When God created the soul he fell back upon himself and made her after his own likeness. Meister Eckhart of Paris says, God made nothing like himself besides the soul. Thus we can give no shape to God nor can we to the soul, and as God is immortal so did he make the soul. The soul is not dependent upon temporal things but in the exaltation of her mind is in communication with the things of God, hence her prodigious capabilities, and it amazes me that, being so like God and of such perfection and with such a powerful word of her own, the soul is still unable to speak the same as God. Some say it is because what is innate in God is not so in the soul : God is his own being and gets this from himself, but what the soul is that she gets from God and when she issues forth from him she does not keep his nature : she takes another nature, a descendent of divinity. So she does not behave the same as God : God moves all things in heaven and earth and gives life to all, and the soul moves the body, giving life to every limb so that it sees, hears, feels and walks and talks although the mind may be elsewhere. St Gregory observes, ‘ We cannot see the visible except with the invisible ’ : the eye sees nothing corporal, lacking the a-corporal thing which quickens it to sight. Subtract the mind, Le, the soul which is invisible, and the eye is open to no purpose, which before did see. God has formed the soul to himself and with himself and in himself ; of time and in time and timely, and no soul can get into God without first being God as she was before she was made into God. Nothing but God finds its way into
God, and once the soul is in God she is God, borne into God on his eternal Word. Soul is the mean ’twixt God and creature ; she is placed at the beginning and end of the supreme, in touch with common knowledge and with the consolation the angels bring to her from God. If she prefers the inferior powers of her live senses to her higher ones whence comes her knowledge of celestial things, then she grows ignoble and base. The creature pleasures of the soul God has no stomach for, and when she realizes this she discards the joys in which God has no share.
While the soul is still here, in sleep, she drives away the angels, and refusing any longer to serve creature she conceives herself all one with God. St Augustine says the soul is nobler, mightier, grander than any creature, but the angels are by nature of still higher rank, for they are the first issue of the breath of God which gives life to them. Gregory, again, observes that ‘ The soul God has appeared to, who has some inkling of him, hnds creatures all so narrow and so vain.’ — While the higher powers of the soul are holding fast to God she actuates her lower powers so that what occurs in these comes to the knowledge of the higher ones. The highest power of the soul is called an inextinguishable light because of the vision the soul has in this power. However far away her power is from God she can discern God always. Her power is never so much out but that it still burns somewhat, enough to be a danger-signal to the soul and, even were she spiritually dead in sin, a beacon showing her the way to come alive again and arise in true sorrow and repentance.
Here comes the question. Can the soul with her owff powers comprehend her highest happiness ? The answer given to this question by the four doctors, Thomas, Egidius, Henricus and Albertus is, that if the soul had her knowledge of herself, as she has her being, image-free, then she would be able to take in her highest happiness, she being an infinite capacity which God cannot fill excepting with himself. St Augustine says. If her own perfect nature were immediately present to the soul she would be her proper self rather than creature in her nature, as she is classified. For God is spirit and he en-spirits the soul who, in her spiritual nature, belongs to an order above creatures; she finishes with creature in the perfect image of the eternal birth which is directly formed in her.
Another question is. How does God enter the soul ? Is he innate in her, sustaining her with his intrinsic energy and providing her with life and being ? One theory is that God enters the soul in three ways. First in his grace whereby a man being gratified is filled with the desire of perfecting virtue as a whole, mingled with alarm lest any creature ever filch it from him.
Secondly, God enters the soul in pure perception wherein a man beholds himself and learns to know himself and answer any call God may make upon him, be it suffering or trials, bodily or mental. Thirdly, God enters the soul in true freedom, liberating man from all the cares of life. Let the soul bid him welcome, refusing to be satisfied save with him alone. At the highest point of his inner self, his soul, man is more God than creature : however much he is the same as creature in his nature, in mind he is like God more than any creature. To the soul at rest in God in her potential, her essential, intellectual nature, everything comes natural as though she were created not at the will of something else but solely at her own. In this point creatures are her subjects, all submitting to her as though they were her handiwork. It was in this power the birds obeyed St Francis and listened to his preaching. And Daniel took refuge in this power, trusting himself to God alone, when he sat among the lions. Moreover, in this power it has been the custom of the saints to offer up their sufferings which, in the greatness of their love, are to them no suffering.
Dionysius says the soul has got to purify herself till in her perfect clarity she is like the angels and receives by grace what the angels have by nature. For the soul will not be able to fulfil her destiny till she is like the angels in whom is no sin. But the soul is from heaven (that is to say, from God who is the heaven of the soul) and body from the earth, s© they are ever opposed to one another. And that is why the soul, wanting to get back to God whence she issued forth, absconds and leaves behind her all the thflis which are not God and do not lead to God. All form and likeness, Dionysius says, God in the first instance imprinted in the lesser angels so that they should inform the soul with divine light and consolation and enable her to enter into her own solitude, God namely, wherein no creature can ever look and sec.
Theologians say the soul is more greatly blest when God begets himself in her without corporal union than the body of Christ is without his Godhood and without his soul. But any beatific soul is a nobler thing than Christ’s mortal body, for the interior birth of God within the soul is the final consummation of her happiness, a happiness more real to her than Christ’s becoming man since this profits the soul nothing without union with God. As Dionysius says, ‘ Beatitude means an in-dwelling with God such that he is more present to the soul than she is to herself, and the soul can apprehend him best when she approaches him with a tranquil mind.’ For in peace is his habitation and in peace he elected us his children. But as God is the mover in the starry and revolving heavens so here in the soul he is the mover of the freedom of our will towards himself and towards all good things :
it is in his light that she sees the light and in his light she will be united with the light. Theologians say that in their own nature the angels in heaven are nobler than the soul of Christ or Mary because they are in essence nearer than the soul to God. But by merit Christ’s soul has more joy than all the angels and is nearer God than any angel. And the same with Mary’s soul. Not by nature though, for by nature Christ’s soul, and Mary’s too, is the same as mine or any other human soul. Further, theologians teach that the soul in man is more than thousandfold, for it is whole in every limb : in the fingers, in the eyes and in the heart and in every several portion of each member large and small. Just as in the eighth heaven, where there are so many stars, there is one angel who revolves that heaven and exists entire in each star. When God created man he safeguarded him against all ills ; the golden (ihain of destiny coming from the Trinity to the highest power of the soul and running also through her lower powers subordinates them to the higher so that no fell disorder can attack either the body or the soul excepting he transgress this law. In her higher powers the soul is spirit and in her lower, soul ; and betwixt soul and spirit is the bond of one common being.
Also you must know that in the soul there exists one power which rests not day or night ; it is flowing from the Spirit and is altogether ghostly, and in this power God comes out in the full flower of his joy and glory, as he is in himself. Such intense delight, such supreme exaltation as no mind can conceive nor tongue express. Were he always recollected in this power a man would never age. Nay more I say : should he in this power catch but one fleeting glance of the joy and bliss therein, it would be happiness enough to make amends though he suffered all things.
The soul receives four things from God in her power of understanding. First, the entire certainty of freedom, of riddance, from all creatures, which God object to in her. Next, the full enjoyment of God while she abides in the power of love. Third, the. complete protection of God against all harm from creatures. Fourthly, victory in this power over all her foes. For as the Son of God, so also is the soul, and the promise of the Son is the promise of the soul, only she is not suspended from where the Son issues from the Father. Fire and heat are one ; taste and tasted are one, albeit far asunder. The Word God speaks eternally lies hidden in the soul so that one neither knows of it nor hears it. Dionysius says the soul resembles the procession in the Godhead since the higher powers of the soul have her nature common to them and each power flows into the rest. For the soul to rise to spirit she must betake herself to her eternal part, never failing to remember that, by the grace of Gk)d, hers is an imperishable nature and capable of eternal bliss. Her spirit is suspended from the unchanging God, so neither life nor death nor height nor depth nor angel nor man nor any creature can loose her steadfast hold on God : the soul who dies in God is also buried in him and beyond the ken of creatures just as much as God is beyond their ken. As Dionysius says, when the soul considers the greatness of God’s might beside her littleness she casts herself out of herself and out of every creature and thus reduced to naked nothingness, God keeping her in his power, she persists simply in the grace of God. God is concerned solely with himself ; he is to each thing absolutely whole. And the soul should be the same : what God is by nature she must be by grace : detached and free from creatures, abandoning all things to God as though they were not. In a soul like this all that survives is God : his uncreated Breath is what the soul draws in inspiration, and she is spirit to all things and all things spirit to her, the eternal spiration of the Holy Ghost. Vicentius the philosopher observes, ‘ The spirit detached is of such perfection that what it sees is real, what it wills comes true and its commands must be obeyed.’
It must be remembered that when the free spirit stands in perfect isolation it constrains God to itself, and if it could subsist as form devoid of accident it would have all the character of God. But this God grants to none beside himself ; the utmost God can do is togjyc himself to him, and such an one is so far raised up to eternity that nothing temporal can move him, nothing material affect him ; he is dead to the world, as St Paul says, ‘ I live not ; Christ Hveth in me.’
According to Dionysius, death in God is nothing but the uncreated life, that is, God himself, not now called the soul but the sovran power of God, because with it he performs his will. What the five senses get from such a soul she gives the whole of to her inner man whenever he embarks upon some high adventure, and such an one is then nonsensical (or senseless), his object being the rational, a-sensible idea. Dionysius comments on the dictum of St Paul, ‘ There be many that run for the crown but it falls to none but the wise.’ This race, he says, is nothing else than the flight from creatures to union with their uncreated God. The soul, in hot pursuit of God, becomes absorbed in him, and she herself is reduced to naught, just as the sun will swallow up and put out the dawn. St Augustine says, ‘ The soul has a private door into divine nature, where for her all things amount to naught.’ And, ‘ The flavour of the spirit spoils the taste for flesh ’ ; and, ‘ The soul at her summit is ignorant with knowing, j5pj .tjb .oneness of
29d the spirit those that have abandoned everything to God are as he had them when we existed not.’ The Lord Jesus stands before the soul as the perfect pattern for our human conduct. But the subjective aspect of the three Persons — Godhead, mind — no creature ever saw, not soul nor angel nor the humanity of Christ, in its own nature. Yet it is held by some, and Meister E(rkhart of Paris notably, maintains in the teeth of all objections : As surely as you know me for a man so surely God gives birth to his own nature in the ground of my soul as in his heaven, and I am not happy till I return to God discarding every means of sin and all its brood together with all creatures. For in th( selfsame ground wherein the Father bears his Son in his own nature therein am I born. In the soul that has trodden underfoot all the ills of time the Father naturally will beget his Son as surely as my father gat me a living man. In the very ground wherein the Father gets his Son therein does he get me and all whom the Fatlier draws to him by grace. And as God in himself is absolutely free from things so I am there by gratae what God is by nature. God destines all of us to such a glorious lot as few indeed can credit who have not gone out of themselves. If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be lillcd thereby but only with himself : he is the very highest uncreated heaven of all the heavens in God’s nature. That the soul in us is deathless is not our doing but God’s : it is the nature of her. But union comes by grace, the highest stooping down to inform the lowest, and therein lies our hope of future sight.
The soul ascends from corporal things and, being caught up above herself, abides within herself, lirst, for the sake of the delights she finds in God. For the divine perfection invests her in him with his likeness. His fullness is i)oured forth without stint : angels more in number than the sands and grass and waterdrops and every single angel with his own distinctive nature, not one the same as any other,- Secondly, the soul ascends for the sake of the purity she finds in God ; things in him are all quite pure and noble, but once they issue forth from him into the nearest creatures there is all the difference between aught and naught. — Thirdly, the soul ascends for the recollection she enjoys in God. In order to grasp God she must have a wont that is higher than herself ; though God had made a thousand earths and a thousand heavens the soul could comprehend them all in her one power, the active power’s reflection. But she cannot conceive God in the act of making her in his own image. — Fourthly, the soul ascends for the sake of the infinite good things she enjoys in God : all things in him are ever new in his Son who to-day is being born the same as though his Father had never given him birth. And as God is flowing into the soul she is flowing back into God.
The soul takes four steps into God. On turning to God, at first she feels afraid of his magnificence. Her next step is to overcome this fear and conceive the hope of God’s affection. Her third step brings the vehement desire, she hails it as the promise, of the infinite embrace wherein she is embraced by God. — At the fourth step she falls into such deep oblivion she never thinks of leaving what she has found in God. God made the soul for his only Son to be born in her. And when and where soever there befalls this birth it gives God greater jdcasure than the creation of the heavens and earth because the soul is nobler and bigger than the heavens. As there is wedlock between a man and wife so there is wedlock between God and the soul. The head power in the soul is the man and the lowest is his wife. The man in the soul always stands Ijareheadcd and the woman veiled, the lower power being caught up to the highest of the soul. First God begets his likeness in the soul and afterwards himself as he is in eternity. God’s Son is the soul’s Son : in him God and the soul have the same Son, that is, God. Once this birth has happened in the soul she is fit for (iod, and the oftener this birth befalls the more at home the soul will be in God, in his paternal heart.
The soul has two feet, understanding and love. And the more she knows the more she loves. Who shall catise her to fall, she bdng uphold by the sustaincr of all creatures ? Grace lending wings to desirehe is borne out of herself, and by grace and in grace she is borne into grace and past grace into (iod her first cause where in blissful union her lot is good beyond compare. There every sense is dumb; the soul’s will and God’s will are confused with one another, the two wills love-locked in the true atonement. Now the soul does neither more nor less than the work of God, for there no longer lives in her anything but God. As the soul cries in the Book of Love, ‘ I have nni the whole world round and have found no end to it. Wherefore I have east myself into the solitary point of my one God who has wounded me with his glance.’ Whom this glance did never wound, his soul was never pierced with the love of God. St Bernard says, ‘ To the spirit that feels this glance it is ineffable ; to him that fe(;ls it not it is incredible.’ ’Tis an arrow sped without anger and received without pain ; thence starts the pure and limpid stream of healing grace which opens the inner eye to perceive in blissful beholding the delights of this divine affliction wherein we enjoy unheard-of spiritual favours, things never told nor preached of nor yet described in any book.
The soul must give up idle thoughts and worldly cares and corporal pleasures and find her way into his hiding-place whom the heaven of heavens is not able to contain. Gk>d’s comfort is only for that soul who scorns all temporal consolations ; and the more she runs from creatures the faster their creator comes and makes her one with him. Dionysius says, love takes the soul out of herself and identifies her with the object of her love, making her insensible and reckless of herself so long as she can do the will of her best-beloved. The powers of the soul, those of her spiritual mind, are celestial in the sense that they do celestial work ; thus the first power receives, the second one perceives and the third one loves. When the soul, conceiving God, is using in recollection her mnemonic power and, in beholding, her intelligence, then love transports her into the midst of God, the point at which there is eternal rest. The Father abiding in the soul clasps her to his heart, and in this fatherly embrace she conceives the Son in his personal procession and hence divines his presence with the Father in his essence ; as saith the Lord, ‘ I will lead her into the desert,’ meaning, he will lead the soul away from vanity and say his say, his only Son, in her. And in this same begetting of his Son they pour their holy Breath into the soul, informing her of all things. Any act of soul that is to share in the eternal meed must be wrought in God. However good an act is in itself, excepting it be wrought in God, it meets with no reward from hini who docs not pay by length or size or multitude of works but for their being done in God, soul being the material God works in. In this divine alliance she is highly honoured, for what God is by nature she is made by grace. But if a soul presents herself before her bridegroom Jesus Christ without the ordinary virtues, forgetting to prepare herself in this resja.'ct for heaven, her shall he cast out into the pit of hell, there to realize his justice just as much in suffering as St Peter did in heaven his eternal joy. Her true bridegroom Jesus Christ comes to the soul and shows her in his visible humanity his divine affection in order that all creatures may do homage to our nature which has been exalted higher than the angels. We cannot imagine him creating any creature nobler than ourselves. His manhood satis lies our sense as his Godhood does our soul. As St Augustine says, we shall end with our soul in the Godhead, and our bodily senses in the humanity of Christ which is exalted above the saints and angels to where, in its unchanging nature, no (creature can attain. When the watching soul is warned by various signs of the coming of her king, everything in her rejoices, and it is his royal right to use his sovran power to fulfil the expectation of the soul who longs for him to buttress her against her outward senses lest by yielding to them in the least she should bring about in any creature something counter to the will of God. The surest way to friendship with the king is for the soul blindly to follow where God leads. If the soul, which rather than the body constitutes us man, if the soul, I say, would only obey all God’s intimations she would overcome every obstacle with ease and rejoice in the burdens borne for him. And when she finds herself with nothing to correct she will be free with perfect freedom from opinion. It is the mark of the God-loving soul that from the moment she goes into his service she never follows her own will as distinct from his. God is the one thing that needs nothing and that all things need. And when the soul, beholding herself from within, perceives herself by grace omnipotent she stays in her own ideal nature.
The soul observes concerning God, first, that she has intuition of him who is to come to her. Next, she is in essential union with him who is operating in her. Thirdly, she enjoys him who so richly entertains her at his table. Fourthly, he provides her with a refuge where she is at peace. Dionysius says, ‘ When the soul returns to God her idea of herself in God is that, except for selfawareness, nothing survives in her but God. When the soul does this she still keeps in touch with her outward man whom she supplies with his natural life. By speaking himself into the soul God unites himself with her and makes the soul into himself, giving her such great ability, it seems to her that being hen; in time is her only obstacle to good. In the virtuous uses of her exaniplar mind, all things being present to the soul in this interior Word of God, her spirit converses with God freely in proportion to the clearness of the Father’s inspiration. It is important then for the soul to Kliow what behaviour to adopt towards God so that she may discover the practices that draw from God his intimations. For this the loving soul must love God more than anything, who, descending into her and energising in her with his spirit, gives her to understand that the interior love she has from him she ought to have and show towards all mankind ; and the soul should submit herself to God as though he suffered death for her alone. So doing she will wax in truth and fit herself to receive the universal gift of God whereby she will arrive at the truth of the humanity of Christ. But if she does not do her best she puts herself on a material level with the brutes, that must be spurred to great exertion ; yet the sorriest of men, who are always bound to fall short of God, Christ wrought more deeds of love for than all the saints have ever done for love of him. Though all creatures were to speak they could never tell the perfection God confers on man, especially the soul, than which he neither could nor would make any nobler creature. 1’his he proves in his own Person, with its common boundary bi;twcen his divine and human natures. It follows that the soul ought to shun all creatures as things unworthy of her whereby she may be lured from the things she is destined to by God, and she ought to be ashamed if, being within reach of his eternal good, she should fail to grasp it.
Here there is the question, If the soul is of such high estate that time and place and nature are powerless to move or even touch her in her essential self, does God then work in her without any image of himself ? To this theologists reply, Granting the soul is creature and has a spiritual nature it follows of neeessity that what God does in her is wrought essentially and free from all contingency ; for his works are all essential and eternal as they are in himself, and the soul participates them in her nature above grace. Grace is the outflowing light designed for the service of the spirit ; grace would not be a light had it no recognised spiritual mission. At the point where God enters the soul in love she is no more known than the highest angel is to her and loves all things God -fashion without any natural idiosyjHrasy. God is abstract intellectual essence, eternal in itself, whereas the soul is made eternal. The soul is no more to be grasped in images and forms than God in words and names. The soul is one in nature with and subject to the laws of the authentic intellect of God, a monad so perfectly balanced in itself no creature can And room there.
The Lord Jesus said to his disciples, ‘ 1 go to prepare a place for you.’ These words teach us two important facts. First, that the soul is by nature made for heaven and God is her lawful heritage. For God brought forth the soul alone in unbroken line and no man knoweth what she is. Every man has got a soul, but what she actually is there is no telling here in time. St Augustine says, the soul is sent from God and returns to God and she cannot rest except in him ; for God is spirit and soul is also spirit and germane to God as one spirit to another. And they compare the soul with fire, most lofty in its nature, most mighty in its ojjcration, which never rests until it licks the skies. Fire envelops all the elements, spreading further and wider and higher than the air, than water or the earth, so that it surrounds the rest and coming next the heavens turns round with them. The soul is called a lire because in her desire she keeps up with God, like fire with the heavens and can find no rest except in him. Again, the soul is dubbed a spark of celestial nature because one has already ascended into heaven, the soul, to wit, of Jesus Christ, which shows the common restingplace of souls is nowhere else than heaven. But unless the soul has turned from temporal to celestial things the Holy Ghost cannot enter in to do its work in her. All God’s work is wrought in spirit. God is high and man is low : to rise to him in prayer he has to hoist himself by putting under him God’s creatures, all of them, including the powers of the soul which end in the functions of the body, then she will have the love and knowledge to carry her above the world. For to know God I want no eyes or ears ; for union with God in love I want no hands or feet ; I want to withdraw myself from all created things and let my spirit swoon into God’s spirit and be one spirit with Gk)d ; withal it was the love God bears my soul that prevailed with him to create all creatures and therein reveal to her his glory. And albeit he made creatures glad, he mixed therewith some sorrow, that anyone careless of his honour might be whipped and spurred with pain. Marvellous as the mind of man are the ways of God, drawing one to him with pleasure and another with the buffets of ill-fortune ; witness the amazing conversion of St Paul on his way to persecute the Christians, notwithstanding which his soul was caught up into the third heaven. And the very day St Augustine was converted he refused to be appeased with the extraordinary pleasure he felt in the security God sent into his soul to turn her to him.
Three things keep the soul from being content with creatures. In the first place they are partial. In the second, they are corporal : emblems of stagnation and corruption and unprogressiveness. Thirdly, the gift of creatures is no largesse of him from whom she first came forth {Le, from God), so they are not relished by souls who have been caught up into bliss ; but God the Jiord lures souls to him just as the lambs are lured from one spot to another by green pasture. Though all psychic powers lay in a single soul she could not here receive the very least reward of the smallest act decreed by God in his eternal love without the soul melting and dying to the body. Not so, however, when she gets the whole reward, namely God himself. But for this the soul must transcend herself and creatures and enter into the divine estate, into her divine exemjdar nature ; for the soul contacts eternity with her higher powers and with her lower, creatures, whicli often lead her into evil. Could the soul see God as clearly as the angels do she would never have come into the body. God is formed in the image of himself, after a pattern of his own, and when she mingles with him in actual intuition, the soul resembles him in form, for he conforms her to him : divine light streams into the soul confusing her with God like one light with another and this is called the light of faith, the divine virtue. Where the soul with her powers and her passions is forbidden to go, there faith can take her ; and when in this power God is apprehended in the soul she acquires the virtue of hope wherein the soul becomes so intimate with God she fancies there is nothing in God beyond her reach. St Augustine says, ‘ The pears I stole, these were to me far sweeter than the ones my mother bought, because they were private and forbidden fruit.’ And so is that grace sweeter to the soul which she conceives in wisdom than that which is common to mankind. The soul must serve God here with her lower powers and in eternity with her higher ones, for she is not made of time nor of eternity : she is made from naught of the nature of them both. Leaning to the temporal she is unstable ; keeping to the eternal she is strong and stable and superior to change.
The bridegroom of the soul is the Lord Jesus of sevenfold likeness. First, in his beauty with which the sun is nothing to compare, for it is not self-luminous : God provides the light wherewith it lights the air. And his bride should be the same in thought and word and deed. For this God lias to brighten all her tarnishes of sin, making luminous the place of her abode.- Secondly, her Lord is of noble lineage : in heaven he has a F ather but no mother and on earth a mother but no father, parentage too strange for any mind to grasp. And his bride, the soul, by birth adorns a rank higher than anything inferior to God. — Thirdly, her Lord is immensely rich : heaven and (‘arth belong to him with all the creatures in it. Accordingly his bride, the soul, may freely confide her every care to him and have no doubt of his providing, for lui is readier to give than we are to receive. — Fourthly, his wisdom is so lucid, it lights the ground of every heart and nothing is hidden from his eyes. Wherefore his bride, the soul, must be very cartTul not to do anything she thinks may be displeasing in his sight,- “F'ifthly, his power is prodigious ; by it all things have come to be and arv preserved in being. And his bride, the soul, has corresponding ho])(i in times of trouble or in any kind of suffering or struggle. For what she cannot do he can to wllom all things are possible.- Sixthly, he is sweet-tem[)ercd. He is called in the scriptures a lamb without blemish, for he is free from anger and bears no resentment. Likewise the soul, his bride, must be gentle, kind and patient in whatever he shall send her to his glory. — Lastly, her Lord, Jesus Christ, has eternal health and dcatlilessncss. And the soul, his bride, should be cheerfully indifferent to disease, not caring for anything so much but she would always be as glad to do without as keep it, just as her bridegroom pleases, and finding no pain so hard to bear but she would suffer it as lief as not. God’s justice to her is as precious as his mercy. This soul is just as pleased with God’s gifts to others as herself.
It is written, ‘ The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God ’ who keeps them too tightly to his sides to be gotten out. Also he made them separate as his handiwork ; their guerdon in eternal life, himself ; for God alone did make the soul, unhelped by any creature ; in power according to his might ; in intellect according to his wisdom and according to his goodness in her will, as he from eternity knew how to make her mighty in his power and blessed in his infinite good. The soul is not made of the nature of God but in the image of the Holy Trinity, and being bound to God by love alone she, seeking perfect rest in him, proclaims her fitness to be his pleasant temple. He went into his temple and drove out the buyers and the sellers, commanding them. Take these things hence. So he made it known that he would have the temple of the soul swept clean, with nothing in it but himself alone. The soul should take example by the angels who disregard all outward things and are without intention except to do the perfect will of God. So bent are they upon the will of God, upon its being done in them, that were it to pick nettles or anything like that, they would do it with a will, as though their whole happiness depended on it.
Any soul devoted thus to the will of God and seeking not her own Jesus takes delight and will work wonders in. When she goes out of her own will all things go in with .Jesus and she becomes so full of light that God alone rivals her in splendour. For though the angels do to some extent resemble the soul in the joys of the hereafter, they have a limit set which they cannot pass beyond. The soul can transcend it in good works, and having once, in grace, drawn level here with the highest angel, her will, free now from all good works, carries her incalculably higher than the angels, provided she can leave her body.
The uncreated God alone is free and the soul’s virgin nature is the same but not her creature nature : it was she who chose to come to ‘naught, but it is left to God to fetch her back. For Jesus to be in the soul she has to recollect herself and be quiet and listen to his Word. When her spirit is receiving power in the Son her every word is pregnant of purity and virtue and perfection. Such a soul nothing can disturb : she stands firm and unshaken as in the power of God.
And Jesus reveals himself in the soul in his infinite wisdom wherein the Father knows himself in all his fatherly authority, together with his Word which is wisdom’s self and all that therein is and the oneness of it. When this same wisdom is embodied in the soul, doubt, error, obstacles of all sorts fade away and leave her in the clear, pure light which is God himself. God in this soul is seen with God : she knows herself and all things with his wisdom. — Also Jesus manifests himself with passing sweetness in the power of the Holy Ghost, and with him the soul flows into herself and beyond herself and transcending all things in grace, plunges directly into her first cause.
Richardus says, commenting upon the Book of Virtue ; When the divine light strikes into the soul she finds her own activities exceedingly insipid, and unable to tolerate herself in her own powers she confines herself to enjoying God. Now St Augustine says, ‘ My soul is where she loves rather than where she is giving life. At this rate God is nearer me than I am to myself ; and any loving soul who follows God so far as to rise above herself, nor rests with pleasure in herself or any creature, such a soul, I say, will have no pleasure either in God’s gifts : what she desires is God himself. When the soul is rid of things she has certain knowledge of and is nothing lacking in the image of God, her mind is wide open to the eternal truth. The eternal sun sheds its light into this soul and permeates her powers, each separate faculty feeling the physical contingency of the visitation according to its individual nature. And the light of the eternal sun raises all the soul-powers to the power of itself in the wholly intelligible image. When the soul undergoes this operation, as it is performed by God, in essential understanding, then the soul’s understanding becomes the light (or knowledge) of all God is bringing about in her by grace. And her mind being enhanced, as we have said, her faculties are raised above the things of time, so that come what may her powers are unhindered by anything infernal and are always being augmented, never getting less. For divine understanding we depend upon God’s bounty ; but it is his nature to give himself to us and the soul’s nature is to give herself to him who gives himself to her, thus giver and gift, doer and deed are one. The Lord Jesus said, ‘ I go to him that sent me. And the soul too may say in her ascent to God, ‘ I go to him I came from.
She goes to the Father, first, in her fixed intention no longer to disobey his will by cumbering herself with untoward creatures. Secondly, she goes the perfect way of answering every call God makes upon her ; and thirdly, she goes in the sweet savour of God’s love wherein her suffering is no suffering. Fourthly, she goes in the four cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice, over time and creatures. And she goes in the three virtues of faith, hope and charity, without which no one gets to God. Who knows to what wonders the soul may not attain by committing herself into the hands of God ? Every blessed soul keeps open heart to God’s consolation, and such as she receives from him she passes on to her inferior powers wherewith she knows not God else were he dishonoured in the weak intelligence of these lower faculties. And because all souls have not the same aptitude for God, the vision of God is not enjoyed the same by all any more than the sunshine affects all eyes alike.
It is written, ‘ There shall come forth a stem out of the root of Jesse. Here let us consider three things : what this root is out of which God is born in the soul, and what and what measure of profit does it bring ? ‘ Root of Jesse ’ is a term for the fiery nature whieh attracts and transmutes all comers to itself. It is the fiery nature of God : drawing the soul it converts her into itself and she is spiritually born in understanding ; for the soul has in common with the angels a light wherein she can see God, and this light she is provided with is her intellect which is ceaselessly conveying God’s wisdom to the soul. But it darkens when poured into the body.
We read of three kings bringing Christ their offerings. These we take to mean the three inferior powers of the soul, things by rights at the disposal of her superior powers. I am going now to speak of these superior powers, showing how they are the kings and what gifts of lower powers it is they bring.
The first king is memory, bearing the produce of his kingdom. When the soul calls to mind how noble God has made her there flows from this perception a passionate desire which ascends to God, flinging behind it all the things of tiiiK. Then indeed King Memory conies offering the gold of love to God, together with surrender of all else. The second king of the soul is understanding. This corresponds with her other power, reason or judgment. When the soul sees that by grace she is enabled to fulfil the will of God, she is never weary of subjugating creatures to please God and each one the more in proportion to the merit she acquires from God. Understanding then, comes rich with patience and grateful acceptance of whatever lot God destines for her in the body here and with this she has the fruit of incense, the union of all virtues, so that what would otherwise be hard and difficult her love makes feasible and easy. — The soid’s third king is will. When in the flower of his strength he brings the soul the fire of love, which tries her through and through and consumes away all the sinful affections of her nature, then she is fixed, and neither life nor death nor any creature can separate her from the love of God. So they bring her myrrh to keep her from the rot of temiwral things which to the soul are a fertile source of evil. St Ambrose says, ‘ Gk)d pours forth the soul creating and pouring forth he creates her.’ And when she is in love with him, immediately he comes to her, as his spiritual bride admits where she says in the Book of Love, ‘ While I was at rest upon my bed my love came tapping at my window and he put in his hand and touched me.’ This suggests that when the soul comes to know herself she withdraws from all the things which are present to her here, for she herself is of greater worth and higher status than any of the other things in time. When now the loving soul has gone out of all creatures and herself, then the eternal truth comes forth as well to meet the loving soul and touch her understanding and exalt it with his light which more enriches her than all the knowledge of material things hitherto amassed by her own nature. St Augustine says,
‘ As the sun shines through glass and makes its contents plain, so is the soul’s intelligence illumined by the light of God with the recognition of her divine abilities. Then the soul is seen in her poverty and God in his purity. Indeed Dionysius says as much when he speaks of ‘ the naked soul, one with her naked God, resting in the desert of the Godhead.’ It may well be called a desert, for creature never looked therein by grace. Ignorance of these matters is just cause for shame. Yet if one of the chief angels should descend and, with creatures all as wise as he, discourse of human happiness, they might talk till doomsday and not tell the tale of all God has in store for every loving soul in life eternal. But the soul must not seek God for any reason except God himself. The emptier she keeps the more God fills her and the more ])erfectly he does his work in her ; besides, it is the safest way, for then at any moment she will be prepared to quit the body at God’s instance rather than remain there at her own. And being so poor of self she will find naught but God both here and yonder. There is no call for such a soul to look outside herself : the Holy Ghost will teach her the elements of bliss in the school of her own heart. She cherishes the gift wherewith God has endowed his best beloved. And the better to fulfil God’s will in everything she does she trains herself never to be without pure consciousness so that the heavenly Father can go on ever giving birth in her to his eternal Word, Jesus Christ his Son. For at her highest point my soul is not in time and does not work in time and is just as neaf td things a thousand miles away as to this spot I stand on.
Jhcorctically speaking, nothing that takes shape or is touched by time can get into the soul, and not only time but likeness. The head of the soul is her highest power, and from the moment she was made she has never for an instant been without the boon of this divine light, this power in which the time God made the world in and the judgment day are just as present to the soul as this time wherein I speak. Being in the power of her head the soul enjoys the benefit of participation in the grace and happiness common to all saints as though they were her own. It is certainly the fact that anyone actually in this head never commits sin and knows so much about eternal bliss and is so well informed that he needs no sermons. Wherefore erecting the head of the soul let us gather ourselves up into the breadth and freedom of a power like this and depart from temporal to eternal things when, in this same power, God suddenly gives birth to all he is in might and truth and wisdom in the soul. Verily the soul in whom this grace is found is absolutely pure and every whit like God. For anything well-pleasing to the Father or which makes for our profit or our weal, must be well-pleasing to him in his Son, because apart from him he has no likes whatever. This then is the nobility which God has implanted in the soul, her beatific nature which is receptive to the grace of God, so that in this grace the light of God’s pure nature can shine into the soul and the Word of the Trinity be spoken in her mind and the life of eternity energise in her.
Theologians say the soul is a suspended force in the power of the Father and a reflected light in the wisdom of the Son and a circulation in the sweetness of the Holy Ghost. According to St Augustine, the soul comes from the heavenly land, out of the paternal heart ; the offspring of God’s love and scion of the noble house of the holy Trinity, she is the heir to heaven, the mistress of all creatures and the proprietor of all the joys God gives in his eternity. She is the image of God and the noblest creature that ever God conceived. For God gripped in between his divine nature and his Godhood, into his eternal essence, and produced the soul from nothing, just as he made from nothing heaven and earth and all things. If you ask how big the soul is, know, she is too big for heaven and earth to fill, or even God himself whom the heavens cannot comprehend. To measure the soul you must gauge her with God. And she is so beautiful as long as she is in the grace of God and not deformed by sin, the highest angels, Seraphim and Cherubim and all the saints try in vain to copy her in form and likeness, for she is God’s image. As to her life in time, she is flowing back to her natural source whence she issued forth ; and the freer she has kept herself from temporal forms and creatures the kinder her return to God, for God is absolutely free from matter, mode and form. For the soul to compare with the abstract spirit of God she must be free from the smallest trace of sensible affection and quite without attachment to anything not God. That such perfect freedom is not known to every spirit is due solely to our undiscovered life and our untaught senses. All the potential good in creatures the soul will find in God together with inestimable joy. St Augustine says, ‘ When everything was still that existed in me God spake a silent Word within my soul, which no one understood but me.’ And to whatever soul this Word is said she will forget all modes and forms and become an in-dweller with God. Thus St Paul relates, ‘ From the moment the eternal Word was revealed within my soul I no linger lived for flesh and blood.’ Inasmuch as she is selfless she is self-possessed and strong. The faithful, loving soul is like the bee, sipping from all kinds of flowers the sweets to make its honey. And even so the soul culls from the flowers of virtue somewhat of each one to heal and fortify her. It is a crying need for she has three mortal foes : the world, the flesh and the devil, hanging all together like three cherries on one stem. Of these three foes the deadliest is the body, wherein the soul is clapt as into prison : not that she may pander to its vicious appetites but to say them nay and by this resistance daily to augment her reward in heaven and here the love inpoured. It was Seneca, the heathen philosopher, who said, ‘ Man is his own worst enemy.’ Death stands at the door of evil appetites, and the pursuit of vice leads into paths which seem all right to us but sometimes they debouch in the pit of hell. If the soul, the mistress of the body, indulges its base appetites and fails to check its sins she has herself to blame when either here or yonder she must pay for it to God. And that there may be no escaping from God’s justice for them that kill the soul with sin and end in fleshly lusts, he says in the prophet Amos, ‘ My wrath shall drive over you like a chariot, cracking with its weight ; my anger the swift shall not outrun nor the valiant turn aside nor yet the strong man conquer with his strength. Not one shall escape me, how fair or strong or mighty soever he may be.’ And seeing that the soul has such a high and heavenly destiny, therefore Meister Elckhart of Paris, at the end of the aforesaid things, which are taken from his writings, sets the following prayer :
O Sovran Riches of Divine Nature, show me thy way which thou in thy wisdom hast ordained and open to me thy most precious treasure whereto thou hast called me : to know with supercreaturely intelligence, to love with the angels, to enjoy with thy only Son our Lord Jesus Christ and to be thine heir to Sternal wisdom and by thy help to be preserved from evil. For thou hast exalted me above all creatures and hast sealed me with the seal of thine eternal image and put my soul beyond the grasp of creatures and hast made nothing liker to thyself than man is in his soul. Teach me to live so that I never want thee ; so as never to hinder the working of thy love-stream in me ; so as never to lend myself to any outward pleasure without thee nor occupy my mind more with any creature than with thee. Lord thou art spirit and incomprehensible to creature ; thou dost inspire the soul and raise her to an order above creature so that she can do thy will, O Eternal Wisdom, and in grace be free from inroad of unbidden images. Thou hast made the soul to suit thyself in her nature and her laws and she maintains she has no room for anyone but thee. O Almighty and Most Merciful Creator and dear Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner and help me to overcome all pitfalls with their lures to idle pleasure ; to shun in thought and act what thou forbiddest and both to do and keep all thy commands ; help me to believe, to hope, to love ; to live and feel exactly as thou wilt and as much as thou wilt and what thou wilt. Lord, grant me the sorrow of the humble ; a mind escaped from mortal body ; to love, to laud and to behold thee and cherish every act and thought that is toward thee. Grant me a clear and sober and genuinely prayerful mind with real intuition of thy will, together with the love and joy which make it easy to perform. Lord, vouchsafe me always modest progress towards better things and never to backslide. And, O my Lord, condemn me not, as I deserve, to rely on my own powers or on human weakness and unwisdom but on thy good providence alone. Direct me Lord to The Good itself, my every thought and act to thine own liking, so that on my part, in me, thy will is always being done and I being saved from evil and brought to thy eternal life where thou art three in Person and one in the essence of thy divine nature : Father, Son and Holy Ghost and ever blest almighty God. Amen.