"Whilst thou didst act so lovingly toward me, and didst not cease to draw my soul from vanity to thyself, it happened on a certain day, between the festival of the resurrection and the ascension, that I went into court before prime, and seated myself near the fountain; and I began to consider the beauty of the place, which charmed me on account of the clear and flowing stream, the verdure of the trees which surrounded it, and the flights of the birds, and particularly of the doves—above all, the sweet calm—apart from all, considering within myself what would make this place most useful to me, I thought it would be the friendship of a wise and intimate companion, who would sweeten my solitude or render it useful to others; when thou, my Lord and my God, who art a torrent of inestimable pleasures, after having inspired me with the first impulse of this desire, thou didst will also to be the end of it; inspiring me with the thought that if by my continual gratitude I return thy graces to thee, as a stream returns to its source; if, increasing in the love of virtue, I put forth, like the trees, the flowers of good works; furthermore, if, despising the things of earth, I fly upward, freely, like the birds, and thus free my senses from the distraction of exterior things, my soul would then be empty, and my heart would be an agreeable abode for thee" (p. 76).
If in this passage we see how the natural yearning for sympathy and companionship may rise into the heavenly aspirations from which mere nature would divert the heart, we find in the following one a type of that compensation which is made to unreserved loyalty. The religion of the incarnation gives back, in a human as well as a divine form, all that human instincts had renounced. "It was on that most sacred night in which the sweet dew of divine grace fell on all the world, and the heavens dropped sweetness, that my soul, exposed like a mystic fleece in the court of the sanctuary, having received in meditation this celestial rain, was prepared to assist at this divine birth, in which a Virgin brought forth a Son, true God and man, even as a star produces its ray. In this night, I say, my soul beheld before it suddenly a delicate child, but just born, in whom were concealed the greatest gifts of perfection. I imagined that I received this precious deposit in my bosom" (p. 85). One of the chief tests as to the divine origin of visions consists in their tending toward humility; for those [{408}] which come from a human or worse than human source tend to pride. The humility of St. Gertrude was profound as the purity of which humility is the guardian was spotless. "One day, after I had washed my hands, and was standing at the table with the community, perplexed in mind, considering the brightness of the sun, which was in its full strength, I said within myself, 'If the Lord who has created the sun, and whose beauty is said to be the admiration of the sun and moon; if he who is a consuming fire is as truly in me as he shows himself frequently before me, how is it possible that my heart continues like ice, and that I lead so evil a life?'" (p. 106).
There can be no stronger argument in favor of the supernatural origin of St. Gertrude's visions than their subjects. The highest of her flights, far from carrying her beyond the limits of sound belief, or substituting the fanciful for the fruitful, but bears her deeper into the heart of the great Christian verities. She soars to heaven to find there, in a resplendent form, the simplest of those truths which are our food upon earth. As the glorified bodies of the blessed will be the same bodies which they wore during their earthly pilgrimage, so the doctrines, "sun-clad," in her "Revelations" are still but the primary articles of the Creed. Her special gift was that of realization: what others admitted, she believed; what others believed, she saw. It was thus that she felt the co-presence of the supernatural with the natural, the kingdom of spirit not to her being a future world, but a wider circle clasping a smaller one. From this feeling followed her intense appreciation of the fact that all earthly things have immediate effect on high. If a prayer is said on earth, she sees the scepter in the hand of the heavenly King blossom with another flower; if a sacrament is worthily received, the glory on his face flashes lightning round all the armies of the blessed. That such things should be seen by us may well seem wonderful; that they should exist can appear strange to no one who realizes the statement, that when a sinner repents there is joy among the angels in heaven.
A vision, from which we learn the belief of one of God's humblest creatures that something was lost to his honor by her compulsory absence from choir, but that he was more than compensated for the loss by the holy patience with which she submitted to illness (p. 180), is not more wonderful than the fact that God's glory should be our constant aim, or that God should have joy in those that love him. The marvel is, that the saint was always believing what we profess to believe. She lived in an everlasting jubilee of divine and human love: it was always to her what a beaming firmament might be to one who for the first time had walked up out of a cave. She was ever seeing in visible types the tokens of a transcendent union between God and man —a deification, so to speak, of man in heaven. Is this more wonderful than the words that bow the foreheads and bend the knees of the faithful, "He was made man?" If such things be true, the wonder is, not that a few saints realize them, living accordingly in contemplation and in acts of love, but that a whole world should stand upon such truths as its sole ground of hope, and yet practically ignore them.
Neither in ordinary Christian literature nor in the ordinary Christian life do we find what might have been anticipated eighteen centuries ago by those who then first received the doctrines of the incarnation and the communion of saints. How many have written as if Christianity were merely a regulative principle, introduced to correct the aberrations of natural instincts! Yet even under the old dispensation the sacred thirst of the creature for the Creator was confessed: "As longeth the hart for the water-springs, so longeth my soul after thee, O Lord." The royal son of the [{409}] great Psalmist had sang in the Book of Canticles the love of the Creator for the creature. What might not have been expected from Christian times!
How much is not actually found in all those Christian writings the inspiration of which, in the highest sense of the word, is de fide! How supernatural at once and familiar is that divine and human relationship set forth by our Lord in his parables! What closeness of union! what omnipotence of prayer! Some perhaps might say, "If our Lord were visibly on earth as he was during the thirty-three years, then indeed the closeness of intercourse between him and his own would be transcendent." But the exact contrary is the fact. The closest intercourse is in the spirit, and apart from all that is sensual; the sense is a hindrance to it. So long as he was visibly with them, the affection of the apostles themselves for their Lord was too material to be capable of its utmost closeness. Even earthly affections are perfected by absence, and crowned by death. Till they are purified by the immortalizing fire of suffering, sense clings to the best of them more than we know; not by necessity corrupting them, but limiting, dulling, depressing, and depriving them of penetration and buoyancy. While he was with them, the apostles sometimes could not understand their Master's teaching—where to the Christian now it seems plain—and replied to it by the words, "Be it far from thee!" When the feast of Pentecost was come, they loved him so that they did not fear to die for him; but they no longer so loved him as to see in him but the restorer of a visible Israel, and to lament his death. But this Pentecost has continued ever since in the Christian Church! What, then, was to be expected except a fulfilment of the earlier promises: "I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;" and as a natural consequence of perfected love, the development of the spiritual sight: "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions" (Joel ii. 28)? Such was the condition of that renewed world for which the apostles wrote, and to which they promised the spiritual gift and the hidden life. More plainly than the Jewish king they proclaimed that the union between the Creator and the creature was no dream, but that the servants of sense and pride were dreamers; and, in words like a musical echo from the canticle of Canticles, they affirmed that between Christ and his Church there exists a union, the nearest type of which is to be found in the bridal bond. This was the doctrine that made the world in which St. Gertrude lived. The clear-sighted will see that the charges brought against her and her Church are charges brought against the Bible no less.
But all is not said when it is affirmed that the ascetics, like the apostles, enjoyed a closer union with their Lord in his spirit because he had withdrawn his visible presence from the earth. Sense may separate those whom it seems to unite; but there is a nearness notwithstanding, which has no such paradoxical effect. No one can even approach the subject of the visions of the saints unless he duly appreciates the real presence, not only as a doctrine, but in its practical effects. The saints had a closeness to their Lord denied to the Jewish prophets. He was absent as regards visibility; but he was present in the blessed eucharist. If the absence made the love more reverential, the presence made it more vivid. A large proportion of the visions of the saints were connected with the blessed sacrament. In it the veil was not lifted; but the veiled nearness quickened that love which perfects faith. To sense all remained dark; but the spirit was no longer enthralled by sense, and it conversed with its deliverer.
There are those who could not be happy if they did not believe that the [{410}] world abounds in persona nobler than themselves. There are others who are affluent but in cavils. The visions of saints must, according to them, be illusory, because they are not demonstrably divine! But are the ordinary graces of Christians distinguished from illusions by demonstration? Is penitence, or humility, or simplicity demonstrable? Do we believe that nothing is an object of prayer, or an occasion for thanksgiving, till it is proved to be such? Those who know that religion has its vast theological region of certainty know also that there exists an outward region in which, though credulity is an evil, yet needless contentiousness is the note of a petty mind. Or the visions must be fabulous, because the caviller does not understand the mode of spiritual operation to which they are referable! But how much do we know as to the separate or joint action of our bodily, intellectual, and moral powers? We believe in results; but we understand little of processes.
The only visions received as de fide are those recorded in the Holy Scriptures. Do we know by what process even these came to exist? Were they external manifestations, such as, if shown to two persons, must have worn for both the same semblance; or may they have had an existence only within the mind of the seer? Is not the real question this—whether or not they had a divine origin; not whether he who sent them worked on the mind from without, or stimulated its action from within? In this case the visions of some event—such as the crucifixion—possessed by two different saints, might not have been the less authentic although different from each other in some particulars. Who can say to what extent habitual grace may not determine the action of the imaginative faculty, as of other faculties, so as to produce vision in one man while it produces prudence or wisdom in another? That grace acts on the mind as well as on the heart no one will deny, since some of the gifts of the Holy Ghost are of an intellectual order, and it is through spiritual discernment that we understand religious truth. It seems, indeed, but natural to suppose that grace should operate on the imagination, and thus counterwork the seductions by which an evil power assails that faculty—a form of temptation often, but not consistently, insisted on by those who scoff at visions. If this be granted, then, as we can neither measure the different degrees in which grace is granted, and increased by co-operation, nor ascertain the intellectual shape and proportions of those to whom it is accorded, who can affect to determine to what extent that grace may not suffice, in some cases, to produce vision, even when accorded mainly for other purposes?
But this is not all. The imagination does not act by itself; the other faculties work along with it; by them also the vision is shaped in part; and as they are developed, directed, and harmonized in a large measure by grace, in the same degree the vision must, even when not miraculous, be affected by a supernatural influence. Once more: God works upon us through his providence as well as through his grace; and the color of our thoughts is constantly the result of some external trifle, apparently accidental. A dream is modified by a momentary sound; and a conclusion may be shaped not without aid from a flying gleam or the shadow of a cloud. Our thoughts are "fearfully and wonderfully made," partly for us and partly by us, and through influences internal and external, which we trace but in part. We can draw a line between the visions which command our acceptance and those which only invite it; but in dealing with the latter class, it seems impossible to determine à priori how far they may or may not be accounted supernatural. It will depend upon their evidence, their consequences, their character, and the character of those to whom they belonged.