XXIV
ST JOHN SAW IN A VISION
St John saw in a vision a lamb standing on Mount Sion and with him stood
forty and four who were not of this world nor had they wifely names.
These were all virgins who stood next the lamb, and when the lamb
inclined they inclined with him, singing with the lamb a new song and having
their names and the name of their Father written in their foreheads.
John says, 'I looked and lo, a lamb stood on the mountain.' I say, John
himself was that mountain whereon he saw the lamb, and whoso sees the Lamb of
God must himself be the mountain, ascending to his highest, purest part.
Again. He says he saw a lamb standing upon a mountain:
when one thing stands upon another its lowest point touches the other's
highest. God touches all things and
remains untouched. God is above all things standing in himself and his instance
sustains all creatures. Creatures
have an uppermost and undermost. God
has not. God is over everything and
is not touched by anything. All
creatures seek outside themselves, in one another, what they lack. God does not. God
does not look outside himself: everything that creatures have God has entire in
him; he is the floor, the roof of creatures.
True, one is prior to another down to the very last, one being born
before another: though creatures give not of her being to him, yet she keeps
some of his. God is a simple
presence, a stay-at-home in himself. With
any creature, as regards her noble nature, the more she sits at home the more of
herself she gives out. A common
stone, like limestone, for example, gives itself out a stone and nothing more.
But a precious stone, this has great power because of something in it, some
interior fastness wherein it rears its head and, so to speak, peers out.
According to the masters, no creature is so stay-at-home as body and
soul, nor goes so far afield as the soul's highest part.
He says, 'I saw a lamb standing.' From
which we learn four things. First,
the lamb is fed and clothed and that in goodly fashion, which to our mind looks
as though we, having gotten so much from God and that so goodly, are bound to
seek in all we do only his honour and his glory.
Again, the lamb stood. It is
good for friend to stand by friend. God
stands by us, is standing by us, steady and unmoved. He says: 'There stood with him a multitude, each having
written in his forehead his name and the name of his Father.' Let at least God's name be written in us.
We must bear God's image in us and his light must lighten us, if we would
be John.