--- title: "Sermons, Collations and Tractates" author: "Meister Eckhart" translator: "C. de B. Evans" languages: [en] shelf: "Mystics" section: 41 of 132 url: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/41/ cite: "Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans, Sermons, Collations and Tractates, section 41. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/41/" --- # 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. ## 41. Sermon 41 · A Little and Ye Shall not See Me Source: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/41/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/41/#p-N [¶0] Modicum videbitis me et modicum non videbitis {Joh. I617, i») I quote in Latin from the Gospel of St John a saying of our Lord to his disciples. The translation runs, ‘ A modicum, a little, ye shall see me and a modicum, a little, and ye shall not see me.’ The disciples were ignorant and did not understand. They were sa3ring to each other, ‘ We know not what he means.’ So St John relates, and he was there. Follows a parable which I will not dwell on. Then, knowing what was in their hearts he says quite plainly, ‘ I shall see you again and your joy shall be full.’ [¶1] Now, to my mind this saying will bear four interpretations. [¶2] More or less the same in wording but widely different in meaning. The kernel of the prime conception and of eternal happiness is knowledge. One theologist who spoke at Paris insisted with loud fulminations that this is not so. Then up and said another one, better than the best they have at Paris : Sir, you are very positive, but in the gospel did not God declare the very thing that you denounce so roundly ? Our Lord’s words are, ‘ This is eternal life, to know thee the only true God ’ — ‘ A little and ye shall see me.’ Meaning to say, ye must get to look upon everything in you as little and of small account if ye are ever to see God. It follows that we must observe minutely what will help and hinder divine knowledge. However small what comes from God, if treated rightly it recurs, it comes again, for we have one divine thing of our own that we can work with as with our own soul ; not that I work and God looks on : I, as it were, co-operate with my own tool which is mine and in me. Thus man being lifted up in time shall sec God out of himself. I have sometimes said, the time St Paul saw nothing he saw God. Now I say something better : when St Paul saw all nothing he saw God : when he saw all things as nothing he saw God, and what God means to say is this : when things are all reduced to naught in you then ye shall see God. [¶3] Again, he says, ‘ a little and ye shall not see me.’ While time and world, which is little, is within you, ye shall not see me. The angel swore on his eternal life that when this life is done there shall be no more time. And in his gospel St John quite plainly states, ‘ the world was made by him and they knew him not.’ In line then, to quote a heathen doctor, world -and -time is a little thing. It is out of world-and-time that we see God. [¶4] Thirdly. He said, ‘ a little and ye see me not,’ as though to say : the very smallest thing that is foreign to the soul will prevent her seeing God. For heaven is shut to strangers ; even an angel from another heaven would not succeed in getting in, for it is not his. Why has my mouth, my ear, no sense of heaven ? Because they are not like it. St Bernard says, ‘ My eye is like the heavens in being round and clear and placed high in the body, nor can it brook the entry of any foreign matter.’ Before my eye can see the painting on the wall this must be filtered through the air and in a still more tenuous form be borne into my phantasy, to be assimilated by my understanding. These properties, both, the soul must needs possess ; and this likeness, how subtile soever it may be, with its suggestiveness, its hint of sin, the soul rejects as foreign to herself. If God himself were foreign to the soul she would have none of him. What the eye perceives has to be conveyed to it by means, in images. If there were no means we should see nothing. If an angel sees another angel or anything that God has made, he does so by some means. But himself and God he sees immediately. If my soul knows an angel she knows him by some means and in an image, an image imageless, not in an image such as they are here. Soul and angel are material things compared with God. Angelic knowledge, anything created, is a means. Which God wholly lacks : he is known without means, without little. For my soul to know God with nothing between thou must be with me and I with thee. [¶5] I will now suggest a meaning quite other than these three. ‘ While ye are little ye do not see me. To see me ye have to grow great.’ Intellect is great indeed, yet small compared with the light of God. Our Lord upbraided his apostles saying, ‘ There is still in you but a little light.’ They were not devoid of light, but it was weak, the light of grace, the brightest thing God ever made or ever could have made. And after all the soul is small so long as she is still in grace. Sometime or other the soul must rise in grace. If grace is not yet overcome, the soul has still to ascend in grace and, being perfected, to transcend grace : then she sees God. [¶6] Fourthly, ‘ and ye shall not see me ’ : being poor in light and grace ye cannot see God. One must abound in light and grace before one can see God. Grace is a surpassing light, superangelic. In grace we can sec God but from afar. While grace exists in us as grace we are not able to see God. ‘ Ye do not sec me because I am going to my Father.’ While the soul progresses God remains unseen. While we are on the way to God we have not gotten him. With finding God all progress ends, as our Lord said to St Mary Magdalene, ‘ Touch me not, I am not yet ascended in thee to my Father.’ While God is ascending in the soul and has not reached the zenith, we are unable to see God. St Paul says, ‘ God dwells in light inaccessible.’ And one saint declares, ‘ No man ever saw God.’ St Paul tells us ‘ We shall know God as we are known.’ As God knows himself so we shall know him ; as he sees all things in himself so we shall see all things in him. ‘ We shall know as we are known,’ St Paul says. The little being cleared away, I shall see as I am seen, as he sees himself, without little, with nothing between ; all in himself and in him all things, nothing outside him ; and we too shall know without little and without means. We shall know in his Son. The Son is the image of the Godhead, not the Godhead itself : he is the idea of God the Father. The Father’s reflection is his only Son. In that idea where nothing exists, in that image we shall be reflected in the Son and by the Son reflected back into the Father : in that image, all the same, where there is no this nor that, we shall know [¶7] God with God’s only Son. May the little depart from us and allow us to know thee the one true God. So help us God. Amen.