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008 - Outward and Inward Morality · Meister Eckharts Sermons First English Translation

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  Speaker 1: Sermons seven of Meister Eckhart's sermons, translated by Claude Field.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
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  Speaker 1: Erik Metzler. Outward and Inward Morality One Corinthians, fifteen, verse ten.
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  Speaker 1: The grace of God. Grace is from God and works
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  Speaker 1: in the depth of the soul, whose powers it employs.
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  Speaker 1: It is a light which issues forth to do service
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  Speaker 1: under the guidance of the Spirit. The divine light permeates
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  Speaker 1: the soul and lifts it above the turmoil of temporal
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  Speaker 1: things to rest in God. The soul cannot progress except
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  Speaker 1: with the light, which God has given it as a
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  Speaker 1: nuptial gift. Love works the likeness of God into the soul.
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  Speaker 1: The peace, freedom, and blessedness of all souls consists in
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  Speaker 1: their abiding in God's will towards this union with God
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  Speaker 1: for which it is created. The soul strives perpetually. Fire
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  Speaker 1: converts wood into its own likeness, and the stronger the
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  Speaker 1: wind blows, the greater grows the fire. Now by the
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  Speaker 1: fire understand love, and by the wind the Holy Spirit.
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  Speaker 1: The stronger the influence of the Holy Spirit, the brighter
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  Speaker 1: grows the fire of love, but not all at once,
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  Speaker 1: rather gradually. As the soul grows, light causes flowers and
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  Speaker 1: plants to grow and bear fruit. In animals it produces life,
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  Speaker 1: but in men blessedness. This comes from the grace of God,
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  Speaker 1: who uplifts the soul, For if the soul is to
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  Speaker 1: grow godlike, it must be lifted above itself to produce
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  Speaker 1: real moral freedom. God's grace and man's will must co operate.
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  Speaker 1: As God is the prime mover of nature, so also
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  Speaker 1: he creates free impulses towards himself and to all good things.
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  Speaker 1: Grace renders the will free that it may do everything
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  Speaker 1: with God's help, working with grace as with an instrument
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  Speaker 1: which belongs to it. So the will arrives at freedom
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  Speaker 1: through love, nay becomes itself love, for love unites with God.
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  Speaker 1: All true morality, inward and outward, is comprehended in love,
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  Speaker 1: for love is the foundation of all the commandments. All
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  Speaker 1: outward morality must be built upon this basis not on
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  Speaker 1: self interest. As long as man loves something else than God,
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  Speaker 1: or outside God, he is not free because he has
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  Speaker 1: not love. Therefore, there is no inner freedom, which does
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  Speaker 1: not manifest itself in works of love. True Freedom is
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  Speaker 1: the government of nature in and outside man through God.
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  Speaker 1: Freedom is essential existence, unaffected by creep catures. But love
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  Speaker 1: often begins with fear. Fear is the approach to love.
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  Speaker 1: Fear is like the all which draws the shoemaker's thread
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  Speaker 1: through the leather. As for outward works, they are ordained
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  Speaker 1: for this purpose, that the outward man may be directed
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  Speaker 1: to God. But the inner work, the work of God
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  Speaker 1: in the soul, is the chief matter. When a man
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  Speaker 1: finds this within himself, he can let go externals. No
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  Speaker 1: law is given to the righteous, because he fulfills the
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  Speaker 1: law inwardly and bears it in himself. For the least
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  Speaker 1: thing done by God is better than all the work
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  Speaker 1: of creatures. But this is intended for those who are
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  Speaker 1: enlightened by God and the Holy scriptures. But here on
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  Speaker 1: earth man never attains to being unaffected by external things.
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  Speaker 1: There never was a saint so great as to be immovable.
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  Speaker 1: I can never arrive at a state when discords shall
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  Speaker 1: be as pleasing to my ears as harmony. Some people
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  Speaker 1: wish to do without good works. I say this cannot be.
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  Speaker 1: As soon as the disciples received the Holy Ghost, they
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  Speaker 1: began to work. When Mary sat at the feet of
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  Speaker 1: our Lord. That was her school time. But afterwards, when
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  Speaker 1: Christ went to heaven and she received the Holy Spirit,
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  Speaker 1: she began to serve and was a handmaid of the disciples.
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  Speaker 1: When saints become saints, they begin to work, and so
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  Speaker 1: gather to the refuge of everlasting safety. How can a
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  Speaker 1: man abide in love when he does not keep God's commands,
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  Speaker 1: which issue forth from love. How can the inner man
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  Speaker 1: be born in God when the utter man abides not
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  Speaker 1: in the following of Christ, in self mortification and in suffering.
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  Speaker 1: For there is no being born of God except through Christ.
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  Speaker 1: Love is the full filling of all commands. Therefore, however
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  Speaker 1: much man strives to reach this freedom, the body can
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  Speaker 1: never quite attain thereto, and must be ever in conflict.
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  Speaker 1: Seeing that good works are the witness of the Holy Ghost,
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  Speaker 1: man can never do without them. The aim of man
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  Speaker 1: is not outward holiness by works, but life in God.
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  Speaker 1: Yet this last expresses itself in works of love. Outward
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  Speaker 1: as well as inward morality helps to form the idea
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  Speaker 1: of true Christian freedom. We are right to lay stress
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  Speaker 1: on inwardness, but in this world there is no inwardness
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  Speaker 1: without an outward expression. If we regard the soul as
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  Speaker 1: the formative principle of the body, and God is the
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  Speaker 1: formative principle of the soul, we have a profounder principle
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  Speaker 1: of ethics than is found in pantheism. The fundamental thought
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  Speaker 1: of this system is the real distinction between God and
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  Speaker 1: the world, together with their real inseparability, for only really
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  Speaker 1: distinct elements can interpenetrate each other. The inner work is
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  Speaker 1: first of all the work of God's grace in the
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  Speaker 1: depth of the soul, which subsequently distributes itself among the
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  Speaker 1: faculties of the soul, in that of reason, appearing as belief,
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  Speaker 1: in that of will as love, and in that of
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  Speaker 1: desire as hope. When the divine light penetrates the soul,
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  Speaker 1: it is united with God as light. With light, this
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  Speaker 1: is the light of faith. Faith bears the soul to
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  Speaker 1: heights unreachable by her natural senses and faculties. As the
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  Speaker 1: peculiar faculty of the eye is to see form and color,
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  Speaker 1: and of the ear to hear sweet tone and voices,
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  Speaker 1: so is aspiration peculiar to the soul. To relax from
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  Speaker 1: ceaseless aspiration is sin. This energy of aspiration directed to
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  Speaker 1: in grasping God as far as is possible for the creature,
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  Speaker 1: is called hope, which is also a divine virtue. Through
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  Speaker 1: this faculty, the soul acquires such great confidence that she
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  Speaker 1: deems nothing in the divine nature beyond her reach. The
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  Speaker 1: third faculty is the inward will, which always turned to
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  Speaker 1: God like a face, absorbs to itself love from God.
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  Speaker 1: According to the diverse directions in which redemptive grace through
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  Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit is imparted to the different faculties of men,
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  Speaker 1: it finds corresponding expression as one of the Spirit's seven gifts.
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  Speaker 1: This impartation constitutes man's spiritual birth, which brings him out
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  Speaker 1: of sin into a state of grace, while natural birth
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  Speaker 1: makes him a sinner. As God can only be seen
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  Speaker 1: by his own light, so he can only be loved
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  Speaker 1: by his own love. The merely natural man is incapable
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  Speaker 1: of this, because nature by itself is incapable of responding
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  Speaker 1: to the divine love and is confined within its own circle. Therefore,
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  Speaker 1: it is necessary for grace, which is a simple supernatural power,
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  Speaker 1: to elevate the natural faculties to union in God above
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  Speaker 1: the merely temporal objects of existence. The possibility of love
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  Speaker 1: to God is grounded in the relative likeness between man
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  Speaker 1: and God. If the soul is to reach its moral
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  Speaker 1: goal i e. God likeness, it must become inwardly like
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  Speaker 1: God through grace and a spiritual birth, which is the
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  Speaker 1: spring of true morality. The inner work that man has
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  Speaker 1: to do is the practical realization of grace. Without this,
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  Speaker 1: all outward work is ineffectual. For salvation, virtue is never
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  Speaker 1: mere virtue. It is either from God or through God,
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  Speaker 1: or in God. All the soul's works which are to
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  Speaker 1: inherit an everlasting recompense, must be carried on in God.
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  Speaker 1: They are rewarded by Him in proportion as they are
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  Speaker 1: carried on in Him. For the soul is an instrument
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  Speaker 1: of God, whereby he carries on his work. The essence
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  Speaker 1: of morality is inwardness, the intensity of will from which
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  Speaker 1: it springs, and the nobleness of the aim for which
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  Speaker 1: it is practiced. When a good work is done by
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  Speaker 1: a man, he is free of it, and through that
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  Speaker 1: freedom is likeer and nearer to his original than he
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  Speaker 1: was before. The moral task of man is a process
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  Speaker 1: of spiritualization. All creatures are go betweens, and we are
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  Speaker 1: placed in time, that by diligence and spiritual business we
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  Speaker 1: may grow likeer and nearer to God. The aim of
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  Speaker 1: man is beyond the temporal, in the serene region of
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  Speaker 1: the everlasting present. In this sense, the new birth of
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  Speaker 1: man is the focus towards which all creation strives. Because
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  Speaker 1: Man is the image of God, after the likeness of
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  Speaker 1: which the world is created. All time strives towards eternity,
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  Speaker 1: or the timeless now, out of which it issued at creation.
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  Speaker 1: The merely temporal life in itself is a negation of
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  Speaker 1: real being because it depends on itself and not on
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  Speaker 1: the deepest foundation of life. Therefore, also natural love is cramped, finite,
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  Speaker 1: and defective. It must, through grace be lifted to the
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  Speaker 1: highest sphere of existence and attained to freedom outside the
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  Speaker 1: narrow confines of the natural. Thereby love becomes real love,
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  Speaker 1: because only that is real, which is comprehended and loved
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  Speaker 1: in its essence. Only by grace, Man comes from the
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  Speaker 1: temporal and transitory to be one with God. This lifting
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  Speaker 1: of manifoldness to unity is the supreme aim of ethics.
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  Speaker 1: By this, the divine birth is completed on the side
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  Speaker 1: of man. This passage from nothingness to real being. This
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  Speaker 1: quitting of one's self is a birth accompanied by pain,
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  Speaker 1: for by it natural love is excluded all grief except grief,
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  Speaker 1: for sin comes from love of the world. In God
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  Speaker 1: is neither sorrow nor grief nor trouble. Which thou be
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  Speaker 1: free from all grief and trouble. Abide and walk in
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  Speaker 1: God and to God alone. As long as love of
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  Speaker 1: the creature is in us, pain cannot cease. This is
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  Speaker 1: the chief significance of the suffering of Christ for us
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  Speaker 1: that we cast all our grief into the ocean of
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  Speaker 1: His suffering. If thou sufferest only regarding thyself, from whatever cause,
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  Speaker 1: it may be that suffering causes grief to thee and
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  Speaker 1: is hard to bear. But if thou sufferest regarding God
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  Speaker 1: and Him alone, that suffering is not grievous nor hard
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  Speaker 1: to bear. Because God bears the load. The love of
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  Speaker 1: the crost must swallow up our personal grief. Whoso does
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  Speaker 1: not suffer from love for him sorrow is sorrow and
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  Speaker 1: grievous to bear. But whoso suffers from love, he sorrows not,
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  Speaker 1: and his suffering is fruitful. In God. Therefore is sorrow
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  Speaker 1: so noble. He who sorrows most is the noblest. Now,
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  Speaker 1: no mortal sorrow is like the sorrow which Christ bore.
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  Speaker 1: Therefore He is far nobler than any man. Verily, were
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  Speaker 1: there anything nobler than sorrow, God would have redeemed man. Thereby,
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  Speaker 1: sorrow is the root of all virtue. Through the higher love,
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  Speaker 1: the whole life of man is to be elevated from
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  Speaker 1: temporal selfishness to the spring of all love to God.
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  Speaker 1: Man will again be master over nature by abiding in
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  Speaker 1: God and lifting her up to God. End of Sermons seven,
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  Speaker 1: recording by Eric Metzler, Albuquerque, New Mexico. End of Meister
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  Speaker 1: Eckhart's sermons, first time translated into English by Meister Eckhart,
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  Speaker 1: Translated by Claude Field.