The Coming of the Bridegroom
What is this eternal coming of our Bridegroom? It is a new birth and a new illumination which are without interruption; for the source from which the brightness streams, and which is itself the brightness, is living and fertile; and so the manifestation of the eternal light is renewed without interruption, in the secret depths of the spirit.... And the coming of the Bridegroom is so swift that He is always coming, and that He dwells within us with His unfathomable riches, and that He returns ever anew in person, with such new brightness that it seems as if He had never come before. For His coming is comprised beyond all limit of time, in an eternal Now; and He is ever received with new desires and a new delight. Behold, the joys and the pleasures which this Bridegroom brings with Him at His coming are boundless and without limit, for they are Himself. And this is why the eyes of the spirit, by which the loving soul beholds its Bridegroom, are opened so wide that they will never shut again. For the contemplation and the fixed gaze of the spirit are eternal in the secret manifestation of God. And the comprehension of the spirit is so widely opened, as it waits for the appearance of the Bridegroom, that the spirit itself becomes vast as that which it comprehends. And so is God beheld and understood by God, in whom all our blessedness is found.
THE END
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THE KEY OF THE GRAVE.
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MEMORANDA SACRA.
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FOOTNOTE:
[1] I shall give only one example, which is elementary in both senses of the word. Ruysbroeck distinguishes three kinds of life—the active life, the inward life, and the super-essential life. The Gnostics distinguish the spirit, the soul, and the material life, and divide men into three classes—the pneumatic or spiritual men, psychic or soul men, and hylic or material men. Plotinus also distinguishes between the soul, the intellect, the reasonable soul, and the animal nature. The Zohar distinguishes the spirit, the soul, and the life of the senses, and in the two systems, as in Ruysbroeck, the relation of the three principles is explained by a procession which is of the nature of an irradiation; then the theory of the divine meeting, God coming into us from within towards without, we going to Him from without towards within, etc. Cf. also the 5th Ennead, etc. etc.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is entered into the public domain.