---
title: "Sermons, Collations and Tractates"
author: "Meister Eckhart"
translator: "C. de B. Evans"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Mystics"
section: 20 of 132
url: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/20/
cite: "Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans, Sermons, Collations and Tractates, section 20. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/20/"
---

# Sermons, Collations and Tractates

*Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans*

A hundred and four sermons, the tractates and the Sayings, in Evans's 1924 English of Pfeiffer's German.

## 20. Sermon 20 · And Behold There Was a Man . . . Simeon

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/20/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/20/#p-N

[¶0] Et ecce, homo erat in Jerusalem cui nomen Simeon etc, {Luc, 235). St Luke relates in his gospel that ‘ when the days were accomplished Christ was brought to the temple. And behold there was a man in Jerusalem, Simeon by name, who was just and Godfearing, waiting for the consolation of the people of Israel and the Holy Ghost was in him.’

[¶1] One of our best doctors says that an image in stone or on the wall, with no foundation to it, taken simply as a form, is the same form as his whose form it is. For the soul passing into her exemplar wherein is no alien thing, only her form wherewith it is one, this doctrine holds good. Having gotten the form that is divine we behold God, we find God. In separation God is not found. On passing into her exemplar and finding herself in that image alone, in that same image the soul finds God and the finding of herself and God, which is all the same act and is timeless, is the finding of God. So far as she is therein so far she is one with God, He means :

[¶2] as far as a man is at the stage where his soul is the divine image. Then so far as he is he is divine. So far therein so far in God, not annexed, not united but one and the same.

[¶3] One master says, likeness means birth. Further he states that like is not met with in nature unless it is born. Doctors declare that fire, however fierce, would never burn had it no hope of propagation. However dry the wood supplied it would never catch (if fire) lacked power to generate its kind. What fire wants is to be born in wood, for all to be one fire, living and lasting. Extinguished and dead it were fire no more, so it wants to keep in. The nature of the soul would never have gotten its kind were it not for her wanting to have God begotten in her ; she would not have proceeded into her nature, would never have wanted to enter therein, except in the hope of this birth ; nor would God ever have brought it to pass had he not meant the soul to be born into him. God docs and the soul desires. God has the energy and the soul has the will and the power to have God born into her and herself into God. This God contrives with intent that the soul shall be like him. She must needs wait for God to be gotten in her and for her treasure to grow into God, desiring union and the safekeeping of God. God’s nature pours into the light of the soul and therein she is preserved. God purposes thus to be born into her, united with her, contained in her.- -How can that be ? Do we not say that God contains himself ? — When he draws in the soul she finds that God is self-contained and there she stays abiding nowhere else. Augustine says : ‘ As thou lovest so thou art : loving earth thou art earthly, loving God thou shalt be divine.’ If I love God then, shall I be God ? It is not I who say so ; search the scriptures. In the Prophets God says : ‘ Ye are gods and the children of the Most High.’ I say that it is in his likes that God gives this birth. Had she no expectation of this the soul would not want to attain it. She wants to be preserved in him, he is her life. God has a preserve, a safe place in himself, which man can know nothing about until he pares off and is rid of all that belongs to the soul — her life, her powers, her nature, all must go. And that means standing in that perfect light where she and God are one form, where she finds herself God. It is characteristic of God to have nothing alien in him, nor on him nor added to him. And likewise it behoves the soul to have no outside impressions, nothing put on, nothing annexed. So much for the first (word).

[¶4] ‘ And behold ’ : ecce. This word ecce has all the meaning of logos (or word) and it could be given no greater. Word, i.e, God. God is a word, God’s Son is a word. It conveys the idea of our life nnd all our desire being centred in and dependent upon and odented to God. As St Paul says, ‘ By the grace of God I am that I am.’ And again, ‘ I live, yet not I but God liveth in me.’ What more ?

[¶5] Homo erat. He says, ‘ Behold, a man.’ We use the word homo for women as well as for men, but the Latins refused it to woman because of her weakness. Homo denotes something whole, nothing lacking. Homo, a man, a mortal, means one pertaining to earth, implying humility. Earth is the basest of the elements and placed in the midst with the heavens all round, it lies open to every celestial emanation. All the work and waste of heaven is caught midway in the sink of earth. Homo in yet another sense means moisture ; as much as to say, one who is watered with grace ; referring to those humble souls who receive the immediate influx of grace. In this inflowing grace there forthwith arises that light of the mind into which God is sending a ray of his unclouded splendour. In this powerful light a mortal is as far above his fellows as a live man is above his shadow on the wall. This light is vastly potent, not merely being in itself exempt from time and place, but anything it falls upon it robs of time and place and bodily semblance and everything extraneous thereto. As I have often said before, were there no time nor place nor aught beside it would be all one being. The man who is in this sense one and casts himself into the ground of humility, there will be watered with grace.

[¶6] Concerning the third point : this light deprives of time and place. ‘ There was a man.’ Who gave him this light ? The light did. This word erat belongs expressly to God. In the Latin tongue there is no word so proper to God as erat John in his gospel comes to using erat as a synonym for pure being. Things are all extras : but addition is possible only in thought ; not by mental addition but by mental abstraction. Goodness and truth are additions, in theory at least, but the abstract essence without anything to it is what is meant by erat Again, erat implies birth, an end of becoming. I was coming to-day, now I have come ; and if we eliminate time from my coming and having arrived, then coming and come close up into one. Where coming and come coincide, there we are born and re-made and re-formed into his primitive form. I have often said that all the while a thing’s aught is a matter of concrete existence it never will be re-created ; refurbished it may be and coloured afresh, even as a seal that is old : that is restamped and renewed. A heathen doctor says, Things yonder no time can stale ; there is the blessed life in the evermore : faultless, care-free, unalloyed being. Solomon says : ‘ There is nothing new under the sun,’ though this is seldom taken in its proper sense. Everything under the sun grows old and dies, but yonder is nothing but new. Time brings two things : age and decay. What the sun shines on is present in time. Creatures are here and are from God, but yonder where they are in God they are not at all the same as they are here ; they are as different as the sun is from the moon, far more so. Erat in eOy he says : " the Holy Ghost was in him,’ wherein is being and becoming. ‘ There was a man.’ Where was he ? In Jerusalem. Jerusalem meaning vision of peace ; it stands, in short, for man’s peace and prosperity. It possibly signifies more. Paul says, ‘ The peace that passeth all understanding keep your hearts and minds.’ Pray God we may be such as to enter into this peace, which is himself. So help us God. Amen.