he is in himself.
Men are compared with the higher faculties because they always go bareheaded, and women with the lower because the head is always veiled. The superior powers transcend time and space, springing straight out of the essence of the soul, and they resemble men in always going uncovered. Accordingly, their working is eternal. The philosopher says that all the powers of the soul, inasmuch as time and space affect them, have lost their virgin purity and can never be so thoroughly abstracted nor so finely sifted as to pass into the higher faculties. Albeit they arc stamped with the same image.
Do thou be ‘ firm and steady,’ the same, that is to say, in weal and woe, in fortune and misfortune; and ‘ set with all the precious stones,’ a treasury, to wit, of all the virtues which come naturally pouring out of thee. Traverse all the virtues and, transcending them, tap virtue only at its source, where it is one with the divine nature. And in so far as thou art more atoned than are the angels with God’s nature, to that extent they must receive through thee. May we be one, So help us God. Amen.
XV THE DIVINE.BEING 1 No man can tell of (iod exactly what he is. According to St Dionysius, God is not anything we can say or think. St Augustine cries: ‘ 1 who have ever been in God and ever more shall be, would sooner I had never been and never more should be than that we found a single word that we could say of God. Were we compelled to si)cak of God, in that case I should say: Verily, in no sense is God comprehensible nor yet attainable. God is what thought cannot better.’ Nay, I declare God beggars human thought; he transcends all human conception. No man knows what God is. Aught that a man could or would think of God, God is not aj^ll. It is the nature of the soul not to be satisfied except ' Soe Spamer’s Texte, B. 1.
54 MEISTER ECKHART with God. But all that heart can desire is small, is insignificant compared with God. Yet man’s thought may be never so rich or so rare but his desire outstrips it. So he transcends man’s desire as well as transcending human thought.
St Dionysius says, God i§^ naught. Meaning that God is as incomprehensible as naught. St Bernard says, I know not what ; God is; but what I know not that he is that same is he. A heathen ^philosopher maintains that what we know of the First Cause is rather what we are ourselves than what the First Cause is. For that passes understanding. And in this strain the heathen doctor argues in his book, IVie Light of Lights, that God is super-essential, super-rational, super-intelligible, i,e. beyond the natural under- standing. I speak not of gracious understanding. By grace man may be carried to the length of understanding as St Paul understood who was caught up into the third heaven and saw unspeakable things. He saw, but was not able to express them. For what a man knows he knows in its cause or in its mode or in its effect. But in these respects God remains unknown, for he is the first. Further, he is modeless, i.e. undetermined. And he is without effect, tliat is, in his mysterious stillness. Here he abides apart from the names that are given him. Moses asked his name. God answered. He- who- is hath sent thee. Otherwise he could not tell it. God as simply being, in that sense he could never give himself to be known to creatures. Not that he could not do it, but creature could not understand it. — I have often laid it down that God’s lordship does not lie merely in his lordship over creature; his lordship consists in his power to create a thousand W'orlds and dominate them all in his abstract essence. Therein lies his lord- ship. Dionysius and Gregory both teach that the divine being is not comprehensible in any sense: not to any wit nor any under- standing, pot even to angelic understanding. Its simplicity and triplicity is a thing not to be grasped by the human mind even at its best, nor by the angelic mind even at its clearest. It was said by a philosopher that w’^hoso knows of God that he is unknown, that man knows God. For it is the height of gnosis and perception to know and understand in agnosia and a-perception. To know him really is to know him as unknowable. As the master puts it: If I must speak of God, then I will say, God is something which is in no sense to be reached or grasped; and I know nothing else about him. According to St Augustine, what we say about God is not true; what we say that God is he is not; what we say he is not that he is rather than what we say that he is. Nothing we can say of God is true. God’s worth and God’s perfection cannot be put into words. When I say inan, I have in my mind human nature. When I say grey^ I have in my mind SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 55 the greyness of grey. When I say Gody I have in my mind neither God’s majesty nor his perfection. Dionysius insists that the more we can abstract from God the better we shall sec him. God is such that we apprehend him better by negation than by affirma- tion. Hence the dictum of one master that to argue about God from likeness is to argue falsely about him, but to argue by denials is to argue about him correctly. Dionysius says, writing about God, He is super-essential, lie is super-luminous; he attributes to him neither this nor that. For whatever he conceives, God far transcends it. There is no knowing him by likeness. Rather by attributing unlikeness may we make some approach to under-; standing him. Take an illustration. Supposing I describe a ship \ to someone who has never seen one, then on looking at a stone he will plainly see that it is not a ship. And the plainer he sees that it is not ship-like, the more he will know about a ship. It is the j same with (iod. The more we can impute to him not-likeness, > the nearer do we get to understanding him. Holy Scripture yields j us merely privatives. That we should credit God with matter, | form and work is due to our gross senses. We fail to find God one ' because we try to come at him by likeness. Dionysius cries, ‘ Friend Timothy, if thou wouldst catch the spirit of truth pursue it not with the human senses. It is so swift, it comes rushing.’ God is to be sought in opposites; in unknowing knowing shall we know God; in forgetfulness of ourselves and all things even to the naked essence of the Godhead. Dionysius was exhorting one of his disciples. ‘ Friend,’ quoth he, ‘ cease from all activity and empty thyself of self that thou mayst commune with the Sovran Good, God namely.’ Pray God wc may seek him so that wc shall find him nevermore to lose him. Amen.
XVI THE SIXTH BEATITUDE Beati qui esuriunt et sitiunt justitiaiii (Matt. 5g). Jesus went up a mountain to a valley, into a field, and power went out of him preaching to the multitude: ‘ Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.’
Methinks this text is apt to my discourse. Blessed are they that hunger for righteousness and endure work and poverty here, for this is but a moment and will surely pass. They are blessed though not most blessed. Blessed are they that hunger not to be deprived of God, albeit the wonder is that man can be without him without whom he cannot be. St Augustine says it is amazing that anyone should live apart from him apart from whom he cannot 66 MEISTER ECKHART 66 MEISTER ECKHART live at all. They are blessed and yet not most blessed. More blessed those who so hunger that they cannot live without God; that is a fiery affection which transforms their nature. The while a man yet finds in his desire or in his hope or his affection anything impermanent, he is not most blessed. He is blessed but not most blessed. Blessed, supremely blessed, are they who arc installed in the eternal now, transcending time and place and form and matter, unmoved by weal or woe or wealth or want, for in so far as things arc motionless they are like eternity.
[The heaven adjoining the eternal now, wherein the angels are, is motionless, immoveable. But the heaven next to that which touches the eternal now, wherein the angels are, and betwixt (that and) the heaven where the sun is, is set in motion by angelic force, revolving once in every hundred years. The heaven the sun is in, moved by angelic force, goes round once a year. The heaven the moon is in, again, is driven by angelic force and goes round once a month. The nearer the eternal now the more immoveable they are, and the further off and more unlike to the eternal now the easier to move. The heaven of the sun and moon and stars is moved by the impulse of their angel, so that they arc spinning in this temporal now; and the eternal now imparts their motion, that being so energetic that from the motion the eternal now imparts, all things derive their life and being. Now the lowest powers of the soul arc nobler than the highest part of heaven, where it adjoins the angels and the eternal now. Moreover, all things get their life and being from the motion there imparted by the eternal now; and if that is so noble, then what would ye expect where the soul in her superior powers contacts the ground of God? How exalted, think ye, that must be? — Follow then after this now, and reach this now and possess this eternal now. May we stand next the eternal now and so be in possession of it. So help us O divine power.]
[One master says: Grace springs from the heart of the Father and flows into his Son and in the oneness of them twain it proceeds from the Wisdom of the Son into the Gift of the Holy Ghost and in the Holy Ghost is sent into the soul. Grace is the face of God which is clearly stamped in the soul without any means by the Spirit of God, giving the soul the form of God. St Dionysius says: The angels are the divine mind. Moreover St Paul declares concerning those who live the angelic life here in the flesh, that into them there flows the mind of God as it does into the angels. He also says the intellectual light, God namely, has given likeness to the rational soul. Quoth St Paul: He who cleaves unto God with his whole being becomes one spirit with (iod. So help us God. Amen.]
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 57 XVII IN PRINCIPIO ERAT VERBUM In 'principio erat verbum {Joh> Ij). Theologians talk of the eternal Word. God never spoke but one word, and that is still unspoken. The explanation is this. The eternal Word is the logos of the Father which is his only begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ. In him he pronounces all creatures without beginning and without end. This accounts for the Word remaining unborn, for it never came out of the Father. This Word is to be known in fourfold guise.
First, on the altar in the priest’s hands. There it is ours to know and love the eternal Word as we, in his eternal Word, appear to the heavenly Father. Secondly, we know the eternal Word as expounded by doctors from the chair. We receive it in their person; like water flowing in a channel, so does the eternal Word flow through its teachers. We should pay no heed to any shortcomings in the doctor: we must fix our gaze on the eternal Word in him, as it comes pouring eternally out of the ground of itself. Thirdly, we can recognise the eternal Word in our Lord’s friends who, having followed this eternal Word, have gotten proof of it in life eternal, and also those that follow it in time, such, namely, as arc quick in our Lord Jesus Christ. Fourthly, we have the eternal Word as spoken in the virgin soul by God himself; wordlessly, to wit, since the soul is not able to express him.
I would have you know that the eternal Word is being born within the soul, its very self, no less, unceasingly. I tell you, the soul knows the eternal Word better than all the doctors can ex- pound it. What we can express is all too little, so for the nonce she is bearing the eternal Word in mind. According to the masters we ought by rights to go to school where the Holy Ghost is teacher; and know, where he is teacher and is bound to be, there he finds students properly equipped to profit by his lofty teaching which issues from out the Father’s heart. So the soul has, if she will, the Father and the Son and Holy Ghost: she goes flowing into the one where naked in naked is revealed to her. Our masters say that no one can attain to this so long as he retains of nether things as much as a needle-point can carry. Into the naked Godhead none may get except he be as naked as he was when he was spilt from God.
The masters say, giving us wise counsel, that leaving God his glory we ought to get all things direct from him and not from creatures. We shall leave God his glory by leaving him to work just how he will and when he will, we staying idle and free. For 58 MEISTER ECKHART we must see that God does all for the best. And so I trow it lies with us, so far as it is in us, to help God to preserve his glory.
A master says. Little recks the king of those of his retainers who perform the drudgery. lie notices the ones about his privy chambers and gratifies their every want. God does the same with his chosen friends, the intimates of his mysterious privacy: he never turns a deaf ear to their prayer. Withal the masters do affirm that numbers go to heaven who know no more of God on earth than, as it were, of sun in forest gloom. Desiring this supremely it rests with us to compass it by practice and by strength of will. Amen.
XVIII I KNOW A MAN IN CHRIST Scio homwem in Christo ante annos quatuordecim etc. (2 Cor.
St Paul declares: ‘ I know a man who fourteen years ago was caught up into the third heaven; whether in the body or no I cannot tell: God knoweth.’ Now granting Paul was there at any time, then either body and soul both turned to spirit or else his soul took wing out of his body. It is certain that his soul left not his body, for she was giving life unto his body; she must then have seen God in her and herself in him.
The soul has three powers: mind, will and rage. These three powers are in league with deity. Will cleaving unto God can do all things. God seized of his divinity bestows upon her power and fecundity. Mind cleaving to the Son knows with the Son; it knows with the Son when it is void of knowledge. The third power is the power of attack, which is connected with the Holy Ghost. This power is ever making for the source whence it ) proceeded forth and the Holy Ghost is its initiator into the eternal nature: it floods the secret chamber of the soul, and lo! she loses time and place in the eternal, in time transcending time. But for the soul this is not enough: had she enough she would have time in lieu of her eternity. Let us not flag. Not ours the blame if, being ready and atoned in will, God hides himself so that we cannot do all things with him although he plays his part just as the sun gives out its light and fire gives out its heat. Woodapples cannot check the letting of their gall, but God contrives from time to time to reach out to the longing soul if he is very near to her. So let her, never doubting, with hearty longing, hail God frequently: ‘ O Friend of me, how long am I to wait for thee? ’ He says, to Christ w^as given a new name: one by the angel, another by St Paul, a third by his heavenly Father. The angel gave him the name Jesus Christ. Joseph and Mary called him by SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 59 this name which signifies Weal of the World. The name is given to the wounded soul. Alas, we are too frail! We should be well of our infirmities being raised up and gotten in; we should be raised if we were destitute and unattached. For tlie exalted spark wherein we see the light divine, that never parts from God nor is there anything between. What matter then if good and ill and pain betide, they do but touch the lower faculties.
St Paul gave him three names and called him the rclieetion of the Father. He says, the wounded soul is given the mystic heavenly bread. Whence comes her wound? From longing.
What is longing? -It is love. What is nobler than longing? What wc pray God for humbly and with longing he durst not refuse: desire ablush with modesty he leads into the triple chamber of the Holy Trinity.
Paul called him also the fecundity of the Father and the image in the Father, working with the Father to brijig forth his Person. Verily I say, the soul will bring forth Person if God laughs into her and she laughs back to him. To speak in parable, the Father laughs into the Son and the Son laughs back to tlic Father; and this laughter breeds liking, and liking breeds joy, and joy begets love, and love begets Person, and Person begets the Holy Ghost. In this wise docs he travail with his Father.
The third name he gave was. The Majesty of the Substance of God. Majesty is the essence of his divine substance, this substance being the elemental matter of the three Persons. The soul is called majesty when she gives u]) mode: then she knows the Father and paternity, the Son and filiation, and the Persons of them twain she comprehends in unity. The Father gave him five names, ineffable. God keep us every whit in him. So help us God. Amen.
XIX PAUL ROSE FROM THE GROUND Surrexit autem S aulas de terra apertisque occults nihil videbat {Act, 93). This statement which I quote in Latin is made in St Luke’s narrative about St Paul. It records that ‘ Paul rose from the ground with open eyes and seeing nothing.’ The words are open to four inter|>retations. One is, that wdien he rose up from the ground he was gazing wide-eyed at naught, that naught being God, for the vision of God he would describe as the naught. Another explanation is that when he got up he saw nothing but God. The third, he saw naught but God in all things. I’hc fourth, that in the divine vision he beheld all things as a naught. He previously tells how light came suddenly from heaven and felled 60 MEISTER ECKHART him to the ground. Mark you, he says that the light came from heaven. According to our doctors, though heaven is fraught with light it does not shine. The sun is full of light and shines withal. Our doctors teach that fire docs not give any light in the simple, natural perfection of its highest state. Its nature is too pure for eye in any wise to see. So subtle is it, so unlike the eye, that were it here below within our view it could not stimulate our eyes to sight. And yet, forsooth, we see it is absorbed by different things, such as a lump of coal, a piece of wood.
By the light of heaven we see the light that is God whereto no mind of man is able to attain. As St Paul hath it: ‘ God dwells in a light that no man can approach unto.’ He says, ‘ God is light inaccessible.’ There is no admittance to God. No man still on the ascent, still on the increase in grace and in light, has ever yet got into God. God is no crescent light: we get to him by growing. In the growing procicss God is unseen. When God is seen it is in the light that is God himself. A master says, In God there is no more nor less nor this nor that. Whiles we are on the way we arc not there.
He says, ‘ A light from heaven shone round about him.’ Implying the capture of his entire soul. A master says that in this light all the soul-powers are exalted and raised to a higher power, the outward senses we see and hear with as well as the inner senses we call thoughts: the reach of these and their pro- fundity are most amazing. I can think as easily about things overseas as close at hand. Above thought comes the intellect, as seeker. She goes about looking, casting her net here and there, gaining and losing. Above intellect the seeker there is another intellect which does not seek but rests in its pure and simple essence in the realm of light. And I say it is in this light that all the soul -powers are exalted. Senses rise to thoughts. How high, how fathomless these are, that no one knows except God and the soul.
Our theologians teach, and it is a knotty question, that angels know nothing about thoughts unless the thoughts take wing and rise up into intellect — intellect the seeker; and this intellect, the seeker, soars up into the intellect which does not seek, which is the pure light in itself. This light embraces all the powers of the soul. Accordingly he says, ‘ The heavenly light encircled him.’
One master lays it down that anything which has an emanation is exempt from these lower things. God emanates into all creatures without being affected by any. He does not need them. God energises nature and her first work is the heart. Wherefore some doctors would pretend the soul is altogether in the heart and flows thereout as life into the other members. Not so. The SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 61 soul is in each member, whole. True, her chief work is in the heart.. The heart being in the middle gets protection on all sides, just as heaven is protected from outside influence and intrusion. It contains all things. It moves all things and itself remains unmoved. Not even fire, exalted though it be in its most high estate, can lick the heavens.
‘ In the encircling light he fell to earth, and his eyes being unsealed he, open-eyed, beheld all things as naught.’ And beholding all things as naught he was beholding God. Mark here what the soul says in the Book of Love: ‘ By night in my bed I sought him my soul loveth: I sought him and I found him not.’ She sought him in her bed: meaning to convey that any- one cleaving to aught below God has too narrow a lie. God’s entire creation is all too confined. Quoth she, ‘ I sought him all night through.’ There is no night without the light: only, it is veiled. The sun is shining in the night albeit screened from view. By day it shines, eclipsing all the other lights. So does the light of God; it blinds and puts out any light. Our creaturely expecta- tions, all these are night. What I mean to say is, that nothing we find in a creature is more than a shadow and dark. Even the highest angel’s light, exalted though it be, illumines not the soul. All but the first light is darkness, is night. By it she cannot find God. ‘ I rose and sought him all about, I scoured the broadways and the alleys. The watchmen (angels) found me, and I questioned them, “ Saw ye not him whom my soul loveth? ” ’ But they answered not; peradventure they could not apprehend him. ‘ It was but a little that I passed and I found him my soul loveth.’ The little, the trifle, that she missed him by has often been the burden of my teaching. He to whom mortal things are not all trivial and as naught withal, that man shall not find God.
‘ Having passed by a little,’ she says, ‘ I found him whom I sought.’ When God pours into and informs the soul and thou takes t him as a light or a state or a boon, whatsoever thou knowest about him, that God is not. We have to transcend the little, discard the adventitious and perceive God one. She says, ‘ When I had passed by a little I found him my soul loveth.’
We are very fond of saying, ‘ him my soul loveth.’ But he is far away above the soul, nor does she name her love. There are five reasons why she names him not. One is that God is nameless. Any name she gave him would have to be well chosen. God is beyond all name, none can express him. A second reason is that on swooning away into God for love, the soul is conscious of nothing but love. She fondly imagines that everyone knows him like that. She is amazed that any wight should find him aught but love alone. Thirdly, she has no time to name him. Love 62 MEISTER ECKHART does not leave her any time to use another word. Fourthly, perchance she weens he has no other name than love. In love she pronounces all names. Quoth she, ‘ I rose up, I went through the broad streets and the alleys. And when I had passed a little I found him rny soul loveth.’
‘ Paul rose from the ground wide-eyed, beholding nothing.’ I cannot see what is one. He saw nothing, to wit, God. God is naught and God is one. What aught is is naught as well. What God is is he altogether. As Dionysius says about the light: speaking of God he says. He is supernatural, supervital, super- luminous; he will allow him neither this nor that, but makes him out to be I know not what that far transcends them. Aught seen, aught that may come within thy ken, that God is not; for why, God is not this nor that. AVhocver says that God is here or there, credit him not. The light which God is shines in darkness. God is the true light: to sec it one has to be blind and strip God naked of things. A master says. To argue about God from any sort of likeness is to argue falsely about him. But to argue about God from naught is to argue soundly withal. \Vhen the soul is reduced to one and is gotten therein by discarding herself altogether, there she finds God, as it were, in a naught. It appeared to one soul as in a dream (it was a waking dream), to be big with naught like a woman with child, and in this naught God was born, the fruits of the naught. God was born in the naught. Therefore he says, ‘ He arose from the earth wide-eyed, gazing at naught.’ He had a vision of God where there are no creatures. He beheld all creatures as naught for he had the whole essence of creatures in him. He is the all -containing essence.
Another thing he means by saying, ‘ he saw naught.’ Accord- ing to our masters, any perception of externals entails some inroad by them, an impression at the least. To get some idea of a thing, a stone, for instance, I do (not) take into my mind the grossest part of it; that I leave outside. As it exists in the ground of my soul where it is at its noblest and best, it is merely a type (or idea). Things perceived by my soul from without contain an outside element: my ])creeplion of creature in God contains nothing but God alone, for in God there is nothing but God. When I sec all creatures T see not. He saw God where creatures are not.
In the third place, why he saw naught. Naught was God. A master says. Creatures in God are as naught for he has in him the whole essence of creatures. He is the being that contains all beings. The master says. Nothing inferior to God, however nigh it might be to him, but has some alien taint. The master says an angel knows himself and God without means. Into other things he knows there comes an outside element, some interference still, SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 68 however slights If we are to know God it must be without means, nothing foreign can come in between. When we do see God in his light it happens in private, safe from the slightest intrusion of creaturely things. Then we have immediate knowledge of eternal life.