Unus deus et pater omnium qui est super omnes et per omnia et in omnibus nobis {Ephes, 4g). I am quoting St Paul’s words, ‘ One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in us all.’ From the gospel I will take another saying, the saying of our Lord, ‘ Friend, go up higher.’
To begin with, when St Paul speaks of ‘ one God and Father of all ’ the omission of the particle suggests some variation from his ‘ one God.’ God is one in himself and apart from all. God belongs to none and none belongs to him, God is one. Boethius says, God is one and changes not. God’s whole creation he created without changing. All things, once created, progress in changing. The moral of which is that we ought to be one in ourselves and wholly free from attachment. Firm and unshaken in God does it behove us to be. Out of God there is notliing but naught. No change nor movement can get into God. What seeks another place outside him, that changes. God has all things in him in one omnipotentiality ; God seeks not anything outside himself, for he has got it in him in its perfection. No creature can conceive it as it is in God.
Another teacher says, ‘ Father of all, blessed art thou.’ This too is big with change, for calling him Father he makes us his children. And if he is our Father then we as his children shall have his honour at heart. Our Lord says, ‘ Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.’ Purity of heart means separation, cleansing, from all bodily things, the isolation of the self and in this abstraction the plunging into God and being atoned with him.
David says, ‘ Those works are pure and guileless which are pursued and perfected in the light of the soul ’ ; and those are yet more guileless which abide therein in the depths of the spirit and proceed not forth. ‘ One God and Father of all.’
The other saying, ‘ Friend, come up higher, take the higher seat.’ I will make of twain one. ‘ Friend, come up higher, draw up,’ is the friendly conversation of the soul with God. He says, ‘ Friend, draw up, come up higher,’ and, answering her : one God and Father of all. A certain philosopher says. Friendship resides in the will. But so far as friendship resides in the will it does not unify. Love does not unify ; true, it unites in act but not in essence. It merely says, ‘ One God, come up higher.
draw nigh.’ Into the ground of the soul nothing enters but God himself. Even the highest angel, although he is so nigh to God and is endowed so largely with God’s love (his works are established in God in one essence not one operation ; he has in God an immanence, a settled habitation), this angel, strange to say, exalted though he be, is not allowed into the soul. One master lays it down that all creatures individually merit that God himself should work in them. Soul as transcending body is too virginexquisite to set her heart on aught save pure Deity himself. But nothing enters there until it has been shorn of all additions. That is why she was answered, ‘ one God.’
St Paul says, ‘ one God.’ One is something more simple than goodness and truth. Goodness and truth are constants, they are added to (only) in thought ; thinking attributes things to them. There is no addition to the one as proceeding in himself into the Son and into the Holy (ihost. He said, ‘ F riend, go up higluir.’ A master says. One is the denial of denials. If I say God is good, that is an anirmation. One is the denial of denials, t he grave of expectations. What does one mean ? That to which nothing is added. The soul receives Godhead as told forth in her, unadded to, unthought. One is the denial of denials. Every creature makes innate denial ; the one denies it is the othi‘r ; an angel denies being any other creature. But (iod makes the denial of denials ; he is one and denies all other, for th(‘r(‘ is notliing without God. All creatures are in God ; they are his very Godhead, that is to say, the fullness. He is the Father of all deity. One God, not proceeding, unmoved, unmindful of the Word. By the fact of denying God something — and by denying God goodness I am not denying God, — (I say), by denying God something 1 conceive something about him, that he is not ; even this has to go. God is one, he is the negation of negations. According to one master, the angelic nature secretes no power nor work, it has no knowledge save of God alone. Everything else it ignores. As he says, ‘ one God and Father of all.’
Some of the powers of the soul take in from without, as, for example, the eye. Though it lets in but little, rejecting the great bulk, yet it is dependent on and does receive something from outside in the mode of here and now. But intelligence and intellect, paring to the core, seize what is neither here nor now. In her unconditioned state she is right in touch with nature, but she still receives from the senses ; what the senses bring in from outside the intellect uses. Not so the will ; in this respect will ranks above the intellect. Will accepts nothing save in abstract understanding, where there is neither here nor now. God intends to convey what a pure and exalted thing will is. It rises to familiar colloquy with God, and God says, ‘ Friend, come up higher, honour waits thee.’
The will wills happiness. It has been asked, what is the difference between grace and happiness. Grace, as we are now in this life, and happiness as ours to be hereafter in eternal life, are to one another as the flower to its fruit. When the soul is brimming with grace and nothing is left her, then grace works to perfect all that exists in the soul ; not that it comes to actual work, but by its mere presence in the soul what the soul does grace makes perfect. Grace docs no work but, all-pouring, pours all at once into the soul. The third grace atones the soul with God. Its consummation, its effect, is to bring back the soul to God ; hers, after the blossom, the fruit. Will, as the will to happiness, as the will to be with God and the actual ascent, in this singleness (of heart) God slips into the will, and the single mind seeing God as the truth, God slips into the intellect, llut his entering into the will raises it up. As he says, ‘one God. Friend, come up higher.’ One God : God’s unity is the crown of God’s divinity. God could never bear his one- begotten Son were he not one. The fact of being one determines all he docs crcaturcly and godly. Oneness belongs to God alone ; God’s idiosyiurasy is oneness ; God must be one God or not be God at all. llivinc riches or wisdom or truth, it is all the same thing in God ; it is not one, it is unity. God has all he has in him ; it is one with him. Theologians say that heaven revolves with the object of gathering all things in ; hence its rapid motion. lie said, ‘ Friend, come up higher, thou art honoured.’ It is the honour and adornment of the soul that God is one. God behaves as though he existed for no purpose but to please the soul ; as though he did adorn himself solely in order to attract the soul. And man desires now one thing now another ; he cultivates now wisdom and now art. If she has nothing of the one she will never rest ; (she will never rest) till she is all the same in God. God is one ; that is the soul’s beatitude, her ornament, her rest. A philosopher says, God orders all things in his operation. The soul is all things, and in all respects the noblest and highest and God pours in all at once ; God is one.