Chapter XV

Showeth forth the operation of the Spirit of God within us.

HENCEFORWARD, as the Spirit of the Lord sendeth us forth to live good and virtuous lives, so doth He draw us also to inward observances, entreating and commanding us to thank and praise and love and honour God for ever and ever, as I have taught aforetime.

And the more we know and love Him, the more we delight therein ; and in this wise we pass beyond the life of the senses.

The Spirit of Our Lord draweth us within and showeth us the Face of Love. He freeth and emptieth us of ourselves, our joys and sorrows, and of all created things, and giveth us the fulness of His grace, teaching us a more perfect practice of love, that is a mutual beholding between us and God, a mutual tasting 104 and knowing, a pleasing and delighting, and a dissolving and overflowing in love. For God giveth Himself to us, but we cannot apprehend Him. From Him flow forth in us His scattered gifts, in our soul and body and heart, in our senses and in all our powers. We taste and feel the comfort and the sweetness of His Love. He- eateth and drinketh with us, and we with Him, beyond the understanding of our senses.

The more we eat, the fiercer is our longing ; and the more we drink, the greater is our thirst ; but it is Love that payeth for all.

The gifts of God consume and nourish us, for they are themselves both food and drink. They fill up and overflow all our vessels ; and yet there remaineth with us a mysterious hunger and thirst, in which we long and gasp for that good thing that is Love itself, beyond all gifts and measureless.

This is the Mode in which the Spirit of God giveth Himself to us, could we but apprehend Him.

He draweth us also within Himself, and entreateth us to be one in love with Him.

io6 THE TWELVE BEGUINES

For all the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ must needs come to pass, and He desired and prayed His Heavenly Father, that we should be One with Them, just as He, in His Humanity, is One with God in love, not by nature, but by grace. And He desired also that we should be where He is, that we might see the glory and the honour given Him of His Heavenly Father.

In these words thou wilt especially observe six several points, wherein is round the most intimate communion 37 between us and God.