The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romance of the Soul, by Lilian Staveley
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Title: The Romance of the Soul
Author: Lilian Staveley
Release Date: July 18, 2009 [EBook #29451]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROMANCE OF THE SOUL ***
Produced by Ruth Hart
THE ROMANCE OF THE SOUL
By
Lilian Staveley
The Author of "The Golden Fountain"
London
John M. Watkins
21 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, W.C. 2
1920
What am I? In my flesh I am but equal to the beasts of the field. In
my heart and mind I am corrupt Humanity. In my soul I know not
what I am or may be, and therein lies my hope.
O wonderful and mysterious soul, more fragile than gossamer and
yet so strong that she may stand in the Presence of God and not
perish!
"Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of
a _dove."--Psalm lxviii. 13._
By what means shall the ordinary man and woman, living the usual
everyday life, whether of work or of leisure, find God? And this
without withdrawing themselves into a life apart--a "religious" life,
and without outward and conspicuous piety always running to public
worship (though often very cross and impatient at home); without
leaving undone any of the duties necessary to the welfare of those
dependent on them; without making themselves in any way
peculiar;--how shall these same people go up into the secret places
of God, how shall they find the marvellous peace of God, how
satisfy those vague persistent longings for a happiness more
complete than any they have so far known, yet a happiness which is
whispered of between the heart and the soul as something which is
to be possessed if we but knew how to get it? How shall ordinary
mortals whilst still in the flesh re-enter Eden even for an hour? for
Eden is not dead and gone, but we are dead to Eden--Eden, the
secret garden of enchantment where the soul and the mind and the
heart live in the presence of God and hear once more "the voice of
God walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Gen. iii.).
It is possible for these things to come to us or we to them, and in
quite a few years if we set our hearts on them. First we must desire;
and after the desire, steady and persistent, God will give. And we
say, "But I have desired and I do desire, and God does not give.
Why is this?" There are two reasons for it. For one--are these
marvellous things to be given because of one cry; for one petulant
demand; for a few tears, mostly of self-pity, shed in an hour when
the world fails to satisfy us, when a friend has disappointed us, when
our plans are spoiled, when we are sick or lonely? These are the
occasions on which we mostly find time to think of what we call a
better world, and of the consolations of God.
But let anyone have all that he can fancy, be carried high upon the
flood-tide of prosperity, ambition, and success, and how much time
will he or she give to Almighty God?--not two moments during the
day. Yet the Maker of all things is to bestow His unspeakable riches
upon us in return for two moments of our thought or love! Does a
man acquire great worldly wealth, or fame, in return for two
moments of endeavour?
"Ah," some of us may cry, "but it is more than two moments that I
give Him; I give Him hours, and yet I cannot find Him." If that is
really so, then the second reason is the one which would explain
why He has not been found. A great wall divides us from the
consciousness of the Presence of God. In this wall there is one Door,
and one only, Jesus Christ. We have not found God because we have
not found Him first as Jesus Christ in our own heart. Now whether
we take our heart to church, whether we take it to our daily work, or
whether we take it to our amusements, we shall not find Jesus in any
one place more than another if He is not already in our hearts to
begin with. How shall I commence to love a Being whom I have
never seen? By thinking about Him; by thinking about Him very
persistently; by comparing the world and its friendships and its loves
and its deceits and its secret enviousnesses with all that we know of
the lovely ways of gentle Jesus. If we do this consistently, it is
impossible not to find Him more lovable than any other person that
we know. The more lovable we find Him the more we think about
Him, by so much the more we find ourselves beginning to love Him,
and once we have learnt to hold Him very warmly and tenderly in
our heart, then we are well in the way to find the Christ and
afterwards that divine garden of the soul in which God seems to slip
His hand under our restless anxious heart and lift it high into a place
of safety and repose.
When for some time we have learnt to go in and out of this garden,
with God's tender help we make ourself a dear place--a nest under
God's wing, and yet mysteriously even nearer than this, it is so near
to God. To this place we learn to fly to and fro in a second of time:
so that, sitting weary and harassed in the counting-house, in an
instant a man can be away in his soul's nest; and so very great is the
refreshment of it and the strength of it that he comes back to his
work a new man, and so silently and quickly done that no one else in
the room would ever know he had been there: it is a secret between
his Lord and himself.
But the person who learns to do this does not remain the same raw
uncivilised creature that once he or she was: but slowly must
become quite changed; all tastes must alter, (all capacities will
increase in an extraordinary manner), and all thoughts of heart and
mind must become acceptable and pleasant to God.
The man who has not yet begun to seek God--that is to say, has not
even commenced to try and learn how to live spiritually, but lives
absorbed entirely in the things of the flesh--is a spiritual savage. To
watch such a man and his ways and his tastes is to the spiritual man
the same thing as when a European watches an African in his native
haunts, notes his beads, his frightful tastes in decorations, foods,
amusements, habits, and habitations, and, comparing them with his
own ways, says instantly that man is a savage. This proud European
does not pause to consider that he himself may be inwardly what the
savage is--quite dark; that to God's eyes his own ways and tastes are
as frightful as those of the African are to himself. What raises a man
above a savage is not the size of his dining-room, the cut of his coat,
the luxuries of his house, the learned books that adorn his
bookshelves, but that he should have begun to learn how to live
spiritually: this is the only true civilising of the human animal. Until
it is commenced, his manners and his ways are nothing but a veneer
covering the raw instincts of the natural man--instincts satisfied
more carefully, more hiddenly, than those of the African, but always
the same. There is little variety in the lusts of the flesh; they are all
after one pattern, each of its kind, follow one another in a circle, and
are very limited.
It is not the clay of our bodies fashioned by God which makes some
common and some not. It is the independent and un-Godlike
thoughts of our hearts and minds which can make of us common,
and even savage, persons. The changing of these thoughts, the
harmonising of them, and, finally, the total alteration of them, is the
work in us of the Holy Spirit. By taking Christ into our hearts and
making for Him there a living nest, we set that mighty force in
motion which shall eventually make for us a nest in the Living God.
For Jesus Christ is able (but only with our own entire _willingness)_
to make us not only acceptable to God, but delightful to Him, so
much so that even while we remain in the flesh He would seem not
to be willing to endure having us always away from Him, but visits
us and dwells with us after His own marvellous fashion and catches
us up to Himself.
To begin with, we must have a set purpose and _will_ towards God.
In the whole spiritual advance it is first we who must make the effort,
which God will then stabilise, and finally on our continuing to
maintain this effort He will bring it to complete fruition. Thus step
by step the spirit rises--first the effort, then the gift. First the will
to do--and then the grace to do it with. Without the willing will God
gives no grace: without God's grace no will of Man can reach
attainment. God's will and Man's will, God's love and Man's love--these
working and joining harmoniously together raise Man up into Eternal
Life.
* * *
God is desirous of communicating Himself to us in a Personal
manner. In the Scriptures we have the foundation, the basis, the
cause and reason of our Faith laid out before us; but He wills that we
go beyond this basis, this reasoning of Faith into experience of
Himself. For this end, then, He fills us with the aching desire to find
and know Him, to be filled with Him, to be comforted and consoled
by Him, to discover His joys. He fills us with these desires in order
that He may gratify us.
By being willing to receive and understand as only through the
medium of the _written_ word we limit God in His communications
with us. For by the Holy Ghost He will communicate not by written
word but by personal touching of love brought about for us by the
taking and enclosing of Jesus Christ within the heart not only as the
Written Word, the Promise and Hope of Scripture, but as the Living
God.
For this end inward meditation and pondering are a necessity.
* * *
How is it that we so often find great virtue, remarkable charity and
patience amongst persons who are yet not conscious of any direct
contact with God? They have never known the pains of repentance,
neither have they known the sublime joys of God. Are these the
ninety-and-nine just persons needing no repentance? Instinctively,
and almost unconsciously, they hold to, and draw upon, the
Universal Christ--or Spirit of Righteousness; but they have not laid
hold of nor taken into themselves that Spirit of the Personal Christ,
whom Christians receive and know through Jesus. He is the Door
into the unspeakable joys of God. What are these joys of God? They
are varying degrees of the manifestation and experience of
_reciprocal_ Divine Love.
What is the true aim of spiritual endeavour--an attempt at personal
and individual salvation? Yes, to commence with, but beyond that,
and more fully, it is the attempt to comply with the exquisite Will of
God; and the general and universal improving and raising of the
consciousness of the whole world. Yet this universal improvement
must take place in each individual spirit in an individual manner.
There are those who would deny to individuality its rights, claiming
that the highest spirituality is the total cessation of all individuality;
yet this would not appear to be God's view of the matter, for in the
most supreme contacts of the soul with Himself He does not wipe
out the consciousness of the soul's individual joy, but, on the
contrary, to an untenable extent He _increases_ it. And Jesus teaches
us that life here is both the means and the process of the gradual
conformation of the will of Man to the will of God, and our true
"work" is the individual learning of this process. But this cultivation
of our individuality must not be subverted to the purpose of the mere
gain of personal advantage, but because of the heartfelt wish to
conform to the glorious will of God. The failure of the human will to
run in conjunction with the Divine will is the cause, as we know, of
all sin. In the friction of these opposing wills, forces baneful to Man
are generated.
From its very earliest commencement in childhood our system of
education is based upon wrong ideas. With little or no regard to
God's plans Man lays out his own puny laws and ambitions and
teaches them to his young. We are not taught that what we are here
for is above all and before all to arrive at a sense of personal
connection with God, to identify ourselves with the spiritual while
still in the flesh. On the contrary, we are taught to grow shy, even
ashamed, of the spiritual! and to regard the world as a place
principally or even solely in which to enjoy ourselves or make a
"successful career."
Children are taught to look eagerly and mainly for holidays and
"parties"; grown men and women the same upon a larger and more
foolish scale, and always under the terribly mistaken belief that in
spiritual things no great happiness is to be found, but only in
materialism: yet very often we find the greatest unhappiness
amongst the wealthiest people.
Happiness! happiness! We see the great pursuit of it on every side,
and no truer or more needful instinct has been given to Man, but he
fails to use it in the way intended. This world is a Touchstone, a
Finding-place for God. Whoever will obey the law of finding God
from this world instead of waiting to try and do it from the next, he,
and he only, will ever grasp and take into himself that fugitive
mysterious unseen Something which--not knowing what it is, yet
feeling that it exists--we have named Happiness.
But how commence this formidable, this seemingly impossible task
of finding God in a world in which He is totally invisible? To the
"natural" or animal Man God is as totally hidden and inaccessible as
He is to the beasts of the field; yet encased within his bosom lies the
soul which can be the means of drawing Man and God together in a
glorious union. "I have known all this from my childhood," we cry,
"and the knowledge of it has not helped me one step upon my way."
Then try again, and reverse your method, for hitherto you have been
beseeching gifts from God, asking for gifts from Jesus, and have
_forgotten to give._ Give your love to Jesus, give _Him_ a home,
instead of asking Him to give you one. Give your heart to God, _set
it upon Him._
What is keeping you back? You are afraid of what it will entail; you
are afraid of what God will demand of you; those words "Forsake all,
and follow Me" fill you with something like terror. I cannot leave
my business, my children, my home, my luxuries, my games, my
dresses, my friends! Neither need you but, knowing this initial
agony of mind, Christ said it is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle (the name of an exceedingly narrow gate into
Jerusalem) than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
What does it mean to "set the heart" upon something? We say, "I
have set my heart on going to see my son," "I have set my heart on
doing so-and-so," but this does not mean that in order to accomplish
it we must wander homeless and lonely until the day of achievement.
No; but we set our heart and mind upon eventually accomplishing
this wish, we shape all our plans towards it, we give it the first place.
This is what God asks us to do; to give Him the first place. We need
not go to Him in rags: David and Solomon were immensely wealthy,
Job was a rich man; but we must eventually think more of Him than
we do of our dress, more of Him than we do of our business, more
of Him than we do of lover, friend, or child. Many well-minded
people are under the impression that such love for an Invisible Being
is a total impossibility. Yet the great commandment stands written
all across the face of the heavens--"Thou shalt love Me with all thy
heart and mind and soul and strength." Are we then to suppose that
God asks the impossible of His own creatures, that He mocks us?
No; for when we desire He sends the capacity, and day by day sends
us the power to reach this love through Jesus Christ. There is
included in the words "Give us this day our daily bread," the bread
of the soul, which is Love.
Divine Love commences in us in a very small way, as a very feeble
flicker, for we are very feeble and small creatures. But God takes the
will for the deed, and the day comes when suddenly we are filled
with true love, as a gift. This is indeed the second baptism, the
baptism of fire, the baptism of the Holy Ghost; then at last the great
wall which has hitherto divided our consciousness from God goes
down in its entirety, never again to rise up and divide us. This is the
mighty work of Jesus Christ.
Though this is not our work, still we have had the earnest will, the
longing desire; we have made continually, perseveringly, our tiny,
often futile, efforts to please and place Him first, and though perhaps
almost all were failures, He has counted every one to us for
righteousness.
We may at all times be asking ourselves, "But how shall I know the
will of God, how shall I please Him, how shall I know what Christ
would wish me to do or to think?" There is one test more sure than
any other, which is to ask oneself, "Would Jesus have done
just this?" and the answer will come from the inward of us
instantaneously. But before we can use this test we must have made
a careful study of Scripture and also have begun the habit of inward
personal intimacy with Jesus Himself. So immense is the bounty of
God to the creature that truly and persistently wills and endeavours
to please Him, so great are the rewards of that creature for its tiny
work that it is as though a child should scratch bare ground with its
little spade and reap a harvest of sweet flowers as magic gifts. In this
way it is that we find actually fulfilled in ourselves the lovely words
of the prophet, "the desert shall blossom like the rose."
The great initial difficulty that surely most of us feel is how to come
into personal contact with this Jesus Christ, and to know which are
the first steps that we should take to bring about this contact. They
are just those same steps that we use to come to a nearer
understanding of and greater intimacy with any persons we are
desirous of making friends with. We commence by thinking about
them, by arranging to spend time in their companionship; and the
more we think about them and the more time we spend with them if
they are very attractive people, the more we feel in sympathy with
them. Form, then, the habit of making for brief instants a mental
picture of the Saviour. Note the exquisite tenderness of His hands,
so instantly ready to save and heal; note the calm strength and the
great love in His countenance, walk beside Him down the street, join
His daily life, learn to become familiar with Him as Jesus--what
would He do, how would He look, what would His thoughts be? To
feel sympathetically towards a person is to take one of the most
important steps towards friendship. How many of us stop in the rush
of our daily amusements, interests, and work to sympathise with
Christ? Most probably, if we think of Christ at all, it is to feel that
He ought to sympathise with us! Now Christ not only sympathises
with but ardently loves us, and our failure to receive the comfort and
help of this love is due to our failure in returning to Him these same
feelings of sympathy and love and friendship. We are not reciprocal,
but perpetually ask and never give.
It is only by returning love to Christ that we are able to receive the
benefits of His love for us. His mighty power and help flows around
but not through us until we place ourselves in individual and direct
contact with Him, until we make that mysterious inward and
spiritual connection with Him which can be achieved only through a
personal love for Him.
Again and again we may cry out, "But how love the invisible?"
Christ is invisible, but for all that, he is not unknown. We all of us
know Him. But we do not give ourselves time or opportunity to
know Him sufficiently well. What hours, months, years, we devote
to making and knowing our friends; yet a few moments a day are
more than enough for most of us to spend in becoming more
intimate with the only Friend whom it is worth our while to make.
"But life is so busy I have no time," you say. What of those hours
spent in the train, those moments spent waiting for an appointment,
that half-hour taken for a rest, but which is not a rest because of the
rushing inharmonious turmoil of your thoughts? No one is so restful
to think of as Jesus. Every single quality that we most admire, trust,
and love is to be found in Jesus Christ. The only reason of our
failure to love Him more ardently than any human being we know is
that we do not think enough about Him.
How much offended we should be if anyone dared to say to us,
"You are not a Christian." We all consider ourselves Christians as a
matter of course; but why this certainty, what reason can we give?
Many would say, "I keep the Commandments, and I am baptised in
Christ's name." But Christianity is not an act done by hands, it is a
life, and the Jews keep the Commandments even more strictly than
we and are not Christians. The mere fact of believing that Christ
once lived and was crucified is not enough. The Jews and also the
Mahommedans believe that He lived and was crucified.
What is then necessary? That we believe that He is indeed the Son
of God, the Messiah, the Saviour; for if He was no more than a holy
man, by what means has He power to save us more than Moses has
power to save us?
The true inward knowledge that Christ is God comes not by nature
to any man, but by gift of God--which gift must be earnestly sought,
striven, prayed for, and desired: this faith is the very coming to God
by which we are saved. If we are not yet in this faith that Jesus
Christ is the Messiah, then we are neither Jew, Mahommedan, nor
Christian, but wanderers without a fold, and without a Shepherd;
longing, and not yet comforted.
How do we come by this joy of the personal loving of God, this
Romance of the Soul brought to sensible fruition whilst still in the
flesh?
Is it a gift? Yes. Is it a gift because of some merit of goodness on our
part beyond the goodness of other persons who are without it,
though striving? No. Is it because of some work for God that we do
in this world, charitable or social? No. Is it, then, nothing but an
arbitrary favouritism on His part? No. Is it a sagacity or cleverness,
a height of learning, a result of close study? No.
It is simply and solely a certain and particular obedient attitude of
heart and mind towards God of the nature of a longing--giving, a
grateful outgoing thinking towards Him, continually maintained, and
a heart invitation to, and a receiving of Jesus Christ into ourselves.
Our part is to maintain this obedient tender-waiting, giving and
receiving attitude under all the circumstances of daily life, and
Christ with the Holy Ghost will then work the miracle in us.
But so difficult is this attitude to maintain that we are totally unable
to do it without another gift upon His part--Grace. The whole
process from first to last is gift upon gift, and that because first of
our belief and desire, and then of our continually remembering that
to receive these gifts we have a part to play which God will not dispense
with. For an illustration let us turn to the artist and his sitter.
The sitter does not produce the work of art, but must maintain his
attitude: if he refuses to do this, the work of the artist is marred and
even altogether foiled. So with Christ and His Divine Art in bringing
us to our Father--by not endeavouring to maintain our right attitude
we foil His work. God would seem to give us that which we seek
and ask for, and no more. Great ecclesiastics, theologians,
philosophers who sought and desired Him with the intelligence,
seeking for knowledge, for pre-eminence of spiritual wisdom, were
not given as an addition to their learning this exquisite fire and balm
of love. Those who desired of Christ the healing of the body
received that, and we are not told they received anything further. So
also with the woman at the well: "If thou hadst asked," Christ said to
her, "I would have given thee of the water of Life." Without we ask
for and receive this gift of Love we hang to God by Faith only.
What is true religion, what is that religion by which we shall feel
_wholly satisfied?_ It is to have Christ recognised, known, adored,
and living in the soul. This is the New Life within us, this is the New
Birth. The first proofs of the power of this New Life in us is the
victory over all the lower passions, victory over the animal "that
once was ourself"! A victory so complete that not only do we cease
to desire those former things or be troubled by them but we no
longer "respond" to that which is base, even though we be brought
into visual contact with such things as would formerly have
inevitably excited at least a passing response in us. Can any man
free himself in such a manner from his own nature? Common sense
forbids us imagine it. It is then a Living Power within us, slowly
transforming us to higher levels, from the fleshly to the spiritual, and
shaping us to meet the purity of God. And such is the tender
consideration of this Power for our weakness that while we are
learning to give up these baser pleasures He teaches us the higher
pleasures of the soul--we are not left comfortless. So in our earlier
stages we may have many very wonderful ecstasies which later are
altogether dispensed with, and indeed are eventually not desired by
the soul, or even the more greedy heart and mind, which all now ask
and desire one favour only--to be on earth in continual fellowship
with Christ Jesus and ever able to enter into the love of God. To be
without this glorious power of entering Responsive Love of God, to
be cut off from this, is the great and only fear of the soul. This fear it
is which holds the soul and the creature towards God both day and
night lest by the least forgetfulness or wrongful attitude they should
lose Him or displease Him.
All these changes no man can bring about for himself--they are
accomplished for him by the Holy Spirit; but this he can and _must_
do for himself, invite Sweet Jesus into his heart and enthrone Him
there as Ruler. This once accomplished, that mysterious monitor
within us commonly known as "Conscience" grows until it attains an
excessive sensitiveness which penetrates the minutest acts of life
and the deepest recesses of heart and mind. It becomes inexorable, it
demands instant and complete obedience. Because of it relations
with other persons undergo a drastic change. Complete, instant,
entire forgiveness for every offence is demanded, and at last even a
momentary annoyance must be effaced; no matter how great the
cause of annoyance, it must be effaced in the same instant as that in
which it crosses the mind, for a single adverse thought eventually
proves as injurious to the Spirit as a grain of sand is to the eyes.
The petty human aims, the smallness of all our former standards, the
instinct for "retaliation" must all be overcome, laid upon one side--a
slow task of much humiliation to the creature, revealing to it its own
smallness and vanity and its own extraordinary ineffectiveness of
self-control, its puny powers over itself: nothing short of an absolute
self-conquest is aimed at and demanded by this inward monitor--the
Soul. With what profound veneration for and recognition of the
power of God does the regenerated creature think of those
alterations in its own nature which, after long strivings, are
eventually given it by God, and of those alterations not yet stabilised
because not yet gifts, but only on the way to perhaps becoming
gifts--that is to say, still only where the power of the creature itself
has been able to raise them: for of these last it may invariably be said
that to-day we may feel serene security and to-morrow fall and fail--and
this in the very meanest way!
We see on every side men and women who try to fill an emptiness, a
wanting that they feel within themselves, by every sort of means
except the only one which can ever be a permanent success. Women
devote themselves to lovers, husbands, children, dress, society, and
dogs; men to business, ambition, the racecourse, folly, drink, games,
and arts. Are any of these persons truly happy, truly satisfied in all
their being? No, and they descend to old age surrounded by the dust
of disillusionment. Lonely and soon forgotten by the hungry
pleasure-seeking crowd, such persons pass from this world, and the
most their friends have to say is that they have gone to a better one.
But have they? For the mere fact of shedding the flesh does not
bring us any nearer to God. On the contrary, the shedding of the
flesh increases appallingly the difficulty of the soul in finding God.
This world is the very place in which we can most easily and
quickly get into communication with God. To think that the mere act
of dying improves our character and takes us to heaven is a delusion
of the Enemy--it is living here which can fit us and carry us to
heaven; and we have no great distance to travel either, for heaven is
a state of consciousness, and by entering that state of consciousness
we become united and connected with such degrees of heaven as the
flesh is able to bear, though these degrees fall infinitely short of
those required by the soul: hence the fearful hungering and longing
of the soul to depart from the flesh. If we do not find Christ whilst
we are here, when we cast off the flesh we enter a bewildering
vortex of a life of terrible intensity and great solitude. We are aware
of nothing but Self, are tormented by Self with its forever
unsatisfied longings, and by the _impossibility of achieving any
other Self._ In this intensity of self-tormenting loneliness the soul
feels to gyrate, and all that she knows of that which is outside of this
Self is the sound of the rushing of invisible things, for she is blind.
Without the light of this world and without the light of Christ. The
joys of space are not open to her, only the dark and lonely horrors of
it: she is in an incalculably greater state of isolation from God than
here in this world! The remedy for all this lies here; let no one think
he can afford to wait to find this remedy until after he leaves this
world, for then his chance is gone, and who is able to foretell when
it will return? What can be more beautiful, more happy, than to find
this remedy, to find the only Being who loves us as much as we love
ourselves! the gentle, tender, gracious, all-sufficing Christ; that
all-mighty ever-giving Christ who yearns over and longs for us--what
madness is it that prevents us seeking Him?
All of us would seem to have two personalities: we are the repentant
and the unrepentant Magdalene and daily change from one to the
other. But true repentance cannot come before love: if we think we
repent before we love, then it is no more than a repentance of the
mind, which says to itself, "I must stand well with God because of
my future well-being." Where love comes first we get the repentance
of the heart, which works this way in us--we love Jesus a little, we
love Him more and more, and because of this love increasing to real
warmth we suddenly perceive the frightful offences we have
committed against this sweet love, and instantly the heart melts and
breaks and we are shaken to our depths that we have ever grieved
our Holy Lover. This is true repentance--no anxious fears for our
own future, but love grieving and agonised for its offences. Such
repentance as this pierces to the deepest recesses of the heart and
mind, and leaves upon them a deep indelible mark, changing all the
aims of our life, and is the beginning of all joys in Christ Jesus. Let
us aim therefore not first at repentance, but first at love. A little love
to Jesus given many times a day as we walk or wait or work, if only
at first said by the lips with desire for more warmth, after a while we
shall find ourselves giving it from the heart; then the Divine Seed
has begun to grow because we have watered it.
If the natural man were asked, "What is life? what is it to live?" he
would reply, "It is to eat, drink, laugh, love, and have pleasure or
pain: to hear, see, touch, taste and smell, and to be conscious that I
do all these things." Yet this consciousness is but a tiny speck of
consciousness, and some mysterious voice within the deeply-thinking
man tells him that this is so. But how uncover a further
consciousness? This is the secret of the soul.
To pass from one form of consciousness to another--this is to
increase life fifty, a hundred, a thousand times according to the
degrees of consciousness we can attain. These degrees would seem
to be irrevocably limited because of the mechanical actions of heart
and breathing, which automatic actions become suspended or
seriously interfered with in very high states of consciousness. When
first these very great expansions of consciousness take place, the
creature is under strong conviction that the soul has left the
body--that it has gone upon some mysterious journey--this because of
several reasons. The first is because of a certain persistent sound of
rushing; the second is because of the sense of living at tremendous
speed, in a manner previously altogether unknown and totally
undreamed of, in which the senses of the body have no concern
whatever and are completely closed down; thirdly, on returning
from this "journey" we are not immediately able to exact obedience
from the body, which remains inert and stiffly cold and suffers
distress with too slow breathing. But reason demands, "How is it
possible that the soul should leave the body and the body not die?
and also we perceive this, that, though the consciousness is
projected to an infinite distance, or includes that infinite distance
within itself, it yet remains aware of the existence of the body,
though very dimly."
The method employed, then, for administering these experiences to
the soul and the creature is not by means of drawing the soul out of
the body, but by a withdrawal of the condition of insulation from
Divine Life or great magnetic emanation, in which insulation all
creatures have their normal existence, living in a condition which
may be termed a state of total Unawareness. By Will of God this
condition of insulation is removed, the soul enters Connection and
becomes instantly and vividly aware of Spiritual Life and of that
which Is, at an infinite distance from herself, so that the soul is at
one and the same time in paradise or heaven, and upon the earth:
space is eaten up. Without seeing or hearing, the soul partakes in a
tremendous and unspeakable manner of the joys of God, which, all
unfelt by us as "natural" man, pass unceasingly throughout the
universe.
These experiences give an immense and unshakable knowledge to
the soul and the creature of the immense reality of the Unseen Life,
and are doubtless sent us to effect this knowledge. Why, then, is not
every man given this knowledge? Because the creature must qualify
before being allowed to receive it, and too many hold back from the
tests. By these experiences we learn some little portion of the
mystery which lies between the pettiness of that which we now are
and the great glories that we shall come to; and in this awful
heavenly mystery in which are fires that have no flame, and melody
which has no sound, the soul is drawn to Everlasting Love. But we
cannot endure the bliss of it, and the soul prays to be covered on
account of the creature.
But because of the limitations of the flesh we are not to despise it
but regard it not as an aim or end (as that if we satisfy its lusts that
shall be our paradise), but regard it as a means. Christ willed the
flesh and the world to be a rapid means of our return to God. Subdue
the flesh without despising it, in humility and thankfulness. Suffer
its trials and penalties not in dejection, rebellion, or hopelessness,
but as a means to an end. "For everyone shall be salted with fire,"
says Scripture; and can anything whatever be well forged or made
without it be first melted and cleaned? So, then, for each his
Gethsemane. As for Christ, so for Judas, who, not being able to
endure, went out and hanged himself. Let our care, then, be to
choose that Gethsemane which shall open to us the gates of heaven
and not hell.
In our raw state we fear the Will of God, thinking it a path of thorns;
but as Christ moulds and teaches us we grow to know the Will of
God as a great Balm: to long to conform to it, joyfully to join it, to
sink into it as into an immense security where we are safe from all
ills; and at last, no matter what temporary trials we endure, so great
does our love and confidence grow by _Grace_ of God upholding
our tiny efforts that, like Job, we cry to Him with absolute sincerity
and confidence, "Though Thou slay me, yet will I trust Thee";
having learnt it is not His Will to slay but to restore and purify and
make glad. Incessant work is the lot of the awakened and returning
soul, and justly so, for because of what folly and ingratitude did she
ever leave God? A multiplicity of choices lie before her, and her
great concern is which amongst all these possible decisions will
prove the shortest path to God. These choices and decisions must be
brought down to the meanest details of everyday life. At first on
awakening the soul would like nothing better than to forsake and
cast away material things altogether, and is inclined to despise the
body. But Jesus teaches her that this is not pleasing: it is His Will
that she should continually lend assistance to the creature in its
weaknesses and uncertainties, not disdaining it but helping it. It is
the soul which maintains contact with the Divine Guide, and then in
turn should guide the creature. As the Divine Guide condescends to
the soul, never despising her, so must the soul condescend to the
creature: acknowledging and understanding that nothing is too small
or humble for the soul to attend to and lead the creature to do in a
beautiful and gentle manner.
By these means the permeation of the natural world by the Divine is
carried out, and no act or fact of life can be considered too
insignificant for the soul to attend to for the development of this aim.
The more we become familiar with spiritual life the more we
observe the regularity of certain laws in it, and the more we find
analogies between these new and unmapped laws and the laws and
forces already known to us in the visible world. Rightly expounded
by some scientific mind, these could bring the world of human
thought and aspirations straight into the arms of God.
Science is the friend and not the enemy of religion. Science will
light up and illuminate the dark gaps. This world is a house fully
wired for lighting: the wiring is perfect, the bulbs alone are
incomplete; they give no light: it is the task of the soul to perfect
these human bulbs.
The life of conscious connection with God is true living as far as we
may know it in the flesh, an enormous increase over the petty
normal life of the world or, more rightly, the petty and _lacking_ life
of the world. For in this life of God-consciousness is an immense
sanity and poise, a balance between soul and body and heart and
mind never achieved in the "normal" or "natural" life. Therefore the
God-conscious life is not to be named an abnormal but the complete,
full, and only truly normal life: a life in which both soul and creature
have found their centre, and the whole being in all its parts is
brought to evenness, to harmony, to peace and a greatly magnified
intelligence. If all men and women attained this state, this world
would automatically become Paradise. In this true life living and
feeling alter their characteristics and surpass anything that can be
imagined by the uninitiated mind. Now, though to convey some idea
of this condition of consciousness would seem to be impossible, still
there are some types of persons to whom a little something of the
commencement of the larger life of the awakened soul might be
conveyed before they themselves experience it. The lovers of nature,
of music, of the beautiful and romantic, and of poetry: in the highest
moments reached by such they are aware of an indefinable
Something--an expansion, a going out towards, a longing--yearning,
subtly composed of both joy and pain, which goes beyond the earth,
beyond the music, beyond the poetry, beyond the beautiful into a
Nameless Bourne. At these moments they live with the soul: this is
the commencement of spirit-life. When the Nameless Bourne has
become to the soul that which It really is--God--and _He sends His
responses to her,_ then the soul knows the fullness of spiritual life as
we may know it in the flesh.
But she can neither know the Nameless Bourne as God nor receive
His responses till the heart and the mind have come to repentance of
their ways and have been changed at least in part. Without this mode
of living no one can be said to live in a full or whole manner,
because nothing is whole which does not include the consciousness
of God, and this in a lively and acute degree.
One of our great difficulties is that when, as the merely
half-repentant creature, we turn to God and, beginning to ask favours of
Him, get no response, then all our warm feelings and longings
towards Him fall back, we go into a state either of profounder
unbelief (which is further separation) or into total apathy. Apathy is
a deadly thing. The more God loves us the more He will do His part
to keep us from it. All the circumstances of life will be used to this
end. We may lose our nearest and dearest. If it is material prosperity
that causes a too complete content to live without Him, then some or
all of that prosperity will be removed. In whatever spot we are most
tender--there He will touch us. "Oh, if it had been anyone else or
anything less that we had lost, then it would not have been so hard to
bear," we say. Exactly. For nothing less would have been of any use,
and alas! even this may be of no use, for Christ is ever willing and
trying to save us, and we will not be saved.
If we do not get out of this apathy, we shall miss the whole reason of
our life here. By these living thrusts He brings us to our knees,
humbled, humiliated, anguished, in order that, having awakened and
purified us, He may lift us into His Divine consolations.
We cannot in one step mount up out of our faithless indifferent
wrongful condition into the glories of the knowledge of God. First
we must learn to know Jesus, intimately, devotedly. Then Jesus the
Christ: then the Father. Finally God the Holy Trinity, once found
and known by us, becomes our All, and by some unspeakable
condescension He becomes to us all things in all ways. The soul is
filled with romantic and divine love, and instantly God is her Holy
Lover: she is sad, weary, or afraid, and immediately she turns to
Him He comforts and mothers her: she is filled with adoring filial
love, and at once He is her Father. Oh, the wonders of the fullness of
the finding and knowing of God!
Let the man who would know happiness here study the works of
God, and not think he will gain virtue by putting everything that he
sees here upon one side, saying it is not real or it is not good. It is
very real of its own kind, and good also if he learns how to use it,
and very marvellous. Let him study how things are made--God's
things, not trivial man-made things--let him observe how all are
made with equal care, the humblest and the proudest, "the tiny violet
perfect as the oak." Let him learn the manner of the ways of light
and the colours of all that he sees,[*] and then stop to consider how,
having made all these marvels, God then fashioned his own delicate
eyes that he might see and know and enjoy them all. To consider all
these things, accepting them from God with love, makes the heart
and the mind and the soul dance and sing together not with noise but
like sunshine upon water.
[*] _Scientific Ideas of To-day,_ by C. Gibson.
What is Nature but the demonstration in visible objects of an
invisible Will? This Will we need to trace to its Source; having done
this, we are able to praise and bless God for every single thing of
beauty He has fashioned here: and this praising and blessing of God
becomes nothing less than a continual ecstasy for both soul and
creature, and, indeed, because of this and by means of this burning
appreciation of God's works, both soul and creature find their
sweetest consolations as they wait to be taken to a holier world.
When they both bless God with the fire of their love for every tender
thing that He has made, then their days become to them one long
delight.
This blessing of God and His works is not just a blessing with lips,
but feels this way. The words being said by the heart, a burning
spark of enthusiasm is immediately kindled there, which spark sets
light to a spark in the soul; and this invisible fire joining another
Invisible Fire, instantly in immense exaltation we enter the joys of
God. But because of our flesh we cannot stay but only enter and
come back.
We are made to love and adore God, but the mode of entry into this
is not by beseeching God to come down and love us, but by constant
endeavour to enter up into _His_ estate, to offer _Him_ love: this
enthusiasm for God brings about a mysterious accomplishment of all
needs, desires, joys.
We are made to love and adore God, and because of this without
Him we are an Emptiness, a Great Want. Such is the lovely and
perfect reciprocity of love that as this Great Want we are the
pleasure and the joy of the All-Giving God. And He is the
All-Giving that He may rejoice and fill our extremity of Want. So we
are each to each that which each most desires. This is Divine Love.
Do not let us imagine that by making very much of earthly loves we
shall by that obtain the heavenly: on the contrary, love of creatures,
and too much turning to and thinking of and depending upon
creatures, is a sure manner of hindering us _till_ we have learnt to
unite with Divine Love. This love for creatures is often for the heart
and soul what treacle is to the wings of a fly! Do not be content with
creatures, but seek beyond the creaturely for the heavenly.
This is not to say that we are not to love our fellow-creatures, attend
to them, wait upon them, bear with them, and work for them; but
whilst doing all these we are not to make them the object of our life:
we are not to think that by merely running about amongst creatures
frenzied with plans for their social improvement and comfort the
nearer we are necessarily getting to God, or even truly pleasing Him.
All these multiplicities of frenzied interests are best centred upon the
finding and knowing and loving of Jesus Christ within our own
hearts. When this finding, knowing, loving and believing has been
accomplished, then we shall have accomplished the only work God
asks us to accomplish, and all other works will automatically,
peacefully, and smoothly come to their proper fruition in us through
Him.
Neither imagine we shall do this finding of Jesus in, or because of,
another person. We shall not find Him in another person or
anywhere till we have first found Him in ourselves: and this by
inward pondering, delicate tender thinkings, loving comparisons,
sweet enthusiasms, persistent endeavours to imitate His gentle ways
and manners as being some proof of our desire to love and find Him.
The need which is the most pressing of all our needs is to find that
Light which will light us when we have to go out from the light of
this world into the awful solitudes of that which we often so lightly
and confidently speak of as "the other world."
Without Christ we go out into a fearful loneliness: with Christ we
walk the rainbow paths of Paradise.
* * *
Having tasted the blissful wonders of God, nothing less than God
Himself can satisfy, comfort, or fill either the soul, heart, or mind;
and yet we are still in a too small and imperfect condition to endure
the power and strength of God's bliss for more than brief spells, so
that after coming to these high things our portion here is to learn to
be a useful willing servant, carrying with as cheerful a face as we are
able the burden of life in the flesh, and endure this waiting to be
with Christ free of the flesh.
What are these blisses of God? They are contact with an
immeasurable Ardour, they are our ardour meeting the Fountain of
all Ardours: and God is communicated to us by a magnetism which
in its higher degrees becomes luminous and unbearable.
Are these divine joys and comforts of God towards us because we
are more loved by God, because our salvation is more sure than that
of those who are without these comforts? Most emphatically no. It is
because we obey a particular and subtle law of giving to God, and
do not (as is more natural to us) content ourselves with merely
believing, expecting, and hoping to receive _from_ God.
Let us pray more frequently than we do: "My Lord, increase my
faith, increase my love, and increase my understanding of how to
use this faith and this love when they have been begotten in me."
* * *
On every side we hear complaints against the Church. It is suggested
that we are falling away from God because of some lack in the
Church. But this fault of the Church is exactly the same fault which
is to be found in the members of the congregation which compose it--a
tepid love for a dimly known Lord. When the priest and every
member of the congregation in his own heart worships the beloved
Christ, then the Church will be found to have gained just that which
is now lacking, and which we attribute to some priestly failure and
not our own also.
Of Church ceremonials it is hard to speak, for the lover of God can
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.
"Now try again and again and again," cries the soul, "O thou
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.
* * *
What is our part and what is our righteousness in all this Process of
the Saviour? This--that we obey, and that we renounce our own will,
accepting and abiding by the Will of God: and this self-lending,
self-surrender, this sacrifice of self-will is counted to us for sufficient
righteousness to merit heavenly life. But from first to last we remain
conscious that we have no righteousness of our own, that we are
very small and full of weaknesses, and remain unable to think or say,
"This is my righteousness, I am righteous," any more than a man
standing bathed in, or receiving the sunlight can say or think, "I am
the sun." Is all this, then, as much as to say that we can sit down and
do nothing; but, leaving all to Christ, we merely believe, and
because of this believing our redemption is accomplished? No, for
we have an active part to play, a part that God never dispenses
with--the active keeping of the will in an active state of practical
obedience, submission, humble uncomplaining endurance through
every kind of test. What will these perhaps too much dreaded tests
be that He will put us through? He will make use of the difficulties,
opportunities, temptations, and events of everyday life in the world
(which difficulties we should have to pass through whether we
become regenerated or not) down to the smallest act, the most secret
thought, the most hidden intention and desire. But through it all it is
the Great Physician Himself who cures, and we are no more able to
perform these changes of regeneration in heart and mind than we are
able to perform a critical operation on our own body. So He takes
our vanities and, one by one, strews them among the winds, and we
raise no protest; takes our prides and breaks them in pieces, and we
submit; takes our self-gratifications and reduces them to dust, and
we stand stripped but patient; takes the natural lusts of the creature
and transfigures them to Holy Love. And in all this pain of transition,
what is the Divine Anaesthetic that He gives us? His Grace.
Having submitted to all that Christ esteems necessary for our
regeneration, what does He set us to? Service. Glad, happy service
to all who may need it. He has wonderful ways of making us
acquainted with His especial friends, and it pleases Him to make us
the means of answering the prayers of His poor for help, to their
great wonder and joy and to the increase of their faith in Him. Also
He uses us as a human spark, to ignite the fires of another man's
heart: when He uses us in this way, it will seem to one like the
opening of a window--to another a magnetism. One will see it as a
light flashed on dark places, another receives it as the finding of a
track where before was no track. But however many times we may
be used in this way, the working remains a mystery to us.
What is our reward whilst still in this world for our patient
obediences and renunciations? This--that all becomes well with us
the moment the process is brought to the stage where the aim of our
life ceases to be the enjoyment of worldly life and becomes fixed
upon the Invisible and upon God: and all this by and because of love,
for it is love alone which can make us genuinely glad to give up our
own will and which can keep us from sinning.
We commence by qualifying through our human love, meagre and
fluctuating as it is, for God's gift of holy love--of divine reciprocity,
and with the presentation of this divine gift immediately we find
ourselves in possession of _a new set of desires,_ which for the first
time in our experience of living prove themselves completely
satisfying in fruition. God does not leave us in an arid waste,
because He would have us to be holy, and nowhere are there such
ardent desires as in heaven; but He transposes and transfigures the
carnal desires into the spiritual by means of this gift of divine
reciprocity which is at once access to and union with Himself. Now,
and only now do we find the sting pulled out of every adverse
happening and every woe of life, and out of death also.
And the whole process is to be gone through just where and how and
as we find ourselves--in our own home or in the home of another,
married or single, rich or poor,--with these three watchwords,
Obedience, Patience and Simplicity.
But it is not sufficient to have once achieved this union with God: to
rest in happiness the soul must continually achieve it. It follows then
that our need is not an isolated event but a _life,_ a life lived with
God, and in experience we find that this alone can satisfy us. A life
in which we receive hourly the breath of His tenderness and pity,
His infinite solace to a pardoned soul.
_Of the Interchange of Thought without Sound_
Many persons know what it is to have the experience with another
person of a simultaneous exactitude of thought--speaking aloud the
same words in the same instant. Others experience in themselves the
power to exchange thought and to know the mind of another
without the medium of sound, though not without the medium of
word-forms, this last being a capacity possessed only by the soul in
communion with the Divine. We name these experiences thought-waves,
mind-reading, mental telepathy, and understand very little about them;
but beyond this mind-telepathy there is a telepathy of the
soul about which we understand nothing whatever. This is the
divine telepathy, with words or _without word-forms,_ by which
Christ instructs His followers. The telepathy of the mind is the
indicator to the existence of a telepathy of the soul; for the mind
indicates to us that which should be sought and known by the soul,
and without we come to divine things first in a creaturely way
(being creatures) we shall never come to them at all. The mind
desires and indicates, the soul achieves.
This telepathy with Christ is the means by which the soul learns in a
direct manner the will and the teaching and the mind of Christ, and
it is by this means she gains such wisdom as it is God's will she shall
have. The soul seeks this telepathy during the second stage, vaguely,
not knowing or understanding the mode of it, receiving it rarely and
with great difficulty.
In the third stage she obtains it in abundance, at times briefly, at
others at great length.
* * *
That God has his dwelling-place at an incalculably great distance
from ourselves is a true knowledge of the soul: but a further
knowledge reveals to us that this calamity is mitigated, and for short
periods even annulled, by provision of His within the soul to
annihilate this distance, and be the means of bringing the soul into
such immediate contact with Himself as she is able to endure. But
the Joy-Energy of God being insupportable to the very nature of
flesh, in His tender love and pity He provides us, through the Person
of His Son, with degrees of union of such sweet gentleness that we
may continually enjoy them through every hour of life; and through
His Son He comes out to meet the prodigal "while yet afar off."
This is strongly observable, that as the process of Christ proceeds
and grows in us, though our joys in God are individual, yet they
become also clothed in a garment of the universal, so that the soul,
when she enters the fires of worship and of blessing and of
conversing with God--without any forethought, but by a cause or
need now become a part of herself,--enters these states and gives to
Him no longer as I, but as We--which is to say, as All Souls.
* * *
Many of us look to death to work a miracle for us, thinking the mere
cessation of physical living will give entry to paradise or even
heaven, so long as we are baptised and call ourselves Christians.
This is a great delusion. In character, personality, cleanliness,
goodwill we are, after death, exactly as far advanced as we were
before death, and no further. What then is needed, since death will
not help us? The Seed of Divine love and life planted and
consciously _growing_ in us whilst we are still in this world. And
what is this Seed?--the Redeemer.
* * *
What is paradise, what is heaven? The progressive gradations of
conditions of a perfect reciprocity of love, and the greater the
perfection of this reciprocity the greater the altitudes attained of
heaven. Thus we see in Scripture that the angels who stand nearest
to God or highest in heaven are the cherubim--that is to say, they are
those who have attained a greater reciprocity than all other angels.
Now this Divine love is incomprehensible to us until we are initiated
into its mystery as a gift, and cannot be understood nor guessed at
by comparisons with any human loves however great, noble, or pure;
but this burning fiery essence of joy, this radiant glory of delight,
this holy and ineffable fulfilment of the uttermost needs, longings,
and requirements of the soul must be personally experienced by us
to be comprehended.
What madness in us is it that can count as an added cross or burden
any means by which we reach such perfection of bliss for ever? The
Cross is for us the misery of our own blinding sins and selfishnesses.
The burden is the weight of our own distance from God. "Take up
thy cross (which is our daily life of ignorance and sin), take up thy
cross, and follow Me," says the voice of the Saviour; and as we do it
and follow Him the distance between God and ourselves diminishes,
and finally the burden and the cross _disappear,_ and behold God!
awaiting us with His consolations.
It is the stopping half-way that causes would-be followers of Christ
such distress. It is necessary that we follow Him all the way and not
merely a part of it--that He may complete His process in us. When
we are living altogether in a creaturely, natural, or unregenerated
way, absorbed in the ambitions and interests of a worldly life, we
are perhaps content. When we live regenerated and in the spirit, we
are in great joy; but when we try to live between the two and would
serve God and worldly interests at the same time we are in gloomy
wretchedness, vacillation, depression.
The Master said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you," which
signified that within us was the potentiality to have entrance to, and
to know, the mystery of the Divine Secret, and to participate whilst
still living here, in the early degrees or manifestations of Divine
Love--that Power which glorifies the angels, and is Heaven.
_Of the three Stages of God-Consciousness_
_(Which more properly expressed is the gift of immediate access of
the soul of God)_
There are three principal stages on the way of progress--three
separate degrees of God-Consciousness. The first is the
Consciousness of the Presence of Jesus, the Perfect Man. We take
Him into the heart, accept and know Him, love and obey Him. In the
second stage we receive Jesus as the Christ and recognise Him as
the Messiah (of which the mind was not sure in the first stage). We
rejoice in Him, giving Him a more perfect obedience. In the third
the soul is given the Consciousness of the Father, and, being filled
with a very great love and joy, worships Him as the Known God.
Now life immediately becomes totally changed, fear and sin are
swept away, and love rules the Universe.
It is now that God makes us know His glamour; that He casts over
the soul His golden net of spiritual delights, and by them seems to
challenge her, saying to the soul, "Now that I reveal Myself to thee,
canst thou ever return to the joys of the world, canst thou find its
pleasures sweet, canst thou be satisfied with any human love; canst
thou by any means resist Me now that I show Myself?" And the soul
answers Him, "Nay Lord, in truth I cannot."
The remembrance of these powers and these spells of God make for
the soul a sure foundation of repose and certainty in the days of the
testing of fidelity that still lie before her: they also further reveal to
her His consummate care of her exact requirements, for she cannot
pass beyond a certain stage without a direct personal assurance is
given her. First He demands of us that we have, and actively
maintain, a clean will to turn and cleave to Him, without any
assurance beyond written assurance (Scripture); and having given
Him a thorough proof of fidelity, He then grants us the personal
assurance. Having been given these rapturous concessions, what
would perfection demand of us--a total withdrawal from the world--a
hiding away in secret with our soul's treasure of delights? Maybe
for some; but a higher perfection calls us back to service in the
wretched turmoil of the world, to work and to stand in the House of
Rimmon and never bow the knee, to carry with us everywhere the
Divine Consciousness and preserve its light undimmed in every
sordid petty circumstance of daily life, to endure with perfect
patience the follies and the prides of the unenlightened. Whoever
can achieve those things may find himself at last a saint.
Very early in this third stage a miracle is performed in us: without
knowing how it came about or what day it was done, we suddenly
know that the heart and the mind _have become virgin_--and this
without any variation. Every kind of lust, whether of eye, body,
heart, or mind, has been removed from us, and never again has any
power over us, for the will has become superior to lust, and there is
a finish to all such contending: this moral healing is more impressive
than any physical healing. Before this miracle is performed for us,
we have suffered many things, as much as we can bear: subtle and
astonishing temptations of mind and body and spirit "call to
remembrance the former days in which after ye were illuminated ye
endured a great fight of afflictions" (Heb. x. 32).
This person that writes formerly supposed that no creature was
admitted to the blessedness of being in any way with God in Spirit
without they were already become a saint; but this is not so, and He
accepts the sinner long before he is a saint (if ever we become one in
this world, which is doubtful), provided the will is always held good
towards God.
This is the mighty Process of Christ which he desires to perform for
all. Of the tears we shed over it the less mention the better; they are
precious tears, necessary tears, cleansing tears, and if we will not
lend ourselves to this Process of Christ we may have as many tears
for our portion and no benefit from them in the way of advancement.
Let us weep the tears that God Himself will wipe away.
So then in the first stage the Soul tastes of the sweet companionship
of Jesus. In the second, of the might and graciousness of Christ; in
the third, of the fullness of God and His unspeakable delights. "Thou
shalt give them to drink of Thy pleasures, as out of the river" (Psalm
xxxvi.).
In the third stage of God-Consciousness a great change takes place
in our relationship to God. Besides the magnitude of the alterations
of the inner life--the sweeping spiritual changes--the body also
shares in a change, for, whilst we formerly prayed to God with a
bowed head and a hidden face, we now become unable to pray or
approach Him except with a raised head and an uncovered face. This
change is not from any thought or intention of our own, but we are
forced to it by a sweet necessity. In a company of persons praying,
all those in the third stage could be immediately known by this
necessity of the raised and bared face if we were not taught by the
Holy Spirit never to reveal to others that we are in the third stage
except in special instances. For this reason it is not possible to enter
true communion with God in a public place of worship unless we
can conceal ourselves from others. For the face undergoes a change
in communion with God, and it is not pleasing to Him that this
should be seen by any eye but His own.
If anyone finds great difficulty (and the most of us do) in coming to
the first stage--that of taking Jesus into the heart--he must pray every
day in a few short words _from the heart_ that God will give him to
Jesus, and in due time he will be heard.
In the third stage of progress we have the home-coming of the soul
as far as we are able to know it in the flesh: "We taste of the powers
of God" (Hebrews).
But the fullness of home-coming is reserved for that day in which
the greatest of all the mysteries will be revealed to us--the mystery
of the Relation of the Soul to God.
In that great day we shall know God by His Own Name.
* * *
We do not find God by denying the existence of things not pleasing
to Him. We do not find the Eternal Goodness by saying that Evil
does not exist. We do not find true health of spirit because we deny
all sickness, pain, and disease. Such a mode of Christianity may give
a sense of comfort, lend a false security to the heart and mind at
once weary of God-searching, and disenchanted with the world; but
it is not the Christianity which regenerates. It is a narcotic, not a
Redemption. It is the way of a mind unwilling to face truths because
they pain. If there was anything made plain by Christ it is that the
way of Redemption lies through heroism and not cowardice. Let
those of us who too much fear a passing pain of sacrifice of will
remember that the deepest of all pains, the last word in the tragedy
of life, is to come to old age and descend to the grave without
having found the Saviour. For our calamity is that we are lost souls.
Our opportunity is that in this world we find the track of Christ
which leads us home.
* * *
God does not create a new world on purpose for His lovers
immediately to live in, yet though we remain our full time in this
same world it is not the same world. We see a person in a severe
illness and again in full health. It is the same person, and not the
same person. We see a garden filled with flowers in the rain under
grey clouds, and again the same garden filled with mellow sunlight
under blue skies; it is the same garden, and not the same garden.
These changes could never be described or conveyed to the man
blind from birth; neither can spiritual changes be described or
conveyed till we ourselves gain similarity of experience. God
transposes our pleasures, taking the glamour from the guilty and
transferring it to the blameless; by this transforming our lives. He
increases the pleasure of unworldly enjoyments so we are
independent of the worldly ones. But we cannot remain in this
transformed world of His unless we are at peace both with ourself
and all persons around us.
Though from earliest childhood we may have found in the beauties
of Nature a great delight, when we become the lover of God He
passes His fingers over our hearts and our eyes and opens them to
marvellous new powers for joy. Oh, the ecstasy that may be known
in one short walk alone with God! The overflowing heart cries out to
Him, What other lover is there can give such bliss as this, and what
is all Nature but a lovely language between Thee and me! Then the
soul spreads wings into the blue and sings to Him like soaring lark.
But do not let us seek Him only because of His Delights, for so we
might miss Him altogether. But let it be because it is His wish:
because Perfection calls, and mystery calls to mystery, and love to
love, and Light calls to the darkness and the Dawn is born.
The glamour of God is come down about my soul,
And He who made all loveliness has decked my heart in spring,
And garlanded me round about with tender buds
Of flowers and scented things, and love and light.
I see no rain, no sad grey skies,
For the glamour of God has come down about mine eyes,
And the Voice of the Maker of all loveliness
Calling to my soul, leads me enchanted
Up the glittering mysteries of Infinity.
------
[Transcriber's notes: The name of the author, Lilian Staveley, is not
mentioned on the title page of this text, but I have added it here.
Also I have made two spelling changes:
"subsitute another picture" to "substitute another picture"
"accepts the sinner long long before he is a saint" to
"accepts the sinner long before he is a saint".]
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