SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 7

was none the worse for it : on the last day he was as strong as on the first. Thus a man must abscond from his senses, invert his faculties and lapse into oblivion of things and of himself. Anent which a philosopher apostrophised the soul : ‘ Withdraw from the restlessness of external activities ! ’ And again : ‘ Flee away and hide thee from the turmoil of outward occupations and inward thoughts for they create nothing but discord ! ’ If God is to speak his Word in the soul she must be at rest and at peace ; then he speaks in the soul his Word and himself : not an image but himself. Dionysius says : ‘ God has no image nor likeness of himself seeing that he is intrinsically all good, truth and being.’ God performs all his works, in himself and outside himself, simul- taneously. Do not fondly imagine that God, when he created the heavens and the earth and all creatures, lYiade one thing one day and another the next. Moses describes it thus it is true, never- theless he knew better : he did so merely on account of those who are incapable of understanding or conceiving otherwise. All God did was : he willed and they were. God works without instrument and without image. And the freer thou art from images the more receptive thou art to his interior operation ; and the more introverted and oblivious thou art the nigher thou art thereto. Dionysius exhorted his disciple Timothy in this sense saying ;

‘ Dear son Timothy, do thou with untroubled mind swing thyself up above thyself and above thy powers, above all modes and all existences, into the secret, still darkness, that thou mayest attain to the knowledge of the unknown super-divine God.’ All things must be forsaken. God scorns to work among images.

Now haply thou wilt say : ‘ What is it that God docs without images in the ground and essence ? ’ That I am incapable of knowing, for my soul-powers can receive only in images ,* they have to recognise and lay hold of each thing in its appropriate image : they cannot recognise a bird in the image of a man. Now since images all enter from without, this is concealed from my soul, which is most salutary for her. Not-knowing makes her wonder and leads her to eager pursuit, for she knows clearly that it is but knows not how nor xvhat it is. No sooner docs a man know the reason of a thing than immediately he tires of it and goes casting about for something new. Always clamouring to know, he is ever inconstant. The soul is constant only to this unknowing knowing which keeps her pursuing.

The wise man said concerning this : " In the middle of the night when all things were in quiet silence there was spoken to me a hidden word.’ It came like a thief, by stealth. What does he mean by a word that was hidden ? The nature of a word is to reveal what is hidden. It appeared before me, shining out with