He says, ‘ I saw a lamb standing.’ From which we learn four things. First, the lamb is fed and clothed and that in goodly fashion, which to our mind looks as though we, having gotten so much from God and that so goodly, arc bound to seek in all we do only his honour and his glory. Again, the lamb stood. It is good for friend to stand by friend. God stands by us, is standing by us, steady and unmoved. He says: ‘ There stood with him a multi- tude, each having written in his forehead his name and the name of his Father.’ liCt at least God’s name be written in us. We must bear God’s image in us and liis light must lighten us, if we would be John.
XXV THE LORD HATH SENT HIS ANGEL Nunc scio vere, quia misii doininus angelum swum {Act Freed from his prison bonds by the power of the supreme God, Peter exclaims, ‘ Now I know of a surety that the Lord hath sent his angel and hath delivered me out of the power of Herod, out of the hand of the enemy.’
We will reverse the words and say, ‘ The Lord hath sent his angel, therefore I know of a surety.’ Peter symbolises intuition. As I have often said, intuition and intellect do not unify the soul in God. Intellect is a matter of pure being. Intuition, its fore- runner, goes ahead and penetrates to what is born there: God’s onc-begotten Son. Our Lord declares, in Matthew, that no one knows the Father but the Son. Now, philosophers say under- standing lies in likeness. Some of them say the soul is made of all things since she is capable of understanding all things. That sounds ridiculous, but it is true. They say that anything I know must SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 75 be wholly present to me in the likeness of my understanding. But according to the saints, power is in the Father, likeness in the Son and union in the Holy Ghost. Hence, if the Father is all present to the Son and the Son is all-to like him, therefore no one knows the Father but the Son.
Peter says, ‘ Now I know of a surety.’ Why does he know of a surety? Because it is divine light which does not deceive. And because we see in it quite clearly without anything to hide the view. Paul says concerning it: ‘ God dwells in light inacces- sible.’ Doctors declare that the wisdom we learn here stays with us yonder. St Paul says it will go. A philosopher once said, ‘ Real knowledge, even in this body, is intrinsically so delightful that the sum-total of created things is nothing to the joys of pure perception.’ Yet noble though it be, it is but contingent; as one small word to all the world even thus insignificant is all the wisdom we learn here compared with the whole and perfect truth. Look you. Paul says it goes. And even if it stayed it would turn to foolishness and be as nothing to the actual truth we see. Thirdly, we surely know, for things seen here as changing we see as changeless there where we get them as a whole and indivisible, approximately one, things widely sundered here being close together there where all things are at hand: both the first day and the last arc happening at the present instant yonder.
‘ Now I know of a surety that the Lord hath sent his angel.’ When the Lord sends his angel to the soul she becomes sure- knowing. Not unjustly God ordained Peter should keep the key. For Peter stands for intuition, and it is intuition with the key that unlocks and goes in and finds God face to face, whereupon she notifies her find to her partner, will, she having had the will before, for what I will I seek. Perception leads the way. It is the princess seeking the prince upon the mountain- top, in virgin realms; she proclaims him to the soul and soul to nature and nature to the passions of the body. So noble is the soul at her highest and her best, the doctors cannot find her any name. They call her anima because she animates the body.
Theologians say that next to the first emanation of the Godhead, when the Son breaks out of the Father, his angel is most like to God. True, soul is like to God in her highest part, but this angel is even more like God. All that belongs to this angel is godlike. The angel was sent to the soul to bring her back to the very same form wherein he is formed, for knowledge comes by likeness. The soul is capable of knowing all things and she never rests till she attains her original form wherein all things are one; it is there she rests, in God. In God one creature is no better than another. According to the masters, being and knowing are the same, for 76 MEISTER ECKHART 76 MEISTER ECKHART things that are not are not known and things that are most are most known. God has transcendent being, so he transcends all knowing, as I said in my first sermon two days back. The soul, informed with primitive light, sealed with the seal of pure being, smacking of God prior to truth and gnosis, with every named nature sloughed away: the soul (I say) at this stage of all-perfect know- ledge has gotten being to match. As St Paul says, ‘ God dwells in light inaccessible.’ He hangs suspended in his own pure being whereto naught is attached. He is merely a presence in himself, where neither this nor that exists, for what is in God is God.
A heathen says. They that hang under God arc hanging in God, and while having real subsistence in themselves do yet impend in him who has neither end nor beginning, for in God nothing alien betides. Heaven affords us an example. It never takes in aliens as aliens. And by the same token, what gets to God is changed: however vile it be, on bringing it to God it sheds its self. For in- stance, I may have wisdom but not be it. I can gain wisdom and can also lose it. But what is God’s is God,* it cannot leave him. It is implanted in God’s nature; God’s nature being so stable that anything to do with it is settled in it once for all or always stops outside. Now reflect and marvel I If God converts vile things into himself, how ween ye he will treat the soul, which he has dignified with his own image?
XXVI XXVI THE FEAST OF THE VIRGIN JEmulor enim vos dei cemulatione etc, {2 Cor. llg). In the name of our Lord. We read on the Feast of the Virgin the words of St Paul, ‘ I have espoused you to one husband, Christ, rejuvenant.’ The masters ask, ‘ Has the Son been born? ’ We say, no! The masters ask, ‘ Is the Son going to be born? ’ We say, no I The masters are answered: the Son is fully born, he is being born anew unceasingly. St Paul says, ‘ Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.’ His power is his wisdom and his wisdom is his power. Christ is the man whose youth is perennially renewed.
Now St Paul says, ‘To this man I have espoused you.’ For as marriage between man and wife is binding, so there is eternal marriage between your souls and God. A maid is given to a man hoping to bear his child. And God did make the soul intending her to bear in her his one-begotten Son. The happening of this birth in Mafy ghostly was to God better pleasing than his being bom of her in flesh. And this same birth to-day in the God-loving soul delights God more than his creation of the heavens and earth.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 77 The philosophers say the soul is bigger than the heavens. St John says: ‘ He who sat upon the throne declared, “ Behold, I make all things new.” ’ Now, according to St Augustine, ‘ God’s speaking is his child-bearing and his child-birth is his Word.’ God spake never a word but one and that he holds so dear that he will never say another. If God stopped saying his Word, but for an instant even, heaven and earth would disappear. Augustine says: ‘ As the marriage of man and woman is for good and all, so is the marriage of the soul.’ The highest power of the soul, the one for ever straining up to God, is called the man. The lower power, the one that is condemned to wander among mortals, is the maid. The higher power, the man, goes all uncovered. But the lower power, the maid, is closely veiled and this lower power is taken to the higher. To this nature it belongs to be always active. It tries all the time, father-like, to beget; and were it not prevented, a son would be always being born as with the heavenly Father. But what God does of his free gift (man’s) nature hinders and a girl is born; but were there neither time nor place nor matter, man would rejuvenate himself as the Son does the Father, always.
God said: ‘ Behold I make all things fruitful.’ Then why am I myself not fruitful? God first bears his image in the God-loving soul and afterwards himself. If God gave himself to the soul here in time she would be vexed. So he gives her himself in eternity, in the perennial now, up-springing freshly without ceasing. She is too curious to rest until she finds her source. This is quite plain from Philip’s words: ‘ Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied.’ As the eternal Son of God comes welling up in his paternal heart, so he wells up in the God-loving soul. Mortal things work outwardly, ghostly things work inwardly. The soul this birth once happens in, that soul is nigh let into God; if it happens twice she gets still more into God. The more frequent this birth the deeper in God and the closer knit into the Father’s heart. This birth transcends here and now. Here^ that is, place; noWy that is, time. It befalls in eternity. May we, being born in him, enable him to bear himself in us. So help us Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
XXVII REJOICE IN THE LORD Gaudete in dominie iterum gaudete etc, {Philip, 44). St Paul says: ‘ Rejoice in the Lord and have no more care: the Lord is present with your thoughts which are known unto God in prayer and thanks- giving.’ ‘ Rejoice in the Lord alway,’ he says. Jerome declares that none receives knowledge nor wisdom nor honour from God 78 MEISTER ECKHART 78 MEISTER ECKHART except he be a virtuous man. No virtuous man is he who, changing not his ways, docs not receive from God knowledge and wisdom and joy. He says again: ‘ Rejoice in the Lord.’ Not in our Lord but in the I^ord. I have repeatedly explained that God’s lordship consists not alone in his being lord of all creatures: his lordship consists in having the power to create a thousand worlds and to transcend them every one in his pure essence: therein lies his lordship.
‘ Rejoice in the Lord (alway),’ he says. And here we note two precepts. First, that we must remain all within in the Lord, not looking for him outside whether in knowledge or in love: simply rejoice within in the Lord. The other precept is: rejoice in his innermost in his first, whence all things get their joy and take their being. That is the meaning of ‘ Rejoice alway.’ As St Augustine hath it, ‘ He rejoices all the time who is rejoicing above time and timelcssly.’ Then he goes on to say: ‘Have no more care. The Lord is present, is at hand.’ The soul must needs cast off all care what time she is rejoicing in the Lord, leastwise on her union with God. And hence his words, ‘ Have no more care: the Lord is present, he is nigh.’ In other words, God is with us in our inmost soul, provided he find us within and not gone out on business with our five senses. The soul must stop at home in her innermost, purest self; be ever within and not flying out: there God is present, God is nigh.
Another meaning of the particle by which he employs. He is in himself, not going far out but remaining all by himself. Quoth David; ‘ Rejoice, my soul, O Lord, for unto thee have I lifted her up.’ The soul must put forth all her strength to lift herself above herself and be translated beyond time and place into the void where God is in and by himself, not going out nor eke in touch with any outside thing. Jerome remarks that ‘ God can no more have recourse to time and temporal things than stones can have angelic wisdom.’ He says: ‘The Lord is nigh.’ Quoth David: ‘God is nigh unto all them that call upon him, that call upon him in truth and invoke him.’ How to call upon him, to call upon him in truth, to invoke him, that I leave aside. But he uses the words ‘ in truth.’ The Son alone is the truth and not the Father, save in the sense that they are one truth in their essence. That is truth which reveals what I have in my heart without likeness. This revelation is truth. The Son alone is the truth. The whole content of the Father’s love he speaks at once in his Son. This utterance, this act, is the truth.
He goes on to say: ‘ Your thoughts arc known unto him in the Lord,’ i.e. in this truth with the Father. Faith inheres in in- tellectual light and sight in the combative faculty which is always SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 79 aspiring to the highest and the purest: to the truth, where God is in himself. I have sometimes said, watch me these souls: their power is too free, too passionate to bear restraint of any kind.
XXVIII THE ANGEL GABRIEL WAS SENT^ Missus est Gabriel angelus etc. {Luc. Ige). St Luke says in his gospel, ‘ the angel was sent from God into a land called Galilee, into a town called Nazareth, to a virgin called Mary, who was of the house of David.’ According to Bede, the theologian, this was the beginning of our salvation. I have said before and say again that everything our Lord has ever done he did simply to the end that God miglit be with us and that we might be one with him, and that is the reason why God was made man. The masters say that God was ever being born in our Lady ghostly ere ever he was born of her in flesh, and from the overflow of that begetting wherein the heavenly Father begat his one-begotten Son within her soul the eternal Word received its human nature in her and she became with carnal child.
He says, ‘ the angel was sent from God.’ The soul would scorn to have the angelic light were it not sent to her from God; if there were not concealed in it the light of God to make the angel’s light detectable, she would have none of it.
He says, ‘ the angel.’ What is an angel? Three doctors give three different definitions of what an angel is. Dionysius says, An angel is a mirror without flaw and passing clear containing the reflection of God’s light. Augustine says, An angel is nigh unto God and matter is nigh unto him. John Damascene says. An angel is a reflection of God and through all that is his there is shining the image of God. The soul has this image in her summit whereon the light of God for ever shines. This is his first definition of an angel. Later on he calls him a dividing sword, aflame with divine desire, and, he adds, ‘ angels are free and inimical to matter.’
He says, ‘ the angel was sent from God.’ What for? Accord- ing to Dionysius, an angel has three functions. First, he purifies, next he enlightens, and lastly he perfects. He purifies the soul from stain, i.e. he purges her from matter and gathers her together to herself, cleansing her from foulness as one angel does another. Then he enlightens her in twofold fashion. Divine light is so overwhelming that the soul is unable to bear it unless it is tempered in the angel’s light and so conveyed into the soul. He enlightens ^ See also Sievera’ No. 2.
80 MEISTER ECKHART her therefore by reflection. The angel conveys his own knowledge to the soul and strengthens her in this way to bear the light of God.
If I were in a wilderness alone and was afraid, the presence of a child would dissipate my dread and give me courage, so noble, so blithe a thing is life. Failing a child, a beast would comfort me. Hence necromancers use an animal, a dog (for instance), the animal’s vitality invigorating them. Knowledge is power. The angel conveyed it to the soul in preparation for the light of God.
He says, ‘ the angel was sent from God.’ The soul must be like an angel in the ways that I have named if the Son is to be sent to her and born in her. But there remains the question of how the angel perfects her. May God send his angel to us. So help us God. Amen.
XXIX THE ANGEL GABRIEL WAS SENT Missus est Gabriel angelus (Luc. Ige). ‘ In time the angel Gabriel was sent from God.’ In what time? In the sixth month, John being then quick within his mother’s womb. When anyone asks me, Why do we pray or why do we fast or do our work withal, I say, So that God may be born in our souls. What were the scriptures written for and why did God create the world and the angelic nature? Simply that God might be born in the soul. All cereal nature means wheat, all treasure nature means gold, all generation means man. As the philosopher says. No animal exists but has somewhat in common with mankind in time. First of all when a word is conceived in my mind it is a subtle, intangible thing; it is true word when it takes shape in my thought. Later, as spoken aloud by my mouth, it is but an outward expression of the interior word. Even so the eternal Word is spoken in the inner- most and purest recesses of the soul, in the summit of her rational nature, and there befalls this birth. Whoso has nothing more than a firm belief in and lively conviction of this will be glad to know how this birth comes to pass and what conduces to it.
St Paul says: ‘ In the fullness of time God sent his Son.’ St Augustine was asked what it meant, this fullness of time. It is the fullness (or end) of the day when the day is done: then the day is over. Certain it is that there is no time where this birth befalls, for nothing hinders this birth so much as time and creature. It is an obvious fact that time affects neither God nor the soul. Did time touch the soul she would not be soul. If God were affected by time he would not be God. Further, if time could touch the soul, then God could not be bom in her. The soul wherein God is born must have escaped from time, and time must SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 81 have dropped away from her; she must be absolutely one in will and desire.
Another fullness of time. If someone had the knowledge and the power to gather up the time and all the happenings of these six thousand years and all that is to come ere the world ends to boot, all this, summed up into one present now, would be the fullness of time. This is the now of eternity, when the soul knows all things in God, as new and fresh and lovely as I find them now at present. The narrowest of the powers of my soul is more than heaven wide. To say nothing of the intellect wherein there is measureless space, wherein I am as near a place a thousand miles away as the spot I am standing on this moment. Theologians teach that the angel hosts are countless, the number of them cannot be conceived. But to one who sees distinctions apart from multiplicity and number, to him, I say, a hundred is as one. Were there a hundred Persons in the Godhead he would still perceive them as one God.
As regards the angels. The angels, of whatever rank, abet and assist at God’s birth in the soul; that is to say, they have satisfac- tion, they delight and rejoice in this birth. Nothing is wrought by the angels: the birth is due to God alone and anything that ministers thereto is work of service. May God be born in us, So help us God. Amen.
XXX ‘VISION IS THE WHOLE REWARD' Beatus es, Simon Bariona, quia caro et sanguis non revelavit tibi^ sed pater meus, qui in coelis est {Matt, I617). ‘ Blessed art thou, Simon Peter,’ says our Lord, ‘ for flesh and blood have not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in heaven.’ St Peter has four names: Peter and Barjona and Simon and Cephas. Our Lord says, ‘ Blessed (or happy) art thou.’ Everyone desires happiness. As the philosopher hath it. All men desire to be. Hence St Augustine’s dictum, The good man wants no praise, he wants to be praiseworthy. And our own doctors teach withal that virtue is so pure, so wholly abstract and detached from corporal things in the ground and summit of its nature that nothing what- ever can occur therein without defiling virtue and introducing vice. The least thought or suggestion of self-seeking and it is not virtue: it is turned to vice. Such is virtue by nature.
A heathen philosopher says, Virtue, except for virtue’s sake, is in uo wise a virtue.^ If its object is 'praise or aught else, that is.
a 82 MEISTER ECKHART bartering virtue. Genuine virtuJ^s not to be sold for anything on earth. Wherefore the good man seeks no praise: he seeks to be praiseworthy. It is not the chiding that we ought to mind but the fact of deserving to be chidden.
^ Blessed art thou,’ quoth our Lord. Beatitude lies in four things. To have all that has being and is lustily to be desired and brings delight; to have it all at once and whole in the undivided soul and that in God, revealed in its perfection, in its flower, where it first burgeons forth in the ground of its existence, and all con- ceived where God is conceiving himself— that is happiness. The name Peter means seer of God. Now, theologians question whether the kernel of external life lies more in intellect or will. Will has two operations: desire and love. Intellect, with its simple function, is therefore better; its work is understanding, and it never stops till it gets a naked hold on what it sees. Withal it nins ahead of will and tells it what to love. We desire a thing while as yet we do not possess it. When we have it we love it: desire then falling away.
What must a man be to see God? He must be dead. ‘ No man can see me and live,’ said our Lord. Now St Gregory says, ‘ That man is dead who is dead to the world.’ Ye can judge for yourselves how dead one may be and how little can touch us the things of this world. By dying to this world we do not die to God. St Augustine prayed a variety of prayers. ‘ Grant me, Lord,’ he said, ‘ to know both thee and me.’ ‘ O Lord, have mercy upon me and show me thy face and grant me that I die not until I eternally behold thee.’ This is the first point; one must be dead to see God. So much for the first name, Peter.
One philosopher says, were there no means we should sec the beloved in heaven. But another one says, were there no means we should see nothing. Both of them are right. The colour on the wall which is carried to my eye is filtered and refined in the air and in the light and transmitted in a pure state to my eye. Even so the soul must be strained by light and grace before it can see God. So rather is that master right who said that without means we should not see at all. But the other one is also right who said that without means we should see the beloved in heaven. For the soul would see God naked if there were nothing between.
The second name, Barjona, signifies a son of grace, in whom the soul, clarified and sublimed, is meet for the vision of God.
The third name is Simon. That is to say, one who listens, one who obeys. To hear God one must be divorced from the world. David says, ‘ I will be still and listen to what God is saying in me.’ He pronounces peace in his Word, on his saints, on his people, on all such as commune with their heart. Happy the man who is 88 SERMONS AND COLLATIONS busy attending to what God is saying in him. He is directly subject to the divine light-ray. The soul that stands with all her powers under the light of God is fired and inflamed with divine love. The divine light shines straight in from above, and a perpendicular sun on one’s head is a thing that few can survive. Yet the highest power of the soul, her head, is held erect beneath this shaft of godly light so that there can shine in this light divine which I have oft described as being so bright, so overwhelming, so transcendent, that all lights are but darkness in comparison with this light. All creatures, as so being, are as naught; dowsed in the light wherein they get their being they are aught. IIow noble soever the natural mind yet to reach, to grasp God without means the soul must possess these six qTialifications I speak of.
First, she is dead to changing things. Next, she is well clarified in light and grace. Thirdly, she is without means. Fourthly, she hears God’s Word in her heart. Fifth, she is under the divine light. The sixth is the heathen philosopher’s definition of happiness: one perpetual ascension and vision of beatitude in God. Where the Son himself is understanding, in his first leaping forth, there in God’s highest we too shall understand. Wherefore it behoves us to keep our head turned steadfastly that way.
Cephas means a head. Understanding is the head of the soul. The superficial notion is that love stands first. Rut the soundest arguments expressly state (what is the truth) that the kernel of eternal life lies rather in knowledge than in love. This mark, for our best masters say, will no special thing, and lo! intellect, under- standing, this flics straight up to God. Love turns to the loved: she finds there what is good. Intellect seizes the cause of the good. Honey is sweeter in itself than anything we make from it. Love takes God as being sweet, but intellect goes deeper and conceives God as being. ‘ Blessed art thou, Simon Peter,’ quoth our Lord. To the righteous man God gives divine being, and calls him by the name which is appropriate to that being. Thus he goes on to speak of ‘ my Father which is in heaven.’ Among names none is more appropriate than He-who-is. That one should recognise a thing and simply say, it is, would seem absurd; call it a stone, a bit of wood, and we know what that means. But suppose every- thing detached, abstracted, pared away, and nothing left except the is; that is the characteristic nature of his name. Our Lord promised his disciples, ‘ My followers shall sit at my table in my Father’s kingdom, and shall eat my meat and drink my drink which my Father hath prepared for me.’ Happy is the wight who has attained to receiving with the Son just where the Son receives. Right there we too shall find our happiness, and there in 84 84 MEISTER ECKHART his felicity, there where he has his being, in that same ground his friends shall all behold and thence shall draw their happiness. That is the table in God’s kingdom. May We approach that table. So help us God. Amen.
XXXI THE MAN IN THE SOUL Vir mens serous tuus mortuus est {4 Reg. 4j_7). The woman said to the prophet, ‘My husband thy servant is dead and the creditors are come to take my two sons as bondsmen for the debt, for I have nothing but a drop of oil.’ Then said the prophet, ‘ Go borrow empty vessels and pour a little in: it will increase and multiply and will pay thy debt and release thy sons. Thou and thy children can live on the rest.’
The spark {i.e. the intellect, the head of the soul), the so-called husband of the soul, is none other than a spark of the divine nature, a divine light, a ray, an imprint of divinity. A woman begged our Lord for the water which he gives. Whoso drinks of this shall never thirst. Theologians say, the best gift of God is the Holy Ghost wherein God bestows all his grace and favour, his living water, namely. ‘ Whom I give this to shall never thirst.’ This water is grace and light upspringing in the soul to everlasting life.
The woman said, ‘ Sir, give me of this water.’ And our Lord replied, ‘ Bring me thine husband.’ She said, ‘ I have no husband.’ Quoth our Lord, ‘ Tliou hast well said; thou hast not one, thou hast had five, and he whom now thou hast is not thine husband.’ St Augustine asks: ‘ Why docs our Lord reply, “ Thou hast well said ”? ’ What he means is this: thy five senses, these are the five husbands thou hadst in thy youth, after thine own heart; now in thine age thou hast one, not thine own: intellect, namely, and this thou dost not obey. When the man in the soul, the intellect, is dead, unchecked evil prevails. To separate soul and body is bad enough, but for the soul to be divorced from God, that is a far worse matter. As the soul is the life of the body so God is the life of the soul. As the soul suffuses our members so God suffuses the powers of the soul and is passed on by them in goodness and love to everything round that they may be aware of him as flowing all the time, i.e. above time, in eternity and in the life they live.
The woman said, ‘ Sir, my husband thy servant is dead.’ Serous means one who receives, receiving another’s; one who keeps and keeps for another. To keep for himself would make SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 85 him a thief. Intellect is a servant, more so than will is or love. Will and love fall on God as being good: were he not good they would ignore him. But intellect pierces right through into essence, reckless of goodness, of power, of wisdom, of things accidental whatever they be and added to God. Not looking for these she gets them in him when, merged into his essence, she knows God simply as existence. What though he be not good nor just, yet she enjoys him as pure being. Here intellect is like the highest rank of angels of which there are three choirs. The Thrones receive God into them and preserve God in themselves. In the Cherubim God rests; they sec God continually. The Seraphim are ardent (burning): like to these is the God-bearing intellect. With these angels the intellect spies God, in his vestibule, naked, as one without difference.
Quoth the woman, ‘ Sir, my husband thy servant is dead, and the creditors have come for my two sons.’ What arc the two sons of the soul? St Augustine, and with him a heathen doctor, speaks of the two faces of the soul. One is turned towards this world and towards the body, in this she works virtue and wisdom. The other face gazes straight into God; the divine light is always in it, and this tells upon it unless, through being from home, she has it unawares. When the spark of the intellect carries right into God, then the man is alive. The birth lakes place. Not once a year it happens nor yet once a month nor once a day but all the time, beyond time, in the open, where there is neither here nor now nor thought nor nature. That is why we speak of sons, not daughters.
Now, to speak of the two sons in another sense. As under- standing and will. Understanding leaps out of the intellect first and is afterwards followed by will, from them both. But no more of this. — These two sons of intellect may be taken in yet another way. One as power, the other as actuality. One heatlicn doctor says that it is in this power the soul becomes all things, ideally. In her actuality she is, like the Father, making all things new. It pleased God to seal her in the nature of all creatures: before the world when she existed not. God wrought this whole world ghostly in every single angel before he made the world itself. An angel has two understandings. The one is morning light, the other is the evening light. In the morning light he sees everything in God. In the evening light he sees things in the light of his own nature. When he goes out into things it grows night. So long as he remains within he has the evening light. We say that the angels rejoice when a man becomes good. But, our best doctors ask, do the angels also repine when a man commits sin? We say: No; they see into the justice of God and enjoy all things therein 86 MEISTER ECKHART as they are in God. Therefore they do not repine. Intellect in its potential power is like the angel’s natural light, i,e. the evening light. With her actual power she raises all things up into God, where all things are bathed in the morning light.
Quoth the woman, ‘ The creditors are come to seize my two sons for their slaves.’ Then said the prophet, ‘ Go borrow empty vessels from thy neighbours.’ These neighbours mean all creatures and the five senses and the powers of the soul with her interior faculties which work in secret and are angels. From all these neighbours borrow empty vessels. Let us borrow empty vessels; these filled with heavenly wisdom will give us means to pay our debt and, on the rest, to live eternally. So help us God. Amen.
XXXII 1 THE SOUL SPARK Homo quidam fecit coenam magnum {Luc, St Luke relates in his gospel how ‘ a certain man gave a great supper or evening entertainment.’ Who makes it? A certain man. What does he mean by calling it a supper? One master says this betokens great affection, seeing none arc bidden save the intimates of God. * When we give a morning party all and sundry are invited but to an evening meal wc invite important people, the people that we like and our own familiar friends.* Secondly, he has in mind how perfect are those souls who enjoy this evening meal. The evening never comes without a whole day having gone before. Were there no sun there were no day. Sunrise, that is morning light which goes on getting brighter up to middle-day. Just as the divine light rising in the soul gradually eclipses the powers of the soul until the advent of the noon. No day, no spiritual day, at all can dawn within the soul except she receive divine light. * Divine light breaks into the soul and makes her morning, and the soul mounts up in this light into space, to the zenith at high noon.* Thirdly, he implies that to take this supper worthily we have to come at evening. When the light of this world fails it is the evening. As King David sings, ‘ He riseth in the evening and His name it is the Lord I ’ So Jacob at eventide did lay him down to sleep. This betokens peace of mind. Fourthly, he remembers, as St Gregory points out, that after supper there comes no other meal. * When the spark in the soul takes in divine light it needs no other sustenance but keeps ever to this divine light.*