have no eyes for them: he is all heart, but sees it this way--that set
rules, regulations, and ceremonials in prayers and worship are most
right and proper for the creature publicly worshipping its Creator.
That the assembling together in church is the outward and visible
acknowledgment of the creature's worship of God and also a looking
for the fulfilling of the promise "where two or three are gathered
together in My name." The redeemed creature worships very
ardently with all its little heart and mind and all its tiny strength,
learning in its own self the words of David: "I was glad when they
said unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord." But the soul
cannot worship in set words, neither can she have need or use for the
ceremonials invented by and for the creature, but worships God in
another manner altogether, as she is taught by the Holy Spirit, and in
the greatness of her worship mounts to God, and closes with God.
For holy love cannot long be divided.
Often when the creature is alone, and eating, its Lord will visit it,
causing the soul and the mind and the heart of it to cry out: "But of
what use to me is this meat and drink which is before me? I have no
need of it, I can do nothing other than sip of the holy beauty of my
Lord." And immediately we are so pressed the earthly cup must be
set down, and in very great ecstasy we sup in spirit with the Lord.
The unnameable Elixir of God is the Wine, and Love is the Bread.
When holy love grows great in us we wonder that we ever thought
that human love was love at all, for no matter how great it may once
have seemed it now seems so small it is no greater than the
humming of a bee around a flower in summer time. But holy
love--who can commence to describe it? It rides upon great wings, it
burns like a devouring fire, it makes nothing of Space and comes before
Him like the lightnings, saying, "Here am I," and, gathering all
things, all loves into itself, pours them out at the feet of God.
By baptism we are named and called for election by the Church.
Through personal and individual repentance and connection by faith
and love with Christ we _enter_ election by baptism of the Holy
Spirit. By the mere following of rituals, doctrines, dogmas,
ceremonies, we are in great danger of introducing the mind of the
Pharisee with his reliance as means of salvation upon the washing of
hands and cups, and except we exceed this righteousness we do not
enter the Kingdom. Or the mind of the lawyer, which type of mind
seeks obstinately, forcefully, to mould the secrets of the soul's
communion with God and fix them upon cold documents where they
quickly cease to have life.
* * *
Above the fretful and contentious human reason is the intelligence
of the soul, and this soul has in itself a higher part for we become
acutely aware of it--that part of it with which we come in
contact with God, with which we respond to God, receive His
manifestations, are laid bare to His blisses. Separated from worldly
things by an impalpable veil, it rests above all such things in serene
calm, and, strangest of all, has no comprehension whatever of sin:
when we enter this part of the soul and live with it sin and evil
become not only non-existent but unthinkable, unimaginable: we are
totally removed from any such order of existence. It communicates
its knowledge to the lower part of the soul, the soul to the Reason,
the Reason to the rest of the creature.
We say we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and in saying this
we think of the body, but far more wonderful is the making of the
spiritual of us. O man, climb out of the gross materialism of thy
fleshly self, for thou canst do it! As out of the heavy earth come the
delicate flowers of spring, so out of the heavy body, because of _that
divine_ which is within it, come the marvellous flowers of the soul.
To think that we can come to God and know Him by means of our
intelligence or reason is as unwise as to suppose we can eat our
dinner with our feet; it is as necessary to use our teeth to eat our
food as it is to use our heart to find God, and it is nothing but the
natural vanity of the human mind which blinds us to this fact. The
human reason is too small to stand the greatness of God, and could it
ever reach to Him would be withered in the awfulness of His
magnetic light. Even the soul in her contacts with God whilst still in
the flesh is of necessity totally blind, and yet, blind as she is, is
pierced by this terrible intensity of light and energy. How then shall
the reason stand naked before God without madness or frenzy? To
reason out upon paper where God is, why He is, what He is, and
how precisely He is to be discovered, will take us no further up into
the mysteries of the actual knowing of the wonders of His love than
the ink and paper we employ might do. To know this love in our
own heart is the necessity, for the soul and the heart live hand in
hand as it were and together can find and know God. God once
found by the heart, we can dwell upon Him with our reason, and
feed our reason with the knowledge we have acquired of Him
through the heart and soul.
The Holy Ghost aids us in this deep search, quickens us, gives us
impulses. At first in our natural state we are able only in a very dim
way to perceive these impulses, but we can become so sensitive to
God that He pierces us, brings us to the ground with a breath, and
we bend and yield before His lightest wish as a reed bends and
quivers to the wind.
When the heart and soul are greatly set upon God and we have
become true lovers of God, there comes a danger of falling into so
deep a pining for God that the health both of the mind and of the
body is weakened by it. We should aim at cheerful and willing
waiting: anything else is a falling short; if we examine into it, we
shall see that pining savours of unwillingness and discontent--there
is in it something of the spirit of the servant who designs to give
notice of leaving. The lover of God is the most blest of all creatures
and should show himself serenely glad, waiting with patience,
knowing as he does from his own experiences that who has God for
a Lover has no need of any other.
_Of how to receive from God, and of the Blessed Sacrament_
Nothing is of a deeper mystery or difficulty or disappointment to the
soul and the heart well advanced in the experience and in the love of
God than to find that in the ceremony of the Blessed Sacrament it is
possible for them to be less sensible of receiving from God than at
any time. How and why can this be? is it the Ceremonial causing the
mind to be too much alert to guide the body now to rise, now to
kneel, now to move in some direction? Is it this distraction which
prevents perception--for in all communion with God the mind is
closed down, the heart and soul only being in operation? On the
other hand, it is easily possible to be in closest communion with God
in all the noises and distractions of a great railway station amongst a
crowd of shifting persons. No, it is some imperfection in the attitude
adopted by the heart and mind in approaching this Sacrament. In
what way have we perhaps been approaching it? In an attitude of
awe accompanied by a humble expectancy or hope of receiving. We
hope and believe we shall receive God's grace. Now, the
experienced soul and heart know so well what it is and how it feels
to receive God's grace that they are all the more disappointed at not
receiving it upon this holy occasion. What were our Lord's words?
He said, "Do this in remembrance of Me," or more correctly
translated, "Do or offer this as a memorial of Me before God." This
implies an act of giving upon our part, whereas we have come to
regard this ceremony as an act of receiving.
Now though the attitude of humble expectancy to receive is of itself
a worthy one it does not fulfil the exact command, which is to
commemorate, offer, and hold up before God the Perfect Love and
Sacrifice of our Saviour, as a living memorial of Him before God. It
should be accompanied by an offering of great love and thanks upon
our part without regard to anything we may receive. But because
first we give we then receive.
About nothing are we in such a state of ignorance as about the laws
which govern the give and take between God and Man. On the one
hand is God the All-Giving, longing to bestow, and upon the other is
Man the all-needing, aching to receive, and between them an
impasse. Failure to fulfil God's laws is the cause of this impasse.
There is both a law of like to like, and a law of like to opposite. We
cannot know God without in some small degree first being like God,
and to be like God we must not only be pure in heart but also
conform to the God-like condition of giving. First we obey this law
that the second may come into effect--that of like to opposite, or
positive to negative, the All-Giving immediately meeting and filling
the all-needing. We have nothing to give to God but our love, thanks,
and obedience; but of these it is possible to give endlessly, and the
more we give the more God-like do we become, and the more
God-like the higher and further do we enter into the great riches and
blisses of God. Therefore the more we give to God the more we
receive.
On going to partake of the Blessed Sacrament we do well to banish
from the heart and mind all thought of what it may please God to
still further give us and to make an offering _to_ God. The only way
we can make an offering to God is upon the wings of love, and upon
this love we hold up before Him the bread and wine as the Body and
Blood of our Redeemer, repeating and repeating in our heart, "I eat
and drink This as a memorial before Thee of the Perfect Love and
Sacrifice of Jesus Christ." When we so do with _great_ love in our
heart we find that we are able sensibly to receive great grace.
_Of Prayer_
Of the many kinds and degrees of prayer first perhaps we learn the
prayer of the lips, then that of the mind, then the prayer of the heart,
and finally the prayer of the soul--prayer of a totally different mode
and order, prayer of a strange incalculably great magnetic power,
prayer which enables us to count on help from God as upon an
absolute and immediate certainty.
We find this about perfect prayer that it is not done as from a
creature beseeching a Creator at an immense distance, but is done as
a love-flash which, eating up all distance, is immediately before and
with the Creator and is accompanied by vivid certainty at the heart;
this latter is active faith; we have too much perhaps of that kind of
faith which may be named waiting or passive faith.
This combination of love with active faith instantly opens to us
God's help. We may or may not receive this in the form anticipated
by the creature, but later perceive that we have received it in exactly
that form which would most lastingly benefit us.
After a while we cease almost altogether from petitioning anything
for ourselves, having this one desire only: that by opening ourselves
to God by means of offering Him great love, we receive Himself.
_Of Contemplation_
To enter the contemplation of God is not absence of will, nor
laziness of will, but great energy of will because of, and for, love: in
which love-condition the energy of the soul will be laid bare to the
energy of God, the two energies for the time being becoming closely
united or oned, in which state the soul-will or energy is wholly lifted
into the glorious God-Energy, and a state of unspeakable bliss and
an _immensity_ of _living_ is immediately entered and shared by
the soul. Bliss, ecstasy, rapture, all are energy, and according as the
soul is exposed to lesser or greater degrees of this energy, so she
enters lesser or greater degrees of raptures.
It is misleading in these states of ecstasy to say that the soul has
vision, if by vision is to be understood anything that has to do with
concrete forms or any kind of sight; for the soul is totally blind. But
she makes no account of this blindness and has her fill of all bliss
and of the knowledge of another manner of living without any need
whatever of sight. Has the wind eyes or feet? yet it possesses the
earth and is not prevented. So the soul, without eyes and without
hands, possesses God.
Contact with God is then of the nature of the Infusion of Energy.
The infusions of this energy may take the form of causing us to have
an acute intense perception and consciousness (but not such form of
perception as would permit us to say "I saw," but a magnetic inward
cognisance, a fire of knowledge which scintillates about the soul and
pierces her) of His perfections; of His tenderness, His sweetness,
His holiness, His beauty. When either of these last two are made
known to her, the soul passes into what can only be named as an
agony of bliss, insupportable even to the soul for more than a very
brief time, and because of the fearful stress of it the soul draws away
and prays to be covered from the unbearable happiness of it, this
being granted her whether automatically (that is to say, because of
spiritual law) or whether by direct and merciful will of God--who is
able to tell?
Such experiences are not for the timid, but require steady courage
and perfect loving trust in God.
Contemplation even in its highest forms is not to be confused with
spiritual "experiences," which are totally apart from anything else
that we may know in life--they are entirely outside of our volition,
they are not to be prayed for, they are not to be even secretly desired,
but to be accepted how and when and if God so chooses.
In contemplation the will is used, and we are not able to come to it
without the will is penetratingly used towards the joining and
meeting with the will and love of God. In the purely spiritual
"experience" from first to last there is no will but an absence of will,
a total submission and yielding to God, without questioning, without
fear, without curiosity, and the only will used is to keep ourselves in
willingness to submit to whatever He shall choose to expose us to.
God does not open to us such experiences in order to gratify
curiosity--but expecting that we shall learn and profit by them. First
we find them an immense and unforgettable assurance of another
form of living, of great intensity, at white heat, natural to a part of us
with which we have hitherto been unfamiliar (the soul) but inimical
to the body, which suffers grievously whilst the soul glows with
marvellous vitality and joy.
This assurance of another manner of living, though we see nothing
with the eyes, is the opening of another world to us. The invisible
becomes real, faith becomes transformed in knowledge. If the
hundred wisest men of the world should all prove upon paper that
the spiritual life as a separate and other life from the physical life
does not exist, it would cause nothing but a smile of compassion to
the creature that had experience. God teaches us by these means to
become balanced, poised, and a complete human being, combining
in one personality or consciousness the Spiritual and the Material.
But we are not given and shown these mysteries without paying a
price: we must learn to live in extraordinary lowliness and loneliness
of spirit. The interests, enjoyments, pastimes of ordinary life dry up
and wither away. It becomes in vain that we seek to satisfy ourselves
in any occupation, in anything, in any persons, for God wills to have
the whole of us. When He wills to be sensibly with us, all Space
itself feels scarcely able to contain our riches and our happiness.
When He wills to disconnect us from this nearness, there is nothing
in all the universe so poor, so destitute, so sad, so lonely as ourself.
And there is no earthly thing can beguile or console us, because,
having tasted of God, it is impossible to be satisfied or consoled
save inwardly by God Himself. But He opens up Nature to us in a
marvellous way, unbelievable until experienced. He offers us Nature
as a sop to stay our tears. By means of Nature He even in absence
caresses the soul and the creature, speaks to them fondly,
encourages and draws them after Him, sending acute and wonderful
perceptions to them, so that, quite consoled, they cry aloud to Him
with happiness. And often when the creature is alone and secure
from being observed by anyone He will open His glamour to the
soul and she passes into union with paradise and even more--high
heaven itself. These are angels' delights which He lavishes upon the
prodigal.
Another heavy price to be paid is found by the soul and heart and
mind in the return from the blissful and perfect calm which
surrounds even the lowest degree of the contemplation of God to the
turmoil of the world. For to have been lifted into this new condition
of living, this glamour, this crystal joy, to know such heights, such
immensities, and to descend from God's blisses to live the everyday
life of this world and accept its pettiness is a great pain, in which
pain we are of necessity not understood by fellow-creatures;
therefore the more and the more we become pressed into that great
loneliness which is the inevitable portion of the true lover, and
experience the pain of those prolonged spiritual conflicts in which
the soul learns to bend and submit to the petty sordidness of life in a
world which has forgotten God. It is the lack of courage and
endurance to perpetually weather these dreadful storms which
causes us to turn to seclusion--the cloister. To refrain from doing
this and to remain in the world though not of it is the sacrifice of the
loving soul--she has but the one to make--to leave the delights of
God, and for the sake of being a useful servant to Jesus to pick up
the daily life in the world; which sacrifice is in direct contrariety to
the sacrifice of the creature, which counts its sacrifices as a giving
up of the things of the world. So by opposites they may come to one
similarity--perfection. How to conduct itself in all these difficult
ways so foreign to its own earthly nature is a hard problem for the
creature, belonging so intimately to this world which it can touch
and see: and yet which it is asked by God bravely to climb out of
into the unknown and the unseen. Bewildered by the enormous
demands of the soul which can never rest in any happiness without
she is contemplating God, adoring Him, conversing with Him,
blessing and worshipping Him, the poor creature is often bewildered
to know how to conduct the ordinary affairs and duties of life under
such pressures. Of its emotions, of the tears that it sheds, of the falls
that it takes, a library of books might be written. In the splendour,
the grandeur, the great magnitudes and expanses of spirit life as
made known to it by the soul, the creature feels like some poor
beggar child, ill-mannered, ill-clothed, which by strange fortune
finds itself invited to the house of a mighty king, and, dumb with
humility and admiration, is at a loss to understand the condescension
of this mighty lord. In this sense of very great unworthiness lies a
profound pain, an agony. To cure this pain we must turn the heart to
give love, to think love, and immediately we think of this great
condescension as being for love's sake--as love seeking for love--we
are consoled. Then all is well, all is joyful, all is divine. The more
simple, childlike, and unpretentious we can be, the more easily we
shall win our way through. Pretentiousness or arrogance in Man can
never be anything but ridiculous, and a sense of humour should
alone be sufficient to save us from such error. For the same reason it
is impossible to regard human ceremonies with any respect or
seriousness, for they are not childlike but childish. How often the
heart and mind cry out to Him, "O mighty God, I am mean and
foolish--mean in that which I have created by my vain imaginings,
my pride, my covetousness; but in that which Thou hast made me I
am wonderful and lovely--a thing that can fly to and fro day or night
to Thy hand!"
The difficulties of the creature should not be raised on some
self-glorifying pinnacle merely because the fickle variable heart at lasts
learns the exercise of Fidelity. Do we not see a very ordinary dog
practising this same fidelity as he waits, so eager that he trembles,
outside his master's door, having put on one side every desire save
his desire to his master whom, not seeing, he continues to await; and
this out of the generosity of his heart! And we? Only by great
difficulty, long endeavour, bitter schooling, and having at last
accomplished it we name each other saints or saintly. Let us think
soberly about these things; are we then so much less than a dog that
we also cannot accomplish this fidelity--so that though hands and
feet go about daily duties the heart and mind are fixed on the Master?
Then the Master becomes the Beloved.
_Of Blessing God_
At first when the creature is being taught to bless God it shrinks
back in a fright, crying, "What am I that I should dare to bless
Almighty God, I am afraid to do it; I am too unworthy; let me wait
till I am more righteous, till I have done more works." Then the
divine soul counsels it so: "Think no more about thyself, moaning
and groaning over thine unworthiness and trusting to progress in
works. Cease thinking of thyself, and rise up and think only of God.
Thou wilt never be worthy, and all thy works are nothing and thy
learning of no count whatever; and as to thy righteousness, is it not
written that it is as filthy rags? All that God will give thee is not for
any merits or works of thine, but for Love's sake. He desires both to
give thee love and to receive thy love, therefore rise and worship
Him, give Him all the love that thou hast; keep none back either for
thyself, or anything or any creature, but give all that thou hast to
Him with tears and songs and gladness." Timidly the creature obeys,
and with all its powers and strength it blesses God, and
instantanteously God blesses the creature, sending His sweetness
and His glamour about it: and the more the soul and the creature
bless God the more does He bless them, and they bless Him from
the bed of sickness and pain as fully as they bless Him in health.
They bless Him in the night-time and in the noonday, they bless
Him as they walk, they bless Him as they work, and because of this
little bit of blessing and love that the two of them offer to God He
offers them all heaven in Himself.
It is the duty of the soul to constantly lend counsel, courage, help,
advice, and strength to the creature, and we are conscious of the
voice of the soul, which without any sound yet makes itself inwardly
heard, calling to the selfishness, the egoism of the creature, urging
the higher part of it to come higher and the animal in it to become
pure and to subdue itself, saying to it, "Lie down and be quiet, or
thou wilt bring disaster to us both." "I cannot be quiet, for I could
groan with my restless distress." "Cease to think of thyself with thy
roarings and groanings. Lay hold of love which thinks nothing of
itself but always of that which it may give to the Beloved." "I cannot
do this; I am no angel nor even a saint, but a most ordinary creature,
forsaken of God and miserable." "Thou art never forsaken, but thy
door is closed: it opens from thy side, and thou art thyself standing
across it and blocking the opening of it--I will show thee how to
open it, cry and moan no more for favours and gifts, but do thou
thyself do the giving. Since thou dost not know at all how to begin--do
it with these set words: 'I love and praise Thee, I love and bless
and thank Thee, I love and bless and worship Thee'; and see thou do
it with all thy heart and mind and strength and with no thought of
thyself and future benefits, but entirely that thou mayest give Him
pleasure." Then the creature tries, but fails lamentably, for most of
its heart and mind is on itself and a fraction only on God.