---
title: "Sermons, Collations and Tractates"
author: "Meister Eckhart"
translator: "C. de B. Evans"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Mystics"
section: 81 of 132
url: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/81/
cite: "Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans, Sermons, Collations and Tractates, section 81. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/81/"
---

# 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.

## 81. Sermon 81 · I Have Chosen You

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/81/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/81/#p-N

[¶0] Ego elegi vos de mundo (Joh. 15). These words which I quote in the Latin are from the gospel of to-day, the feast of one of the saints, Barnabas by naTiic, who is commonly referred to in the scriptures as being an apostle. Our Lord says, ‘ I have elected you, selected you, chosen you out of the world, from all created things, that ye should bring forth much fruit and that your fruit should remain,’ for it is very good to bring forth fruit and for the fruit to remain, and the fruit does remain if we dwell in love. At the end of this gospel our Lord says, ‘ Love one another as I have ever loved you ; my Father hath loved me eternally and so have I loved you ; keep my commandments, so shall ye remain in my love.’

[¶1] All God’s commandments come from love, from the kindness of his nature ; did they not come from love they would not be God’s law, for God’s law is the goodness of his nature and his nature his benignant law. Whoso dwells in love dwells in the goodness of his nature : he dwells in God’s love, and love is without why. Suppose I had a friend and loved him for benefits received and because of getting my own way, I should not love my friend, 1 should be loving my own self. I ought to love my friend on his own account, for his virtues, for his own intrinsic worth : 1 love my friend aright loving him like this. And so with the man abiding in God’s love, seeking not his own in God nor in himself nor in any thing but loving God sim})ly for his kindness, for the goodness of his nature, for what he is in himself : that is true love. Love of virtue is the flower, the ornament of virtue, aye, the motJier of all virtue, all perfection and all happiness : it is God, for God is the fruit of virtue, and it is this fruit which remains to man. When a man works for fruit and the fruit remains to him he rejoices greatly. Sup])osc he has a vineyard or a field and makes it over to his man to work while keeping all the produce ; he may give into the bargain all the things thereto belonging and still be much rejoiced to have the fruits remain in pa)unent. Even so a man rejoices in the fruit of virtue ; he has no worries, no vexations, because he has made over himself and everything.

[¶2] Our Lord says, ‘ Whoso shall leave anything for me and for my name’s sake, to him will I restore an hundredfold and eternal life to boot.’ But if thou leave it for that hundredfold and for the sake of eternal life, thou art leaving nothing ; nay, so thou leave it for a thousandfold reward thou art leaving nothing : leave thyself, give up self altogether, that is real riddance. A man once came to me (it was not long ago), and told me he had given up a quantity of land and goods to save his soul. Alack ! I thought, how paltry, how inadequate, the things thou hast resigned. It is blindness and folly so long as thou dost care a jot for what thou hast forsworn. Forswear thyself, that is true resignation.

[¶3] The man who has resigned himself is so impartial, this world will have none of him, as I said here not long ago. The devotee of justice is given up to justice, seized of justice, identified with justice. I once wrote in my book : The just man serves neither God nor creature : he is free ; and the more he is just the more he is free and the more he is freedom itself. Nothing created is free. While therc is aught above me, excepting God himself, it must constrain me, however small it be or however (great) ; even love and knowledge, so far as it is creature and not actually God, confines me with its limits. The unjust man, whether he would or no, is the servant of illusion : serving the world and creature he is the bondman of sin.

[¶4] I was thinking lately ; that I am a man belongs to other men in common with myself ; I see and hear and eat and drink like any other animal ; but that I am belongs to no one but myself, not to man nor angel, no, nor yet to God excepting in so far as I am one with him. All God’s work he puts into his one replica of himself, and though radically differing in their operation, (creatures) all tend to reproduce themselves. In my father nature took its normal course. In the course of nature I should be a father like himself. The tendency is ever towards self-repetition, towards the preservation of the species : it is every man’s intention that his work should be himself. Any shifting or hindering of his nature and the result is woman : thus where nature stops God begins to work and to create ; for without woman there would be no men. The child as conceived within its mother’s womb has shape and colour and material being ; so much is wrought by nature. That lasts for forty days and forty nights, and on the fortieth day God creates the soul in much less than the twinkling of an eye. Now ends the work of nature, all nature can contrive in colour, form and matter. The activity of nature goes out altogether, and as the natural energy is finally withdrawn it is restored intact in the rational soul. This then is the work of nature and the creation of God. In created things (as I have said repeatedly) there is no truth.

[¶5] There is something, transcending the soul’s created nature, not accessible to creature, non-existent ; no angel has gotten it, for his is a clear (intelligible) nature, and clear and overt things have no concern with this. It is akin to Deity, intrinsically one, having naught in common with naught. Many a priest finds it a baffling thing. It is one ; rather unnamed than named, rather unknown than known. If thou couldst naught thyself an instant, less than an instant, I should say, all that this is in itself would belong to thcc. But while thou dost mind thyself at all thou knowest no more of God than my mouth docs of colour or my eye of taste : so little thou knowest, thou discernest, what God is.

[¶6] Plato, that great priest, who occupied himself with lofty matters, makes reference to this thing. He speaks about a light which is not in this world; not in the world and not out of the world; not in time nor in eternity : it lias neither in nor out. God the eternal Father, the fullness and the sink of all his deity does he give birth to here in his one-begotten Son, so that we are that very Son, and his birth is his presence within and his abiding within is his bringing forth. That remains ever the same which comes welling up in itself. Ego, the word /, is proper to none but to God himself in his sameness. Vos, the word implies your collective unity, so that ego and vos, I and you, stand for unity. May we be the unity itself, unity abiding. So help us God. Amen.