The Romance of the Soul Part 3

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 G.o.d, we become G.o.dly.

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 G.o.d's magnetic power acting directly and immediately upon us and is altogether independent of place, time, services, sacraments, or ceremonies. We limit G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d's help, all G.o.d'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This Grace will constantly be withdrawn so that we may learn that we arrive at nothing by our own power but by gift of G.o.d, who is ever willing to give to us provided we whole-heartedly respond.

This Response to G.o.d 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 G.o.d is a unity of our tiny force to the Might-Presence and company of G.o.d as much as we are able to bear it, producing in us while with us such wealth of living; and such happiness as pa.s.ses all description. As we have capacity to respond to G.o.d so we shall know that of G.o.d which is not known by those as yet unlearned in response. For G.o.d, 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 G.o.d of our mere faith, nor the G.o.d of the theologian veiled behind great mysteries of book-learning. It is the Responsive G.o.d 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 G.o.d-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 appet.i.te 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 G.o.d-consciousness is a gift, and our work is to qualify for this gift by persistent ardent desire towards G.o.d continued through every adversity, through every lack of sensible response on His part--a naked will and heart insisting upon G.o.d. This state of G.o.d-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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sistance.

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 G.o.d; 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 G.o.d-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 G.o.d, this is to truly live. No distance is too great, no s.p.a.ce too wide. All is our home. Without this burning consciousness of G.o.d, s.p.a.ce is a thing of fear and Eternity not to be thought of.

Of the many experiences and conditions of the soul returning to G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d? The true health of the soul when in the blisses of G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d is the only Will by which we live.

Our great difficulty is that we try at one and the same time to hang to G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances of life in which we find ourselves we learn in _everything to place G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d; and yet there comes a pretty frock, a pleasant companion, and behold G.o.d 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 pa.s.sing 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 circ.u.mstances in which we find ourselves.

Another difficulty we have, and which forms an insuperable barrier to finding G.o.d, is the ever-recurring--we may almost say the continual--secret undercurrent of criticism and hardness towards G.o.d over what we imagine to be His Will. We need to seek G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. He Himself is Ineffable Tenderness.

Having once re-found G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d: 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.s 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 l.u.s.ts 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 G.o.d: 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 G.o.d'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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d: 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 G.o.d, 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 exact.i.tude 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d are individual, yet they become also clothed in a garment of the universal, so that the soul, when she enters the fires of wors.h.i.+p and of blessing and of conversing with G.o.d--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 alt.i.tudes attained of heaven. Thus we see in Scripture that the angels who stand nearest to G.o.d 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, n.o.ble, 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 G.o.d. "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 G.o.d and ourselves diminishes, and finally the burden and the cross _disappear,_ and behold G.o.d!

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 G.o.d 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 G.o.d-Consciousness_