"Take this answer," he said, "to those that sent you. I will neither hear nor consider such words any more. If I yield in this matter, and say one word to the King or to any other, by which any may understand that my message was a delusion, or that I spoke of myself and not from our Lord, then I pray that our Lord may blot my name out of the Book of Life."

So Master Richard answered and closed his eyes to commune with G.o.d. And the young man went away sighing but speaking no word.

Of the Dark Night of the Soul

_De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine: Domine exaudi vocem meam._

Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice.--_Ps. cxxix. 1, 2._

XI

The third temptation was so fierce and subtle, that I doubt whether I wholly understood it when Master Richard tried to tell it to me. He did not tell me all, and he could answer but few questions, and I fear that I am not able to tell even all that I heard from him. It was built up like a house, he said, stone by stone, till it fenced him in, but he did not know what was all its nature till he saw my lord cardinal.

A soul such as was Master Richard's must have temptations that seem as nothing to coa.r.s.er beings such as myself: as a bird that lives in the air has dangers that a crawling beast cannot have. There are perils in the height that are not perils on the earth. A bird may strike a tree or a tower; his wings may fail him; he may fly too near the sun till he faint in its heat; he cannot rest; if he is overtaken by darkness he cannot lie still. [Sir John enumerates at some length other such dangers to bird life.]....

Now Master Richard described the state into which he fell under a curious name that I cannot altogether understand. He said that there be three _nights_ through which the contemplative soul must pa.s.s or ever it come to the dawn. The first two he had gone through during his life in the country; the first is a kind of long-continued dryness, when spiritual things have no savour; the second is an affection of the mind, when not even meditation [This is an exercise distinct from contemplation apparently. I include this pa.s.sage, in spite of its technicalities, for obvious reasons.] appears possible; the mind is like a restless fly that is at once weary and active. This second is not often attained to by ordinary souls, though all men who serve G.o.d have a shadow of it. It is a very terrible state. Master Richard told me that before he suffered it he had not conceived that such conflict was possible to man. It was during this time that the fiend came to him in form of a woman. The imagination that cannot fix itself upon the things of G.o.d is wide-awake to all other impressions of sense. [I do not think that Sir John understands what he is writing about, though he does his best to appear as if he did. I have omitted a couple of incoherent paragraphs.]....

Now, these two first _nights_ I think I understand, for he told me that what he suffered during his whipping in the hall and the strife of his mind with the clerk were each a kind of symbol of them. But the third, which he called the _Night of the Soul_ I do not understand at all. [It is remarkable that this phrase frequently occurs in the writings of St.

John of the Cross, though he treats it differently. Until I came across it in this MS. I had always thought that the Spanish mystic was the first to use it.] This only can I say of the state itself: that Master Richard said that it was in a manner what our Lord suffered upon the rood when he cried to His Father _Eloi, Eloi, etc._

But I can tell you something of the signs of that affliction, as they shewed themselves to Master Richard. Of the interior state of his soul I cannot even think without terror and confusion. Compared with the darkness of it, the other _nights_, he said, are but as clouds across the sun on a summer's day compared with a moonless midnight in winter.

He had suffered a shadow of it before, when he was entering the contemplative state, or the prefect Way of Union. Now it fell upon him.

Before I tell you how it came, I must tell you that this _night_, as he explained it, takes its occasion from some particular thought, and the thought from which it sprang you shall hear presently.

When the clerk had left him, sighing, as I said, as if with a kindly weariness (to encourage the other to call for him, I suppose), Master Richard committed himself again to G.o.d and lay still.

A fellow came in soon with his supper (for it was now growing dark), set it by him and went out. Master Richard took a little food, and after a while, as his custom was after repeating the name of Jesu, began to think on G.o.d, on the Blessed and Holy Trinity, and on His Attributes, numbering them one by one and giving thanks for each, and marking the colour and place of each in the glory of the throne. He was too weary to say vespers or compline, and presently he fell asleep, but whether it was common sleep or not I do not know.

In his sleep it seemed to him that he was walking along a path beneath trees, as he had walked on his way to London; but it was twilight, and he could not see clearly. There was none with him, and he was afraid, and did not know what he feared. He was afraid of what lay behind, and on all sides, and he was yet more afraid of what lay before him, but he knew that he could not stay nor turn. He went swiftly, he thought, and with no sound, towards some appointed place, and the twilight darkened as he went; when he looked up there was no star nor moon to be seen, and what had been branches when he set out seemed now to be a roof, so thick they were. There was no bray of stag, nor rustle of breeze, nor cry of night-bird. He tried to pray, but he could remember no prayer, and not even the healthful name of _Jesu_ came to his mind. He could do nought but look outwards with his straining eyes, and inwards at his soul; and the one was now as dark as the other. He thought of me then, my children, and longed to have me there, but he knew that I was asleep in my bed and far away. He thought of his mother whom he had loved so much, but he knew that she was gone to G.o.d and had left him alone. And still, through all, his feet bore him on swiftly without sound or fatigue, though the terror and the darkness were now black as ink. He felt his hair rising upon his head, and his skin p.r.i.c.kle, and the warmth was altogether gone from his heart, but he could not stay.

And at the last his feet ceased to move, and he stood still, knowing that he was come to the place.

Now, I do not understand what he said to me of that place. He told me that he could see nothing; it was as if his eyes were put out, yet he knew what it was like.

It was a little round place in the forest, with trees standing about it, and it was trampled hard with the footsteps of those who had come there before him. But that was no comfort to him now; for he did not know how these persons had fared, nor where were their souls.

So he stood in the black darkness, knowing that he could not turn, with the horror on him so heavy that he sweated as he told me of it, and with the knowledge that something was approaching under the trees without sound of step or breathing--he did not know whether it was man or beast or fiend, he only knew that it was approaching. Yet he could not pray or cry out.

Then he was aware that it had entered the little s.p.a.ce where he stood, and was even now within a hand's grasp. Yet he could not lift his hands to ward it off, or to pray to G.o.d, or to bless himself.

Then he perceived that the thing--_negotium perambulans in tenebris_ ["the Business that walketh about in the dark" (Ps. xc. 6.)]--was formless, without hands to strike or mouth to bite him with, and that it was all about him now, closing upon him. If there had been aught to touch his body, wet lips to kiss his face, or fiery eyes to look into his own, he would not have feared it with a thousandth part of the fear that he had. It was that there was no shape or face, and that it sought not his body but his soul. And when he understood that he gave a loud cry and awoke, and knew, as in a mystery, that it was no dream, but that he was indeed come to the place that he had seen, and that this _negotium_ was at his soul's heart. [There is either an omission here in the translation of Sir John's original MS., or else the transcriber has dashed his pen down in horror, or sought to produce an impression of it.]....

I find it impossible, my children, to make you understand in what state he was; he could not make even me understand. I can only set down a little of what he said.

First, he knew that he had lost G.o.d. It was not that there was no G.o.d, but that he had lost Him of his own fault and sin. He was aware that in all other places there was G.o.d and that the blessed reigned with Him, but not in the place where he was, nor in his heart. In all men that ever I have met there was a certain presence of G.o.d. As the apostle told the men of Athens, _Ipsius enim et genus suum_; ["For we are also His offspring" (Acts xvii. 28.)] and, again, _Non longe est ab unoquoque nostrum_; ["He is not far from every one of us" (Acts xvii. 27.)] and again, _In ipso vivimus, et movemur, et sumus_. ["In Him we live, and we move, and we are" (Acts xvii. 28.)] I have not seen a man who had not this knowledge, though maybe some, such as Turks and pagans, may call it by another name. But until death, I think, all men, whatever their sins or ignorance, live and move in G.o.d's Majesty. h.e.l.l, Master Richard told me, is nothing less than the withdrawal of that presence, with other torments superadded, but this is chief. Master Richard told me that that black fire of h.e.l.l rages wherever G.o.d is not; and that the worm gnaws in all hearts that have lost Him, and know it to be by their own fault--_maxima culpa_. ["the very great fault."]

There be a few men in this world--the Son of G.o.d derelict is their prince--who are called to this supreme torment while they yet live--if indeed that man may be said to live who is without G.o.d--and of this company Master Richard was now made one.

It was with him now as he had dreamed. Where G.o.d is not, there can be no communion with man, for the only reason by which one perceives another's soul, or understands that it is the soul of a man and has a likeness to his own, is that both are, in some measure, in G.o.d. If we were more holy and wise we should understand for ourselves that this is so, and see, too, why it is so, for He is eyes to the blind and ears to the deaf.

[I do not understand this at all. I wonder whether Sir John did as he wrote it; I am quite sure that his flock did not.]

For Master Richard, then, there was no other person in the world. There was that that fenced him from all living. Our Saviour Christ upon the rood spoke to His Blessed Mother before His dereliction, but not again afterwards. There was no more that He might say to her, or to His cousin, John.

This, then, was the state in which Master Richard lay--that _specialissimus_ of G.o.d Almighty, to whom the Divine Love and Majesty was as breath to his nostrils, meat to his mouth, and water to his body.

I an say no more on that point.

As to the fault by which it seemed that he had come to that state, it was the most terrible of all sins, which is Presumption. Holy Church sets before us Humility as the chief of virtues, to shew us that Presumption is the chief of vices. A man may be an adulterer or a murderer or a sacrilegious person, and yet by Humility may find mercy.

But a man may be chaste and stainless in all his works, and a worshipper of G.o.d, but without Humility he cannot come to glory. [Sir John proceeds in this strain for several pages, ill.u.s.trating his point by the cases of Lucifer, Nabuchodonosor, Judas Iscariot, King Herod, and others.]....

Now the matter in which it seemed to Master Richard that he had sinned the sin of Presumption was the old matter of the tidings he had borne to the King. It was not that the tidings were false, for he knew them for true; but yet that he had been presumptuous in bearing them. It was as though a stander-by had overheard tidings given by a king to his servant, and had presumed to hear them himself, as it were Achimaas the son of Sadoc. [I supposed that this obscure reference is to 2 Kings xviii. 19.] And more than that, that he had presumed in thinking that he could be such a man as our Lord would call to such an office. He had set himself, it appeared, far above his fellows in even listening to our Saviour's voice; he should rather have cried with saint Peter, _Exi a me quia h.o.m.o peccator sum Domine_. ["Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Luke v. 8.)]

It was this sin that had driven him from G.o.d's Presence. Our Lord had bestowed on him wonderful gifts of grace. He had visited him as He visits few others and had led him in the Way of Union, and he had followed, triumphing in this, giving G.o.d the glory in words only, until he had fallen as it seemed from the height of presumption to the depth of despair, and lay here now, excluded from the Majesty that he desired.

Now, here is a very wonderful thing, and I know not if I can make it clear.

You understand, my children, a little of what I heard from Master Richard's lips--of what it was that he suffered. But although all this was upon him, he perceived afterwards, though not at the time, that there was something in him that had not yielded to the agony. His body was broken, and his mind amazed, and his soul obscured in this _Night_, yet there was one power more, that we name the Will (and that is the very essence of man, by which he shall be judged), that had not yet sunk or cried out that it was so as the fiend suggested.

There was within him, he perceived afterwards, a conflict without movement. It was as when two men wrestle, their limbs are locked, they are motionless, they appear to be at rest, but in truth they are striving with might and main.

So he remained all that night in this agony, not knowing that he did aught but suffer; he saw the light on the wall, and heard the c.o.c.ks crow--at least he remembered these things afterwards. But his release did not come until the morning; and of that release, and its event, and how it came about, I will now tell you.

How Sir John went again to the cell: and of what he saw there

_Ecce audivimus eam in Ephrata: invenimus eam in campis silvae._

Behold we have heard of it in Euphrata: we have found it in the fields of the wood.--_Ps. cx.x.xi. 6._

XII

It is strange to think that other men went about their business in the palace, and knew nothing of what was pa.s.sing. It is more strange that that morning I said ma.s.s in the country and did not faint for fear or sorrow. But it is always so, by G.o.d's loving-kindness, for no man could bear to live if he knew all that was happening in the world at one time.

[Sir John adds some trite reflections of an obvious character.]....