--- title: "Sermons, Collations and Tractates" author: "Meister Eckhart" translator: "C. de B. Evans" languages: [en] shelf: "Mystics" section: 57 of 132 url: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/57/ cite: "Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans, Sermons, Collations and Tractates, section 57. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/57/" --- # 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. ## 57. Sermon 57 · Such is the Nature of God Source: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/57/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/57/#p-N [¶0] A master cries, Dear God, how well for me did my love bear fruit ! [¶1] Our Lord says to every loving soul, ‘ I was made man for you, and if ye are not God for me ye wrong me. I in my God-nature did dwell in your man’s nature, so that none guessed my godly might seeing me walk like any other man. And even so shall ye in your humanity hide you in my divinity, and none shall guess your human weakness : your life being all divine they shall see naught in you but God.’ This does not mean soft words or pious mien or much parade of holiness, so that our name borne far and and wide is highly honoured by the friends of God ; nor that as cherished and elect of God we fondly think God has forgot all creatures but ourselves and anything we ask of God is straightway done. No, not by any means ! That is not what God wants of us : all the other way. [¶2] He would have us found wholly unmoved wheri people call us cheats and liars or whatever it may be whcrcly we are bereft of our fair name ; and not only evil speaking but evil deeds as well : denying us our animal necessities ; and not only temporal needs but bodily hurt. (He would that) our sickness, or whatever ill it be, should help us in our bodily work ; that we should always do our best despite that people turn it to the worst account ; further, that we should suffer in this sense not alone from people but from God as well, who, withholding from us his present consolation, builds as it were a wall between us and when we bring our work to him seeking his help and comfort, he behaves towards us as if he shut his eyes and refused to sec or hear : he leaves us in our need to stand and fight alone, like Christ forsaken by his Father. Then hiding us in his divinity, behold us unbowed down by woe and with no other help than the words Christ uttered, [¶3] ‘ Father, they will be done.’ [¶4] Such is the nature of God that we know it by nothing better than naught. — How, by naught ? — By getting rid of all means, not merely by spurning the world and the possession of virtue ; I must let virtue go if I would see God face to face ; not that I should flout virtue, but virtue being innate in me I transcend virtue. When a man’s mind has lost touch with every thing then, not till then, it comes in touch with God. A heathen philosopher has said, nature cannot transcend nature. Ergo, no creature can see God. If he is seen it must be in light that is supernatural. Theologians have a question, When God uplifts the soul above himself and above all creatures and leads her home into himself, why does he not raise up the body too so that it has no earthly needs ? One of the masters — I think St Augustine — answers this as follows. When the soul attains to union with God then at last the body enjoys all things to God’s glory. Through man all creatures have flowed forth and the body’s rational use of creatures is not a drawback to the soul : it is an added dignity, for creatures can find no better way of returning to their source than in the righteous man who of his soul can say that even for an instant it has been absorbed in union with God. For then there is no obstacle between God and the soul, and as far as the soul follows God into the desert of his Godhead so far the body follows the bodily Christ into the desert of his willing poverty : as the soul is united with his deity so the body is atoned in Christ by the operation of true virtue. Well, then may the heavenly Father say, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,’ for not only has he gotten in the soul his only Son : he has begotten her his only Son. [¶5] From the very bottom of my heart I say, Man, how can aught afflict thee or be hard to bear when thou considerest that he who yonder subsisted in the form of God and in the day of his eternity and in the glory of the saints, and who before was born the splendour and substance of God, did enter the prison, the trap of thy sensenature which is so unclean that aught, however pure, is besmirched and fouled by coming near it, yet notwithstanding this he abode there for thy sake ? What is there thou wouldst not gladly suffer, reading of the bitterness of thy Lord and God, pondering the afflictions, all the woes, that did befall him ? The scorn and contumely he bore from king and soldier, from knaves and passers by his cross ? How the glory of the eternal light was mocked and scorned and tortured ? Behold, what innocence, compassion and true love, and nowhere shown to me more clearly than where the love-power pierced his heart. Make thee then a bundle of the woes of thy Lord God and let it lie between thy breasts. Regard and realize his virtues, how all his works make for thy weal, and see thou pay him back in his own coin his infamous and shameful death and his pain-bearing nature wherein he, sinless, suffered for thy sin as if it had been his ; as he says in the Prophets concerning his afflictions, ‘ Lo, I suffer for my sins,’ and speaking of the fruits of all his labours, ‘ By your works shall ye possess this kingdom I ’ calling our sins his sins and his works our works ; and he has answered for our sins as though he had committed them, whereas we profit by his works as though they were our own. And this should make our labour light, for the good knight laments not his own. wounds, seeing his king who is wounded with him. He offers us the drink he drank himself. He asks nothing of us but what he has already done or suffered. We ought to suffer gladly, for God did nothing else while he sojourned upon earth. May we in God’s nature so transcend and lose our human nature, all our weakness, that nothing should be found in us but good alone. So help us God. Amen.