God made the poor for the rich and the rich for the poor. Lend to God, he will repay you. Some say they believe in God who believe not God. It is a greater thing to believe in God than to believe God. I may trust a man to pay me back five shillings
I have lent him yet not trust in the man. So if a man believes in God why will he not trust him to repay what he lends his poor ? He who gives up all things gets back an hundredfold. If he expects his hundredfold he shall get nothing : he is not giving up the things but getting more, an hundredfold. Our Lord repays an hundredfold the man who leaves all things. Letting go all things he gets an hundredfold return and eternal life. If it happens to a man in the course of riddance to get again the very same he gave, then, not giving all, he shall get nothing. Anyone who looks to find anything in God, knowledge, understanding or devotion or whatever it may be, even if he find it will not be finding God but knowledge, understanding or devotion : all things I heartily commend ; but to him not lasting.
Seek nothing at all, not understanding nor gnosis nor piety nor inwardness nor peace but only God’s will. The soul who is as she by rights should be, would not be satisfied even if God gave her his whole Godhead ; it would no more console her than his giving her a fly. God-knowledge is vain apart from God-will. In God’s will are all things, eternal and perfect and pleasant to God ; but out of God’s will things are all of them naught and not pleasant to God and not perfect. Never pray for any mortal thing ; if thou must pray for anything at all, pray for God’s will and nothing else for therein thou hast all. To ask for aught beside means getting nothing. In him is naught but one and one is indivisible and aught save one is part, not one. God is one and anything extra that is sought or found is not God but a fraction. Peace, intuition or anything else than simply God’s will is for self-love and is naught ; but if he seeks God’s naked will then whatever he may find or have revealed to him therein that man may take as a gift of God without ever thinking or looking to sec if it is of nature or of grace or from whence or in what wise it may be : he need have no anxiety whatever on that score ; he is going the right way and while following the broad lines of the Christian life there is no need to scrutinize each detail. He can just take each thing from God, and whatever comes accept it as the best for him, and have no fear of meeting on his lonely road with anything, do what he may, that hinders his awareness of the love of God, which to him is all that matters.
People have a way of saying, when it falls to them to do or suffer something, ‘ If only I knew it was the will of God I would gladly suffer and put up with it.’ Dear God I what a question for a sick man to ask, docs God intend me to be ill ? He ought to know it is the will of God by the very fact of being ill. And so with other things. Whatever comes accept it as God’s will, pure and simple. Some, when things prosper with them, inwardly or outwardly, praise God and have faith in him. They will say, for instance, ‘ I have gotten four quarters of corn this year and as many of wine : I put my trust in God.’ Nay, I say thou dost trust in the corn and the wine.
The soul is created for good so great, so high, that she cannot rest in any mode ; all the time she is hastening past modes to the eternal good, to God who is her goal. This is not won in the heat of the assault, in the stress and strain of action or of passion, but by gentleness and true humility and self-abnegation in that and everything that may betide. A man should not dragoon himself :
‘ Thou shalt do this at whatever cost,’ that would be wrong for so he lends importance to himself. If anything should chance to grieve or trouble or disquiet him, again he would be wrong for that means giving way to self. When out of the depths of humiliation he calls on God for counsel and bending low before him accepts with quiet faith whatever he may send, then he is right. It all depends, in teaching and advising, if a man will listen, disregarding everything but God. Many and various are the ways of putting this, but it promotes the proper play of conscience to refuse attention to casual happenings and for a man when he is by himself to make an offering of his will to God and then proceed to take each thing alike from God, grace or whatever comes, inward or outward.
Whoso sees aught of God’s secs naught of God. The righteous man does not need God. What I have I am not in need of. He serves for naught, he cares for naught, he has God and that is all he needs. As God is higher than man so is he readier to give than man is to receive. Not by fasting and good works can we gauge our progress in the virtuous life, but a sure sign of growth is a waxing love for the eternal and a waning interest in temporal things. The man who owns an hundred crowns and gives them all in the name of God to found a cloister is doing a good work. And yet I say, it were a better to despise and naught himself for love of God. It behoves a man in all he docs to turn his will in God’s direction and keeping only God in view to forge ahead without a qualm, not wondering, am I right or am I doing something wrong ? If the painter had to plan out every brush-mark before he made his first he would not paint at all. And if, going to some place, we had first to settle how to put the front foot down, we should never get there. Follow your principles and keep straight on ; you will come to the right place, that is the way.
This is a collation of Meister Eckhart’s.