Part 3

“On these four curtains of divers colours the Lord ordered Bezaleel and Aholiab to weave and to embroider with the needle many ornaments. So likewise our obedient will and our intelligence will place upon these four colours divers ornaments of virtues. On the white colour of innocence we shall place red roses, by evermore resisting all that is evil. Thus we maintain purity and crucify our own nature, and these red roses with their sweet perfume are very lovely on the white colour. Again, upon innocence we shall embroider sunflowers, by which we mean obedience; for when the sun rises in the east, the sunflower opens towards its rays, and turns ever eagerly towards the sun, even until its setting in the west; and at night it closes and hides its colours and awaits the return of the sun. Even so will we open our hearts by obedience towards the illumination of the grace of God, and humbly and eagerly will we follow that grace so long as we feel the warmth of love. And when the light of grace ceases to awaken fresh emotions, and we feel the warmth of love but little, or feel it not at all, then it is night, when we shall close our heart to all that may tempt it; and so shall we shut up within ourselves the golden colour of love, awaiting a new dawn, with its new brightness and its fresh emotions; and thus shall we preserve innocence always in its pristine splendour. On the blue colour, which is like the firmament, we shall embroider birds with varied plumage; in other words, we shall keep before our minds, with clear observation, the lives and the works of the saints, which are manifold. These works are their varied plumage, so gracious and so beautiful, and with this they adorned themselves and soared to heaven. They are birds which we must observe with attention; if we are like them in their plumage, we shall follow them to their eternal rest. On the purple colour (that is, violet or blood-red, meaning generosity) we shall place water-lilies, and these symbolise the free possession of all the treasures of God. For we notice four things in the water-lily. It keeps itself always above the water, and has four green leaves between the air and the water; and it is rooted in the earth, and above it is opened out to the sun; and it is a remedy for those who are fevered. So also may we, by generosity and freedom of spirit, possess the waves of all the riches of God. And between this free possession by our spirit and the waves of the lavish gifts of God, we shall have green leaves--that is to say, an earnest consideration of the way in which the eternal liberality of God flows forth, with ever new gifts to men, and we shall consider also how the gifts are bestowed with discrimination, according to the nature of the beloved ones who receive them, and how the final cause of all the gifts is the generous outflow of divine love; and the more immediate cause the wisdom and generosity in human creatures, which makes them resemble God. For none can know the wealth of the gifts of God except the wise and generous man, who, out of the treasures of God, can give wisely and generously to all creatures. So shall we adorn generosity, and then we shall be rooted in the soil of all the gifts--that is to say, in the Holy Spirit, as the water-lily is rooted deep down under the water. And we shall open our hearts in the air above, towards truth and towards the sun of righteousness. And thus we are a remedy for all the world; for the generous heart which possesses the treasures of God, ought to fill, console, refresh, and cool all those who are afflicted. And it is thus that the purple colour is adorned with the red colour--that is to say, with burning love. On it we shall place bright stars, by which I mean pious and devout prayer for the good of our neighbour, and reverent and secret communion between God and ourselves. These are the stars which illuminate with their brightness the kingdoms of heaven and of earth, and they make us inwardly light-giving and fruit-bearing, and fix us in the firmament of eternal life.”

I shall next translate the whole of the “chapter on fishes,” with its amazing analogies:--

“This is why the symbolic law ordered the Jews to eat clean fish, which had scales and fins; and all other fish were unclean and were forbidden by the law. By this we understand that our inner life ought to have a clothing of virtues, and our inward devotions ought to be covered with the application of our reason, just as the fish is clothed and adorned with its scales. And our loving power should move in four different ways:--in triumphing over our own will, in loving God, in desiring to resist our own nature, and in seeking to acquire virtues. These are four fins between which our inward life should swim, as fish do, in the water of divine grace. The fish has besides, in the middle of its body, a straight fin, which remains motionless in all its movements. So our inward feelings, firmly centred, should be empty of everything and without personal preference; in other words, we should allow God to act in us and in all things, both in heaven and earth. The fourth scale balances us in the mercy of God and in true divine peace. And so our devotion has fins and scales and becomes for us a pure nourishment which pleases God. But the scales which clothe and adorn our inward exercises should be of four colours, for some fish have gray scales, others red scales, others green scales, and others again white scales. The gray scales teach us that the images with which we clothe our devotions must be humble; in other words, we must think of our sins, of our want of virtue, of the humility of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of His mother, and of all things which may abase and humble us, and we shall love poverty and contempt and to be unknown and despised by everybody. This is the gray colour, which is very beautiful in the eyes of God.

“Further, we shall clothe our devotions with red scales--that is to say, we shall remember that the Son of God laid down His life for love of us, and we shall keep His passion in our memory, like a glorious mirror before our inward eyes, so that we may remember His love and console ourselves in all our sorrows. And we shall also think of the many torments of the martyrs, who by their sufferings followed our Lord into eternal life. These are red scales, set well in order, and they are a delightful clothing for our inward emotions.

“Then, again, we shall adorn our secret thoughts with green scales. I mean that we shall earnestly meditate upon the noble lives of confessors and saints, remembering how they despised the world, and by what wonderful work and in what divers ways they honoured and served God. Green is the colour which attracts and rejoices loving hearts and willing eyes. Let us stir our fins, then, and follow the saints by imitating their good works to the utmost of our power.

“Again, we shall clothe our inward exercise with white scales; in other words, we shall glass ourselves in the purity of virgins, and shall observe how they fought and how they conquered flesh and blood, by which is meant the inclination of nature. This is why they wear the crown of gold and follow the Lamb, who is Christ, with new songs, which none shall sing save those who have preserved chastity in soul and body. But if we have lost purity, we may still acquire innocence and clothe ourselves with other virtues, and so we may reach the day of judgment shining brighter than the sun, and possess the glory of God through an unending eternity. In this way, then, we shall cover our inward devotion with four kinds of scales, and each kind shall have the active fins of good-will; that is, we must desire to carry out in good works that which we understand by our intelligence. So shall our spiritual nourishment be clean; for knowledge and wisdom without a virtuous life are like scales without fins; and practical virtues without reflection are fins without scales; and so we must know, love, and practise virtues, in order that our life may be pure; and then we shall be nourished with clean fish which have scales and fins.”

I give next the following passage:--

“Further, each lamp had a vase of gold, full of water, in which was extinguished the fire taken away from the wicks. By this we learn that every gift demands from our mind a desire towards every cardinal virtue--a desire so simple that we can feel in ourselves the yearning of love after union with God. We observe this in Jesus Christ, who is our mirror in all things; for in every virtue which He practised, He excelled so lovingly that He sought ardently after union with His Father. And we shall unite all our yearnings in that loving yearning which He felt towards His Father in all cardinal virtues. For our loving yearnings are our golden vases, full of water--that is, of truth and righteousness--we shall plunge into them our burning wicks, the acts, that is, of all the virtues which we have practised; we shall plunge them in and extinguish them, by commending ourselves to His righteousness, and by uniting ourselves to His adorable merits; without this the wick of all our virtues would smoke and would have an evil savour before God and before all His saints.”

Elsewhere, he examines the twelve jewels of the Breastplate, and sees in them reflections of eternal symbols, as well as unsuspected, precise, and suggestive analogies. Let us see whether it is not so.

“In the rays of the sun, the topaz surpasses in splendour all precious stones; and even so does the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ excel in glory and in majesty all the saints and all the angels because of His union with the eternal Father. And in this union the reflection of the Divine Sun is so clear and glorious that it attracts and reflects in its clearness all the eyes of saints and angels in immediate vision, and those also of just men to whom its splendour is revealed. So likewise does the topaz attract and reflect in itself the eyes of those who behold it, because of its great clearness. But if you were to cut the topaz it would darken, while if you leave it in its natural state it will remain clear. And so, too, if you examine and try to penetrate the splendour of the eternal Word, that splendour will darken and you will lose it. But leave it as it is, and follow it with earnest gaze, and with self-abnegation, and it will give you light.”

Let us next consider the curious correspondences which he discovered in other precious stones:--

“In this article we compare Christ to the noble sapphire, of which there are two kinds. The first is yellow with shades of purple and seems to be mingled with powdered gold; the other is sky-blue, and in the rays of the sun it gives forth a burning splendour, and one cannot see through it. And we find all this in our Lord, in this fifth article of the creed. For when His noble soul rose to heaven, His body lay in the tomb--yellow, because of the soul’s departure; purple, because of His bleeding wounds; and mingled with powdered gold because He was united to the divine nature. And His soul descended into hell, blue as the sky, so that all his friends rejoiced and were glad in His splendour; and in His resurrection the splendour becomes so great and so powerful, both in body and soul, through the illumination of the Divine Sun, that it darts forth lightnings and burning rays, and inflames with love all things which it touches. And none can see through that noble sapphire, Christ, because in His divine nature there is a depth unfathomable.”

I pass over the amethyst “from which red roses seem to flow forth,” and as a closing passage from this work, I shall translate the last three symbols: those of the chrysolite, the emerald, and the jasper.

First of all, the chrysolite:--

“The communion of saints and the forgiveness of sins are obtained by the _waves of the night_--that is to say, by two sacraments of the Holy Church, baptism and penance. These are the waves which by faith wash that night of darkness, sin. And God has sworn, even from the time of Abraham, that He would give Himself to us and would become our familiar friend, and because of His all-embracing and overflowing love, He has willed to wash us in His blood. And in order that we might believe without doubting in the oath which He sware by Himself, He has sealed it with His own death, and has given the merits of His death to all men in the Holy Church for the remission of sins, and to the saints, for the adornment of their glory. That precious stone, the chrysolite, symbolises to us that article of the creed, ‘the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,’ for it is like the waves of the sea, translucent and green, and moreover it has gleams of gold. And so likewise all saints and just men are translucent by grace or by glory, and they are green by their holy life, and they gleam with the gold of divine love which shines through them. And these three adornments are common to all saints and to all just persons, for they are the treasure of the holy churches, here and in eternal life. And all who by penance have put away from them the colour of the Red Sea--that is, a sinful life--are like the chrysolite.

“You must know that this sea is red because of its country and the colour of its bed. It is between Jericho and Zoar, Jericho signifies ‘the moon,’ and Zoar the beast which blinds the reason. Between the moon of inconstancy and the inclination of reason towards the beast, there is always the Red Sea--that is to say, an impure life. No creature can live in the Red Sea, and whatever does not live in it sinks to the bottom; and that is why it is called the Dead Sea, because there is no movement in it, and it is like bitumen or pitch, because it seizes and slays whatever enters it, and in this way it very closely resembles sin, which seizes man and puts him to spiritual death in the sight of God, and plunges him into hell.”

Let us see, lastly, how he applies the emerald and the jasper to the third and sixth articles of the Apostles’ Creed:--

“In this article we compare to the Son of God that beautiful stone which is called the emerald, and which is so green that neither leaves nor grass nor any other green thing can compare with its viridity. And it fills and feeds with its greenness the eyes of those who behold it. Now when the eternal Word of the Father was made man, then was seen the greenest colour ever known on earth. That union of natures is so green and so lovely and so joyful, that no other colour can equal it; and so in a holy vision it has filled and fed the eyes of such men as have prepared themselves to perceive it. Nothing is more lovely and more pleasant to the eye than the emerald when it has been cut and polished, and everything that it reflects may be recognised and seen as in a mirror. And so, if we examine in detail the divine being of Him who took our nature through His love for us, we must needs admire, and we cannot sufficiently praise its sublimity. And when we consider how He became man, we must be ashamed of ourselves, remembering His humility, and we cannot abase ourselves too deeply. And when we remember what His motive was in becoming man, we cannot rejoice enough or love Him as He deserves.

“In these three ways we shall behold with eager desire, and we shall polish and lovingly examine Christ our noble emerald; and so doing, we shall find nothing more pleasant to the eyes of our reason, nothing more attractive, for we shall find Him reflected in us, and we shall find ourselves re-echoed in Him through His grace and a virtuous life, and so we shall turn away from earthly things and keep this mirror ever before our eyes.

“In another article we compare Christ to the noble jasper, which has a green colour, very pleasant to the eye; and it almost equals the emerald in its greenness. And so we compare it to the ascension of our Lord, who was green and beautiful in the eyes of the apostles, and so pleasant that they could never forget Him during all their lives. And we shall rightly have the same experience; we shall consider that the noble emerald, the eternal Word, descended into our nature because of His love for us, with an overflowing greenness, and we shall rejoice in this above all, for this vision is full of grace. We shall further consider that the glorious jasper, by which I mean our Lord Jesus, ascended to heaven wearing our nature, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and has prepared for us the state of glory--Amen.”

Next comes _The Book of the Twelve Virtues_, which Laurentius Surius entitles more exactly _Tractatus de præcipuis quibusdam virtutibus_. In it the hermit of Grönendal seems to have made a violent effort to open his bodily eyes, and all his thoughts are intertwined with the simplicity of divine children, in the green and blue rays of humility and mercy, while his prose, which is usually quite impersonal, is enlivened here with various counsels and practical matters.

Here is a fragment on humility:--

“To reach the lowest place is to have no longer any desire towards evil; and as we have always some sin to forsake, so long as we are in this mortal life, we never reach the lowest place, for to die is to attain, not according to the senses, but in a spiritual paradox. And if any one were to say that to be steeped in humility is to have reached the lowest place, I should not contradict his opinion. But it seems to me that to bathe oneself in humility is to bathe oneself in God, for God is the source of humility, and He is at the same height and the same depth above and below all places. And between self-abasement and the attainment of the lowest place, there is, to my mind, a difference. For to reach the lowest place is to have no longer any desire towards evil, and to experience self-abasement is to be steeped in humility, and that is self-annihilation in God and death in God. Now, we have always something to forsake so long as we live, and to have nothing more to forsake is to have reached the lowest place. This is why we cannot attain to the lowest place. For what man was ever so humble that he could not have been more humble still? and who ever loved so fervently that he could not have loved more fervently still? Except Christ, assuredly not one. And so let us never be satisfied while in this dying life, for we may always become more humble than we are to-day. It is a most joyful thought that we have so great and good a God that we can never give Him sufficient homage and praise. Yes, not even if each single man could give every moment that which is given by all men and by all angels. But if we steep ourselves in humility, that is enough, and we please God by Himself, for in that immersion we are _one life_ in Him, not according to nature, but by being bathed in humility, because by humility we have descended below our creation, and we have flowed into God, who is the source of humility. And there we lack nothing, for we are beyond ourselves and in God, and there is neither giving nor receiving, nor anything which can be called _there_, for it is neither _there_ nor _here_, but I know not where.”

From the same book I transcribe the following passage on detachment from all things:--

“Now, he who has found God thus reigning in him by His grace, and who dwells in God above the measure of his human strength, may remain insensible to joy, to grief, and to the multitude of creatures. For God is _essenced_ in him, and he is more disposed to introversion than to extroversion; and this essence is recalled to him wherever man is found; and this inclination and this essence are never forgotten, unless the man should deliberately turn away from God; and this he will not readily do, for he who has experienced God in this way cannot easily turn away from Him. I do not say that this can never happen, for no one is certain of anything in this mortal life, except of certain revelations.

“God takes by His divine power the man whom he has _essenced_ in himself in this way, and enlightens him in everything, for everything is full to him of divine enjoyment; for he who refers all things to the glory of God, enjoys God in all things, and he sees in them the image of God. For he takes all from the hand of God, thanks Him and praises Him in everything, and God shines ever brightly before him, for he watches God with close attention, and never willingly turns away to worthless things. And as soon as he sees that he has turned towards worthless things, he at once turns away from them with great bitterness against himself, and bewails his unfaithfulness to God and resolves never again to turn knowingly towards worthless things. For all is bare and empty in which there is not either the glory of God or the good of our neighbour or our own salvation. He who thus watches over himself is less and less distracted, for his friend is often present with him, and that delights him above all. He is like to one who has a burning thirst. In his thirst he does nothing but drink. He may think of many other things besides the thirst which consumes him; but whatever he does, and whoever he is, or of whatever object he thinks, the image of drink does not disappear from his mind so long as he suffers from thirst. And the longer the thirst endures, the greater is the suffering of the man. And it is even so with the man who loves anything so passionately that he has no taste for aught besides, while nothing really touches his heart except that with which he is busied, and on which his love is set. Wherever he may be, with whomsoever he may find himself, nothing removes from him that which he so ardently loves. And he sees in all things the image of the beloved object; and the greater and more powerful his love, the more vividly that image is present to him. He does not seek repose and idleness that he may enjoy it, for no distraction hinders him from having the image of the beloved abiding ever with him.”

Let us glance next at the little work on _Christian Faith_, to which Surius gives the title _De fide et judicio, tractatulus insignis_. Its twenty pages form a kind of catechism, splendid in its precision, from which I take the following fragment on the happiness of the elect:--

“We shall behold with our inward eyes the mirror of the wisdom of God, in which shall shine and be illumined all things which have ever existed and which can rejoice our hearts. And we shall hear with our outward ears the melody and the sweet songs of saints and angels, who shall praise God throughout eternity. And with our inner ears we shall hear the inborn Word of the Father; and in this Word we shall receive all knowledge and all truth. And the sublime fragrance of the Holy Spirit shall pass before us, sweeter than all balms and precious herbs that ever were; and this fragrance shall draw us out of ourselves, towards the eternal love of God, and we shall taste His everlasting goodness, sweeter than all honey, and it shall feed us, and enter into our soul and our body; and we shall be ever an hungered and athirst for it, and because of our hunger and thirst, these delights and this nourishment shall remain with us for ever, ever more renewed; and this is eternal life.

“We shall understand by love and we shall be understood by love, and God shall possess us and we Him in unity. We shall enjoy God, and, united to Him, we shall rest in blessedness. And this measureless delight, in that super-essential rest, is the ultimate source of blessedness, for we are then swallowed up in satisfaction beyond all possibility of hunger. Hunger can have no place in it, for there is nothing here but unity; all loving spirits shall here fall asleep in super-essential darkness, and nevertheless they shall live and wake for ever in the light of glory.”