SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 5

drawn in and found shelter. For when the soul-powers contact a creature they set to to make of the creature an image and likeness which they absorb. By it they know the creature. Creatures cannot go into the soul, nor can the soul know anything about a creature which she has not willingly taken the image of into herself. She approaches creatures through their present images ; an image being a thing that the soul creates with her powers. Be it a stone, a rose, a man, or anything else that she wants to know about, she gets out the image of it which she has already taken in and is thus enabled to unite herself with it. But an image rceeiv^cd in this way must of necessity enter from without through the senses. Consequently there is nothing so unknown to the soul as herself. The soul, says a philosoplier, can neither create nor absorb an image of herself. So she has nothing to know liersclf by. Iniages all enter through the senses, hence she can have no image of herself. She knows other things but not hcrsell’. Of nothing does she know so little as of herself, owing to this arrangement. Now thou must know that inwardly the soul is free from means and images, that is why God can freely unite with her without form or similitude. Thou caiist not but attribute to God without measure whatever power thou dost attribute to a master. The wiser and more powerful the master the more immediately is his work effected and the simpler it is. Man requires many instruments for his external works ; much preparation is needed (‘re he can bring them forth as he has imagined them. The sun and moon whose work is to give light, in their mastership perform this very swiftly : the instant their radiance is poured forth, all the ends of the world arc full of light. More exalted arc the angels, who need less means for their works and have fewer images. Tlie highest Seraph has but a single image. lie seizes as a unity all that his inferiors regard as manifold. Now God needs no image and has no image : witliout image, likeness or means does God work in the soul, aye, in Iier ground whereinto no image did ever get but only himself with his own essence. This no creature can do.

— How do(\s God the Father give birth to his Son in the soul ; like creatures, in image and likeness ?

No, by my faith ! Imt just as he gives him birth in eternity and no otherwise.

— Well, but how docs he give him birth there ?

See. God the Father has perfect insight into himself, profound and thorough knowledge of himself by means of himself, not by means of any image. And thus God the Father gives birth to his Son, in the very oneness of the divine nature. Mark, thus it is and in no other way that God the Father gives birth to his Son in the ground and essence of the soul and thus he unites himself