Eratis enim. aliquando tenebrWy nunc autem Ixlk in domino {Ephes 5g). St Paul says, ‘ For ye were sometimes darkness but now the light in God.’ The prophets walking in the light perceived and knew the truth umbraged in the procession of the Holy Ghost. Sometimes they were moved to return to the world and speak of things they knew to be conducive to our happiness, thinking to teach us to know God. Whereupon they would fall dumb, becoming tongue-tied and for three reasons.
First, because the good they knew by sight in God was too immense and too mysterious to take definite shape in their understanding. Such ideas as formed were so unlike what they had seen in God, were such a travesty of the reality, that they held their peace for fear of lying. Another reason was, that what they had gotten in God rivalled God’s very self in its immensity and sublimity and yielded no idea nor any form for them to express. Thirdly, they were dumb because the hidden truth they saw in God, the mystery they found there, was ineffable. So it befell from time to time that, coming back and speaking of these things, they slipped, through lapses from the tnith, into gross matter and tried to teach us to know God by means of infernal creature things.
Paul says, ‘ but now the light in God.’ Aliquando, to those who are instructed, is the same as tvhen and expresses time, which is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time. He means not time alone but temporalities ; not only temporal things but temporal affections ; not only temporal affections but the very taint and aroma of time ; for as, where an apple has lain the smell lingers, so with the contact of time. According to our best authorities the visible heavens and the sun and stars have nothing to do with time beyond bare contact with it. This I cite as showing that the soul, which towers high above the heavens, has, at her very summit, no connection with time at all. Many times I have explained about the act in God, the birth wherein the Father bears his one-begotten Son whose proeession causes the interior blossoming of the Holy Ghost, that the Spirit proceeds from both and that in this procession the soul comes leaping forth, the image of the Godhead being sealed into the soul in this procession ; and that in the return of the three Persons the soul goes back, re-informed into her primitive and formless form. Or as Paul puts it, ‘ now the light in God.’ He does not say, ‘ Ye are the light ’ but ‘ now the light.’ Meaning, as I have often said, that to know things (really) we must know them in their cause. The philosophers tell us that things are suspended in their birth as in a look-out over their existence. The Father gives birth to his Son now. In this eternal birth wherein the Father generates his Son, the soul comes into her existence which is the image of the Godhead imprinted in her soul.
It was mooted in the schools and maintained by some of the professors, that God imprints his image in the soul as a picture is painted upon canvas, and it fades. This was refuted. Others suggested with more truth, that God leaves in the soul a permanent impression of the nature of an abiding intention, as thus ; my wish of to-day is my purpose of to-morrow, the idea of which is kept alive by my actual thinking of it, just as, they said, God’s works are done. For if the carpenter were perfect at his work he would not need materials : he would no sooner think a house than, lo, it would be made. And so with works in God : he thinks them and behold they are.
Then came a third professor who spoke most truly of them all. He pointed out that yonder no work is done at all : it is the now, being without becoming, newness without renewing, and this existence is his essence. God’s content is too subtile for renewal. And also in the soul there is a subtile nature too fine and rare to be renewed. In God it is all the here and now ; unrenewable.
There are four points I had intended to discuss ; the subtile nature of God, the subtile nature of the soul, the work of God and the work of the soul. These I must leave over for the present.