D. This stagnation of the emotions has its counterpart in

the stagnation of the will and intelligence, which has been experienced by some contemplatives as a part of their negative state. As regards the will, there is a sort of moral dereliction: the self cannot control its inclinations and thoughts. In the general psychic turmoil, all the evil part of man’s inheri- tance, all the lower impulses and unworthy ideas which have long been imprisoned below the threshold, force their way into the field of consciousness. “I had thoughts of all the sins,” says Madame Guyon, “though without committing them.” 2 “Every vice was re-awakened within me,’ says Angela of Foligno, “I would have chosen rather to be roasted than to endure such pains.” 3
Where visual and auditory automatism is established, these irruptions from the subliminal region often take the form of evil visions, or of voices making coarse or sinful suggestions to the self. Thus St. Catherine of Siena, in the interval between her period of joyous illumination and her “spiritual marriage,” was tormented by visions of fiends, who filled her cell and “with obscene words and gestures invited her to lust.” She fled from her cell to the church to escape them, but they pursued her there: and she obtained no relief from this obsession until she ceased to oppose it. She cried, “I have
® Ruysbroeck, ‘‘L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” 1. ii. cap. xxviii.
* Vie, pt. i. cap. xxiii.
3 B. Angele de Fulginia, “ Visionum et Instructionum Liber,’ cap. xix. (Eng. trans. p. 15).
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 469
chosen suffering for my consolation, and will gladly bear these and all other torments in the name of the Saviour, for as long as it shall please His Majesty.” With this act of sur- render, the evil vision fled: Catherine swung back to a state of affirmation, and was comforted by a vision of the Cross." .
An analogous psychological state was experienced by St. Teresa; though she fails to recognize it as an episode in her normal development, and attributes it, with other spiritual adventures for which she can find no other explanation, to the action of the Devil. “ The soul,” she says, “laid in fetters, loses all control over itself, and all power of thinking of any- thing but the absurdities he puts before it, which, being more or less unsubstantial, inconsistent, and disconnected, serve only to stifle the soul, so that it has no power over itself; and accordingly—so it seems to me—the devils make a football of it, and the soul is unable to escape out of their hands. It is impossible to describe the sufferings of the soul in this state, It goes about in quest of relief, and God suffers it to find none. The light of reason, in the freedom of its will, remains, but it is not clear; it seems to me as if its eyes were covered with a veil. ... Temptations seem to press it down, and make it dull, so that its knowledge of God becomes to it as that of something which it hears of far away.” This dullness and dimness extends to ordinary mental activity, which shares in the lassitude and disorder of the inner life. “If it seeks relief from the fire by spiritual reading, it cannot find any, just as if it could not read at all. On one occasion it occurred to me to read the life of a saint, that I might forget myself and be refreshed with the recital of what he had suffered. Four | or five times, I read as many lines; and though they were | written in Spanish, I understood them less at the end than I did when I began: so I gave it up. It so happened to me on more occasions than one.”2 If we are reminded of anything here, it is of the phenomenon of “dark contemplation.” That dimness of mind which we there studied, is here extended to the most normal activities of the surface intelligence. The Cloud of Unknowing, rolling up, seems to envelop the whole self. Contemplation, the “way within the way,” has epitomized
t E. Gardner, ‘*St. Catherine of Siena,” p. 20. * Vida, cap. xxx. §§ 13 and 14.
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the greater process of the mystic life. In both, the path to Light lies through a meek surrender to the confusion and ignorance of the “Dark.” The stress and exasperation felt in this dark, this state of vague helplessness, by selves of an active and self-reliant type, is exhibited by Teresa in one of her half-humorous self-revealing flashes. “The Devil,” she says of it, “then sends so offensive a spirit of bad temper that I think I could eat people up!” ?
All these types of “darkness,” with their accompanying and overwhelming sensations of impotence and distress, are common in the lives of the mystics. We have seen them exhibited at length in Madame Guyon’s writings. Amongst innumerable examples, Suso and Rulman Merswin also ex- perienced them: Tauler constantly refers to them: Angela of Foligno speaks of a “ privation worse than hell.” It is clear that even Mechthild of Magdeburg, that sunshiny saint, knew the sufferings of the loss and absence of God. “Lord,” she says in one place, “since Thou hast taken from me all that I had of Thee, yet of Thy grace leave me the gift which every dog has by nature: that of being true to Thee in my distress, when I am deprived of all consolation. This I desire more fervently than Thy heavenly Kingdom!”2 In such a saying as this, the whole “value for life” of the Dark Night is abruptly revealed to us : as an education in selfless constancy, a “school of suffering love.”
E. There is, however, another way in which the self’s sense of a continued imperfection in its relation with the Abso- lute—of work yet remaining to be done—expresses itself. In persons of a very highly strung and mobile type, who tend to rapid oscillations between pain and pleasure states, rather - than to the long, slow movements of an ascending conscious- ness, attainment of the Unitive Life is sometimes preceded by the abrupt invasion of a wild and unendurable desire to “see God”: to apprehend the Transcendent in Its fulness: which can only, they think, be satisfied by death. As they begin to outgrow their illuminated consciousness, these selves begin also to comprehend how partial and symbolic that consciousness—even at its best—has been: and their move-
® Ob. cit., loc. cit. * **Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit,” pt, ii. cap. 25.
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ment to union with God is foreshadowed by a passionate and uncontrollable longing for ultimate Reality. This passion is so intense, that it causes acute anguish in those who feel it. It brings with it all the helpless and desolate feelings of the Dark Night; and sometimes rises to the heights of a negative rapture, an ecstasy of deprivation. St. Teresa is perhaps the best instance of this rather rare method of apprehending the self’s essential separation from its home, which is also the subject of a celebrated chapter in the “Traité de l’Amour de Dieu” of St. Francis de Sales.t Thanks to her exceptionally mobile temperament, her tendency to rush up and down the scale of feeling, Teresa’s states of joyous rapture were often paid for by such a “great deso- lation ””—a dark ecstasy or “pain of God.” “As long as this pain lasts,” she says, “it is impossible to the soul to think of anything that has to do with her own being: from the first instant all her faculties are suspended as far as this world is concerned, and they only preserve their activity in order to increase her martyrdom. Here I do not wish to be accused of exaggeration. I am sure, on the contrary, that what I say is less than the truth; for lack of words in which it may be expressed. This, I repeat, is an entrance- ment of the senses and the faculties as regards all which does not contribute to make the soul feel this pain. For the understanding perceives very clearly why the soul is in affliction, far from her God: and our Lord increases her grief in showing her in a vivid light His sovereign loveliness. The pain thus grows to such a degree of intensity that in spite of oneself one cries aloud. This is what happened to the per- son of whom I have spoken [St. Teresa herself] when she was in this state. In spite of her patience, in spite of her familiasity with suffering, she could not suppress those cries: because, as I have said, this is not a pain which is felt in the body, but in the depths of the soul. This person then learned how much more intense are the pains of the soul than those of the body.” 2
Moreover, the intense and painful concentration upon the Divine Absence which takes place in this “dark rapture”
* L. vi. cap. xiii. * « El Castillo Interior,”” Moradas Sextas, cap. xi.
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induces all the psycho-physical marks of ecstasy. “ Although this ecstasy lasts but a short time, the bones of the body seem to be disjointed by it. The pulse is as feeble as if one were at the point of death, but whilst the natural heat of the body is lacking and almost extinguished, the soul on the contrary feels itself so burned up by the fire of its love, that with a few more degrees it would escape, as it desires, and throw itself into the arms of God. ... You will tell me, perhaps, that there is imperfection in this desire to see God: and this humbled soul ought to conform herself to His will Who keeps her still in this exile. Before, I answer, she could do this; and this consideration helped her to endure her life, But now, impossible! She is no longer mistress of her reason, and can think of nothing but the causes of her afflic- tion. Far from her Sovereign Good, how could she desire to live? She feels in an extraordinary solitude: neither the creatures here below, nor even the inhabitants of heaven, are companionable to her, if He whom she loves be not in the midst of them. There is no alleviation to be found in this world: all, on the contrary, torments her. She is like a person sus- pended in the air, who can neither plant her foot upon the earth, nor raise herself to heaven. She burns with a con- suming thirst, and cannot drink at the well which she desires. There is nothing in this world which can soothe the violence of that thirst: and besides, the soul would not consent to quench it with any other water than that of which our Lord spoke to the Samaritan woman, and this water is denied her.” = :
Now all these forms of the Dark Night—the “ Absence of God,” the sense of sin, the dark ecstasy, the loss of the self’s old passion, peace and joy, and its apparent relapse to lower spiritual and mental levels—are considered by the mystics themselves to constitute aspects or parts of one and the same process: the final purification of the will or strong- hold of personality, that it may be merged without any reserve “in God where it was first.” The function of this process upon the Mystic Way is to cure the soul of the innate tendency to seek and rest in spiritual joys; to confuse Reality with the joy given by the contemplation of Reality. It
* St. Teresa, 0. ctt., loc, cit. Compare the Vida, cap. xx. §§ 11 to 14.
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 473
is the completion of that ordering of disordered loves, that transvaluation of values, which the Way of Purgation began. The ascending self must leave these childish satisfactions; make its love absolutely disinterested, strong, and courageous, abolish all taint of spiritual gluttony. A total abandonment of the personal standard, of that trivial and egotistic quest of per- sonal success which thwarts the great movement of the Flowing Light, is the supreme condition of man’s participation in Reality. This is true not only of the complete participation which is possible to the great mystic, but of those unselfish labours in which the initiates of science or of art become to the Eternal Goodness “what his own hand is to a man.” “Think not,” says Tauler, “that God will be always caressing His children, or shine upon their head, or kindle their hearts as He does at the first. He does so only to lure us to Himself, as the falconer lures the falcon with its gay hood... . We must stir up and rouse ourselves and be content to leave off learning, and no more enjoy feeling and fire, and must now serve the Lord with strenuous industry and at our own cost.’’!
This manly view of the Dark Night as a growth in responsibility—an episode of character-building—in which, as the “ Mirror of Simple Souls” has it, “the soul leaves that pride and play wherein it was full gladsome and jolly,” is charac- teristic of the German mystics. We find it again in Suso, to whom the angel of his tribulation gave no sentimental con- solations; but. only the stern command, “ Vereleter agite”— “Beaman!” “Then first,’ says Tauler again, “do we attain to the fullness of God’s love as His children, when it is no longer happiness or misery, prosperity or adversity, that draws us to Him or keeps us back from Him. What we should then experience none can utter; but it would be some- thing far better than when we were burning with the first flame of love, and had great emotion, but less true sub- mission.” 2
In Illumination, the soul, basking in the uncreated Light, identified the Divine Nature with the divine light and sweetness which it then enjoyed. Its consciousness of the
* Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent (Winkworth’s translation, p. 280), ® Of. cit., loc. cit.
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transcendent has been felt chiefly as an increase of personal vision and personal joy. Thus, in that apparently selfless state, the “I, the Me, the Mine,” though spiritualized, still remained intact. The mortification of the senses was more than repaid by the rich and happy life which this mortifica- tion conferred upon the soul. But before real and permanent union with the Absolute can take place: before the whole self. can learn to live on those high levels where—its being utterly surrendered to the Infinite Will—it can be wholly transmuted in God, merged in the great life of the All; this separated life, this dependence on personal joys, must be done ‘away. The spark of the soul, the fast-growing germ of divine humanity, must so invade every corner of character that the self can only say with St. Catherine of Genoa, “My me is God: nor do I know my selfhood except in God.”! The various torments and desolations of the Dark Night constitute this last and drastic purgation of the spirit; the doing away of separateness, the annihilation of selfhood, even though all that self now claims for its own be the Love of God. Such a claim—which is really a claim to entire felicity, since the soul which possesses it needs nothing more —is felt by these great spirits to sully the radiance of their self-giving love. “All that I would here say of these inward delights and enjoyments,” says William Law, “is only this; they are not holiness, they are not piety, they are not per- fection; but they are God’s gracious allurements and calls to seek after holiness and spiritual perfection . .. and ought rather to convince us that we are as yet but Jdades, than that we are really men of God.... This alone is the true ' Kingdom of God opened in the soul when, stripped of all selfishness, it has only one love and one will in it; when it has no motion or desire but what branches from the Love of God, and resigns itself wholly to the Will of God.. .. To sum up all in a word: Nothing hath separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God. All the disorder and corruption and malady of our nature lies in a certain fixedness of our own will, imagination, and desire, wherein we live to ourselves, are our own centre and circumference, act wholly from our-
* Vita e Dottrina, cap. xiv.
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 475
selves, according to our own will, imagination, and desires, There is not the smallest degree of evil in us but what arises from this selfishness, because we are thus all in _ all to ourselves. . . . To be humble, mortified, devout, patient in a certain degree, and to be persecuted for our virtues, is no hurt to this selfishness; nay, spzrztual-se/f must have all these virtues to subsist upon, and his life consists in seeing, know- ing, and feeling the bulk, strength, and reality of them. But still, in all this show and glitter of virtue, there is an unpurified bottom on which they stand, there is a selfishness which can no more enter into the Kingdom of Heaven than the grossness of flesh and blood can enter into it. What we are to feel and undergo in these last purifications, when the deepest root of all selfishness, as well spiritual as natural, is to be plucked up and torn from us, or how we shall be able to stand in that trial, are both of them equally impossible to be known by us beforehand.” !
The self, then, has got to learn to cease to be its “own centre and circumference”: to make that final surrender which is the price of final peace. In the Dark Night the starved and tortured spirit learns through an anguish which is, as Madame Guyon says, “itself an orison” to accept lovelessness for the sake of Love, Nothingness for the sake of the All; dies with- out any sure promise of life, loses when it hardly hopes to find. It sees with amazement the most sure foundations of its tran- scendental life crumble beneath it, dwells in a darkness which seems to hold no promise of adawn. This is what the German mystics call the “upper school of true resignation ” or of “ suffer- ing love”; the last test of heroic detachment, of manliness, of spiritual courage. Though such an experience is “ passive” in the sense that the self can neither enter nor leave it at will, it is a direct invitation to active endurance, a condition of stress in which work is done. Thus, when St. Catherine of Siena was tormented by hideous visions of sin, she was being led by her deeper self to the heroic acceptance of this subtle form of torture, almost unendurable to her chaste:and delicate mind. When these trials had brought her to the point at which she ceased to resist them, but exclaimed, “I have chosen suffering
* “Christian Regeneration ” (The Liberal and Mystical Writings of William Law, pp. 158-60).
a
476 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
for my consolation,” their business was done. They ceased. More significant still, when she asked, “ Where wast Thou, Lord when I was tormented by this foulness?” the Divine Voice answered, “I was in thy heart.”!
“Tn order to raise the soul from imperfection,” said the Voice of God to St. Catherine in her Dialogue, “I withdraw Myself from her sentiment, depriving her of former consolations .. . which I do in order to humiliate her, and cause her to seek Me in truth, and to prove her in the light of faith, so that she come to prudence. Then, if she love Me without thought of self, and with lively faith and with hatred of her own sensuality, she rejoices in the time of trouble, deeming herself unworthy of peace and quietness of mind. Now comes the second of the three things of which I told thee, that is to say: how the soul arrives at perfection, and what she does when she is perfect. That is what she does. Though she perceives that I have withdrawn Myself, she does not, on that account, look back; but perseveres with humility in her exercises, remaining barred in the house of self-knowledge, and, continuing to dwell therein, awaits with lively faith the coming of the Holy Spirit, that is of Me, who am the Fire of Love. ... This is what the soul does in order to rise from imperfection and arrive at perfection, and it is to this end, namely, that she may arrive at perfection, that I withdraw from her, not by grace, but by sentiment. Once more do I leave her so that she may see and know her defects, so that feeling herself deprived of consolation and afflicted by pain, she may recognize her own weakness, and learn how incapable she is of stability or perseverance, thus cutting down to the very root of spiritual self-love: for this should be the end and purpose of all her self-knowledge, to rise above herself, mount- ing the throne of conscience, and not permitting the sentiment of imperfect love to turn again in its death-struggle, but, with correction and reproof, digging up the root of self-love with the knife of self-hatred and the love of virtue.” 2
“Digging up the root of self-love with the knife of self- hatred ”—here we see the mystical reason of that bitter self- contempt and sense of helplessness which overwhelms the soul in the Dark Night. Such a sense of helplessness is really, the mystics say, a mark of progress: of deeper initiation into that
* Vide supra, p. 460. ? Dialogo, cap. Ixiii.
THE DARK: NIGHT OF THE SOUL 477
sphere of reality to which it is not yet acclimatized, and which ‘brings with it a growing consciousness of the appalling disparity ‘between that Reality, that Perfection, and the imperfect soul. _ The self is in the dark because it is blinded by a Light greater than it can bear. “The more clear the light, the more does it blind the eyes of the owl, and the stronger the sun’s rays the more it blinds the visual organs; overcoming them, by reason of their weakness, and depriving them of the power of seeing. So the divine light of contemplation, when it beats on the soul not yet perfectly enlightened, causes spiritual darkness, not only because it surpasses its strength, but because it blinds it and deprives it of its natural perceptions. ... As eyes weakened and clouded by humours suffer pain when the clear light beats upon them, so the soul, by reason of its impurity, suffers exceed- ingly when the divine light really shines upon it. And when the rays of this pure light shine upon the soul, in order to expel its impurities, the soul perceives itself to be so unclean and miser- able that it seems as if God had set Himself against it, and itself were set against God. ... Wonderful and piteous sight! so ereat are the weakness and impurity of the soul that the hand of God, so soft and so gentle, is felt to be so heavy and oppressive, though neither pressing nor resting on it, but merely touching it, and that, too, most mercifully ; for He touches the soul, not to chastise it, but to load it with His graces.” ?
The Dark Night then, whichever way we look at it, is a state of disharmony; of imperfect adaptation to environment. The self, unaccustomed to that direct contact of the Absolute which is destined to become the Source of its vitality and its joy, feels the “soft and gentle touch” of the Following Love as unbearable in its weight. The “self-naughting ” or “ purification of the will,” which here takes place, is the struggle to resolve that disharmony, to purge away the somewhat which still sets itself up in the soul as separate from the Divine: and makes the clear light of reality a torment instead of a joy. So deeply has the soul ‘now entered into the great stream of spiritual life, so dominant has her transcendental faculty become, that this process is accomplished in her whether she will or no: and in this sense it is, as ascetic writers sometimes call it, a “ passive purgation.” So long as the subject still feels himself to be somewhat he
3 St. John of the Cross, ‘‘ Noche Escura del Alma,” 1. ii. cap. v.
478 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
has not yet annihilated selfhood and come to that ground where his being can be united with the Being of God. :
Only when he learns to cease thinking of himself at all, in however depreciatory a sense; when he abolishes even such selfhood as lies in a desire for the sensible presence of God, will that harmony be attained. This is the “naughting of the soul,” the utter surrender to the great movement of the Absolute Life, which is insisted upon at such length by all” writers upon mysticism. Here, as in purgation, the condition of access to higher levels of vitality is a death: a depriva-} tion, a detachment, a clearing of the ground. Poverty leaps” to the Cross: and finds there an utter desolation, without promise of spiritual reward. The satisfactions of the spirit must” now go the same way as the satisfactions of the senses. Even the power of voluntary sacrifice and self-discipline is taken away. A dreadful exzuz, a dull helplessness, takes its place. The mystic motto, J am nothing, I have nothing, I desire nothing, must now express not only the detachment of the senses, but the whole being’s surrender to the All.
The moral condition towards which the interior travail is directed is that of an utter humility. “ Everything depends,” says Tauler, on “a fathomless sinking in a fathomless nothing- ness.” He continues, “If a man were to say, ‘ Lord, who art Thou, that I must follow Thee through such deep, gloomy, miserable paths?’ the Lord would reply, ‘I am God and Man, and far more God. If a man could answer then, really and consciously from the bottom of his heart, ‘Then I am nothing and less than nothing’; all would be accomplished, for the Godhead has really no place to work in, but ground where all has been annihilated. As the schoolmen say, when a new form is to come into existence, the old must of necessity be destroyed. ... And soI say: ‘If a man is to be thus clothed upon with this Being, all the forms must of necessity be done away that were ever received by him in all his powers—of perception, knowledge, will, work, of subjection, sensibility and self-seeking.’ When St. Paul saw nothing, he saw God. So also when Elias wrapped his face in his mantle, God came. All strong rocks are broken here, all on which the spirit can rest must be done away. Then, when all forms have ceased to
‘ 4
* J.e., the pure essence of the soul, purged of selfhood and illusion.
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 479
exist, in the twinkling of an eye the man is transformed. Therefore thou must make an entrance. Thereupon speaks the Heavenly Father to him: “Thou shalt call Me Father, and shalt never cease to enter in; entering ever further in, ever nearer, so as to sink the deeper in an unknown and unnamed abyss; and, above all ways, images and forms, and above all powers, to lose thyself, deny thyself, and even unform thyself.” In this lost condition nothing is to be seen but a ground which rests upon itself, everywhere one Being, one Life. It is thus, man may say, that he becomes unknowing, unloving, and senseless.” !
It is clear that so drastic a process of unselfing is not likely to take place without stress. It is the negative aspect of “deification” : in which the self, deprived of “ perception, know- ledge, will, work, self-seeking ”—the I, the Me, the Mine—loses itself, denies itself, unforms itself, drawing “ever nearer” to the One, till “nothing is to be seen but a ground which rests upon itself’—the ground of the soul, in which it has union with God.
“Everywhere one Being, one Life”—this is the goal of mystical activity ; the final state of equilibrium towards which the self is moving, or rather struggling, in the dimness and anguish of the Dark Night. “The soul,’ says Madame Guyon in a passage of unusual beauty, “ after many a redoubled death, expires at last in the arms of Love; but she is unable to perceive these arms. ... Then, reduced to Nought, there is found in her ashes a seed of immortality, which is preserved in these ashes and will germinate in its season. But she knows not this; and does not expect ever to see herself living again.” Moreover, “the soul which is reduced to the Nothing, ought to dwell therein; without wishing, since she is now but dust, to issue from this state, nor, as_ before, desiring to live again. She must remain as something which no longer exists: and this, in order that the Torrent may drown itself and lose itself in the Sea, never to find itself in its selfhood again: that it may become one and the same thing with the Sea.” 2
So Hilton says of the “naughted soul,” “the less that it thinketh that it loveth or seeth God, the nearer it nigheth
* Sermon on St. Matthew (‘‘ The Inner Way,”’ pp. 204, 205). * “ Les Torrents,” pt. i. cap. viii.
480 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
for to perceive the gift of this blessed love; for then is love master, and worketh in the soul, and maketh it forget itself, and for to see and look on only how love worketh: and then © is the soul more suffering than doing, and that is pure love.” ! |
The “mystic death” or Dark Night is therefore an aspect or incident of the self’s self-loss in the Abyss of the Divine Life; of that mergence and union of the soul with the Abso- lute which is the whole object of the mystical evolution of — man. It is the last painful break with the life of illusion, the tearing away of the self from that World of Becoming in which all its natural affections and desires are rooted, to which its intellect and senses correspond; and the thrusting of it into that World of Being where at first, weak and blinded, it can but find a wilderness, a “dark.” No transmutation without fire, say the alchemists: No cross, no crown, says the Christian. All the great experts of the spiritual life agree—whatever be their creeds, their symbols, their explanation—in describing this stress, tribulation, and _ loneliness, as an essential part of the way from the Many to the One.
The Dark Night, then, brings the self to the threshold of that completed life which is to be lived in intimate union with Reality. It is the Entombment which precedes the Resurrection, say the Christian mystics; ever ready to de-— scribe their life-process in the language of their faith. Here as elsewhere—but nowhere else in so drastic a sense—the self must “lose to find and die to live.” .
The Dark Night, as we have seen, tends to establish itself gradually; the powers and intuitions of the self being withdrawn one after another, the intervals of lucidity becoming rarer, until the “mystic death” or state of total) deprivation is reached. So, too, when the night begins to’ break down before the advance of the new or Unitive Life, | the process is generally slow, though it may be marked—as/ for instance in Rulman Merswin’s case—by visions atch ecstasies.2. One after another, the miseries and disharmonies of the Dark Night give way: affirmation takes the place of nega-
* “ The Scale of Perfection,” bk. iii. cap. v. 2 Jundt, ‘‘ Rulman Merswin,”’ p. 22.
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 48]
tion: the Cloud of Unknowing is pierced by rays of light. “When the old state of deprivation has reached its term,” says Madame Guyon, “this dead self feels little by little, yet without feeling, that its ashes revive and take a new life: but this happens so gradually that it seems to her that it is but a fancy, or a sleep in which one has had a happy dream. .. . And in this consists the last degree ; which is the beginning of the Divine and truly Interior Life which con- tains an infinite number of degrees, and wherein one may always go forward without end, even as this Torrent can always go forward in the Sea, and take therefrom the more qualities the longer it sojourns there.” !
The act of utter surrender then, which is produced by the Dark Night, has given the self its footing in Eternity: the abandonment of the old centres of consciousness has permitted movement towards the new. In each such forward movement, the Transcendental Self, that spark of the soul which is united to the Absolute Life, has invaded more and more the seat of personality; advanced in that unresting process which involves the remaking of the self in conformity with the Eternal World. In the misery and apparent stag- nation of the Dark Night, in that dimness of the spiritual consciousness, that dullness of its will and love, work has been done; and the last great stage of the inward transmutation accomplished. The self which comes forth from the night — is no separated self, conscious of the illumination of the Un- created Light, but the New Man, the transmuted humanity, whose life is ove with the Absolute Life of God. “The instant the two houses of the soul [the sensual and the spiritual] are tranquil and confirmed,” says St. John of the Cross, “ with the whole household of its powers and desires sunk in sleep and silence, as to all things of heaven and earth, the Divine Wisdom immediately in a new bond of loving possession unites itself to the soul, and that is fulfilled which is written, ‘While quiet silence contained all things and the night was in the midway of her course, Thy omnipotent Word sallied out of heaven from the royal seats’ (Wisdom xviii. 14). The same truth is set before us in the Canticle, where the Bride, after passing by those who took her veil away and
* Les Torrents,” pt. i. cap. viii. II
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wounded her, saith, ‘When I had a little passed by them I found Him whom my soul loveth’ (Cant. iii, 4).”?
So far, we have considered the Dark Night of the Soul from a somewhat academic point of view. We have tried to dissect and describe it: have seen it through the medium of literature rather than of life. Such a proceeding has obvious disadvantages when dealing with any organic process: and in its application to the spiritual life of man, these disadvan- tages are increased. Moreover, our chief example, ‘‘from the life” Madame Guyon, valuable as her passion for self analysis makes her to the student of mystic states, cannot be looked upon as a wholly satisfactory witness. Her morbid sentimen- talism, her absurd “spiritual self-importance” has to be taken into account and constantly remembered in estimating the value of her psychological descriptions. If we want to get a true objective idea of the Dark Night, we must see it in its wholeness as a part of the general life-process; not as a departmental experience. We must study the reactions of a self which is passing through this stage of development upon its normal environment, the content of its diurnal existence; not only on its intuition of the Divine.
As a pendant to this chapter, then, we will look at this “state of pain” as it expressed itself in the life of a mystic whose ardent, impressionable, and poetic nature reacted to every aspect of the contemplative experience, every mood and fluctuation of the soul. I choose this particular case— the case of Suso—(1) because it contains many interesting and unconventional elements ; showing us the Dark Night not as a series of specific events, but as a stage of development largely conditioned by individual temperament: (2) because, — being described to us at first hand, in the pages of his | singularly ingenuous Autobiography, it is comparatively free — from the reverent and corrupting emendations of the hagio- erapher.
Suso’s “ Life,” from the 22nd chapter onwards, is one of the most valuable documents which we possess for the study of this period of the Mystic Way. We see in it—more clearly
* “Noche Escura de] Alma,” 1. ii. cap. xxiv.
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 483
perhaps than its author can have done—the remaking of his consciousness, his temperamental reactions to the ceaseless and inexorable travail of his deeper self: so different in type from those of Madame Guyon and St. Teresa. There is a note of virile activity about these trials and purifications, an insistence upon the heroic aspect of the spiritual life, which most of us find far more sympathetic than Madame Guyon’s elaborate discourses on resignation and holy passivity, or even St. Teresa’s “dark ecstasies” of insatiable desire.
The chapter in which Suso’s entrance into this “Second Mystic Life” of deprivation is described is called “How the Servitor was led into the School of True Resignation.” Characteristically, this inward experience expressed itself in a series of dramatic visions; visions of that “dynamic” kind which we have noticed as a common accompaniment of the crisis in which the mystic self moves to a new level of consciousness.t It followed the long period of constant mortification and intermittent illumination which lasted, as he tells us, from his eighteenth to his fortieth year: and con- stituted the first cycle of his spiritual life. At the end of that time, “God showed him that all this severity and these penances were but a good beginning, that by these he had triumphed over the unruly sensual man: but that now he must exert himself in another manner if he desired to advance in the Way.”2
In two of these visions—these vivid interior dramas—we seem to see Suso’s developed mystical consciousness running ahead of its experience, reading the hidden book of its own future, probing its own spiritual necessities; and presenting the results to the backward and unwilling surface-mind. This growing mystic consciousness is already aware of fetters which the normal Suso does not feel. Its eyes open upon the soul’s true country, it sees the path which it must tread to perfect freedom ; the difference between the quality of that freedom and the spirituality which Suso thinks that he has attained. The first of these visions is that of the Upper School; the second is that in which he is called to put upon him the armour of a knight.
“One night after matins, the Servitor being seated in his
* Vide supra, p. 348. ? Leben, cap. xx.
484 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
chair, and plunged in deep thought, he was rapt from his senses. And it seemed to him that he saw in a vision a magnificent young man descend from Heaven before him, and say, “Thou hast been long enough in the Lower School, and hast there sufficiently applied thyself. Come, then, with me; and I will introduce thee into the highest school that exists in this world.t There, thou shalt apply thyself to the study of that science which will procure thee the veritable : peace of God; and which will bring thy holy beginning to a happy end.” Then the Servitor rose, full of joy ; and it seemed to him that the young man took him by the hand and led him into a spiritual country, wherein there was a fair house - inhabited by spiritual men: for here lived those who applied - themselves to the study of this science. As soon as he entered it, these received him kindly, and amiably saluted him. And at once they went to the supreme Master, and told him that a man was come, who desired to be his disciple and to learn his science. And he said, “Let him come before me, that I may see whether he please me.” And when the supreme Master saw the Servitor, he smiled on him very kindly, and said, “Know that this guest is able to become a good disciple of our high science, if he will bear with patience the hard probation: for it is necessary that he be tried inwardly.”
“The Servitor did not then understand these enigmatic words. He turned toward the young man who had brought him and asked, “Well, my dear comrade, what then is this ~ Upper School and this science of which you have spoken to me?” The young man replied thus: “In this Upper School they teach the science of Perfect Self-abandonment ; that is to say, that a man is here taught to renounce him- self. so utterly that, in all those circumstances in which God is manifested, either by Himself or in His creatures, the man\ applies himself only to remaining calm and unmoved, renouncing so far as is possible all human frailty.” And
* These expressions, the Upper and Lower School of the Holy Spirit, as applied to the first and second mystic life, were common to the whole group of ‘‘ Friends of God,” and appear frequently in their works. Vide supra, p. 441, Rulman Merswin’s ‘Vision of Nine Rocks,” where the man who has ‘‘ gazed upon his Origin’’ is ~
said to have been in the Upper School of the Holy Spirit; 7z.e., to have been united to God. /
\
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 485
shortly after this discourse, the Servitor came to himself... and, talking to himself, he said, “Examine thyself inwardly and thou wilt see that thou hast still much self-will: thou wilt observe, that with all thy mortifications which thou hast inflicted on thyself, thou canst not yet endure external vexations. Thou art like a hare hiding in a bush, who is frightened by the whispering of the leaves. Thou also art frightened every day by the griefs that come to thee: thou dost turn pale at the sight of those who speak against thee: when thou dost fear to succumb, thou takest flight; when thou oughtest to present thyself with simplicity, thou dost hide thyself. When they praise thee, thou art happy: when they blame thee, thou art sad. Truly it is very needful for thee that thou shouldst go to an Upper School.” !
Some weeks later, when he had been rejoicing in the new bodily comfort which resulted from his relinquishment of all outward mortifications, Suso received a still more pointed lesson on his need of moral courage. He was sitting on his bed and meditating on the words of Job “ Militia est.” “The life of man upon the earth is like unto that of a knight” :2 “and during this meditation, he was once more rapt from his senses, and it seemed to him that he saw coming towards him a fair youth of manly bearing, who held in his hands the spurs and the other apparel which knights are accustomed to wear. And he drew near to the Servitor, and clothed him in a coat of mail, and said to him, “Oh, knight! hitherto thou hast been but a squire, but now it is God’s will that thou be raised to knighthood.” And the Servitor gazed at his spurs, and said with much amazement in his heart, “ Alas, my God! what has befallen me? what have I become? must I indeed be a knight? I had far rather remain in peace.” * Then he said to the young man, “Since it is God’s will that I should be a knight I had rather have won my spurs in battle; for this would have been more glorious.” The young man turned away and began to laugh: and said to him, “Have no fear! thou shalt have battles enough. He who would play a valiant part in the spiritual chivalry of God must endure more numerous and more dreadful combats than any which were encountered by the proud heroes of ancient
* Leben, cap. xxi. 2 Job vii. 1 (Vulgate).
486 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
days, of whom the world tells and sings the knightly deeds. It is not that God desires to free thee from thy burdens ;
;
}
He would only change them, and make them far heavier ©
than they have ever been.” Then the Servitor said, “Oh, Lord, show me my pains in advance, in order that I may know them.” The Lord replied, “ No, it is better that thou know nothing, !est thou shouldst hesitate. But amongst the innu- merable pains which thou wilt have to support, I will tell thee three. The first is this. Hitherto it is thou who hast scourged thyself, with thine own hands: thou didst cease when it seemed good to thee, and thou hadst compassion on thyself.
Now, I would take thee from thyself, and cast thee without ~
defence into the hands of strangers who shall scourge thee. Thou shalt see the ruin of thy reputation. Thou shalt be an object of contempt to blinded men; and thou shalt suffer more from this than from the wounds made by the points of thy cross. When thou didst give thyself up to thy penances thou wert exalted and admired. Now thou shalt be abased and annihilated. The second pain is this: Although thou didst inflict on thyself many cruel tortures, still by God’s grace there remained to thee a tender and loving disposition. It shall befall thee, that there where thou hadst thought to find a special and a faithful love, thou shalt find nought but unfaithfulness, great sufferings, and great griefs. Thy trials shall be so many that those men who have any love for thee shall suffer with thee by compassion. The third pain is this: hitherto thou hast been but a child at the breast, a spoiled child. Thou hast been immersed in the divine sweetness like a fish in the sea. Now I will withdraw all this. It is my will that thou shouldst be deprived of it, and that thou suffer from this privation; that thou shouldst _
be abandoned of God and of man, that thou shouldst be —
publicly persecuted by the friends of thine enemies. /I will tell it thee in a word: all thou shalt undertake, that might bring thee joy and consolation, shall come to nothing, and all that might make thee suffer and be vexatious \to thee shall succeed.” 2
™ During the years of purgation Suso had constantly worn a sharp cross, the
points of which pierced his flesh. 2 Leben, cap. xxii.
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 487
Observe here, under a highly poetic and visionary method of presentation, the characteristic pains of the Dark Night as described by Madame Guyon, St. John of the Cross, and almost every expert who has written upon this state of con- sciousness. Desolation and loneliness, abandonment by God and by man, a tendency of everything to “go wrong,” a profusion of unsought trials and griefs—all are here. Suso, naturally highly strung and unbalanced, sensitive and poetic, suffered acutely in this mental chaos and multiplication of woes. He was tormented by a deep and heavy depression, so that “it seemed as though a mountain weighed on his heart”: by doubts against faith: by temptations to despair. These miseries lasted for about ten years. They were diversified and intensified by external trials, such as illnesses and false accusations; and relieved, as the years of purgation had been, by occasional visions and revelations.
Suso’s natural tendency was to an enclosed life: to secret asceticisms, dreams, outbursts of fervent devotion, long hours of rapt communion with the Eternal Wisdom whom he loved. Half artist, half recluse, utterly unpractical, he had all the dreamer’s dread of the world of men. His deeper mystical self now ran counter to all these preferences. Like the angel which said to him in the hour of his utmost prostration and misery, “ Viriliter agite /”2 it pressed him inexorably towards the more manly part; pushing him to action, sending him out from his peaceful if uncomfortable cell to the rough- and-tumble of the world. Poor Suso was little fitted by nature for that rough-and-tumble: and a large part of his autobiography is concerned with the description of all that he endured therein. The Dark Night for him was emphatically an “active night”; and the more active he was forced to be, the darker and more painful it became. Chapter after chapter is filled with the troubles of the unhappy Servitor; who, once he began to meddle with practical life, soon disclosed his native simplicity and lost the reputation for wisdom and piety which he had obtained during his years of seclusion.
There was not in Suso that high-hearted gaiety, that child- like courage, which made the early Franciscans delight to call themselves God’s fools. The bewildered lover of the
* Leben, cap. xxiii. 2 [bid., cap. xxv.
488 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
Eternal Wisdom suffered acutely from his loss of dignity ; from the unfriendliness and contempt of his fellow-men. He gives a long and dismal catalogue of the enemies that he made, the slanders which he endured, in the slow acquirement of that disinterested and knightly valour which had been revealed to him as the essential virtue of the squire who would “ride with the Eternal Wisdom in the lists.” ?
Suso was a born romantic. This dream of a spiritual chivalry haunts him: over and over again he uses the language of the tournament in his description of the mystic life. Yet perhaps few ideals seem less appropriate to this timid, highly- strung, impracticable Dominican friar: this ecstatic “ minne- singer of the Holy Ghost,” half-poet, half-metaphysician, racked by ill-health, exalted by mystical ardours, instinctively fearing the harsh contact of his fellow-men.
There is no grim endurance about Suso: he feels every hard knock, and all the instincts of his nature are in favour of telling his griefs. A more human transcendentalist has never lived. Thanks to the candour and completeness with which he takes his readers into his confidence, we know him far more intimately than is the case with any of the other great contemplatives. There is one chapter in his life in which he describes with the utmost ingenuousness how he met a magnificent knight whilst crossing the Lake of Constance; and was deeply impressed by his enthusiastic descriptions of the glories and dangers of the lists. The conversation between
the tough man at arms and the hypersensitive mystic is full of
revealing touches. Suso is exalted and amazed by the stories of hard combats, the courage of the knights, and the ring for which they contend: but most astounded by the fortitude which pays no attention to its wounds.
“And may not one weep, and show that one is hurt, when one is hit very hard?” he says.
The knight replies, “No, even though one’s heart fails as happens to many, one must never show that one 1s dis- tressed. One must appear gay and happy; otherwise one is dishonoured, and loses at the same time one’s reputation and the Ring.”
“These words made the Servitor thoughtful; and he was
* ‘ Buchlein von der ewigen Weisheit,” cap. ii.
/
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 489
greatly moved, and inwardly sighing he said, ‘Oh Lord, if the knights of this world must suffer so much to obtain so small a prize, how just it is that we should suffer far more if we are to obtain an eternal recompense! Oh, my sweet Lord, if only I were worthy of being Thy spiritual knight !’”
Arrived at his destination, however, Suso was visited by fresh trials : and soon forgetting his valiant declarations, he began as usual to complain of his griefs. The result was a visionary ecstasy, in which he heard that voice of his deeper self, to which he always attributed a divine validity, inquiring with ill-con- cealed irony, “ Well, what has become of that noble chivalry ? Who is this knight of straw, this rag-made man? It is not by making rash promises and drawing back when suffering arrives, that the Ring of Eternity which you desire is won.”
“ Alas! Lord,” says Suso plaintively, ‘the tournaments in which one must suffer for Thee last such a very long time!”
The voice replied to him, “ But the reward, the honour, and the Ring which I give to My knights endures eternally.” *
As his mystic consciousness grows, this instinct pressing him towards action and endurance grows with it. The inner voice and its visionary expression urges him on remorselessly. It mocks his weakness, encourages him to more active suffering, more complete self-renunciation: more contact with the un- friendly world. Vzriliter agtte! He is to be a complete personality ; a whole man. Instead of the quiet cell, the secret mortifications, his selfhood is to be stripped from him, and the reality of his renunciation tested, under the unsympathetic and often inimical gaze of other men. The case of Suso is one that may well give pause to those who regard the mystic life as a progress in passivity, a denial of the world: and the “ Dark Night” as one of its most morbid manifestations.
* Leben, cap. xlvii. So Ruysbroeck, ‘‘ The gold Ring of our Covenant is greater than Heaver or Earth” (*‘De Contemplatione”). Compare Vaughan the Silurist (‘‘ The World’’).
“‘T saw Eternity the other night, Like a great Ring of pure and endless light, All calm as it was bright ; One whispered thus : *This Ring the Bridegroom did for none provide . But for His Bride.’”
490 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
It is interesting to observe how completely human and apparently “unmystical” was the culminating trial by which Suso was “perfected in the school of true resignation.” “None can come to the sublime heights of the divinity,’ said the Eternal Wisdom to him in one of his visions, “or taste its ineffable sweetness, if first they have not experienced the bitter- ness and lowliness of My humanity. The higher they climb without passing by My humanity, the lower afterward shall be their fall. My humanity is the road which all must tread who would come to that which thou seekest: My sufferings are the door by which all must come in.”! It was by the path of humanity ; by some of the darkest and most bitter trials of human experience, the hardest tests of its patience and love, that Suso “came in” to that sustained peace of heart and union with the divine will which marked his last state. The whole tendency of these trials in the “ path of humanity ” seems, as we look at them, to be directed towards the awakening of those elements of character left dormant by the rather specialized disciplines and purifications of his cloistered life. We seem to see the “new man” invading all the resistant or inactive corners of personality : the Servitor of Wisdom being pressed against his will to a deeply and widely human life in the interests of Eternal Love. The absence of God whom he loved, the enmity of man whom he feared, were the chief forces brought to play upon him: and we watch his slow growth, under their tonic influence, in courage, humility, and love of his fellow-men.
Few chapters in the history of the mystics are more touch- ing. than that passage in Suso’s Life2 “Where we speak of an extraordinary Trial which the Servitor had to bear.” It tells how a malicious woman accused him of being the father of her child, and succeeded for the time in entirely destroying his reputation. “And the scandal was all the greater,” says the Servitor with his customary simplicity, “because the rumour of that brother’s sanctity had spread so far.” Poor Suso was utterly crushed by this calumny, “wounded to the depths of his heart.” “Lord, Lord!” he cried, “every day of my life I have worshipped Thy holy Name in many places, and have helped to causeit to be loved and honoured by many men: and now Thou wouldst drag my name through the mud!” When the
? ‘* Buchlein von der ewigen Weisheit,” cap. ii. ? Cap. xl.
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 491
scandal was at its height, a woman of the neighbourhood came to him in secret ; and offered to destroy the child which was the cause of this gossip, in order that the tale might be more quickly forgotten, and his reputation restored. She said further, that unless the baby were somehow disposed of, he would certainly be forced by public opinion to accept it, and provide for its upbringing. Suso, writhing as he was under the con- tempt of the whole neighbourhood, the apparent ruin of his career—knowing, too, that this calumny of one of their leaders must gravely injure the reputation of the Friends of God—was able to meet the temptation with a noble expression of trust. “T have confidence in the God of Heaven, Who is rich, and Who has given me until now all that which was needful unto me. He will help me to keep, if need be, another beside myself.” And then he said to his temptress, “Go, fetch the little child that I may see it.”
“ And when he had the baby, he put it on his knees and looked at it: and the baby began to smile at him. And sigh- ing deeply, he said, ‘Could I kill a pretty baby that smiled at me? No, no, 1 had rather suffer every trial that could come upon me!’ And turning his face to the unfortunate little crea- ture, he said to it,‘Oh my poor, poor little one! Thou art but an unhappy orphan, for thy unnatural father hath denied thee, thy wicked mother would cast thee off, as one casts off a little dog that has ceased to please! The providence of God hath given thee to me, in order that I may be thy father. I will accept thee, then, from Him and from none else. Ah, dear child of my heart, thou liest on my knees ; thou dost gaze at me, thou canst not yet speak! As for me, I contemplate thee with a broken heart ; with weeping eyes, and lips that kiss, I bedew thy little face with my burning tears! ... Thou shalt be my son, and the child of the good God; and as long as heaven gives me a mouthful, I shall share it with thee, for the greater glory of God ; and will patiently support all the trials that may come to me, my darling son!’” How different is this from the early Suso ; interested in little but his own safe spirituality, and with more than a touch of the religious zsthete!
The story goes on: “And when the hard-hearted woman who had wished to kill the little one saw these tears, when she heard these tender words, she was greatly moved: and her
£92 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
heart was filled with pity, and she too began to weep and cry aloud. The Servitor was obliged to calm her, for fear that, attracted by the noise, some one should come and see what was going on. And when she had finished weeping the Brother gave her back the baby, and blessed it, and said to it, ‘Now may God in His goodness bless thee, and may the saints protect thee against all evil that may be!’ And he enjoined the woman to care for it well at his expense.”
Small wonder that after this heroic act of charity Suso’s reputation went from bad to worse; that even his dearest friends forsook him, and he narrowly escaped expulsion from the religious life. His torments and miseries, his fears for the future, continued to grow until they at last came to their term in a sort of mental crisis. “His feeble nature broken by the pains which he had to endure, he went forth raving like one who has lost his senses ; and hid himself in a place far from men, where none could see or hear him ... and whilst he suffered thus, several times something which came from God said within his soul, ‘ Where then is your resignation? Where is that equal humour in joy and in tribulation which you have so lightly taught other men to love? In what manner is it, then, that one should rest in God and have confidence only in Him ?’ He replied weeping, ‘You ask where is my resignation ? But tell me first, where is the infinite pity of God for His friends F ... Oh Fathomless Abyss! come to my help, for without Thee I am lost. Thou knowest that Thou art my only conso- lation, that all my trust is only in Thee. Oh hear me, for the love of God, all you whose hearts are wounded! Behold! let none be scandalized by my insane behaviour. So long as it was only a question of preaching resignation, that was easy : but now that my heart is pierced, now that I am wounded to the marrow... how can I be resigned?’ And after thus suffering half a day, his brain was exhausted, and at last he became calmer, and sitting down he came to himself: and turning to God, and abandoning himself to His Will, he said, ‘If it cannot be otherwise, fiat voluntas tua’”* The act of sub- mission was at once followed by an ecstasy and vision, in which the approaching end of his troubles was announced to him. “ And in the event, God came to the help of the Servitor, and little by little that terrible tempest died away.”
® Of. ctt., loc. cit.
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 493
Thus with Suso, as with St. Catherine of Siena and other mystics whom we have considered, the travail of the Dark Night is all directed towards the essential mystic act of utter self-surrender ; that fiat voluntas tua which marks the death of selfhood in the interests of a new and deeper life. He has learned the lesson of “the school of true resignation”: has moved to a new stage of reality. His last state, allowing for temperamental differences, is in essence the same as Madame Guyon’s “holy indifference”: a complete self-naughting, an utter acquiescence in the large and hidden purposes of the _ Divine Will.
** Anzi é formale ad esto beato esse tenersi dentro alla divina voglia per ch’ una fansi nostre voglie stesse,’’!
says Piccarda, announcing the primary law of Paradise. Suso has passed through the fire to the state in which he too can say, “Ta sua voluntate é nostra pace.’ The old grouping of his consciousness round “spiritual self” has come to its head and at last broken down. In the midst of a psychic storm parallel to the upheavals of conversion, “ mercenary love” is for ever dis- established, the new state of Pure Love is abruptly established in its place. Human pain is the price: the infinite joy peculiar _ to “free souls” is the reward. We may study the pain, but the nature of the joy is beyond us: as, in the Absolute Type of all mystic achievement, we see the Cross clearly but can hardly guess at the true nature of the resurrection life.
Hence Suso’s description of his establishment in the Unitive Way seems meagre, an anti-climax, after all that went before. “ And later,” he says simply, “when God judged that it was time, He rewarded the poor martyr for all his suffering. And he enjoyed peace of heart, and received in tranquillity and quiet- ness many precious graces. And he praised the Lord from the very depths of his soul, and thanked Him for those same suffer- ings : which, for all the world, he would not now have been spared. And God caused him to understand that by this complete abasement he had gained more, and was made the more worthy to be raised up to God, than by all the pains which he had suffered from his youth up to that time.” 2
Par. iii. 79. ‘‘ Nay, it is essential to this blessed being, to hold ourselves within
’ the Will Divine wherewith our own wills are themselves made one,”’ * Loc. ctt.