--- title: "Sermons, Collations and Tractates" author: "Meister Eckhart" translator: "C. de B. Evans" languages: [en] shelf: "Mystics" section: 25 of 132 url: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/25/ cite: "Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans, Sermons, Collations and Tractates, section 25. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/25/" --- # 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. ## 25. Sermon 25 · The Lord Hath Sent His Angel Source: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/25/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/25/#p-N [¶0] Nunc scio vere, quia misii doininus angelum swum {Act Freed from his prison bonds by the power of the supreme God, Peter exclaims, ‘ Now I know of a surety that the Lord hath sent his angel and hath delivered me out of the power of Herod, out of the hand of the enemy.’ [¶1] We will reverse the words and say, ‘ The Lord hath sent his angel, therefore I know of a surety.’ Peter symbolises intuition. As I have often said, intuition and intellect do not unify the soul in God. Intellect is a matter of pure being. Intuition, its forerunner, goes ahead and penetrates to what is born there : God’s onc-begotten Son. Our Lord declares, in Matthew, that no one knows the Father but the Son. Now, philosophers say understanding lies in likeness. Some of them say the soul is made of all things since she is capable of understanding all things. That sounds ridiculous, but it is true. They say that anything I know must be wholly present to me in the likeness of my understanding. But according to the saints, power is in the Father, likeness in the Son and union in the Holy Ghost. Hence, if the Father is all present to the Son and the Son is all-to like him, therefore no one knows the Father but the Son. [¶2] Peter says, ‘ Now I know of a surety.’ Why does he know of a surety ? Because it is divine light which does not deceive. And because we see in it quite clearly without anything to hide the view. Paul says concerning it : ‘ God dwells in light inaccessible.’ Doctors declare that the wisdom we learn here stays with us yonder. St Paul says it will go. A philosopher once said, ‘ Real knowledge, even in this body, is intrinsically so delightful that the sum-total of created things is nothing to the joys of pure perception.’ Yet noble though it be, it is but contingent ; as one small word to all the world even thus insignificant is all the wisdom we learn here compared with the whole and perfect truth. Look you. Paul says it goes. And even if it stayed it would turn to foolishness and be as nothing to the actual truth we see. Thirdly, we surely know, for things seen here as changing we see as changeless there where we get them as a whole and indivisible, approximately one, things widely sundered here being close together there where all things are at hand : both the first day and the last are happening at the present instant yonder. [¶3] ‘ Now I know of a surety that the Lord hath sent his angel.’ When the Lord sends his angel to the soul she becomes sureknowing. Not unjustly God ordained Peter should keep the key. For Peter stands for intuition, and it is intuition with the key that unlocks and goes in and finds God face to face, whereupon she notifies her find to her partner, will, she having had the will before, for what I will I seek. Perception leads the way. It is the princess seeking the prince upon the mountain- top, in virgin realms ; she proclaims him to the soul and soul to nature and nature to the passions of the body. So noble is the soul at her highest and her best, the doctors cannot find her any name. They call her anima because she animates the body. [¶4] Theologians say that next to the first emanation of the Godhead, when the Son breaks out of the Father, his angel is most like to God. True, soul is like to God in her highest part, but this angel is even more like God. All that belongs to this angel is godlike. The angel was sent to the soul to bring her back to the very same form wherein he is formed, for knowledge comes by likeness. The soul is capable of knowing all things and she never rests till she attains her original form wherein all things are one ; it is there she rests, in God. In God one creature is no better than another. According to the masters, being and knowing are the same, for things that are not are not known and things that are most are most known. God has transcendent being, so he transcends all knowing, as I said in my first sermon two days back. The soul, informed with primitive light, sealed with the seal of pure being, smacking of God prior to truth and gnosis, with every named nature sloughed away : the soul (I say) at this stage of all-perfect knowledge has gotten being to match. As St Paul says, ‘ God dwells in light inaccessible.’ He hangs suspended in his own pure being whereto naught is attached. He is merely a presence in himself, where neither this nor that exists, for what is in God is God. [¶5] A heathen says. They that hang under God are hanging in God, and while having real subsistence in themselves do yet impend in him who has neither end nor beginning, for in God nothing alien betides. Heaven affords us an example. It never takes in aliens as aliens. And by the same token, what gets to God is changed : however vile it be, on bringing it to God it sheds its self. For instance, I may have wisdom but not be it. I can gain wisdom and can also lose it. But what is God’s is God , it cannot leave him. It is implanted in God’s nature ; God’s nature being so stable that anything to do with it is settled in it once for all or always stops outside. Now reflect and marvel I If God converts vile things into himself, how ween ye he will treat the soul, which he has dignified with his own image ?