Third Day

" The kingdom of God is within you."f God has just invited us to abide in Him, that our soul may live in the heritage of His glory ; and He now reveals to us that we are not to go outside ourselves to find this inheritance, for the kingdom of God is within us. St. John of the Cross says that it is in the substance of the soul, which is inaccessible to the devil and the world, that God gives Himself to it. Then all the movements of the soul become divine, and though of God, still are the soul's, because God effects them within it, itself willing and assenting to them.J The same saint also states that the centre of the soul is God. When the soul loves, comprehends, and enjoys Him with all its strength, it will have attained to its deepest and ultimate centre in God. When, however, the soul has not attained to this state, though it be in God, Who is the centre of it, still, it is not in the deepest centre, because there is still room for it to advance. Love unites the soul with God, and the greater its love the deeper does it enter God, and the more it is centred in Him. Thus, a soul which has but one degree of love is already in God, Who is its centre ; but when its love shall have attained the highest degree, it will have penetrated to its

X "The Living Flame," Stan. i. 10, II.¹

inmost depth or centre, and will be transformed until it becomes most like God.* To such a soul, recollected in itself, may be addressed Pere Lacordaire's words to the Magdalen : " Ne demandez plus le Maitre a personne sur la terre, a personne dans le ciel, car Lui c'est votre ame, et votre ame, c'est Lui."f