In hoc ajpparuit charitas dei in nobis etc. ‘ In this was manifested the love of God toward us that he sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we might live with the Son, ’ that is, 1 See also Wackeraagel, No. Ixv, p. 172.
‘in and through the Son.’ Those that live not through the Son, verily they err.
If a mighty king had a beautiful daughter and gave her to a poor man’s son, every member of his family would rise in rank and become ennobled. Thus one learned doctor says : ‘ By God becoming man the whole human race has been ennobled and exalted ; wherefore it behoves us to rejoice greatly that Christ our brother has with peculiar power ascended up above the choir of angels and sitteth on the right hand of the Father.’ This is well said, though I set but little store by it. What profit to me that my brother is rich if I am poor, or wise and I a fool ?
I say something more and more significant : God not only became man, he assumed human nature. Doctors agree that all men are of equal rank by nature. But I make bold to say that every good thing possessed by the saints and by Mary, God’s mother, and Christ in his human nature, is also mine in this same nature. Haply thou wilt ask me : ‘ If already I possess in this nature all that Christ does in his humanity, how come we to set Christ so high and honour him as our Lord and God ? ’ — Because he was a messenger from God to us, bringing us our happiness. The happiness he brought us was our own. When the Father begets his Son in the innermost ground, what moves there has this nature. This same nature is one and indivisible. Anything distinct in it or connected with it is not this one.
Another thing I say, still harder. To subsist immediately in this pure nature a man must be so wholly dead to person that he wills as well to one across the seas whom his eyes have never seen as to his own present and familiar friend. While thou still wishest better to thine own person than to that man whom thou hast never seen thou art beside the mark, nor hast thou even for an instant seen into this simple ground. Haply in some far-fetched symbol thou hast beheld the truth as in an image, but it was not the best. — Secondly, thou must be pure in heart ; and only that heart is pure which has exterminated creaturehood. And thirdly, thou must be free from not.
It is a question, what burns in hell ? Doctors reply with one accord : ‘ self-will.’ But I maintain : not burns in hell. A simile 1 Suppose I take a burning coal and put it on my hand ; then if I say the coal is burning me, I do it great injustice. To define precisely what it is that bums me : not docs ; because the coal has in it something my hand has not. Observe, it is this very not that bums me. Did my hand contain what the coal is and can afford, it would possess the fire-nature altogether. In which case all the fire that ever burned might be taken and heaped upon my hand without its burning me. Likewise, I aver that because God and those who are in sight of God, have in them something pertaining to real happiness which those who are apart from God have not, therefore this not alone torments the souls in hell more than the personal will or any fire soever. In sooth I hold : as far as not inheres in thee, so far thou art imperfect. To be perfect, then, thou must be free from not.
Further, my text says : ‘ God sent his only-begotten Son into the world,’ by which ye are to understand not the external world : it must be taken of the inner world. As surely as the Father by his simple nature begets the Son innately, so surely he begets him in the innermost recesses of the mind, which is the inner world. Here God’s ground is my ground and my ground God’s ground. Here I live in my own as God lives in his own. To one who even for an instant has seen into this ground, a thousand ducats of red beaten gold are worth no more than a false farthing. Out of this innermost ground thy works should be wrought without why. Indeed, I hold that as long as thou doest thy works because of the kingdom of heaven, or God, or thine own eternal happiness, from without (that is to say), all is not well with thee. It may be tolerable but it is not the best. He who fondly imagines to get more of God in thoughts, prayers, pious offices and so forth, than by the fireside or in the stall : in sooth he does but take God, as it were, and swaddle his head in a cloak and hide him under the table. For he who seeks God under settled forms lays hold of the form while missing the God concealed in it. But he who seeks God in no speeial guise lays hold of him as he is in himself, and such an one ‘ lives with the Son ’ and is the life itself. We might question life for a thousand years : ‘ Why dost thou live ! It would only say, if it replied at all, ‘ I live because I live.’ For life lives in a ground of its own, wells up out of its own. It lives without a cause for it lives itself. And if anyone asked a proper man, one who works his own ground, ‘ Why dost thou work ? ’ he too would say, if he told the truth : ‘ I work because I work.’
Where creature stops, there God begins. All God wants of thee is for thee to go out of thyself in respect of thy creatureliness and let God be God in thee. The smallest of creaturely images that ever takes shape in thee is as big as God. — ‘ How so ? ’
— It shuts out the whole of God. As soon as this image appears God disappears with all his Godhood. As this image fades out God comes in. [No temporal image is so godly but thrice harms the soul. First, it vexes spirituality ; next, it tarnishes her purity ; and thirdly, it disturbs detachment.
— ‘ What does God do to my mind ? ’
— Transcend thyself and repress creatures : God does that to thy mind.]
God longs as urgently for thee to go out of thyself in respect of thy creaturely nature as though his whole felicity depended on it. Why, man, what is the harm of letting God be God in thee ? Go clean out of thyself for God’s sake, and God will go clean out of his for thy sake. Both being gone out, what remains is simply the one. In this one the Father gives birth to his Son, in his innermost source. Thence blossoms forth the Holy Ghost and thence originates in God the will belonging to the soul. The while this will remains unmoved by creatures and by creaturehood, the will is free. Christ says : ‘ None goes to heaven but he who came from heaven.’ Things are all made from nothing ; hence their true source is nothing. This noble Avill, as far as it inclines to creatures, with them elapses into nothing.
The question is, Docs the will lapse so far that it is never able to return ? Doctors reply with one accord that it docs not return so far as it has lapsed with time. But I maintain that if this will turns back, even for an instant, from its oAvri self and things created and rallies to its source, there in its own free origin the will is free and in this instant time lost is all recovered.
People often say to me : ‘ Pray for me.’ And I think to myself : Why ever do ye go out ? Why not stop at home and mine your own treasure ? For indeed the whole truth is native in you.
May we be apt to stay thus in ourselves and to possess the entire truth immediately, impartibly, in real happiness. So help us God ! Amen.