The Romance of the Soul Part 2

When the heart and soul are greatly set upon G.o.d and we have become true lovers of G.o.d, there comes a danger of falling into so deep a pining for G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d for a Lover has no need of any other.

_Of how to receive from G.o.d, 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 G.o.d than to find that in the ceremony of the Blessed Sacrament it is possible for them to be less sensible of receiving from G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d in all the noises and distractions of a great railway station amongst a crowd of shifting persons. No, it is some imperfection in the att.i.tude adopted by the heart and mind in approaching this Sacrament. In what way have we perhaps been approaching it? In an att.i.tude of awe accompanied by a humble expectancy or hope of receiving. We hope and believe we shall receive G.o.d's grace. Now, the experienced soul and heart know so well what it is and how it feels to receive G.o.d'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 G.o.d." 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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d the Perfect Love and Sacrifice of our Saviour, as a living memorial of Him before G.o.d. 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 G.o.d and Man. On the one hand is G.o.d the All-Giving, longing to bestow, and upon the other is Man the all-needing, aching to receive, and between them an impa.s.se. Failure to fulfil G.o.d's laws is the cause of this impa.s.se.

There is both a law of like to like, and a law of like to opposite. We cannot know G.o.d without in some small degree first being like G.o.d, and to be like G.o.d we must not only be pure in heart but also conform to the G.o.d-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 G.o.d but our love, thanks, and obedience; but of these it is possible to give endlessly, and the more we give the more G.o.d-like do we become, and the more G.o.d-like the higher and further do we enter into the great riches and blisses of G.o.d. Therefore the more we give to G.o.d 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 G.o.d to still further give us and to make an offering _to_ G.o.d. The only way we can make an offering to G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sive faith.

This combination of love with active faith instantly opens to us G.o.d's help. We may or may not receive this in the form antic.i.p.ated 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 pet.i.tioning anything for ourselves, having this one desire only: that by opening ourselves to G.o.d by means of offering Him great love, we receive Himself.

_Of Contemplation_

To enter the contemplation of G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d-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 G.o.d.

Contact with G.o.d 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 pa.s.ses 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 G.o.d--who is able to tell?

Such experiences are not for the timid, but require steady courage and perfect loving trust in G.o.d.

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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. In the purely spiritual "experience" from first to last there is no will but an absence of will, a total submission and yielding to G.o.d, 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.

G.o.d 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 a.s.surance 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 a.s.surance 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 compa.s.sion to the creature that had experience. G.o.d 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 G.o.d wills to have the whole of us. When He wills to be sensibly with us, all s.p.a.ce 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 dest.i.tute, so sad, so lonely as ourself.

And there is no earthly thing can beguile or console us, because, having tasted of G.o.d, it is impossible to be satisfied or consoled save inwardly by G.o.d 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 pa.s.ses 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d_

At first when the creature is being taught to bless G.o.d it shrinks back in a fright, crying, "What am I that I should dare to bless Almighty G.o.d, 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 G.o.d.

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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, and instantanteously G.o.d blesses the creature, sending His sweetness and His glamour about it: and the more the soul and the creature bless G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d.

"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 G.o.d. Then automatically the door opens, and immediately in through it there rushes the breath and the blisses of G.o.d. 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 princ.i.p.al glamours: the glamour of youth, the glamour of romance, the glamour of evil, and the glamour of G.o.d.

When once the Spirit of Love, which is G.o.d, 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. G.o.d--Goodness--Love: these we understand. But evil--whence and why, since G.o.d 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 grat.i.tude, 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 G.o.d so to teach them!" we may cry, forgetting that with G.o.d 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. G.o.d wills to save us. We have but to join our will with His, and we are saved. How shall we mount to G.o.d 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 G.o.d by that exact degree of evil which we have overcome by good--that is to say, by practice of forgiveness, compa.s.sion, 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.suming 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 subst.i.tute another picture, another invitation, another presentment, of that which pertains to the good and the beautiful. He who has learnt so to subst.i.tute 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 subst.i.tuting; this is transferring allegiance from the glamour of Evil which is present with us, to the glamour of G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d?

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 gla.s.s bottle with this most horrid growth. Through the gla.s.s 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 G.o.d.