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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
During the last quarter-century more investigation than ever before has been going on into the unconscious activities of the human mind, or, as the investigators have preferred to call it, the sub-conscious mind. This has led in psychology to the study of apparitions and the various forms of telepathy, and in religion to a revival of Quietism. Religious bodies as far from Quakerism as the Episcopal Church are holding retreats for meditation, silent prayer, “the practice of the presence of God.” The exclusion of worldly thought is pointed to as the means for the opening of the soul to the incoming of the Divine; and some are following the Mystic Way through its steps of Purgation, Illumination, and Ecstasy to its goal of absorption into God in the Unitive Life.
1 “Art thou but true to God, seeking no other gain,
Thou wilt find Paradise even in the sharpest pain.”
2 “God thrusts Himself on none; He stands for all men free.
So that whate'er thou wilt, He may be unto thee.”
3 “God loves the special Me. Anxious for me He is;
So that He would expire of grief, were I not His.”
4 “God is small as I; I am as great as He.
He cannot above me, nor I beneath Him be.”
5 “Thou dwellest not in space, but space, it is in thee.
Cast it out, and already is eternity.”
6 “Eternity is as time, time as eternity.
If they are otherwise, the difference is in thee.”
7 “Lift up thy soul o'er time and space. The spirit's power
Shall give thee even here eternity each hour.”
8 “He who in hell — note this! — without hell cannot live,
To his own Best himself as yet he does not give.”
9 “If with thee Paradise exist not first within,
Then, trust me well, thou ne'er wilt come therein.”
10 “Heaven is in thee, and also in thee is hell's pain.
Whate'er thou wilt, whate'er thou choosest, thou dost gain.”
11 “But why complain of God, when it is thou alone
Canst ever damn thyself? He sentences no one.”
12 “Wherefore desirst thou aught? since thou thyself mayst even
Be earth and myriad angels and the very heaven.”
13 “Whate'er thou lovest, Man, that too become thou must;
God, if thou lovest God; dust, if thou lovest dust.”
14 “One who is freed from earth has wholeness, liberty.
How betwixt him and God can any difference be?”
15 “Who is as he were not, as he had never been,
Has become very God. O blessedness serene!”
16 Der Cherubinischer Wandersmann (ed. Sulzbach, 1829); Vorrede, pp. vi, vii.
17 “They who are held in God's sweet peace are blest in this —
That they have no desire; therefore they dwell in bliss.”
18 “Thou lovest not aright, lov'st thou aught here below.
God is not This nor That; so let the Somethings go.”
19 “Nought raises thee above thyself like nothingness.
God is the more in thee as thou thyself art less.”
20 “Go out, and God comes in; die, God thy soul will fill.
Be not, and there is He; do nought, He has His will.”
21 “One who is truly poor, no compromise can make.
Should God give him Himself, even this he would not take.”
22 “Christ himself, if he had an atom of self-will,
However holy too, would not have been Christ still.”
23 “Thy will, it makes thee lost; thy will, it makes thee found;
Thy will, it makes thee free, or fast in fetters bound.”
24 “God cannot find a wretch deep in the pool of hell
Because it is his fixéd will therein to dwell.”
25 “The sun, on all who turn to him, must brightly burn.
The Devil's face would shine, if he to God would turn.”
26 “God is both to the Fiend and to the Seraph near.
But the Fiend turns his back on God, and will not hear.”
27 “Spirit must ever live. It may in darkness lie.
As do the damned; yet even then it cannot die.”
28 “There is no death, I hold. Should I die every hour,
Yet every hour there is a better life in store.”
29 “Nothing that is, can die. It is but life again
That follows death, even though a life of fiercest pain.”
30 “I find in God a man; I find in man a God.
I slake His thirst, and He must needs help me, a clod.”
31 “He who is joined to God can suffer no damnation;
For God Himself would perish in his conflagration.”
32 “Apart from me, I know God cannot live a minute.
Should I leave life, He too could not continue in it.”
33 “God without me cannot create a worm. If I
Hold not with Him, it and creation's self would die.”
34 “God thinks not. Had He thoughts, they must go here and yonder.
But it consists not with His changelessness to wander.”
35 “‘Thy will be done, O Lord my God!’ we pray not well.
He has no will, but in eternal calm must dwell.”
36 “God is a simple Naught; He has nor Here nor Now.
The more thou searchest Him, the less attainest thou.”
37 “Much knowledge puffs one up. Him rather I extol
Who knows the Crucified abiding in his soul.”
38 “The nearest way that leads to God is through love's gate.
Who takes the way of knowledge, comes by far too late.”
39 “Stay, Augustine; ere thou reducest God to rule,
A man will find the whole of ocean in a pool.”
40 “Die now before thou diest, that thou mayst not die
When thou shalt die; else shalt thou die eternally.”
41 “A child who in the world lives but an hour, he
Is old as e'er Methuselah was said to be.”
42 “What is of God is God. A thousand Gods, I say,
Might be; and yet a worm is God as much as they.”
43 “The soul that only seeks oneness with God to attain
Lives in perpetual peace, and has perpetual pain.”
44 “Two there are close to God—not all to Him are near—
The maiden and the child—these are God's playmates dear.”
45 “The rose is without ‘Why?’ It blows because it blows.
It cares not for itself, nor if seen even knows.”
46 “Seekest thou God for rest, thou hast thyself beguiled.
Thou seek'st thyself, not God; a servant, not a child.”
47 “The creatures, so laments thou, lead thy soul astray.
Nay, let them rather be for thee to God a way.”
48 Isa. 45 7.
49 1 John 2 22.
50 St. John 17 21 f. I cannot refrain from calling attention to the misuse of this passage, according to which Jesus is supposed to be setting forth the importance of corporate unity, as it is called, of having but one ecclesiastical institution. But the union he desired with his disciples was to be like that between him and his Father, which was certainly not institutional. His words here refer to a union the very opposite of that contemplated by those who use them as an authorization of their demand for church-uniformity.
51 St. Matt. 22 32.
52 “As numbers great or small the number One imply,
So too is God the One in all things low or high.”
53 Rev. 8 2.
54 God the Known and God the Unknown; Chap. IV, II.
55 2 Cor. 12 2.
