LVI
THE EMANATION AND RETURN
Nolite timere eos qui corpus occidunt, animum autem occidere non
possunt (Matt. 1022).
'Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul.'
Spirit does not kill spirit;
spirit gives life to spirit.
'Them which kill you' are flesh and blood which die by one another.
Man's most precious possession is blood, when it is well-liking.
The most mischievous thing in man is blood when it is ill-liking.
When the blood rules the flesh, the person is humble and patient and
chaste and has all the virtues.
But where the flesh has the upper hand he is supercilious, hasty, and
lascivious and has all the vices.
Praised by St John the glorified of God himself.
Now
mark. I
say something I never said before.
When God created the heavens and the earth and all creatures,
God did no work; he had no work to do; there was no activity in him.
God said: 'We will make a likeness.'
To create is easy; we do it when and as we will.
But what I make, I make myself, with myself and in myself, imprinting my
image clearly in it. 'We will make a likeness': not the Father nor the Son nor
the Holy Ghost: we, the holy Trinity in concert, we will make a likeness.
When
God made man he wrought in the soul his like work, his ever-cherished, his
working work. The
work was a great one, no less than the soul: she was the work of God.
God's nature, he being and his godhood depend upon his working in the
soul. God be praised, God be praised!
God works in the soul;
he is in love with his work.
The work is love and love is God.
God loves himself and his nature, his essence and his Godhead.
In the love wherein he loves himself therein God loves all creatures.
With the love wherewith God loves himself therewith he loves all
creatures, not as creatures: creatures as God.
In the love wherein God loves himself therein he loves all things.
Again
I say what I have never said before.
God enjoys himself.
In the joy wherein God enjoys himself therein he enjoys all creatures.
With the joy wherewith God enjoys himself he enjoys all creatures, not as
creatures: creatures as God.
In the joy wherein God enjoys himself, therein he enjoys all things.
And mark.
All creatures tend toward their ultimate perfection.
Apprehend me, I beseech you, but the eternal ever-valid truth and by my
soul. For
yet again I say a thing I have never said before:
God and Godhead are as different as earth is from heaven.
Moreover I declare: the outward and inward man are as different, too, as
earth and heaven.
God is higher, many thousand miles. Yet God comes and goes.
But to resume my argument: God enjoys himself in all things.
The sun sheds his light upon all creatures, and anything he sheds his
beams upon he absorbs them, yet he loses nothing of his brightness.
All creatures sacrifice their life for being.
Creatures all come into my mind and are rational in me.
I alone prepare all creatures to return to God.
Beware, all of you, what ye do.
To
return to my inner and my outer man.
I see the lilies in the field, their gaiety, their colour, all their
leaves. But
I do not see their fragrance.
Why? Because
what I give out is in me.
What I am saying is in my mind and I speak it forth of me.
My outward man relishes creatures as creatures, as wine and bread and
meat. But
my inner man relishes things not as creature but as the gift of God.
And again to my innermost man they savour not of God's gift but of ever
and aye. I
take a bowl of water and place a mirror in it and set it in the sun.
The sun sends forth his light-rays both from his disc and also from the
bottom of the bowl, suffering thereby no diminution.
The reflection of the mirror is the sun in the sun.
The sun and it are thus what it is.
And so with God.
God is in the soul with his nature, his essence and his Godhood, but he
is not on that account the soul.
The soul's reflection is in God.
God and she are thus what she is.
There God is all creatures.
There God's utterance is God.
While
I subsisted in the ground, in the bottom, in the river and found of Godhead, no
one asked me where I was going or what I was doing: there was no one to ask me.
When I was flowing all creatures spake God.
If I am asked, Brother Eckhart, when went ye out of your house? Then I
must have been in. Even so do all creatures speak God.
And why do they not speak the Godhead?
Everything in the Godhead is one, and of that there is nothing to be
said. God works, the Godhead does not work, there is nothing to do; in it is no
activity. It
never envisaged any work.
God and Godhead are as different as active and inactive.
On my return to God, where I am formless, my breaking through will be far
nobler than my emanation.
I alone take all creatures out of their sense into my mind and make them
one in me. When
I go back into the ground, into the depths, into the well-spring of the Godhead,
no one will ask me where I came or whither I went.
No one missed me: God passes away.
All
happiness to those who have listened to this sermon.
Had there been no one here I must have preached it to the poor-ox.
Some poor souls will go back home and say, I shall settle down and eat my
bread and serve God. Verily
I say, they persist in error, and will never have the power to strive for or to
win what those others do who follow Christ in poverty and exile.
Amen.