I
Wonderful, beautiful weeks went by, filled with divine,
indescribable peace. The Presence of God was with me day and
night, and the world was not the world as I had once known it--a
place where men and women fought and sinned and toiled and
anguished and wondered horribly the meaning of this mystery of
pain and joy, of life and death. The world was become Paradise, and
in my heart I cried to all my fellow-souls, "Why fret and toil, why
sweat and anguish for the things of earth when our own God has in
His hand such peace and bliss and happiness to give to Every man?
O come and receive it, Every man his share."
And the glamour of life in Unity with God became past all
comprehension and all words.
Is life, then, a poem? is it a melody? I cannot say; but it is one long
essence of delight--a harmony of flowing out and back again to God.
O blessed life! O blessed Man! O blessed God!
II
One morning in my room I began thinking and reasoning about a
wonderful change that I knew had crept all through me. If God
should now come at any moment of the day or night and turn over
every secret page of heart and mind, He would not find one thought
or glimmer of any sort or kind of lust, whether of the eye, of the
heart, of the mind, or of the body; and all in one moment I realised
the miracle that Christ had worked in me, and the words came over
my mind, "Though thy sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as
snow." And I stood there, gazing before me, speechless, and the
tears of a joy that was an agony of gratitude poured and poured
down my face like a rain. I did not sob, I could not speak, and very
quietly I took my heart and my mind and my soul and laid them for
ever at the feet of Christ.
III
One evening as I knelt to say my prayers, which were never long,
because since the Visitation on the hill my natural habit--whether
walking, sitting, working, travelling, or on my bed--had come to be
a continual sending up from my heart and mind the tenderest and
most adoring, the most worshipping and thanking little stream of
thoughts to God (very much as a flower, if we could but see it, sends
its scent to the sun).
And because this mode of prayer is so smooth and joyous, so easy,
so unutterably sweet, in that during it the Presence of God laves us
about as the sun laves the flower--so because of this it was only for
short and set times that I worshipped Him as the creature in prayers
upon its knees; but those few moments of prayer would always be
intense, the heart and the mind with great power bent wholly and
singly upon God.
So now, this evening as I knelt and dwelt in great singleness on God,
He drew me so powerfully, He encompassed me so with His
glamour, that this singleness and concentration of thought continued
much longer than usual on account of the greatness of the love that I
felt for Him, and the concentration became an intensity of
penetration because of this magnetism, He turned on to me, and my
mind became faint, and died, and I could no longer think of or on
God, _for I was one with Him._ And I was still I; though I was
become Ineffable Joy.
When it was over I rose from my knees, and I said to myself, for
five wonderful moments I have been in contact with God in an
unutterable bliss and repose: and He gave me the bliss tenderly and
not as on that Night of Terror; but when I looked at my watch I saw
that it had been for between two and three hours.
Then I wondered that I was not stiff, that I was not cold, for the
night was chilly and I had nothing about me but a little velvet
dressing-wrapper; and my neck was not stiff, though my head had
been thrown back, as is a necessity in Communion with God; and I
thought to myself, it is as if my body also had shared in the blessing.
And this most blessed happening happened to me every day for a
short while, usually only for a few moments. In this way God
Himself caused and enabled me to contemplate and _know_ Him;
and I saw that it was in some ways at one with my beautiful pastime,
but with this tremendous difference in it--that whereas my mind had
formerly concentrated itself upon the Beautiful, and remaining Mind
had soared away above all forms into its nebulous essence in a
strange seductive anguish, it now was drawn and magnetised beyond
the Beautiful directly to the Maker of it: and the soaring was like a
death or swooning of the mind, and immediately I was living with
that which is above the mind: in this living there was no note of pain,
but a marvellous joy.
Slowly I learnt to differentiate degrees of Contemplation, but to my
own finding there are two principal forms--Passive and Active (or
High) Contemplation.
In meditation is little or no activity, but a sweet quiet thinking and
talking with Jesus Christ. In Passive Contemplation is the beginning
of real activity; mind and soul without effort (though in a secret state
of great love-activity) raise themselves, focussing themselves upon
the all-unseen Godhead: now is no longer any possible picture in the
mind, of anyone nor anything, not even of the gracious figure or of
the ways of Christ: here, because of love, must begin the sheer
straight drive of will and heart, mind and soul, to the Godhead, and
here we may be said first to commence to breathe the air of heaven.
There is no prayer, no beseeching, and no asking--there are no
words and no thoughts save those that intrude and flash unwanted
over the mind, but a great undivided attention and waiting upon God:
God near, yet never touching. This state is no ecstasy, but smooth,
silent, high living in which we learn heavenly manners. This is
Passive or Quiet Contemplation.
High Contemplation ends in Contact with God, in ecstasy and
rapture. In it the activity of the soul (though entirely without effort
on her part) is immensely increased. It is not to be sought for, and
we cannot reach it for ourselves; but it is to be enjoyed when God
calls, when He assists the soul, when He energises her.
And then our cry is no more, Oh, that I had wings! but, Oh, that I
might fold my wings and stay!
IV
Having come so far as this on the Soul's Great Adventure all alone
as far as human guidance and companionship was concerned, and
having for more than a year known the wonders of the joy of Union
with God--which I did not know or understand to call Union, but
called it to myself Finding God and coming into Contact with Him,
because this is how it _feels,_ and the unscholarly creature
understands and knows it in that way--well, having come so far, I
had a great longing to share this knowledge, this exquisite balm,
with my fellows, and I desired immensely to speak about it, to know
how they fell about it, if they had yet come to it, or how far on the
way they were to it, because I was all filled with the beauty of it, as
lovers are filled with the beauty of their love. But I was frightened to
speak to them, something held me back: also they felt to me to be so
exceedingly full of the merest trifles--clothes and tea-parties and
fashionable friends; and each time I tried to speak, in some
mysterious way I found myself stopped. So I thought that I would
speak to a friend that I had in the Church. Several times I had heard
him preach very beautiful sermons, and I felt I very greatly needed
the guidance of _someone who knew._ I wanted, I longed for, a
human intermediary. I knew that I was in the hands of the God
Whom for so many years I had so passionately sought; but He was
so immeasurably great, and I so pitifully small, and I needed a
human being--someone to whom I might speak about God.
Yet something warned me not to commence as though speaking of
myself, but of another person. I said only a few words, of the joy of
this person in finding and loving God, and immediately my friend
spoke very severely of persons who imagined they had found, and
loved, God. God was not to be found by our puny, shifting and
uncertain love: He was to be found by duty, by obedience to Church
rules, by pious attendance _At Church._ He explained to me various
dogmas which helped me no more than the moaning of the wind; he
explained the absolute necessity (for salvation) of certain beliefs and
written sentences, and ceremonials in the Church. Love was not the
way. Love was emotion, emotion was deceptive: the mind, and
severe firm attention to the dictates of The Church was what was
required; in fact, he unfolded before me the Ecclesiastical Mind. I
shrank back from it, dismayed, frightened. Were all the deep needs
and requirements of the soul to be satisfied in the singing of hymns
and Te Deum, in the close and reverent attention to the Ceremonies
before the altar, and of the actions of Priests! Did, or could, any
reasoning creature truly think to Find God by merely repeating,
however reverently, the same prayers and ceremonies Sunday after
Sunday! Could the great mountain up which my soul had sweated,
and which each soul must climb--could it be climbed by kneeling in
a pew in church? No; a total change of _character_ was needed, and
Christ Himself was necessary for this change--Jesus Christ gliding
into the heart and mind and soul, and _biding_ there because of that
heart's, that mind's, invitation to, and love for, Him. Secretly--in
one's own chamber, every hour of the day, in the streets, in the
fields--in this way it might be accomplished.
With Christ biding in the heart all the Church service would
_become_ a thing of beauty as between the Soul and God; but
without this Jesus Christ dwelling in the heart, the connection was
not yet made between the Soul--the service--and the Godhead.
Perhaps amongst Romans I should find the understanding that I
looked for. I had a friend, a Dominican: I approached him, and I
could see that for (as he thought) my own good he longed to convert
me to the Roman Church: it did not seem that he wanted, or by any
means knew how, to bring me into contact with God, but his thought
was to bring me to _The Church._ "Does anyone," I asked him,
"love God with all their heart, and mind, and soul, and strength?"
"No," said he, "that is hardly possible--what is required is--"; and
here he gave me once more the contents of the Ecclesiastical Mind:
more authoritatively, more positively; but he spoke as I now
commenced to realise all Churchmen would speak--that is to say, as
persons having learnt by study, by careful rule and rote, by
paper-knowledge, that which can only be learnt in the spirit direct from
God. How immense is the difference to the Soul between this
knowledge that comes of the spirit and the knowledge that comes of
study--the knowledge which too easily becomes mechanical religion!
I thought of the beautiful and gracious simplicity of the knowledge
that Christ gives to the soul: I saw the nature of the sore disease that
afflicts the soul of Christ's Church, I saw also a terrible pain for
Christ in all this of which I had previously been unaware.
I was thrown back and into myself by it all, and into a great
loneliness as far as my fellow-beings were concerned. Yet I
continued to need to share Christ with humanity, piercingly,
pressingly. I would go to a library and find a book--but, on the other
hand, I did not know the name of a single religious book or writer.
So I wrote my need to a friend, and she sent me the life of one,
Angela of Foligno. This book was a great delight to me, because,
though written in tiresome mediaeval language, it yet expressed and
shared exactly what I also knew and loved, and folded in strange
wrappings of the fashion of the thought of long ago lay the same
exquisite jewel that I also knew--the pearl for which men gladly sell
all that they have in order to keep it--the knowledge of the Secret of
the Kingdom of Heaven, of the Union of the Soul with God.
A few months went by, and I wrote asking for another book, and this
time came Richard Rolle to my acquaintance--a little dried-up
hermit, a holy man too, though I noticed how very discourteous he
was to women; severe, critical, and suspicious, merely because they
were women. How often I noticed this peculiarity, both in the monks
of to-day with their averted eyes, as if the shadow of a woman
falling on them were pollution, and long ago, Paul, and Peter also,
and Moses, and many others, showed surprising weakness of
intolerance and harsh judgment against Woman!
Where was Wisdom in all this? Surely it was Folly flaunting and
laughing and dressing herself cunningly to deceive, for did none of
these men, from Adam downwards--did they never come to know
themselves well enough to see that their danger lay not in the
Woman, but in _their own inclination to sin!_
Oh, the righteousness of the greatest saint was, and is, but as dust
and ashes before the righteousness of Jesus! and I came to wonder if
there ever was or could be a saint, save one--Jesus.
But this Richard Rolle, this person so discourteous to some
fellow-beings, could all the same be very tender and loving towards God:
he, too, held in his heart the Pearl without Price. He, too, knew that
marvellous incense of the heart to God--that song of the soul, and
called it by the same name as I; but how could it be called by any
other name? for every soul that knows it, it must ever be the same.
Oh, how intimately I knew those two people of centuries ago, and
how intimately they knew me! A strange trio we made--he, the little
wizened English hermit; she, the Italian woman in her nun's habit;
and I in my modern Bond Street clothes: outwardly we were indeed
incongruous, we had no links, but inwardly we were bound together
by bonds of the purest gold.
Of whether my friend sent me another book or not I cannot be sure;
but my interest was becoming altogether removed from the past,
because Christ was pressing me more and more to the present and
the living.
V
God says to the aspiring soul: Come, taste of paradise and taste of
heaven, and then return thou to the earth and wait, but not in
idleness, and suffer many things till thou become perfect.
So I found that in the earlier stages, in order to show me the heights
to which I might by perseverance attain, He turned His Power and
Glamour on to me, and I became a creature transfixed and held by
love. I had one desire--God; I had one thought--God; I had one
consciousness--God. There was no effort needed on my part: it was
Pure Grace and the result of _past_ efforts. Having climbed and
endured and endeavoured up to a certain degree, it was necessary for
further advance that there should be more knowledge, and a more
complete ineffaceable assurance. He therefore exposed the soul to as
much as she could enjoy of heavenly pleasures and consciousness,
without death to the flesh. In these experiences the soul found and
knew God to be the fulfilment of all desires and all needs. The soul
stood steadied before God in an unutterable Happiness which she
perceived had no limit but God's Will, and her own capacity to
endure the rapture of Him.
What is it that would seem to determine this immeasurable privilege
of Access to Him? It would seem to be a healthy willing will
towards Him under all circumstances (to begin with).
In due time He converts this mere will into a sweet love, the natural
love of the heart and mind--by Gift of the Father we love Jesus
Christ. This is salvation.
But beyond salvation it would feel to be this way--after a further
great endeavour and endurance on our part, a further great striving
towards Him, He will awaken and prick to new life the soul and fill
us with Holy Love. This is the second baptism, the baptism of the
Spirit of Love. This is the entry to the Kingdom, and immediately
we taste of the Godhead. What this is, what this ravishment of
happiness is, cannot be known or guessed till we ourself have
experienced it.
In all this we progress by the communicated Power of Christ. How
is this Power to be recognised, how is it communicated? Can we
stand still and receive it like the dew, without work? At first, no--but
later it would almost seem to be yes; or else it is that the exact
attitude of heart and mind necessary for the reception of Grace
becomes so habitual, so natural, that eventually we come to live in a
state in which the communication of this Power becomes nearly
continuous--though at any time by negligence or by a wrong attitude
of Spirit _we fall away from it and lose it completely,_ and in all
times of temptation or of testing we are cut off from _sensible_
contact with it.
We learn then that Grace awaits every creature that attunes himself
to the Will of Christ: it awaits good and bad, saint and sinner, it
transforms the sinner into the saint, and but for its deliberate
withdrawals we might suppose its action to be automatic, we might
suppose it a fixed power like the sun, shining upon worthy and
unworthy alike in degree. But Grace is far more subtle and
mysterious than this. Grace is the most sublime, the most exquisite
secret of all the mysteries which exist between the Soul and her
Maker.
* * *
I find that He works upon my soul by two opposite ways: He draws
her up to contact and sublime content; He sets her down to solitude
and hides Himself: He is there, and will not speak.
And she suffers horribly: and why not? Where is the injustice of this
pain?
Countless ages ago--who can count them?--the soul, born in a palace,
has deliberately willed and chosen to become the Wanderer, the
Street Walker; therefore fold up self-pity and lay it aside, because it
does not live in the same house with Truth.
Cast off self-consciousness and pride, because they are ridiculous,
and a man can only be great or noble in just so far as he has
abandoned them.
* * *
What is it that often makes it so much harder for the soul to refind
God when she is enclosed in the male body? Perhaps the greater
strength of the natural lusts of the male: perhaps the pride of
"Being"--as lord of creation; or the pride of Intelligence which says,
I rely easily upon myself, I need no religion of hymn tunes, I leave
hymn tunes to women, for the ardour and capacity of my manhood
rush to far different aims.
But can any sane man think that the Essential Being who has created
the universe, with all its infinite wonders, and this earth with its
beauty and its wonderful flesh, and so much more that is not flesh
but the still more wonderful spirit--can any sane man really think
that this Essential Being is stuck fast at hymn tunes (which are
Man's own invention!) and knows not how to satisfy the needs and
longings of that which He has Himself created!
Ardent and greatly mistaken Sinner, know and remember that to
Find God is to Live Tremendously.
* * *
O beloved Man with thy strangely vain and small pursuits and
pleasures--thy pipe, thy wine, thy women, thy "busy" city life, thine
immense sagacity which once in twenty times outwits a fool or
knave--thy vaunted living is a bubble in a hand-basin!
Find God and Live!