Do not suppose, Dear Sir, that you are to be purified by great trials
and extraordinary events. All is accomplished in you by the suppleness
of your will,--by the state of infancy. It must be so on account of
the pride of your natural reason. God conducts the soul in a way
opposed to human philosophy. Hence the necessity of being reduced to
the state of infancy, and to the subjection of the will. What we call
the _death_ of the _will_, is the passage of our will into the will of
God. This change implies not only a change in externals, but the
inward subjection of the desires and sentiments of the heart. Here
most persons, who commence the religious life, stop short. They cannot
submit to the interior crucifixion, which lays prostrate the whole of
the natural carnal life, and consequently there follows a mingling of
the spirit of the flesh with grace, and it is this which produces such
monsters in the religious world. Do we not read in Scripture, that in
consequence of the alliance of the sons of God with the daughters of
men, giants were born, who so filled the earth with wickedness, they
drew down a deluge of wrath upon the world? It is from this abominable
alliance of the flesh with the spirit, that all those who appear in the
world, as "mighty men, men of renown," are produced and sustained. One
may be full of the natural life, while apparently dead to the external
things of the world. Thus they are dead to inferior things, and alive
in the most essential points--dead in name, but not in reality.
By an authority as gentle as efficacious, God accomplishes his will in
us, when we have surrendered our souls to him. The consent we give to
his operations, and our relish of them, is sweet and sustaining, in
proportion to the perfection of our abandonment. God does not arrest
the soul with violence. He adjusts all things in such a manner, that
we follow him happily, even across dangerous precipices. So good is
this Divine Master, so well does he understand the methods of
conducting the soul, that it runs after him, and makes haste to walk in
the path he orders.
Suppleness of soul is, therefore, of vital consequence to its progress.
It is the work of God to effect this. Happy are the souls, who yield
to his discipline. God renders the soul, in the commencement, supple
to follow illuminated reason; afterwards to follow the way of faith.
He then conducts the soul by unknown steps, causing it to enter into
the wisdom of Jesus Christ which is so different from all its former
experience, that without the testimony of divine filiation, which
remains in the soul in a manner hidden, and the ease and liberty the
soul finds in this unknown way, it would consider itself as being
separated continually from God, being left, as it were, to act of
itself. Human wisdom being here lost, and the powers of the soul
controlled by the wisdom of Jesus Christ, born in the soul, it
increases in its proportions, even unto the stature of a perfect man in
Christ Jesus.
The soul, having now passed into God, is in its proper place, and will
be happy, provided it remains fixed and separate from its former manner
of acting.
Reason may at times oppose with all its strength, and cause some fears,
some hesitations; but, being fixed in God, it is impossible for the
soul to change its course; and, after the experience of many useless
sufferings, having their origin in self, it suffers itself to be drawn
in the current of love. There is now no more of violence to nature.
The soul is in its natural state. The ease and naturalness of this
state causes, at times, some fear, some anxiety. It is as much the
nature of man, originally, and in his new creation in the likeness of
Christ, to be in God, and to be there in perfect enlargement,
simplicity, and innocence, as it is the nature of water to flow in its
channel. When man is as he should be, his state is one of infinite
ease and without limitations, because he is created sovereign, or
master of himself, and cannot be subjected by anything created,
although he is subjected to God, if that may be called subjection,
which brings the soul into affinity with God, and makes it partaker of
his nature.
Be therefore persuaded, that God uses no violence in dealing with the
soul. This commotion in the soul, arises from the resistance of man's
will to divine operations. When the soul is disenfranchised of all
that is opposed to the will of God; when it is not arrested either by
desires or repugnancies, it runs without stopping or weariness in the
way. This is what is called death,--death to self; but the soul was
never so much alive; it now lives the true life, the life of God.
When the soul becomes one with God by the loss of its own will and
life, it has purposes, and it is important to follow them; but they are
purposes in God, and have in them nothing of self. All that has
rapport to self is no more, and God is all. Being passed into God, the
soul is changed and transformed in him. This is what the mystics call
_Resurrection_. But the word used in this way, does not bear its usual
signification. To resuscitate is to revive the former life. But in
this case, the will, or natural life is consumed, and gives place to
the will or life of God. Thus the Holy Spirit operates effectively in
the soul, transforming it into the likeness of the Son of God.
Now the soul participates in the qualities of God, one of which
qualities, is that of communicating itself to other souls. Or rather,
it is as a stream, which, being lost in a large river, follows the
course of the river, communicating itself where the river communicates,
watering where it waters, drawing into itself all the smaller rivers,
which are destined alike to lose themselves in the great ocean of Love.
These streams have no independent life, but proceed from, and flow back
into their origin. Here is the consummation of souls in oneness, as
Jesus Christ has expressed it,--"_One in us_."
There is divine reality in this truth. Blessed are those who
comprehend it! How many walk side by side along these rivers, and yet
never mingle their waters! And many there are, also, who haste with
eagerness, to precipitate themselves into this divine stream, and flow
together, as the souls of the celestial ones, in the fulness of divine
love.
This is not a chimera of the fancy; it is the wonderful economy of
divinity. It is the end and object of the creation of the soul--the
end and compass of all the efforts of God, regarding his creatures.
Here is consummated all the glory, God derives from their existence.
All beside are only the means approaching this final end, this glorious
termination, and absorption of the soul in Deity. Here is the light
which ravishes the soul. A light which does not precede, but follows
the soul in its progress; unfolding more and more, as a man in a dark
cavern, discovers the concealed places, only when he has remained in it
for some time.
This is the pure Theology in which God instructs the angels and the
saints. It is the Theology of Experience, that God teaches only to his
children, who having abandoned their own wisdom, he has himself become
their wisdom and their life. This is the law of wisdom, my friend, for
us,--the way of the Lord in us. In him we are one.