Matelda and the cloister of Hellfde

by of Magdeburg Mechthild

If so, the Lord Himself is no longer the Truth. He has solemnly declared to us, that for ever He would hold intercourse with His saints by the power of the Holy Ghost. He has given us the plain assurance, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (the age).” The saints of all ages have claimed these promises, and have found them true.

But the world cannot receive the Spirit of Truth, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him. Nevertheless “Ye know Him, for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you. Yet a little while the world seeth Me no more; but ye see Me: because I live ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.” And again, “He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.”

Thus in spite of delusions caused by the false teaching of the corrupted Church, in spite of the hallucinations caused by unnatural bodily conditions, the Lord was true to His word, and made to His servants that revelation of His love that passeth knowledge, which marks their testimony.

And because it passeth knowledge, and all that it is possible for the heart of man to conceive, we recognise it as His revelation to the soul. The God of Catholicism was a Judge, awful and terrible. Even the thought that the righteous anger of the Father needed to be appeased by the merciful intervention of the Son, gave place in time to the thought that the Son also was but a righteous Judge, in whom was justice without mercy. Therefore it was necessary that His mother should be the hope and refuge of sinners, and that her intercession should incline His heart to pity. And there followed in due time a host of other mediators between God and man, to whom the sinful and the suffering should turn rather than to the great and dreadful God.

And it was in the face of this teaching that those who knew His voice had the absolute assurance of His immeasurable and unspeakable love. They passed, as it were, through the host of mediators and intercessors to cast themselves at His feet, and to wash them with their tears, and anoint them with the love which the Holy Spirit of God had shed abroad in their hearts.

Nor had they, as some Protestants in our days, the strange delusion that there is a something called “religion” to which, if they turn in their last days, they may perhaps be fit for heaven. They knew, and we know, if we will look into our hearts, that this is not the answer to our need.

Can “religion” love us? We need love. We need a living heart who can love us with a love utterly unchangeable and eternal. And we find it in Him whose name is Love; in Him who is absolutely just, but who is also the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. “The Just God and the Saviour”—well may it be added, “there is none besides Me.” No God has ever been invented by the thoughts of man who can be at once the Just One and the Saviour, in whom “Mercy and Truth are met together, in whom Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other.”

We find this revelation of Himself all through the ages, and it is thus that He is now revealed to every soul whose eyes have been opened to see Him, whose ears have been unstopped to hear that marvellous Voice, which is as clear and distinct to the soul now, as will be the shout, and the voice of the Archangel, and the trumpet of God in the day that is to be.

Is it not by the teaching of God Himself, through His Word and Spirit, that we find the solid path upon which to walk, day by day, in all circumstances of our ordinary life? He thus becomes wisdom to the foolish, and strength to the weak. He directs the path of those who in all their ways acknowledge Him. We find a safer guide than our own understanding, than the “common-sense” of the natural heart, which may mislead, and will mislead, those who have no better teacher, as dreams and visions misled the true-hearted servants of God in former days.

The guidance and teaching of Him who is the Wisdom of God, and who hears and answers the prayers of those who seek Him, will assuredly not lead us to commit acts of folly; but the common-sense will be more fully exercised, because all existing facts will then be taken into account.