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and live to him, is easy to him who doeth it.' Truly it is so to him who doeth it from love, but it is hard and wearisome to him who doeth it for hire. It is the same with all virtue and good works, and likewise with order, laws, obedience, precepts, and the like. But God rejoiceth more over one man who truly loveth than over a thousand hirelings." (Chapter xxxviii.)

One of the Friends of God, who is specially interesting because of his influence upon Gerard Groot, the founder of the Brotherhood of the Common Life, to which Thomas à Kempis belonged, is John Ruysbroek, properly John of Ruysbroek, who was born in 1293 in the village near Brussels after which he was called. He was a man of original genius, though, we are told, of little education. As a recluse in the abbey of Grönendal in the forest of Soignes he exercised a great influence both personally and through his writings. Many resorted to him for counsel in their spiritual perplexities. There is a story of some priests coming to him from Paris to consult him about the state of their souls, and the only answer he would give them was, "You are just as holy as you desire to be." When they showed some annoyance at receiving such an answer, he continued, "I said that your holiness was that which you desired it to be; in other words, it is in proportion to your goodwill. Enter into yourselves, examine your goodwill, and you will have the measure of your state."

To the literature of the Friends of God belong also the writings of Henry Suso (1295-1365), who, like Tauler, was a Dominican. After studying under Eckhart at Cologne, he returned to the monastery at Constance where he had received his earlier training, and where

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by and by he became Prior. In his autobiography he relates how, one day, soon after he became a monk, he was crossing the Lake of Constance, and beside him in the boat there sat a young knight who told him that he was on his way to arrange a tournament in which many were to take part. And what is the prize? asked Suso. "A gold ring," was the answer, "and," added the knight, "it will be won by him who best bears wounds and bruises and who holds out the longest." Then said Suso within himself, "How much these men are willing to risk and endure for a prize so trifling! Oh to be a knight of God!" And so he came to think of his life in terms of chivalry, as a tourneying for the Lord, in which he must fight manfully and bear cheerfully whatever blows were dealt him. There is a breath of true poetry in his writings, and a fine feeling for nature. 'Let us pause here awhile," he says, and reflect upon the high and venerable Master as mirrored in his works. Look above thee and around thee . . . and see how wide and high the beautiful heaven is in its swift course, and how nobly its Master has adorned it with the seven planets, and how he has decked it with the countless multitude of bright stars. Oh, when in summer time the beautiful sun bursts forth unclouded and serene, what fruitfulness and blessings it bestows unceasingly on the earth! See how the leaves and grass shoot up, and the lovely flowers smile; how forest, heath, and meadow ring again with the sweet song of nightingales and other little birds; how all those little creatures, which stern nature had shut up, issue forth rejoicing, and pair together; and how mankind, too, both old and young, rejoice and make merry. Oh, gentle God, if thou

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art so lovely in thy creatures, how lovely and blessed must thou be in Thyself! "

One distinguishing feature of the teaching of the Friends of God was its insistence on the idea that the highest life is open to men of every calling and not merely to those who had taken the monastic vows. In this respect it anticipated the teaching of the Reformers, with their doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. By the mediaeval mind generally saintliness was regarded as a career that could only be followed by withdrawing from the common relationships of home and business, and by devoting oneself to the life of prayer and selfdiscipline and thought on sacred things. Even when the monastic orders were missionary in their character-as was the case with the Franciscan and the Dominicanthe path of holiness was still the same; the "religious " life was considered incompatible with life" in the world." Saintliness was a profession, and was to be entered only through the renunciation of property and all domestic ties, and through the complete surrender of the will to ecclesiastical authority. The tradesman might, by the grace of God and the uprightness of his life, and the faithful use of the means and opportunities of spiritual culture, attain his salvation; but he was made to feel that there were heights in the Christian life which he need never hope to reach, and that the least among those who had taken the monastic vows and kept them was greater than he. It was not supposed, of course, that the mere keeping of the vows made men saints; there was always evidence enough to the contrary; but nevertheless, that was the door through which the saintly life was entered

1 The Life of Henry Suso by himself, chap. LIV.

if it was entered at all. Dean Inge has said that "the professional saint almost disappeared from northern Europe at or before the Reformation." His disappearance is largely due to the teaching of the Friends of God, and especially to that of John Tauler.

Tauler's teaching in this respect was based on his conviction of the divinity of every human soul. That each soul bears the image of God is a truth which he asserts again and again. Thus in preaching on the text "Whose image and superscription is this?" he says that God impressed his image and superscription on our souls when he created them; and so, while we should render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, we ought to render to God the soul which bears his image, and should never debase this divine currency by making it serve unworthy ends. He illustrates the same truth in another striking way. "As a sculptor is said to have exclaimed on seeing a rude block of marble, 'What a godlike beauty thou hidest !' so God looks upon man in whom his own image is hidden.” This divine image is the most central and essential thing in man; and to have it clear of all that obscures and disfigures it, is the great task of his life, in accomplishing which he regains his lost unity with God. "When " says Tauler," through all manner of exercises, the outward man has been converted into the inward, reasonable man, the powers of the senses and of the reason are gathered into the very centre of man's being-the unseen depths of the spirit, wherein lies the image of Godand thus he flings himself into the Divine Abyss in which he dwelt eternally before he was created; then when God finds the man thus simply and nakedly turned

towards him, the Godhead bends down and descends into the depths of the pure, waiting soul, and transforms the created soul, drawing it up into the uncreated essence, so that the spirit becomes one with him." (Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity.)

According to Tauler, nothing is so near the soul as God. Into the Divine Abyss of love and goodness that encompasses it, the soul may throw itself at any moment by means of holy desire, and through such experience be purified and ennobled. And the good effects of that experience persist in spite of all subsequent failure and backsliding. It is better to have loved God and lost him than never to have loved him at all; it is better to have heard his word and forgotten it or but imperfectly obeyed it, than never to have listened to it.

"Dear children, ye ought not to cease from hearing or declaring the word of God, because ye do not always live according to it, nor keep it in mind. For inasmuch as ye love it and crave after it, it will assuredly be given unto you; and you shall enjoy it for ever with God, according to the measure of your desire after it. Do not relinquish your desire though it be not fulfilled immediately, or though you may swerve from your aspirations, or even forget them for a time. It were a hard case if this were to cut you off for ever from the end of your being. But when ye hear the word of God, surrender yourselves wholly to it as if for eternity with a full purpose of will to retain it in your mind and to order your life according to it; and let it sink down right deep into your heart as into an eternity. If afterwards it should come to pass that you let it slip, and never think of it again, yet the love and aspiration which once really existed live

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