--- title: "Sermons, Collations and Tractates" author: "Meister Eckhart" translator: "C. de B. Evans" languages: [en] shelf: "Mystics" section: 64 of 132 url: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/64/ cite: "Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans, Sermons, Collations and Tractates, section 64. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/64/" --- # 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. ## 64. Sermon 64 · The Swift River Source: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/64/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/64/#p-N [¶0] Fluminis impetus Iwtificat civitatern del : sanctijicavit tabernacuturn suurn altissimus {Psalm 455). ‘ The sudden or swift river makes glad the city of God.’ Here we must note three things. First, the swift stream ; next, the city it serves ; thirdly, the benefit it brings. [¶1] The prophet knows not how to stem the torrent of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost flows into the soul as fast as she is poured forth in humility and so far as she has gotten the capacity. He fills all the room he can find. Consider, next, what city it is it flows through. It is really the soul. A city is something enclosed and centred within. And so must the soul be whereinto God flows. She must be safe from outside alarms, her forces assembled within. According to St John, the twelve apostles were gathered together when they received the Holy Ghost. Even so the soul must be gathered and brought to herself in order to welcome this divine stream which fills to the full her cup of delight. [¶2] I sometimes say, beginners of the virtuous life shoiild do as he does who describes a circle : the starting-point once fixed, he keeps it so and then the trace is good. In other words, learn first to fix the heart on God, on good and on good works. Great deeds performed with shifting heart profit but little if at all. There were once two doctors. One of them declared that the good man cannot be moved. The other disagreed. What I say is, the good man may forsooth be moved, but he cannot be changed for the worse. I trow the good man is not easily hindered. But if aught can worsen him he is not perfect. [¶3] Thirdly, the good of it. Which is, the prophet says, that ‘ God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.’ It is the soul he means. Soul would not that God wrought with her aught that is mixed with creature. Some things God does with help of creature and some unaided. If the grace which is a help and which is coming through my words could enter your heart without means, as though spoken by God, your soul would forthwith be converted and she could not help it. By pronouncing God’s word I become a co-worker with God and grace is mingled in me, God speaking it through me, and since I am to you as the means, it is not received intact in your soul. But the grace which is uttered by the Holy Ghost itself is received direct and imprinted unaltered in the soul what time the soul is recollected into the single power which has intuition of God. Grace springs up in the heart of the Father and flows into his Son, and in their mutual love it proceeds from the wisdom of the Son into the gift of the Holy Ghost and in the Holy Ghost is sent into the soul ; and this grace is the face of God and is sealed in the soul by the Spirit of God, without means and unchanged, making the soul like God. This God does by himself unaided by creature. [¶4] No creature is noble enough to help in this work ; God has not graced their nature with such excellence. But he can do it easily enough in his own perfect nature. God will not let a creature assist him in this work, so for the nonce he elevates the soul to a much higher level than lier natural habitat, where she is out of reach of any creature. It were well within the compass of an angel’s noble nature, provided God would let an angel serve. But that would offend the soul for in that hour she disdains the slightest taint of creature ; even the light of grace wherein she is atoned would be flouted by the soul did she not know she cannot pass it by. After all, it is not natural to her, it is quite supernatural, her flouting at that moment everything that is not God, for God leads forth his bride out of creaturely values into hiinself and speaks with her in her heart, that is, he makes her like himself in grace. For this exalted act the soul must recollect herself. [¶5] The powers of the soul are filled full of delight by this pure infusion of grace. Grace is to God as the shine to the sun ; it is one with him and it carries the soul into God and makes her exactly the same as God and as such she enjoys God’s perfection. I’o the soul that has gotten and enjoyed divine perfection all that is not God has a bitter, nauseous savour. Then again, the soul wants the highest of all, so she cannot abide aught above her. I say, aye, and I durst maintain, she cannot even bear God being above her and I can prove it thus. For if the soul were spirited away far beyond things to perfect freedom from them and came in touch with God in his abstract divinity, natheless she would never rest till, thrusting into that, he shall have drowned her in himself and drowned himself in her alone. What though God be far above her in nobility of nature, she cannot rest till she has gotten God, so far as it is possible to creature to conceive him. The greatest happiness in earth or heaven lies in likeness to God, which divine nature makes in the highest degree : to wit, the image of itself. And this is what the soul is striving for seeing no soil can throughly follow God without having in her the image of God. It is for us to sec whether the grace we have received is every whit divine, whether it smacks of God’s perfection, whether it is in common with and is emanating in his grace into whatever can receive it. Even so ought man to be flowing out into whatever can receive him. So help us God. Amen.