SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 13

thine eye see all things and thine ear hear all things and thy heart remember them all, then in these things thy soul is destroyed.

A master says, ‘ To achieve the interior act one must assemble all one’s powers as it were into one corner of one’s soul, where, secreted from images and forms one is able to work. We must sink into oblivion and ignorance. In this silence, this quiet, the Word is heard. There is no better method of approaching this Word than in silence, in quiet : we hear it and know it aright in unknowing. To one who knows naught it is clearly revealed.

Haply thou wilt object : ‘You place our salvation in ignorance. Sir. That seems a mistake. God made man to know : “ Lord make them to know,” says the prophet. Where there is ignorance there is defect and illusion : he is a brutish man, an ape, a fool, and so remains as long as he is ignorant.’ But this is transformed knowledge, not ignorance which comes from lack of knowing ; it is by knowing that we get to this unknowing. Then we know with divine knowing, then our ignorance is ennobled and adorned with supernatural knowledge. Then in our passion we are more perfect than in action. According to one authority, the sense of hearing is much nobler than the sense of sight, for we learn wisdom more by car than eye and live this life more wisely. We read about a heathen philosopher who was lying at death’s door while his pupils were discussing in his presence some noble science, that, lifting up his dying head and listening, he ex(;laimed, ‘ O teach me even now this art that I may practise it eternally ! ’ Hearing draws in more, seeing leads out more, the very act of seeing. In eternal life we are far more ha})py in our ability to hear than in our power to see, because the act of hearing the eternal Word is in me, whereas the act of seeing goes forth from me : hearing, I am receptive ; seeing, I am active. But our bliss docs not consist in being active but in being receptive to God. As God excels creature, so is God’s work more excellent than mine. It was out of love that God did set our happiness in suffering, for we undergo far more than we do and receive incomparably more than n return we give ; moreover, each divine gift is the preparation for some new and richer gift, each gift increasing our capacity and our desire to receive a greater still. Some theologians say that the soul is symmetrical with God in this respect. For as God is infinite in giving, so the soul is infinite in receiving or conceiving. And the soul is as profound to suffer as God is omnipotent to act, hence her transformation by God into God. God must act and the soul must suffer ; for him to know and love himself in her, for her to know with his knowledge, love with his love ; and since she is far happier in his than hers it follows that her happiness depends upon his work more than on her own.