Et qumrehat videre Jemmy quis esset etc, {Luc. lOg). St Luke relates that when our Lord walked upon earth in human nature ‘ there was a rich man who sought to see him, and eould not for the press for he was small of stature.’ According to a holy man. Only he is rich who has plenty of God and virtue. To be well off for goods and stinted for God makes one poor and not rich, for things are as nothing to God. Hence the protest of that seigneur whom his retainers lauded for his power and his riches. Quoth he, ‘ I trow they laud not me one whit who have forgot my strongest claim to praise, my power over my body to demand of it what I will.’ This man who sought to see .lesus did outrun the crowd and climbed up into a tree in order to see him. And Jesus said, ‘Make haste and come down, for to-day I abide at thine house.’ Whoso would see Jesus must outrun all things. What does it show when a man does not hasten past things ? It shows he has not tasted God. If he had tasted God he would hasten to pass by all things, and not pass by merely but break through all creatures. What his love is ready to leave he breaks through. If we fail to see God that is due to our feeble desire no less than the concourse of creatures. Aim high, be high. To see God needs high aspiration. Know, ardent desire and abject humility work wonders. I vow God is omnipotent, but he is impotent to thwart the humble soul with towering aspiration. And where I cannot master God and bend him to my will it is because I fail either in will or meekness. I say, and I would stake my life upon it, that by will a man might pierce a wall of steel, and accordingly we read about St Peter that on catching sight of Jesus he walked upon the water in his eagerness to meet him.
Look you : a thing that grows in the filling will never get full. Take a vessel, a stoup ; if you pour a stoup in and it stretches thereby then it will not be full. And so with the soul : the more she demands the more she is given ; the more she receives the bigger she grows. Who is Jesus ? lie has no name. Where do we sec God ? Where there is no yesterday nor morrow : where it is now and to-day, there we sec God. What is God ? One master says, If I were forced to tell of God then 1 should say, God is a thing no mind can reach or grasp and that is all I know about him. Another master says, lie who knows of God that he is unknown, that man knows God. Then comes St Augustine with his dictum, God is something sovran, supreme, which is common to all partakers. lie means that God is somewhat wherein every creature must be ; for if he fall out of the hand of the mercy of God he will fall back into the hand of the justice of God. lie must ever be in him. Needs must a man have his being in God and have enjoyment in God withal, aye in God himself, an he will. But he who docs not lind eternal satisfaction and enjoyment in God himself must get it out of things, things that are base, far lower than his footstool ; yet creatures without exception get their being from God, even the damned in hell persist on somewhat of his being. Though they dwell not in God in felicity, still they must go on without him, against their will, in damnation. What folly it is to refuse to be with him we cannot be without !
St Augustine says, ‘ What is God ? lie is something we cannot conceive any better.’ But I say, God is better than anything we can conceive ; I say, God is somewhat, I know not what, verily I know not. He is all that is being rather than not- being, existent more than non-existent ; our highest aspirations are but grovelling things falling hopelessly short of God. He transcends heart’s desire. When I preached at Paris I declared, and I durst now repeat, that not a man at Paris can conceive with all his learning what God is in the very meanest creature, not even in a fly. Moreover, I now say that the whole world is powerless to conceive it
What God is in himself no man can tell except he be ravished into the light that God is himself. What God is in the angels is very remote and nobody knows. What God is in the God-loving soul not a soul knows but the soul he is in. What God is in these nether things, I know to some extent but very little. What time God comes within our ken the natural faculties vanish. May we be rapt away into the light that is God himself and therein Be forever blest. So help us God. Amen.