have, and are, nothing, in comparison with that which we are and
that which we have when we have Him.
In my earlier stages I was greatly set back and disturbed by this
gloom and sacrifice (which is no sacrifice) of myself so put forward
by pulpit teaching. It was a great hindrance to me and blinded me to
the truth. I was only a normal, ordinary creature, and they thrust a
great burden into my arms.
Little by little, as I was able to learn directly from His own heart, I
came to know Him as He is; and I could not reconcile this
knowledge of Himself which He gave me, especially of His high
willingness and serenity, with pulpit teachings of heavy gloom. The
Church too frequently spoke to me of following Him in terms which
conveyed a burden: "Pick up thy cross, pick up thy cross!" they
cried; and He spoke to me in terms which conveyed a great joy:
"Come to Me, come to Me, for I love thee!"
I thought I was very cowardly and sinned by this inability to like the
gloomy burden, and one day I came upon this out of Jeremiah: "As
for the prophet, or the priest, or the people, that shall say, The
burden of the Lord, I will punish that man and his house . . . because
ye say, The burden of the Lord, I will utterly forget you and forsake
you, and cast you out of My presence."
These words of Jesus, "Take up thy cross and follow Me": whoever
will do it will be shown by Jesus that the cross of following Him is
no burden, but a deliverance, a finding of life, the way of escape, a
great joy, and a garland of love.
The world thinks of joyousness as being laughter, cackling, and
much silly noise; and to such I do not speak. But the Christ's
joyousness is of a high, still, marvellous, and ineffable
completeness--beyond all words; and _wholly satisfying_ to heart
and soul and body and mind.
It is written, "They shall love silver, and not be satisfied with it"--for
why? Only those are _satisfied_ who know the gold of Christ.
All of which is not to say that by following Him we shall escape
from happenings and inconveniences and sorrows and illnesses
common to life; but that when these come we are raised out of our
distress into His ineffable peace.
When the heart is sad, use this sadness in a comprehension of the
deeper pain of Jesus, who was in the self-same exile as we ourselves.
The more the soul is truly awakened and touched, the more she feels
herself to be in exile; and this is her cross.
But the remedy for her sadness is that she should courageously pass
out of her woes of exile and go up to meet her lover with smiles.
Now, He cannot resist this smiling courage and love of the soul, and
very quickly He must send her His sweetness, and her sadness is
gone.
* * *
When I say that if we will take a few steps alone towards Christ--which
is to say, if we will make some strenuous efforts to cleanse
ourselves and change our minds and ways--He will take us all the
rest of the way, I speak from experience. For amongst many things
this happened to me: at a certain stage, after my third conversion on
the hill, He caused my former thoughts, desires, and follies to go
away from me! It was as though He had sent a veil between me and
such thoughts of my heart and mind as might not be pleasing to Him,
so that they disappeared from my knowledge and my actions!
By this marvellous act He removed my difficulties, and put me into
a state of innocence which resembled the innocence I remember to
have had up to the age of four or five years. But I find this new
innocence far more wonderful than that of childhood, which is but
the innocence of ignorance. But this new innocence--which is a gift
of God--is innocence with knowledge. I am not able to express the
gratitude and amazement and wonder that have never ceased to fill
me about this. Such things can only be spoken of by the soul to her
lover, and then not in words but in a silence of tears.
What did I ever do that He should show me such kindness? I did
nothing except this: I desired with all the force of my heart and soul
and mind and body to love Him. I said, "Oh, if I could be the
warmest, tenderest lover that ever thou didst have! Teach me to be
Thy burning lover." This was my perpetual prayer. And my idea of
Heaven was and is this, that without so much as knowing, or being
known or perceived by _any save Himself,_ without even a name,
yet retaining my full consciousness of individuality, I should be with
Him for always.
What is this love for God, and how define it? For myself, I never
knew it until I was filled with it upon the hill. Many judge it to be _a
following_ of Christ and His wishes, but this is only a part of it and
the way we begin it, and often we begin from duty, fear of future
punishment, desire for salvation or spiritual pre-eminence, and
obedience; and in none of these is there the joy of love.
By such standards I might count myself to have loved Him for
twenty years; but know I did not. For ten years past I felt myself to
have so great a need of Him, I sought Him so, that for me Heaven
contained no re-met former earthly loves, much as I loved them here.
I knew that He would be my all. Nevertheless, He was not yet my
Love, but my Need.
Love is a fire, for we feel the great heat of it.
Love is a light, for we perceive the white glare of it.
Of things known, to what can we compare it? Most perhaps to
electricity, for here we have both light and heat, and the lightning
flash strikes that which already contains the most of itself (or
electricity). And the lightning of God's love strikes him whose heart
contains the most love for Himself. And He strikes when He will,
and afterwards visits when He will; and I do not count myself (for
all my earthly loves) to have so much as known the outer edge of the
meaning of the word love, till He struck me with His own upon that
hill.
Truly, fair and holy love is our warranty, our only pass for entering
into Heaven.
Brave and wilful, rapturous and insistent, love passes with bold yet
humble ecstasy into the very presence of her Lord and God; and
alone, out of all creation, is never denied the Right of Way.
* * *
I have seen it quoted, "Turn to the heights, turn to the deeps, turn
within, turn without, everywhere thou shalt find the Cross." But I
see it so: "Turn to the heights, turn to the deeps, turn within, turn
without, everywhere thou shalt find His Love." Love to help on the
way. Too much we might suppose, to hear pious people talk, that
because of Christ's way we must be miserable and our life an
endless Cross! And so life may be a cross, but He carries it for us.
Do sinful men never suffer? Do the sinful escape disease? and live
for ever without biting the dust in death or disappointment? Why,
disease and suffering are the very twin-children of sin. I am amazed
that people can take such a view of the Cross as to think it an
unhappy, miserable way. For so marvellous is the beauty of such
love that there is no other so desirable a thing upon earth.
"Come, walk the way with Me," says the Beloved; "I am all serenity,
all peace, all might, all power, all love. Come, walk with Me, and
forget thy tiny cares in the peace of My bosom."
* * *
We do not love God because we do not yet know Him. And we do
not know Him because we seek only to know and have our own
desires: and having learnt to know these, we would have our
unknown God accommodate Himself to us and them.
But let us first seek to know God's desires by heart, and then
accommodate our own to His: so shall we learn to be pleasing to
Christ, that He may lead us, whilst here, into His Garden. For to the
creature that ardently pursues God there comes at last a time when
He reveals Himself to the searching soul, saying: "I Am Here.
Come!" Then in secrecy we arise,--and go to Him out of the House
of Vanity into the music of the great Beyond.
There is small credit or virtue to the soul when, in a state of high
grace or nearness, she burns with love for her God: for she is under
the spell of the enticement of His Presence--how can she help but
burn! It is as though two earthly lovers, in full sight and nearness,
are filled each for each with great love, and are content.
But this is a credit to the soul and the creature (as to the earthly
lovers), that in separation and farness they should seek no other, but
continue to dwell with great intentness upon the absent love. This is
fidelity.
At times it is as if her Lord said to the soul: "I have other to do than
to stay by thee; and also thou hast had more than enough to thy
share of My honey"; and, so saying, He departs.
And this is fidelity of the soul and the creature, and a great virtue,
that, without change of face, without complaint or petitioning, they
should with all sweetness continue to pour up to Him their unabated
love. If any can do this, he is a perfect lover and has no more to
learn.
When the love of the soul, as it were, exceeds itself, it passes up and
beyond even the song of love; and being unable to express itself by
words or by song, or by deep sighings, or by any of those subtle,
silent, spiritual means known only between herself and God, when
all means fail because of the too great stress of her adoration, then
the soul passes into a great pain, which is the anguish of love and a
hard thing to bear. This excess is to the fullness of the Godhead.
And now the soul must turn to prayer for help, but not to the
Godhead: for the more she turns to the Godhead the greater becomes
her anguish. But coming down to His humanity, she must beseech
sweet Jesus for His aid, and so regain her equilibrium.
* * *
Many of us are, perhaps unwittingly, impudent to God. In this way
we are impudent: We question (even though it be in secret, hidden in
the heart and not spoken) the justice of God, the ways of God, the
plans of God, the love of God: by which means we argue with God
and judge Him. And another manner of impudence we have is this,
that we dare to attribute or to blame Him for the results of man's
own filth, saying: "This and this is the will of God, for we see that it
exists, and His will is omnipotent." Oh, beware of this impudence,
drop it out of the heart and mind, and flee from it as from the plague!
"How then can these things be, if He is omnipotent?" we say.
Because of this, that in the trust of His great love He gave us the
royal and Godly gift of free-will, and our souls have proved
themselves unworthy to have it; and now the creature is brought
before the Beautiful, and the Holy, and the Pure, but turning away,
like the sow, prefers the mire and the festering sores proceeding
from such wallowings. If there were no choice, there were no virtue,
and no progress home. But let no man venture in his heart to
attribute to that Holy and Marvellous Being whom we speak of as
God, not knowing as yet His Name, any will towards festers and
corruptions, for what does He say Himself? "Their sins rise up
before Me and stink in My nostrils!"
We surely forget that this world is not yet God's Kingdom, and that
His will is not done here, and will not be until the Judgment Day.
This world is but a tiny testing-chamber in His mighty workshop;
and great and wonderful is the care He has for the workers in it.
O man! whence come thy wretchednesses? Look round and think.
Do they not all proceed from self and fellow-men, alive or dead?
Then why blame God?
"Why am I here?" we cry, "to suffer all these pains, and my consent
not asked? A poor, sad puppet dancing to a tune I know not the
rhythm of. Where is my recompense? And where my wages? I will
take all I can of what is offered here, and give no thanks! It is but
my scant due for all my wretchednesses!"
O foolish man! so timid of all future possibilities of bliss that he
must grasp and burn himself with such delights as he finds here!
And equally mistaken and small-minded man who thinks that all our
Mighty God will have to offer us hereafter are crowns, damp clouds
and mists, and endless hymns! Such little hearts are far away indeed
from knowing the _magnitudes of Life._
O wretched man! why this distrust? Hast thou created even thine
own palate and digestion? Hast thou invented any of those fond
delights that so enslave thee now? Hast thou thyself devised the
means wherewith to satisfy the longing of thy _creature_ for the
sweets of life? They were provided thee; all that thou hast created is
misuse! Thou art but a perverted thing!--a crooked tool of self, a fly
drowning in the honey that it sought too greedily to own!
O wretched, wretched man! so cloyed with sweets of earth thou
canst not raise thy head to see the sunrise out beyond the world, and
know true sweets! How many are the tears wept over thee by the
great heart of God!
* * *
Since coming into this new way of living, the more I come into
contact with music the more I sense a mysterious connection
between melody--the soul--and her _origin._ Alone out of all the
sciences and arts, music has no foundation upon anything on earth.
There is no music in nature until the soul, come to a perfect
harmony within herself, brings out the hidden harmony in all
creation, and, turning it to melody within herself, returns it to her
Lord in song, whether by outward instrument or inward love.
The soul, indeed, would seem to have come out of a life of infinite
melody and to have dropped into an existence of mere contrary and
vexing time-beat.
Who can by any means account for the variety of passions excited
within him by the mere difference of the spacing, time, or rhythm of
music? In my new condition of living I notice that the soul throws
out with most disdainful impatience music that was formerly
beautiful to my mind and heart (or my creature); and certain types of
flowing cadences (very rarely to be found), sustained in high,
flowing, delicate, and soaring continuity will produce in her
conditions akin to a madness of joy. For one brief instant _she
remembers! but cannot utter what!_
Of visions I know nothing, but received all my experiences into my
soul as amazingly real inward perceptions. That these perceptions
are of unprecedented intensity, and more realistic than those which
are merely visual, can be understood by bodily comparisons; for to
_feel_ or to be one with fire is more than to _see_ it.
To try to compare spiritual life with physical experiences would
seem to be useless; for, to my feeling, while we live in the spirit we
live at a great speed,--indeed, an incalculably great speed--and as a
whole and not in parts. For with physical living we live at one
moment by the eyes, at another with the mind, at another through
the heart, at another with the body. But the spirit feels to have no
parts, for all parts are of so perfect a concordance that in this
marvellous harmony all is one and one is all. And this with
_incredible intensity,_ so that we live not as now--dully--but at
white heat of sensibility.
_Prayer_
Prayer is the golden wedding-ring between ourselves and God. For
myself, I divide it into two halves--the one petitioning, the other
offering.
Of petitioning I would say that this is the _work_ of the soul; and of
offering, that it is the pleasure of the soul.
Of petitioning, that I come to it under His command; and of offering,
that I come to it of my own high, passionate desire.
I make upon my knees, three times a day, three short and formal
prayers of humble worship, as befits the creature worshipping its
Ineffable and Mighty God: and for the rest of my time I sing to Him
from my heart and soul, as befits the joyful lover, adoring and
conversing with the Ineffable and Exquisite Beloved.
* * *
This is the circle of His way with us. First is prayer; then love; and
after love, humility. With humility comes grace; and after grace,
temptation; and in temptation we must quickly enter prayer again.
* * *
O wonderful and ineffable God! who, while remaining hidden from
His lovers in this life, yet so ravishes their hearts and minds and
souls that they are unable to find truly sweet even the greatest of
life's former joys--for nothing can now ever satisfy them but the
secret and marvellous administrations of His love and grace! On one
day feeling to be forsaken, the most desolate and lonely of all
creatures in the Universe; and on another exalted to almost
unbearable pinnacles of bliss, equal to the angels in felicity, and
blest beyond all power of words to say--such and so are the lovers of
God.
* * *
The soul has six wings: love, obedience, humility, simplicity,
perseverance, and courage. With these she can attain God.
We know very well that no man will find God either enclosed, held
fast, or demonstrated within a circle of dogmatic words; but every
man can find, in his own soul, an exquisite and incomparable
instrument of communication with God. To establish the working of
this communication is the whole object and meaning of life in this
world--this world of material, finite, and physical things, in which
the human body is at once a means and a debt.
The key to progress is a continual dressing of the will and mind and
heart towards God, best brought about by continually filling the
heart and mind with beautiful, grateful, and loving thoughts of Him.
At all stages of progress the thoughts persistently fly away to other
things in the near and visible world, and we have need quietly and
perpetually to pick them up and re-centre them on Him. With the
mind turned in this way, steadily towards God, we are in that state
known to science as polarisation: we are in that condition in which
common iron becomes a magnet. It is so that God transforms us into
a diminutive part-likeness of Himself.
When at last the soul reaches union with Him, she is for a while so
caressed, so held in a perpetual contact and nearness, that we may
think ourselves already permanently entered into Paradise! But this
is not the plan; and, our education being exceedingly incomplete, we
return to our schooling.
We commence to experience profound and even terrible longings to
leave the world and all creatures, for we cannot bear either the sight
or the sound of them, and seek all day long to be alone with the
Beloved God. To conquer this last selfishness and weakness of the
soul, we must go again--as in the beginning--to Jesus. He teaches us
to go to and fro _willingly,_ gladly, from the highest to the lowest.
To pick up our daily life and duties, our obligations to a physical
world, in all humility, sweet reasonableness, and submission. He
teaches us to willingly accept incessant interruptions, and with
smiling face and perfect inward smoothness to descend from a
high contemplation of God (and only those who know high
contemplation can judge of the immensity of what I say) to listen
and _attend to_ some most trivial want of a fellow-creature! Reader,
it is the hardest thing of all. No sooner have we learnt the hard and
difficult way of ascent than we must willingly come down it, even
remain altogether in the valley below, and that with a smiling face
and, if possible, no thought of impatience! This is the true sacrifice
of the soul. Now, the sacrifices of the creature are the giving up of
the near and visible joys and prides of the world to follow Christ,
and are not real but seeming sacrifices, for, if done heartily and with
courage, an exchange between these joys and the joys of the
invisible is rapidly effected, and there remains no sacrifice, but "the
hidden treasure" is ours! But the sacrifice of the soul is real and long;
for having at last re-found God, she must resign her full joy of Him
till the death of the body--and this willingly, thankfully, without
complaint, not asking favours but pouring up her gratitude. In joy or
in pain, in happiness or in tribulation--gratitude! gratitude!--and this
not by her own strength but by strength of the Holy Ghost.
* * *
Because of this new way of living, the mind acquires a great
increase of capacity and strength and clearness: being able to deal
quickly and correctly with all matters brought before it with an ease
previously altogether unknown to its owner. It is no exaggeration to
say that the sagacity, scope, and grasp of the mind feels to be more
than doubled from that which it previously was, and this not because
of any study, but by an involuntary alteration. So that, though the
mind and attention are now given almost exclusively to the things of
God, yet when the things of the world have to be dealt with, this is
accomplished with extraordinary efficiency and quickness, though
very distasteful to the mind.
* * *
As the soul returns to her source nothing is more strongly
emphasised to her than the strength and intensity of individuality;
she is shown that the essence of all joy is Individuality in Union.
In the marvellous condition of Contact, though we cease to be the
creature or the soul adoring the Creator (but by an incomprehensible
condescension we are accepted as one with Himself in love), yet we
retain our own consciousness, which is our individuality.
In the highest rapture I ever was in, my soul passed into a fearful
extremity of experience: she was burned with so terrible an excess
of bliss, that she was in great fear and anguish because of this excess.
Indeed, she was so overcome by this too great realisation of the
strength of God that she was in terror of both God and joy. It was
three days before she recovered any peace, and more than a year
before I dared recall one instant of it to mind.
I am not able to think that even in Heaven the soul could endure
such heights for more than a period. These heights are incomparably,
unutterably beyond vision and union. They are the uttermost
extremity of that which can be endured by the soul, at least until she
has re-risen to great altitudes of holiness in ages to come.
By contact with God we acquire certain wonderful and terrible
realisations of truth and knowledge. For one thing, we learn the
nature and mode of spirit-life, as over against body- or sense-life.
We learn, at first with great fear, something of the awful intensities
of pain, as of joy, which can be endured by the spirit when free of
the body: for when we are in the spirit we do not _see_ fire, but we
feel to _become it_ and yet live! And so equally of pain or joy--we
do not feel these things delicately, as with, and in, the body, but we
pass into the essence of these things themselves, in all their terrible
and marvellous intensity, which is comparatively without limit.
Woe to those who must gather the garland of pain--which is
remorse-after death! It is easier to suffer a whole lifetime in the
body than one day in the spirit. O soul! come to thy contrition here
in this world, where pain has short limit! Repent and return!
* * *
Of the marvellous favours shown to the soul the heart cries out: "O
mighty God! of the magnitude of Thy condescensions I am afraid
even to think; they are too great for me, and I dare to recall them,
but only with all the simplicity of a little child!"
* * *
Those who feel desire and need within themselves to reach the
heights of inward life will do it best, not through diversity of
interests in fellow-creatures, but by unification of all interests in
God.
God once found, and possessed, we return to the interests of
creatures in moderation and with judgment.
* * *
What is pain? It is a mystery of separation, and we are gangrenous
with sin and pain because of separation from the source of life.
Truth now comes to us in such small segments that we no longer see
the pattern of it; but this we are able to perceive: that the mystery of
Separation is equal in degree with the mystery of Union, and that the
child of separation is Pain.
How did the soul ever become so separated from God? To my
feeling, in curiosity of loves we may find the answer, and know the
"fall" to be not that of the animal man but of the soul, which, once
living in perpetual beatitude--knowing nothing of pain because of
the unity with God, not understanding or being even grateful for her
bliss because of its invariable presence, and given free-will,--in
curiosity went out in search of newer and yet newer loves. And this
is the retribution of the soul for her unfaithful wanderings--that as
separation grows greater she commences to know pain, and,
becoming anxious therefrom to return to the source of her
remembered joys, she finds herself unable to accomplish this
because of the weight and grossness of the nature of the loves to
which she has hired herself, and from which _she is totally unable to
free herself,_ and yet which she must by some means overcome that
she may rise again to sanctity and return to God.