"If any one," says he, "ascends to such a height of contemplation as Saints Peter and Paul reached; and he perceives that a sick beggar needs his help to warm his soup, or for any other service, it would be much better for him to leave the repose of contemplation, and aid the poor man, instead of remaining in the sweetness of contemplative life." (Institutions, p. 195.)
Here is the plain truth and no illusion. And elsewhere he writes: "Men should not pay so much attention to what they do, as to what they are in themselves; for if the core of their heart be good, their acts will be so also without difficulty; and if their conscience be just and right, their works cannot be otherwise. Many make sanctity [to] consist in action; but action is not the chief element in it. Holiness must be judged in its principle as well as in its acts. In other words, we must be interiorly saints before we can perform exterior holy actions. No matter how good may be our works, they do not sanctify us as works. It is we, on the contrary, who make them meritorious, in virtue of inner sanctity which is their producing principle. It is in the bottom of the soul that we find the essence of a just man." (Institutions, p. 156.)
Here is the truth again. Collate those two passages, after having studied them separately, and you will find that they throw complete light on the nature and value of human acts.
The almost continual ecstatic state in which Tauler lived, never made him forget his smallest duties.
It has been often remarked that grace adapts itself to the natural qualities of the individual whom it sanctifies. This is as true of nations as of individuals. In Italy, asceticism has the color of the sun. Italian ascetics shout, burn with ardor, and seem full of exaggerated transports to the nations of cooler blood. The landscape of Italian asceticism presents you a burning sky, an ocean of fire, and a scorching earth. Sadness is generally wanting. In Spain, the hue is more sombre. The same ardor is there; but ardor tempered with jealousy. There is interior disquietude in Spanish mysticism, and even adoration in it examines itself as if suspicious of its truth. In Germany, profound gravity and stern austerity lead the soul into a horrible place. In Italy, images come crowding together, and divine love, instead of rejecting them, embraces them. The soul of the Italian saint holds garlands of flowers in his hands, offering them joyously to the blessed sacrament. Familiarity and adoration unite, like the two species of electricity before the thunder-clap. Familiarity, wedded to adoration, appeared in St. Francis of Assisi. The greatness of that strange man, who saw brothers and sisters in everything, and conversed with water, fire, the birds, and his monks, in the same tone and spirit, is not immediately manifest to superficial minds. Plain good nature veils his wonderful character. In Germany, those images which poetry presents to love are accepted with great precaution. Adoration is sober in thought and expression; and aspires to something sublime, whose form and name are intangible. German adoration is philosophical, meditative, broad, comprehensive, austere, silent, wrapped up in herself, and self-sufficing. She borrows only what is strictly necessary from persons and things. The world is a servant which she employs only with regret. She holds aloof from all creatures, and her words sound like concession. She says to no one, "My brother," or "My sister." If she had a brother. he would be silence. Her sister would be the mist which surrounds God.
Tauler is one of the most majestic representatives of Teutonic asceticism.
A disciple of St. Dionysius the Areopagite and of that layman of whom we have written, in the wake of those two great characters he follows, with eye and wing of eagle, into the region of translucent darkness. He does not flutter there, he soars; or, if he flies, his motion is so high and rapid, that it seems like the active repose of a sublime and fruitful immobility.
Tauler seems to desire obscurity. The remarkable effects of his preaching on his audience are less like thunder pealing in his language, than like the awful presence of the sacred cloud where the thunder is reposing.
Every man is a universe in himself. Unity and variety are the two terms of the antinomy, without which there is no life. But perfection consists in equilibrium between those terms. Such perfection is very rare. In general the antinomy of life is replaced by the contradictory, which is death. Man is divided between good and evil, always attempting an impossible reconciliation between them. Contradiction is a dead force which tries to serve two masters. An antinomy is a living force which, having chosen a master, and obeying but him, desires to serve him in a thousand different ways always useful. Nothing better displays the unity of a landscape than the variety of colors which it presents to the eye at the same time. The lights and shades, the undulations of the soil, and the accidents of sun, clouds, villages, forests, and spires, all are harmonized in the eye of the spectator; and the more numerous, varied, and unexpected are the details, the more does he experience delight and a certain dilation of mind and heart in the contemplation of their unity. If he takes away some of the circumstances, he mars the effect of the whole; for he cannot even destroy a shadow without diminishing the sunshine. What is true of a landscape is also true of a book or a man. But Tauler lost the balance between unity and variety, for he gave all to one and nothing to the other. Few individuals, even among the greatest saints, have been so ardent in the sentiment, love, pursuit, and conquest of unity. He seeks after it incessantly, and it haunts him. He never seems to look at the road he is travelling. He fixes his eyes solely on the goal ever present to his soul. He turns neither to the right nor the left. He knows not whether there be flowers or thorns on the borders of his pathway. Do not ask him to imitate St. Antony of Padua, and preach to the fishes of the streams. He minds neither fishes nor birds. He seems to regard creation as a stranger, of whom he had heard tell long ago, but whose remembrance is now but faintly glimmering in his mind.