CHAPTER XI.

STANZA^ I.
With anxious love inflamed.
The burning fire of love, in general, is not felt at first, for it has not begun to burn, either because of our natural impurity, or because the soul, not understanding its own state, has not given it, as I have said,* a peaceful rest within. Sometimes, however, whether it be so or not, a certain longing after God begins to be 1 felt ; and the more it grows, the more the soul feels itself touched and inflamed with the love of God, without knowing or understanding how or whence that love comes, except that at times this burning so inflames it that it longs earnestly after God. David in this night said of himself, * My heart is inflamed, and my reins are changed, and I am brought to nothing, and knew not.'f That is, ‘my heart hath been inflamed' in the love of[ contemplation ; ‘ my reins,' that is, my tastes and affections also, have been changed from the sensual to
* Ascent of Mount Carmel, bk. ii., ch. 13, § 4. t Ps. lxxii. 21, 22.
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the spiritual way by this holy dryness, and in my denial of them, and ‘ I am brought to nothing, and I knew not/ The soul, as I have just said, not knowing the way it goeth, sees itself brought to nothing as to all things of heaven and earth, wherein it delighted before, and on fire with love, not knowing how.
2. And because occasionally this fire of love grows in the spirit greatly, the longings of the soul for God are so deep that the very bones seem to dry up in that thirst, the bodily health to wither, the natural warmth and energies to perish in the intensity of that thirst of love. The soul feels it to be a livings thirsts So was it with David when he said, 1 My soul hath thirsted after God, the strong, living/* It is as if he had said, the thirst of my soul is a living thirst. We may say of this thirst, that being a living thirst, it kills. Though this thirst is not continuously, but only occasionally, violent, nevertheless it is always felt in some degree.
3. I commenced by observing that this love, in general, is not felt at first, but only the dryness and emptiness of which I am speaking ; and then, instead of love, which is afterwards enkindled, what the soul feels in the dryness and the emptiness of its faculties is a general painful anxiety about God, and a certain painful misgiving that it is not serving Him. But a soul anxious and afflicted for His sake, is a sacrifice not a little
* Ps. xli. 3.
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CHAP. XI.] OF THE SOUL.
pleasing unto God. Secret contemplation keeps the soul in this state of anxiety, until, in the course ot time, having purged the sensual nature of man, in some degree, of its natural forces and affections by means of the aridities it occasions, it shall have kindled within it this divine love. But in the meantime, like a sick man in t he hands of his physician T all it has to do, in the dark night and dry purgation of the desire, is to suffer, healing its many imperfections and practising many virtues, that it may become meet for the divine love, of which I shall speak while explaining the following line :
O happy lot 1
4. When God establishes the soul in the dark night \ of sense, that He may purify, prepare, and subdue its lower nature, and unite it to the spirit, by depriving it of light, and causing it to cease from meditation — as He afterwards establishes it also in the spiritual night, that He may purify the spirit, and prepare it for union with Himself— the soul makes a gain so great, though it does not think so, that it looks upon it as great happiness to , have escaped from the bondage of the senses of its lower nature in that happy night, and therefore it sings — ‘Jp happy lot ! *
5. It is necessary now for us to point out the benefits which accrue to the soul in this night, and for the sake of which it pronounces itself happy in having passed
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through it. All these benefits are comprised in these words :
Forth unobserved I went.
6. f This going forth of the soul is to be understood of that subjection to sense under which it laboured when it~^ was seeking after God in weak, narrow, and fitful ways, for such are the ways of man's lower nature. It then fell at every step into a thousand imperfections and ignorances, as I showed while speaking of the seven capital sins, from all of which the spiritual man is delivered in the dark night which quenches all desire in all things whatsoever, and deprives him of all his lights in meditation, and brings with it other innumerable blessings in the acquirement of virtue, as I shall now show.
7. It will be a great joy and comfort to him who travels on this road, to observe how that which seemed so rugged and harsh, so contrary to spiritual sweetness, works in him so great a good. This good flows from going forth, as I am saying, as to all affections and operations of the soul, from all created things, in this night, and journeying towards those which are eternal, which is a great happiness and a great good. In the first place, because the desires are extinguished in all things ; and in the second place, because they are few who persevere and enter in through the narrow gate, by
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CHAP. XII.] OF THE SOUL.
the strait way that leadeth to life : ‘ How narrow is the gate and strait is the way that leadeth to life, and few there are that find it ! ’* are words of our Lord.
8. The narrow gate is this night of sense. The soufl detaches itself from sense that it may enter on it, » directing itself by faith, which is a stranger to all sense, that it may afterwards travel along the strait road of the other night of the spirit, by which it advances towards God in most pure faith, which is the means of union with^ Him. This road, because so strait, dark, and terrible — for there is no comparison, as I shall show,f between its trials and darkness and those of the night of sense — is travelled by very few, but its blessings are so much the more. I shall begin now to say somewhat, with the utmost brevity, of the blessings of the night of sense, that I may pass on to the other.