The Prodigal Returns Part 3

There came a night when I pa.s.sed beyond Ideas, beyond melody, beyond beauty, into vast lost s.p.a.ces, depths of untellable bliss, into a Light. And the Light is an ecstasy of delight, and the Light is an ocean of bliss, and the Light is Life and Love, and the Light is the too deep contact with G.o.d, and the Light is unbearable Joy; and in unendurable bliss my soul beseeches G.o.d that He will cover her from this most terrible rapture, this felicity which exceeds all measure. And she is not covered from it. And she beseeches Him again; and she is not covered; and being in the last extremity from this most terrible joy, she beseeches Him again: and immediately is covered from it.

My soul, my whole being, is terrified of G.o.d, and of joy. I dare not think of Him, I dare not pray; but, like some pitiful and wounded child, I creep to the feet of Jesus.

When on the following evening once more the day closes and I compose myself for the night, I wonder tremblingly to what He will again expose me; but for the first time in six weeks I fall into a natural sleep and know no more until the morning.

Then I understand that the lesson is over. Mighty and Terrible G.o.d, it was enough!

In the light of these measureless joys what is any earthly joy? What is the very greatest experience of earthly happiness but so much waste paper?

What are the joys of those vices for which men sell their souls, but soap-bubbles!

The whole meaning of life, together with all the graduated and accepted values of it, becomes for ever changed in the light of the knowledge of Celestial Happiness.

PART III

I

Wonderful, beautiful weeks went by, filled with divine, indescribable peace. The Presence of G.o.d was with me day and night, and the world was not the world as I had once known it--a place where men and women fought and sinned and toiled and anguished and wondered horribly the meaning of this mystery of pain and joy, of life and death. The world was become Paradise, and in my heart I cried to all my fellow-souls, "Why fret and toil, why sweat and anguish for the things of earth when our own G.o.d has in His hand such peace and bliss and happiness to give to Every man?

O come and receive it, Every man his share."

And the glamour of life in Unity with G.o.d became past all comprehension and all words.

Is life, then, a poem? is it a melody? I cannot say; but it is one long essence of delight--a harmony of flowing out and back again to G.o.d.

O blessed life! O blessed Man! O blessed G.o.d!

II

One morning in my room I began thinking and reasoning about a wonderful change that I knew had crept all through me. If G.o.d should now come at any moment of the day or night and turn over every secret page of heart and mind, He would not find one thought or glimmer of any sort or kind of l.u.s.t, whether of the eye, of the heart, of the mind, or of the body; and all in one moment I realised the miracle that Christ had worked in me, and the words came over my mind, "Though thy sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow." And I stood there, gazing before me, speechless, and the tears of a joy that was an agony of grat.i.tude poured and poured down my face like a rain. I did not sob, I could not speak, and very quietly I took my heart and my mind and my soul and laid them for ever at the feet of Christ.

III

One evening as I knelt to say my prayers, which were never long, because since the Visitation on the hill my natural habit--whether walking, sitting, working, travelling, or on my bed--had come to be a continual sending up from my heart and mind the tenderest and most adoring, the most wors.h.i.+pping and thanking little stream of thoughts to G.o.d (very much as a flower, if we could but see it, sends its scent to the sun).

And because this mode of prayer is so smooth and joyous, so easy, so unutterably sweet, in that during it the Presence of G.o.d laves us about as the sun laves the flower--so because of this it was only for short and set times that I wors.h.i.+pped Him as the creature in prayers upon its knees; but those few moments of prayer would always be intense, the heart and the mind with great power bent wholly and singly upon G.o.d.

So now, this evening as I knelt and dwelt in great singleness on G.o.d, He drew me so powerfully, He encompa.s.sed me so with His glamour, that this singleness and concentration of thought continued much longer than usual on account of the greatness of the love that I felt for Him, and the concentration became an intensity of penetration because of this magnetism, He turned on to me, and my mind became faint, and died, and I could no longer think of or on G.o.d, _for I was one with Him._ And I was still I; though I was become Ineffable Joy.

When it was over I rose from my knees, and I said to myself, for five wonderful moments I have been in contact with G.o.d in an unutterable bliss and repose: and He gave me the bliss tenderly and not as on that Night of Terror; but when I looked at my watch I saw that it had been for between two and three hours.

Then I wondered that I was not stiff, that I was not cold, for the night was chilly and I had nothing about me but a little velvet dressing-wrapper; and my neck was not stiff, though my head had been thrown back, as is a necessity in Communion with G.o.d; and I thought to myself, it is as if my body also had shared in the blessing.

And this most blessed happening happened to me every day for a short while, usually only for a few moments. In this way G.o.d Himself caused and enabled me to contemplate and _know_ Him; and I saw that it was in some ways at one with my beautiful pastime, but with this tremendous difference in it--that whereas my mind had formerly concentrated itself upon the Beautiful, and remaining Mind had soared away above all forms into its nebulous essence in a strange seductive anguish, it now was drawn and magnetised beyond the Beautiful directly to the Maker of it: and the soaring was like a death or swooning of the mind, and immediately I was living with that which is above the mind: in this living there was no note of pain, but a marvellous joy.

Slowly I learnt to differentiate degrees of Contemplation, but to my own finding there are two princ.i.p.al forms--Pa.s.sive and Active (or High) Contemplation.

In meditation is little or no activity, but a sweet quiet thinking and talking with Jesus Christ. In Pa.s.sive Contemplation is the beginning of real activity; mind and soul without effort (though in a secret state of great love-activity) raise themselves, focussing themselves upon the all-unseen G.o.dhead: now is no longer any possible picture in the mind, of anyone nor anything, not even of the gracious figure or of the ways of Christ: here, because of love, must begin the sheer straight drive of will and heart, mind and soul, to the G.o.dhead, and here we may be said first to commence to breathe the air of heaven.

There is no prayer, no beseeching, and no asking--there are no words and no thoughts save those that intrude and flash unwanted over the mind, but a great undivided attention and waiting upon G.o.d: G.o.d near, yet never touching. This state is no ecstasy, but smooth, silent, high living in which we learn heavenly manners. This is Pa.s.sive or Quiet Contemplation.

High Contemplation ends in Contact with G.o.d, in ecstasy and rapture. In it the activity of the soul (though entirely without effort on her part) is immensely increased. It is not to be sought for, and we cannot reach it for ourselves; but it is to be enjoyed when G.o.d calls, when He a.s.sists the soul, when He energises her.

And then our cry is no more, Oh, that I had wings! but, Oh, that I might fold my wings and stay!

IV

Having come so far as this on the Soul's Great Adventure all alone as far as human guidance and companions.h.i.+p was concerned, and having for more than a year known the wonders of the joy of Union with G.o.d--which I did not know or understand to call Union, but called it to myself Finding G.o.d and coming into Contact with Him, because this is how it _feels,_ and the unscholarly creature understands and knows it in that way--well, having come so far, I had a great longing to share this knowledge, this exquisite balm, with my fellows, and I desired immensely to speak about it, to know how they fell about it, if they had yet come to it, or how far on the way they were to it, because I was all filled with the beauty of it, as lovers are filled with the beauty of their love. But I was frightened to speak to them, something held me back: also they felt to me to be so exceedingly full of the merest trifles--clothes and tea-parties and fas.h.i.+onable friends; and each time I tried to speak, in some mysterious way I found myself stopped. So I thought that I would speak to a friend that I had in the Church. Several times I had heard him preach very beautiful sermons, and I felt I very greatly needed the guidance of _someone who knew._ I wanted, I longed for, a human intermediary. I knew that I was in the hands of the G.o.d Whom for so many years I had so pa.s.sionately sought; but He was so immeasurably great, and I so pitifully small, and I needed a human being--someone to whom I might speak about G.o.d.

Yet something warned me not to commence as though speaking of myself, but of another person. I said only a few words, of the joy of this person in finding and loving G.o.d, and immediately my friend spoke very severely of persons who imagined they had found, and loved, G.o.d. G.o.d was not to be found by our puny, s.h.i.+fting and uncertain love: He was to be found by duty, by obedience to Church rules, by pious attendance _At Church._ He explained to me various dogmas which helped me no more than the moaning of the wind; he explained the absolute necessity (for salvation) of certain beliefs and written sentences, and ceremonials in the Church. Love was not the way. Love was emotion, emotion was deceptive: the mind, and severe firm attention to the dictates of The Church was what was required; in fact, he unfolded before me the Ecclesiastical Mind. I shrank back from it, dismayed, frightened. Were all the deep needs and requirements of the soul to be satisfied in the singing of hymns and Te Deum, in the close and reverent attention to the Ceremonies before the altar, and of the actions of Priests! Did, or could, any reasoning creature truly think to Find G.o.d by merely repeating, however reverently, the same prayers and ceremonies Sunday after Sunday! Could the great mountain up which my soul had sweated, and which each soul must climb--could it be climbed by kneeling in a pew in church? No; a total change of _character_ was needed, and Christ Himself was necessary for this change--Jesus Christ gliding into the heart and mind and soul, and _biding_ there because of that heart's, that mind's, invitation to, and love for, Him. Secretly--in one's own chamber, every hour of the day, in the streets, in the fields--in this way it might be accomplished.

With Christ biding in the heart all the Church service would _become_ a thing of beauty as between the Soul and G.o.d; but without this Jesus Christ dwelling in the heart, the connection was not yet made between the Soul--the service--and the G.o.dhead.

Perhaps amongst Romans I should find the understanding that I looked for. I had a friend, a Dominican: I approached him, and I could see that for (as he thought) my own good he longed to convert me to the Roman Church: it did not seem that he wanted, or by any means knew how, to bring me into contact with G.o.d, but his thought was to bring me to _The Church._ "Does anyone," I asked him, "love G.o.d with all their heart, and mind, and soul, and strength?"

"No," said he, "that is hardly possible--what is required is--"; and here he gave me once more the contents of the Ecclesiastical Mind: more authoritatively, more positively; but he spoke as I now commenced to realise all Churchmen would speak--that is to say, as persons having learnt by study, by careful rule and rote, by paper-knowledge, that which can only be learnt in the spirit direct from G.o.d. How immense is the difference to the Soul between this knowledge that comes of the spirit and the knowledge that comes of study--the knowledge which too easily becomes mechanical religion!

I thought of the beautiful and gracious simplicity of the knowledge that Christ gives to the soul: I saw the nature of the sore disease that afflicts the soul of Christ's Church, I saw also a terrible pain for Christ in all this of which I had previously been unaware.

I was thrown back and into myself by it all, and into a great loneliness as far as my fellow-beings were concerned. Yet I continued to need to share Christ with humanity, piercingly, pressingly. I would go to a library and find a book--but, on the other hand, I did not know the name of a single religious book or writer.

So I wrote my need to a friend, and she sent me the life of one, Angela of Foligno. This book was a great delight to me, because, though written in tiresome mediaeval language, it yet expressed and shared exactly what I also knew and loved, and folded in strange wrappings of the fas.h.i.+on of the thought of long ago lay the same exquisite jewel that I also knew--the pearl for which men gladly sell all that they have in order to keep it--the knowledge of the Secret of the Kingdom of Heaven, of the Union of the Soul with G.o.d.

A few months went by, and I wrote asking for another book, and this time came Richard Rolle to my acquaintance--a little dried-up hermit, a holy man too, though I noticed how very discourteous he was to women; severe, critical, and suspicious, merely because they were women. How often I noticed this peculiarity, both in the monks of to-day with their averted eyes, as if the shadow of a woman falling on them were pollution, and long ago, Paul, and Peter also, and Moses, and many others, showed surprising weakness of intolerance and harsh judgment against Woman!

Where was Wisdom in all this? Surely it was Folly flaunting and laughing and dressing herself cunningly to deceive, for did none of these men, from Adam downwards--did they never come to know themselves well enough to see that their danger lay not in the Woman, but in _their own inclination to sin!_

Oh, the righteousness of the greatest saint was, and is, but as dust and ashes before the righteousness of Jesus! and I came to wonder if there ever was or could be a saint, save one--Jesus.

But this Richard Rolle, this person so discourteous to some fellow-beings, could all the same be very tender and loving towards G.o.d: he, too, held in his heart the Pearl without Price. He, too, knew that marvellous incense of the heart to G.o.d--that song of the soul, and called it by the same name as I; but how could it be called by any other name? for every soul that knows it, it must ever be the same.

Oh, how intimately I knew those two people of centuries ago, and how intimately they knew me! A strange trio we made--he, the little wizened English hermit; she, the Italian woman in her nun's habit; and I in my modern Bond Street clothes: outwardly we were indeed incongruous, we had no links, but inwardly we were bound together by bonds of the purest gold.

Of whether my friend sent me another book or not I cannot be sure; but my interest was becoming altogether removed from the past, because Christ was pressing me more and more to the present and the living.

V

G.o.d says to the aspiring soul: Come, taste of paradise and taste of heaven, and then return thou to the earth and wait, but not in idleness, and suffer many things till thou become perfect.

So I found that in the earlier stages, in order to show me the heights to which I might by perseverance attain, He turned His Power and Glamour on to me, and I became a creature transfixed and held by love. I had one desire--G.o.d; I had one thought--G.o.d; I had one consciousness--G.o.d. There was no effort needed on my part: it was Pure Grace and the result of _past_ efforts. Having climbed and endured and endeavoured up to a certain degree, it was necessary for further advance that there should be more knowledge, and a more complete ineffaceable a.s.surance. He therefore exposed the soul to as much as she could enjoy of heavenly pleasures and consciousness, without death to the flesh. In these experiences the soul found and knew G.o.d to be the fulfilment of all desires and all needs. The soul stood steadied before G.o.d in an unutterable Happiness which she perceived had no limit but G.o.d's Will, and her own capacity to endure the rapture of Him.

What is it that would seem to determine this immeasurable privilege of Access to Him? It would seem to be a healthy willing will towards Him under all circ.u.mstances (to begin with).

In due time He converts this mere will into a sweet love, the natural love of the heart and mind--by Gift of the Father we love Jesus Christ. This is salvation.

But beyond salvation it would feel to be this way--after a further great endeavour and endurance on our part, a further great striving towards Him, He will awaken and p.r.i.c.k to new life the soul and fill us with Holy Love. This is the second baptism, the baptism of the Spirit of Love. This is the entry to the Kingdom, and immediately we taste of the G.o.dhead. What this is, what this ravishment of happiness is, cannot be known or guessed till we ourself have experienced it.

In all this we progress by the communicated Power of Christ. How is this Power to be recognised, how is it communicated? Can we stand still and receive it like the dew, without work? At first, no--but later it would almost seem to be yes; or else it is that the exact att.i.tude of heart and mind necessary for the reception of Grace becomes so habitual, so natural, that eventually we come to live in a state in which the communication of this Power becomes nearly continuous--though at any time by negligence or by a wrong att.i.tude of Spirit _we fall away from it and lose it completely,_ and in all times of temptation or of testing we are cut off from _sensible_ contact with it.