Mulier venit horn ci nunc e.st, quando veri adoratores adorabunt pafrem in spiritii et veritaie (Job, This comes from St
John’s Gospel. I take one sentence from a long discourse. Our Lord said : ‘ Woman, the hour eometh and now is, when true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth and the Father seeketh such.’
Taking the opening words : ‘ The hour eometh and now is.’ He who would worship the Father must betake himself into eternity in his desires and hopes. There is one, the loftiest, part of the soul which stands above time and knows nothing of time or of body. The happenings of a thousand years ago, days spent millenniums since, are in eternity no further off than is this moment I am passing now ; the day to come a thousand years ahead or in as many years as you can count, is no more distant in eternity than this very instant I am in.
He says, ‘ true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and in truth.’ What is trutJi ? The truth is a most noble thing. Tf (iod were able to backslide from truth T would fain cling to truth and let God go. Hut (iod is truth, and things in time, the things that (xod created, are not truth.
He says, ‘they worship the Father.’ Alas, how many worship crealurcs and saddle tlKanselves with them, fools that they are. As sure as thou dost pray to God for creatures thou prayest for thine own undoing, for no sooner is creature creature than hey for trouble and bitterness, Avrong and distress. They get their deserts, do these lolk, with their wrongs and their bitterness. For why ? They prayed for it.
I have sonudimes said, whoso gO('s seching God and seekiiig aught with God docs not iind (md ; but he who seeks God by himself in truth docs not lind God alone ; all God affords he finds as well as God. Art thou looking for God, sc'eking God with a view to thy jiersoual good, thy personal prolit ? Then in truth thou art not sething God. ' True Avorshippers Avorship the Father,’ he saAs, and he says right well. If a A irtuous man is asked, ‘ Why dost thou seek (xod V ’ he ansAvers : ‘ Because he is God.’- AVhy dost thou s(‘ek truth? ’ - Beeause it is truth.’ — ‘ Why dost thou seek right ? ' ‘ Jh'cause it is right,’ and Avith such all is aa'cII. Things here in tinui have each their cause. Ask a man why he eats ? ‘ For strength,’ he says. Why he sleeps ?
‘ For tile very same reason.’ And so Avith everything in time. But ask a good man, " hy dost thou lo\e God ? ’ -He says :
‘ I knoAv not ; for God’s sake.’ ‘ Why dost thou love the truth V — ‘For the truth’s sake.’— ‘ Why dost thou lo\c right?’ — ‘For righteousness’ sake.’ ‘ Why dost thou loAe good?’ — ‘ For good’s sake.’- ‘ Why dost thou live ? ’ — ‘ I’ faith, I knoAV not ! 1 like living.’
A philosopher says : ‘ He aa Iio has once been touched by truth, by right, by good, though it entailed the pangs of hell, that man could ncAer turn therefrom, not for an instant.’ The man, whoe’er he be, nioAxd by these three — truth, righteousness and goodness — can no more quit these three than God can quit his Godhood.
A philosopher says that goodness has three branches. The first is use, the second is enjoyment and the third is secmlincss. Concerning his AAords, ‘ they AAorsliip the Father.’ Why does he say ‘ the Father ’ ? Seek God alone and thou shalt find with God all that he gives. It is the positiAe truth, true of necessity, a Avritteii axiom though no less true uiiAvritten, that if God had more he could not keep it from thee, he would have to sliow it thee, to give it thee, and, as I soinctinus say, he gives it to thee as a birth.
Philosophers say the soul is double-faeed, her upper face gazes at God all the time and her lower fac’e looks somewhat down, informing the senses ; and the upper face, whieli is the summit of the soul, is in eternity and has nothing to do with time : it kno\vs nothing of time or of body. Kls(‘wherc T have (‘xplaiiu'd how in this li(‘S hid llu fount as it were of all good, as a shining light that is always shining, a burning brand that is always hairning, which brand is none other than the Jloiy Ghost.
Philosophers say that out of the summit of the soul there tlow twin powers. The one is will, the oilier intiHeet, and her ])owers’ jierfeetion lies in the sovran })ower of intellect. TJiis ne\'cr rests. It wants (xod not as Holy Ghost nor 3'et as Son ; it (lees the Son. It wants God not. as (iod. And why ? Heeanse thus he has name ; \vere th(re a thousand (»ods ye t would it penudrate them all in the desire to get to where he has no name at ail : it wants a nobler, better thing than (iod as having nanux Wiiat Avonld it, then ? It do('S not know : it would havc‘ Jiiin Kiithca. ‘ Lord, show" us the Patiier,’ Pliilij) erics, ‘ and \V(' shall be content.’ It wants him as the quick of kindness ; it wants liini as the miirrow dripping fatness ; it wants him as the root, the main of goodness : thus he is simply Father.
Our Lord says : ‘No man knoweih the Father but the Son, nor the Son but the Father.’ In truth, to know the father we must be the Son. I have laid dowm these three' maxims wdiich take like three bad gra])es and drink tb(‘reafter. First, if wci are Son, we must have the Fatlier : none f'an say lie is ii son unless lie has a father, nor father unless he has a son. His father dead, he says, ‘ he w’as my father.’ II is son being deael, he says.
‘ he was my son.’ The son’s life hangs upon tlu‘ father, and the father’s on the son, and thendbre none can say : ‘ I am the Son ’ unless he have the Fatlier and he is in truth Son whose every work is wrought for love therein. Secondly, that which most makes man Son is equaliility. lleing sick lie would as soon be sick as sane, as sane as sick. His frit nd dit s, ‘ In God’s name ! ’ He has an eye out, ‘ In God’s name ! Fhirdly, it beseems the Son to bow the head to no one save the Father. Truly, a royal power this, transcending time and w"ithoiit place ! And by the facd of its transcending time it both contains all time and is tlu? w")iolc of time, and the least jot of that which transcends time makes a man rich indeed, for things at the antipoilcs an no more distant to this power than those present here. It is of these he says, ‘ the Father seeketh such.’
Look you, God loves us so, God importunes us so, because God cannot work till the soul is shelled and trimmed of creatures, and the plain truth is that of necessity God is bound to cherish us just as though his Godhood were at stake, as in fact it is. God can no more do without us than we can without him, nay, even if we turned from (lod it would be imjossible for God to turn his back on us. I vow I will not pray to God for gifts nor worship him because of gifts bestowed, but I will entreat him to make me worthy to receive and worship him for being of the essence and of the nature that must give. lie who would spoil God of this would spoil him of Ins veiy life, of his very being. That we may thus in truth be Son, help us the truth of which I speak. Amen.