Steiit Jesus in medio discipulorum et dixit: pax etc. {Luc. 2435, Joh, 20). St John tells us in his gospel that ‘ on the first day of the week, at evening, when the doors were shut, came our Lord and stood in the midst of the disciples and said : Peace be unto you ! ’ and again, ‘ Peace be unto you ! ’ and a third time,
‘ Receive ye the Holy Ghost ! ’ Now the evening never comes unless morning and midday have gone before. We say that the middle of the day is warmer than the evening. But in so far as evening takes in middle-day and stores up its heat, it is the warmer, when, too, before the evening there goes a whole bright day. Late in the year, again, after the summer solstice, when the sun is drawing nigh to earth, the evenings will grow warm. But midday never comes till morning goes nor evening until noon has passed away. The moral of which is, that when the divine light breaks forth in the soul, getting brighter and brighter unto the perfect day, then morning does not vanish before noon nor noon ere eventide : they close up to one. So the evening is warm. There is perfect day in the soul when all the soul is full of light divine. But it is evening in the soul, as I have said before, when the light of this world fades and the soul goes in to rest.
God said, ‘ Peace ! ’ and ‘ Peace 1 ’ again, and ‘ Receive ye the Holy Ghost ! ’ Jacob the patriarch came to a place, in the evening, and putting underneath his head some stones which lay about, he sank to rest. In his sleep he saw a ladder reaching up to heaven with angels ascending and descending and God leaning down over the top of the ladder. This place Jacob slept in had no name. Which is as much as to say : the Godhead alone is the place of the soul, and is nameless. Concerning this our doctors say : a thing which is another’s place must be above it ; as heaven is the place of all things and fire is the place of air and air the place of water and water, partially, the place of earth and earth is not a place. An angel is a heavenly place, and any angel who has got the least drop more of God than any other is the place, the habitation, of that other, the most exalted angel being the place, the room, the measure of the rest while he himself is without measure. But although he is without measure, natheless God is his measure.
Jacob rested in the place which is nameless. By not naming it it is named. On getting to this nameless place the soul will rest : where all things are being God in God, there shall she rest. The abode of the soul, which God is, is unnamed. I say, God is unspoken. But St Augustine says that God is not unspoken ; were he unspoken, that even would be speech and he is more silence than speech. One of our most ancient philosophers who found the truth long, long before God’s birth, ere ever there was Christian faith at all as it is now, to him (I say) it seemed that what he could manage to utter of things only conjured up within him something monstrous and unreal and therefore he refused to speak at all. Not even would he say, give me meat or give me drink. He declined to mention things because he could not say them as perfect as they sprang from their first cause : he chose rather to be dumb and to make known his wants by pointing with his finger. How much more does it beseem us, if he knew not the way to talk of things, to be absolutely mute concerning him who is the origin of all things.
We say that God is a spirit. Not so. If God were really a spirit he would be spoken. According to St Gregory, we cannot rightly speak of God at all. Anything we say of him is bound to be a stammering. This place which is not named, wherein all creatures thrive and bloom in orderly array, this habitat of all creatures, is gotten suddenly out of the ground of this orderly place, the seat of the soul proceeding out of this ground.
Jacob wanted to rest : mark you, he wanted to rest. Whoso resteth in God his rest is will-free. We say that will is without habit. Will is free, it takes nothing from matter. In this sense it is freer than intellect, and some rash people pouncing upon this would put it above knowledge. That is not so. Intellect also is free despite that intellect does take from matter and from corporal things in the locality of soul, for, as 1 pointed out on Easter Eve, various of the soul-powers are in link with the five senses, for instance, sight and hearing, which convey to them the things we know. A master says : ‘ God would never choose that eye or ear should sense what crowns the summit of the soul : none other than the nameless place, which is the place of all things.’ It gives a fair reflection, and is useful in that way, but is marred by colour and by sound and corporal things. It is only by the senses that the soul is roused and the idea of wisdom naturally imprinted in her. Plato says, and with him St Augustine : The soul has all knowledge within, and all we can do from without is but an awakening of knowledge. — Jacob rested in the evening. Let us pray ever for the now ; ’tis but a little thing we ask, just for one evening. May it be granted us, So help us God. Amen.