miserable halfhearted shallow worldling!" And the creature tries
again, and, doing better, gets a very slight warmth about the heart;
and, doing it again, gets a little comfort, and so, gradually
progressing in the way of true love which is all giving, at last one
day the creature does it perfectly because it has altogether forgotten
itself in the fire of its love and is completely set upon God. Then
automatically the door opens, and immediately in through it there
rushes the breath and the blisses of God. And the creature, weeping
with excess of happiness, cries, "I never asked for such delights, I
did not know such happiness was to be had; and if I did not ask, how
is it that I have received?" Then the soul answers, "Because thou
hast learnt to give to God, and that is the key which unlocks the
garden of His joys. Thou hast just three things which He desires to
have--thy love and thine obedience, and thy waiting fidelity. When
thou dost conform to His desire with all thy tiny unadulterated
strength, immediately heaven becomes open to thee and thou dost
receive more than thou didst ever dream or think to ask for. This is
His lovely Will towards thee. But first always do thy part, and until
thou doest thy part I cannot begin mine, for thou couldst receive
neither blessings nor blisses did I not receive them first from Him
and hand them on to thee; so each are dependent the one on the
other, and only together can we enter paradise. Think not I do not
suffer as much as thyself and far more. I know thou dost suffer with
thy body and with the losses of thine earthly loves, but I suffer far
more with the loss of my Heavenly Love. At first I could not
understand what had come to me, buried and choked in thy strange
house of flesh. I despised thee, I hated thee, thy stupid ways, thy
dreadful greeds, thine unspeakable obstinacy and unwillingness;
thou didst give me horrible sicknesses with thine unsavoury wants,
thine undignified requirements. I thought thee foolish and now know
myself to be more foolish than thee, for thou hardly knowest the
heavenly love whereas I knew and left Him, seeking other loves.
The Fall was not thy fault, poor human thing, but mine. I am the
Prodigal, and thou the means of my return, for if I can but raise thee
to true adoration of our God, then I shall pay my debt of infidelity to
Him and together as one glorious radiant spirit we shall enter heaven
again.
"Only listen and I can guide thee, for the Master speaks to me and
tells me what to do. I am partly that which thou dost please to call
thy conscience, and thou dost treat me shockingly, buffeting and
wounding me when I try to whisper to thee: if thou art not careful,
thou wilt so disable me that all our chance of happiness will be
spoiled. Do thou listen very tenderly for my voice, for I am of
gossamer and thou of strangely heavy clay."
_Of Evil and Temptation and of Grace_
The heart and soul are subject to four principal glamours: the
glamour of youth, the glamour of romance, the glamour of evil, and
the glamour of God.
When once the Spirit of Love, which is God, descends into our soul
then a new light becomes created in us by which we see the glamour
of evil in its true form and complexion. We see it as disease, misery,
imprisonment, and death; and who finds it difficult to turn away
from such?
The natural man sees evil as an intense attraction, the spiritual man
as a horror of ugliness. See then how the Spirit of Love is at once
and easily our Salvation.
Amongst all mysteries none seems greater to us than the mystery of
Evil. God--Goodness--Love: these we understand. But evil--whence
and why, since God is Love, Omnipotence, and Holiness?
We cannot but observe that all things have their opposites: summer
and winter, heat and cold, light and dark, silence and sound, pleasure
and pain, life and death, action and repose, joy and sadness, illness
and health; and how shall we know or have true pleasure in the one
without we have also knowledge of the opposite? The man who has
never known sickness has neither true gratitude, understanding, nor
pleasure in his heart over his good health: he does not know that
which he possesses. Neither can we know the great glory that is
Holiness till we have known evil and can contrast the two.
"But what a price to pay for knowledge; what fearful risk and danger
to His creatures for God so to teach them!" we may cry, forgetting
that with God all things are possible, "Who is able and strong to
save." And does He dare set Himself no difficult thing that He may
overcome it? The strong man's knowledge of his own courage
forbids us think it. God wills to save us. We have but to join our will
with His, and we are saved. How shall we mount to God other than
by mounting upon that which offers a foundation of tangible
resistance, overcoming and mounting upon evil. Evil then becomes
our stairway--the servant of Good. By using the evil that we meet
with day by day, we mount daily the nearer to God by that exact
degree of evil which we have overcome by good--that is to say, by
practice of forgiveness, compassion, patience, humility, endurance,
held out over against the invitation of evil to do the exact opposite.
A negligent, thieving, lying servant that we have to deal with calls
forth forgiveness, and humility also, for are we a perfect servant to
our Lord? The evil of a drunken husband may be used by the wife as
a sure ladder to God, for because of this evil she may learn to
practise all the virtues of the saints. Truly if we have the will to use
it, Evil is friendly. If we misuse Evil--that is to say, if we do not use
it by mounting on it but, intoxicated with its glamour, consent to
it,--this is Sin, and immediately the stairway is not that of ascent
but of descent and death.
The Master says "Resist not evil." How are we to understand this but
by assuming that if we try our strength against Evil, Evil is likely to
overcome us? but on being confronted with Evil we should instantly
hold on to and join with the forces of Good and so have strength
quietly to continue side by side with Evil without being seduced by
it. When Evil cannot seduce--that is to say, make us consent to
it,--then for us it is conquered. When we give in or conform to this
seduction we generate Sin. Let us say that we are in temptation, that
Evil of some sort confronts and invites us; if we battle with this
presentment, this picture, this insinuating invitation held out before
us by Evil, the act of contending with the invitation will fix it all the
more firmly in our minds. We need to substitute another picture,
another invitation, another presentment, of that which pertains to the
good and the beautiful. He who has learnt so to substitute and
present before his own heart and mind Jesus and the pure and
beautiful invitations of this Divine Jesus can solve the difficulty.
This is not contending, this is substituting; this is transferring
allegiance from the glamour of Evil which is present with us, to the
glamour of God, which, because we are in temptation, is not present,
but is yet hoped and waited for.
To return again to the lying, dishonest, and negligent servant. If we
argue, contend, and battle morally with this evil servant we do not
alter him, but by this contention generate antagonism. Then what is
our own position? Bad temper, a disturbed heart, an inharmonious
angry mind; but if without contending we bear with and act gently
with this evil, making careful comparisons with our own service to
our own Lord, we learn patience, forgiveness, and humility also, for
have we never lied, have we never been dishonest, have we never
been negligent to this sweet Lord? Then immediately His patience,
His forgiveness, His love are brought more intimately to our
consciousness, and our heart nearer to His and His to ours. Is this
loss or gain? Is Evil then an enemy? No, a handmaid. So is Satan
made a servant to his Overlord, and his power crossed.
Of all false things nothing is more false than the glamour of Evil, for
when on being drawn into it we sin, instead of the hoped-for delight
we soon find satiety; instead of exhilaration, fatigue; instead of
contentment, disillusion; instead of satisfaction, dust; instead of
romance, the greedy claws of the harpy; and the further we go in
response to this glamour the more pitiable our outlook; for the
sweets and possibilities of Evil are extraordinarily limited. Can any
man devise a new sin? No, but ever pursues the same old round, the
same pitiful circle.
If we pursue the glamour of God, we find the exact opposite of all
these things. Spiritual delights know no satiety because of infinite
variety: they know no disease, no disillusionment, and who can set a
boundary or limit to the beautiful, to love, and light, and God?
It is characteristic of temptation that while we are exposed to it
Christ is absent from perception; for to perceive Christ would
instantly free us from all temptation (and often it is by temptation
faithfully borne that we mount).
When we are in a condition of contact with Christ which is His
grace, we are raised above the stem of faith into the flowers of
knowledge; but for the true strengthening of the will it is necessary
that we live also on the harder and more difficult meat of faith. So
we return again and again to that insulation from things heavenly in
which we lived before we had been made Aware. When we emerge
from these dark periods we find ourselves to have advanced. With
regard to Grace we can neither truly receive nor benefit by it without
our heart, mind, and soul are previously adjusted to Response to it.
The regenerated creature is not exempt from further temptations, but
contrariwise the poignancy of these temptations is greatly increased
(though of a quite different order of temptation to that known to us
in an unregenerated state); it is increased in proportion to the
degrees of Grace vouchsafed to us. That is to say, temptation keeps
level with our utmost capacity of resistance yet never is allowed to
exceed the bounds, for when it would exceed them a way out is
found by the return of Grace; and we are freed. The cause is the
great root called Self, a hydra-headed growth of selfishness, both
material and spiritual, sprouting in all directions. We would seem to
be here for ever enclosed as in a glass bottle with this most horrid
growth. Through the glass we see all life, but always and ever in
company with this voracious Self. No sooner do we lop off one
shoot of it than another grows--never was such strenuous gardening
as is required to keep this growth in check, and every time we lop a
shoot we learn another pain. This is the long road to perfection, for
the Cross is "I" with a stroke through it.
Who can describe the marvels, the variations, the mystery of Grace?
It is a dew and an elixir, a balm and a fire, a destroyer of all fear and
sorrow, a delight and an anguish, for we are martyred, pierced with
long arrows by the longing of the love that it calls forth. It is a
sweetness and a might, a glory and a power in which we are sensibly
aware we could walk through a furnace unscathed if He bade us to
do it. And by it we are lifted in a crystal vase and enclosed in the
Presence of God.
* * *
As a man's desire is so is he. If our desire is entirely towards fleshly
things and joys and comforts, we are sensualists. If our desire is all
towards sport and horses, we are not above horses but rather below
them, for the human animal is full of guile and the horse of
obedience and generosity. Nevertheless he is no goal for the human
to aim at. If we desire the beautiful, we become beautified and
refined. If we desire God, we become godly.
* * *
It is characteristic of spiritual progress that each step is gained
through suffering, through penetrating faithful endeavours, through
grievous incomprehensible turmoils and discords of the spirit,
worked frequently by means of the everyday commonplace happenings
and responsibilities of our daily life; and finally as each
new step is gained we are by Grace carried to it in a flood of divine
happiness to crown our woes. Grace is God's magnetic power acting
directly and immediately upon us and is altogether independent of
place, time, services, sacraments, or ceremonies. We limit God's
communication with us in this way--that He is communicable to us
only in so far as we ourselves respond and are able, apt, and willing
to receive Him.
Is the condition of blessed nearness to God permanent? No, not as a
condition but as a capacity only. We have need to perpetually renew
this condition by a positive active enthusiasm toward God. We can
in laziness no more retain and use this condition as a permanency
than we can sleep one night and eat one meal and have these suffice
for our lifetime. But slowly, with work and with pain, we learn
perpetually to regain this condition by that form of prayer which is
the spiritual breathing-in of the Spirit of Christ.
All God's help, all God's comfortings are to be had by us by Grace.
This Grace will constantly be withdrawn so that we may learn that
we arrive at nothing by our own power but by gift of God, who is
ever willing to give to us provided we whole-heartedly respond.
This Response to God is surely amongst the most difficult of our
achievements; unaided by Grace it is an impossibility, but we know
that every man born into the world is invited by Christ to ask for and
to receive this Grace. The effect of Response to God is a unity of our
tiny force to the Might-Presence and company of God as much as
we are able to bear it, producing in us while with us such wealth of
living; and such happiness as passes all description. As we have
capacity to respond to God so we shall know that of God which is
not known by those as yet unlearned in response. For God, we know,
is neither This nor That, but so infinitely more than any
particularisation that we are able to know Him only and solely
according to our own capacity to receive Him. To one He is a
Personal Power that ravishes with might, whose awful magnetism
draws the very heart and soul in longing anguish from the body. To
another He is the dimly known silent Manipulator of the Universe,
the secret Ruler to whose mighty Will creation bows--because
needs must. To another He is yet even more remote, being the
unresponsive, impersonal, incomprehensible, immovable Instigator
of all law.
What is it in our religion that we need for a full happiness? Not the
God of our mere faith, nor the God of the theologian veiled behind
great mysteries of book-learning. It is the Responsive God that we
long for, and how shall we reach Him? There is one way only--through
the taking of Jesus Christ firmly and faithfully into our own
heart and life.
It is not what we now are, or where we now stand that matters, but
what He has the power to bring us to.
How is God-consciousness to be achieved--shall we do it by study,
by reading? No--for the study or reading of it will do no more than
whet the appetite for spiritual things--this is its work,--but can do no
more in giving us the actual possession of this joy than the study of
a menu can satisfy hunger.
Individual, personal and inward possession is in all things our
necessity. If our friend has slept well it is no rest to us if we have
slept ill. Up to a given point in all things each for himself. It is the
law. Of where this law ends or is superseded by the law of all for all
only the Holy Spirit can instruct us, and that inwardly and again
each to himself. This state of God-consciousness is a gift, and our
work is to qualify for this gift by persistent ardent desire towards
God continued through every adversity, through every lack of
sensible response on His part--a naked will and heart insisting upon
God. This state of God-consciousness once received and in full
vigour of life, there is without doubt about this condition a principle
of active contagion, very noticeable, very remarkable.
That "something" which would appear frequently to be needed by
persons anxious to come to God and unable to discover the manner
of achieving it, would seem to be supplied by this contagion, as
though a human spark were often wanted to ignite the spark in
another, which done, the Divine Fire springs up and rapidly grows
without further human assistance.
We see this contagion as used in its full perfection by Jesus, for with
all His selected followers He had but to come in momentary contact
with them, using a word or a look, and, instantly forsaking
everything, they followed Him. Was this selection of His
favouritism? No, they were prepared to receive this contagion, and
not one of them but had been secretly seeking for God; and this
perhaps for long years.
To find this new life we need then not the reading of profound books
of learning, not the wisdom of the scholar, but an inward persistence
of the heart and will God-wards. This time of insistent waiting is to
be endured with all the more courage in that we do not know at what
blessed moment we may pierce the veil and the gift come in all its
glorious immensity. Ten years, twenty, thirty--what are such in
comparison with the blisses that shall afterwards be ours for all
eternity?
To look up by day or night into the vastness of the sky with its
endless depths, and as we do it burn with the consciousness of God,
this is to truly live. No distance is too great, no space too wide. All
is our home. Without this burning consciousness of God, Space is a
thing of fear and Eternity not to be thought of.
Of the many experiences and conditions of the soul returning to God
there is a condition all too easily entered--that of an enervating,
pulseless, seductive inertia. In this condition of inert but marvellous
contentment the soul would love to stay. This is spiritual sensuality,
a spiritual back-water. The true life and energy of the soul are lulled
to idleness: basking in happiness, the soul ceases to give and
becomes merely receptive.
This condition is entered from many levels: we can rise to it (for it is
very high) from ordinary levels, branch sideways to it from high
contemplation; drop to it from the greatest contacts with God. This
condition seems strangely familiar to the soul. So much so that she
questions herself. Was it from this I started on my wanderings from
God? The true health of the soul when in the blisses of God is to be
in a state of intense living or activity. She is then in perfect
connection with the Divine Energy. She is then in a state of an
immense and boundless radiantly joyful Life.
To find God is to have the scope of all our senses increased, but it is
easily to be understood that our power of suffering increases also,
because we are, as it were, flayed and laid bare to everything alike.
But it increases our joys to so great a degree that for the first time in
life joy is greater than pain, happiness is greater than sorrow,
knowledge is greater than fear, and Good suddenly becomes to us so
much greater than Evil that Evil becomes negligible. This increase,
this wonderful addition to our former condition, might be partly
conveyed by comparison to a man who from birth has never been
able to appreciate music: for him it has been meaningless, a noise
without suggestion, without delight, without wings, and suddenly by
no powers of his own the immense charms and pleasures and
capacities of it are laid open to him! These increases of every sense
and faculty God will give to His lovers, so that without effort and by
what has now become to us our own nature we are continually able
to _enter the Sublime._
_Of the Two Wills_
We have in us two wills. The Will to live, and the Will to love God
and to find Him. The first will we see being used continually and
without ceasing, not only by every man, woman, and child, but by
every beast of the field and the whole of creation.
The Will to live is the will by which all alike seek the best for
themselves, here gaining for themselves all that they can of comfort
and well-being out of the circumstances and opportunities of life.
This is our natural Will. But it is not the will which gains for us
Eternal Life, nor does it even gain for us peace and happiness during
this life. It is this Will to live which in Christ's Process we are taught
to break and bruise till it finally dies, and the Will to love, and
gladly and joyously to please God is the only Will by which we live.
Our great difficulty is that we try at one and the same time to hang
to God with the soul and to the world with our heart. What is
required is not that we go and live in rags in a desert place, but that
in the exact circumstances of life in which we find ourselves we
learn in _everything to place God first._ He requires of us a certain
subtle and inward fidelity--a fidelity of the heart, the will, the mind.
The natural state of heart and mind in which we all normally find
ourselves is to have temporary vague longings for something which,
though indefinable, we yet know to be better and more satisfying
than anything we can find in the world. This is the soul, trying to
overrule the frivolity of the heart and mind and to re-find God. Our
difficulties are not made of great things, but of the infinitely small
our own caprices. Though we can often do great things, acts of
surprising heroism, we are held in chains--at once elastic and iron--of
small capricious vanities, so that in one and the same hour we
may have wonderful, far-reaching aspirations towards the Sublime,
and God; and yet there comes a pretty frock, a pleasant companion,
and behold God is forgotten! The mighty and marvellous Maker of
the Universe, Lord of everything, is placed upon one side for a piece
of chiffon, a flattering word from a passing lover.
So be it. He uses no force. We are still in the Garden of Free-Will.
And when the Garden closes down for us, what then? Will chiffon
help us? Will the smiles of a long-since faithless lover be our
strength? Now is the time to decide; but our decision is made in the
world, and by means of the world and not apart from it, and in the
exact circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Another difficulty we have, and which forms an insuperable barrier
to finding God, is the ever-recurring--we may almost say the
continual--secret undercurrent of criticism and hardness towards
God over what we imagine to be His Will. We need to seek God
with that which is most like Him, with a will which most nearly
resembles His own. To be in a state of hardness or criticism, not
only for God but for any creature, in even the smallest degree is to
be giving allegiance to, and unifying ourselves with, that Will which
is opposite to, furthest away from, and opposed to God. He Himself
is Ineffable Tenderness.
Having once re-found God, the soul frequently cries to Him in an
anguish of pained wonder, "How could I ever have left Thee? How
could I ever have been faithless to Thine Unutterable Perfections?"
This to the soul remains the mystery of mysteries. Was it because
of some imperfection left in her of design by God in order that He
might enjoy His power to bring her back to Him? If this were so,
then every single soul must be redeemed--and not for love's sake,
but for His Honour, His own Holy Name, His Perfection. If the soul
left Him because of a deliberate choice, a preference for
imperfection, a poisonous curiosity of foreign loves, then love alone
is the cause and necessity of our redemption, and so it feels to be,
for in experience we find that love is the beginning and the middle
and the end of all His dealings with us.
* * *