Sciiate, quia prope est regnum dei {Luc, ‘ily). Our Lord says. The kingdom of God is at hand. Yes, the kingdom of God is within us, and according to St Paul our salvation is nearer than we think. In what sense is the kingdom of God near at hand ? Let us consider this carefully. Supposing 1 were king all unbeknowest to me, then I should be no king. But suppose I have the firm conviction that I am the king and everyone maintains and insists upon it with me and I know for certain that all the world is of the same opinion, in that case I am king and all the king’s treasure is mine. Failing any one of these three things I can be no king. Even so our happiness depends on our knowledge, our awareness of the sovran good, which is God himself. I have one power in my soul fully sensible of God. I am as certain as I live that nothing is so close to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to my own self ; my life depends upon God’s being near me, present in me. So is he also in a stone, a log of wood, only they do not know it. If the wood knew of God and realized his nearness like the highest angel does, then the log would be as blessed as the chief of all the angels. Man is more happy than a log of wood in that he knows and is aware of God, how near at hand God is. The better he knows it the happier he is and the worse he knows it the more unhappy he is. He is not happy because of God’s being in him and so near him or because of having God, but because he is aware of God, of his nearness to him ; because he is God-knowing and God-loving, and such an one knows that God’s kingdom is at hand.
Thinking upon God’s kingdom, often I am dumbfounded at. its grandeur ; for God’s kingdom is God’s self in all his fullness. God’s kingdom is no little thing : all imaginable worlds God might create, these make not up his kingdom. The soul God’s kingdom dawns in, who is conscious of God’s fullness, her none durst counsel nor instruct : she is by it instructed and assured of life eternal. He who knows, who is aware, how near God’s kingdom is can say with Jacob, God is in this place and I knew it not.
God is just as near in creatures. The wise man says, God has spread his nets and lines all over creatures, and we can find and know him in any one of them if only we will look.
A philosopher says, ‘ That man knows God aright who is equally aware of him in all things ’ ; and, ‘ To serve God in fear is good ; to serve him in love is better, but he who is apt to behold love in f( ar does best of all.’ A life of rest and peace in God is good ; a life of pain in patience is still better ; but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all. One may go in the fields and say one’s prayers and be conscious of God or go to church and be conscious of God ; if we are more eonseious of God by being in a quiet place, that comes of our own imperfection and is not due to God, for God is the same in all things and all places and just as ready to vouchsafe himself so far as in him lies ; and that man knows God aright who ever finds him the same.
St Bernard says, ‘ Why does my eye see sky, and not my foot ? Because my eye is like the sky, more than my foot.’ For rny soul to see God then, she must be heavenly. What makes the soul alive to (lod in her, aware how close to her he is ? I answer : Heaven permits no alien intrusion, no mortal lack can penetrate therein to do it outrage. And the soul that knows God is so firmly established in God that nothing can reach her, not hope nor fear nor joy nor grief nor good nor ill nor nothing that would bring her down to earth.
Heaven is at all points equidistant from the earth. And likewise it behoves the soul to be equally remote from every earthly thing and no nearer to one than to another but equable iy> hi grief, in having and in wanting ; whatever it be she mUwSt be dead, dispassionate, superior to it. Heaven is clear and unsullied in its brightness, free from any taint of time and place. No corporal thing finds room therein. Not itself in time, incredible in swiftness is its revolution, its actual course being timeless though from its course comes time. Nothing hinders the soul from knowing God so much as time and place. Time and place are fractions, God is an integer. So if the soul knows God at all she must know him above time and space, for God is neither this nor that as these manifold things are : God is one.
If the soul would see God she must not look at anything in time. While the soul is regarding time and place or any such idea she can never recognise God. Before the eye can see colour it has to be rid of all colour. Before the soul can see God it must have nothing in common with naught. The seer of God knows that creatures are naught. Comparing one with another, creature looks fair and is aught, but compare it with God, it is naught.
Further I declare : any soul that sees God must have forgotten herself and have lost her own self ; while she secs and remembers herself she nor sees nor is conscious of God. But when for God’s sake she loses herself and abandons all things then in God does she re-find herself, for knowing God she is knowing herself and all things (which she rid herself of) in God in perfection. To know the sovran good and the eternal goodness, really, I must know them in the good itself, not in partial goodness. To know real being I must know it as subsisting in itself, that is, in God, not parcelled out in creatures.
In God alone exists the whole of godhood. Not in one man exists the whole of manhood, for in a single man exists not all mankind. But in God the soul finds perfect manhood and all things in their prime, for she knows them in their essential nature. The dweller in a richly furnished house must know far more about it than another person who, though full of information, has never been within. And by this same token I am as certain as I live, and as God lives, that the soul who knows God knows him above time and place. In this God -conscious state the soul perceives how near God’s kingdom is, namely, God in all his fullness. There is much discussion among doctors at the School as to the possibility of the soul knowing God. Not by reason of his harshness docs God exact so much from man but out of his great kindness, wanting the soul to be more capacious, big enough to hold the largesse he is anxious to bestow.
Let no one deem it difficult to arrive at this however hard may seem, and be, indeed, to start with, the parting from and dying to all things. Having once got into it no life is more easy, more delightful or more lovely. God is so very careful to be always with a man to guide him to himself in case of his taking the wrong way. No man ever wanted anything so much as God wants to make the soul aware of him. God is ever ready, but we are so unready. God is near to us, but we are far from him. God is in, we are out ; God is at home, we are strangers. The prophet says, ‘ God leads the just by a narrow path to the high road out into the open,’ that is, to the true freedom of the spirit become one spirit with God. Ours to follow his lead and let him bring us to himself. So help us God. Amen.