SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 9

undiscovered ? Those who have written of the soul’s nobility have gone no further than their natural intelligence could carry them : they never entered her ground, so that much remained obscure and unknown to them. ‘ I will sit in silence and hearken to what God speaketh within me,’ said the prophet. Into this retirement steals the Word in the darkness of the night. St John says, ‘ The light shines in the darkness : it ciime unto its own and as many as received it became in authority sons ol‘ God : to them was given power to become God’s sons.’

Mark now tlie fruit and use of this mysterious Word and of this darkness. In this gloom which is his own the heavenly Father’s Son is not born alone : thou too art born lliere a cliild of the same heavenly Father and no other, and to thee also he gives power. Observe how great the use. No truth h‘arncd by any master by his own intellect and understanding, or ever to be learned this side the day of judgment, has twer been interpreted at all according to this knowh^dge, in this ground, ( all it an tliou wilt an ignorance, an unknowing, yet there is in it more than in all knowing and undc'rstanding without it, for this outward ignorance lures and attracts thee irom all understood things and from tliysclf. This is what Christ meant wlieii he said : ' Whosoever denieth not him- self and Icaveth not father and mother and is not estranged from all these, he is not worthy of me.’ As though to say : he who aliandons not creatunly externals can neither be conceived nor born in tiiis divine birth. Ihit divesting thysell'of thyself and of every- thing external thereto does indeed give it thee. And in ver}^ truth I believe, nay 1 am sure, that the man who is established herein can in no wise be at any lime separated from (xod. I hold he can in no wise lapse into mortal sin. lie would rather suffer the most slianicful death, as the saints have done before him, than commit the l(*ast of mortal sins. 1 hold that he cannot willingly commit, nor yet consent to, even a venial sin, whether in himself or in another. So strongly is he drawn and attracted to this way, so much is he habituated to it, that he eoukl ne\ er turn to any other : to this way are directed all his senses, all his powers.

May the (iod who has been born again as man assist us in this birth, continually helping us, weak man, to be born again in him as God. Amen.

II

TIIIS IS ANOTHER SERMON

Ubi est qiii nalus est rex Jud(voruni? (Matt. 2 . 2 ). Where is he who is born King of the Jews ? Now concerning this birth, mark where it befalls. I say again as I have often said before that this