of Magdeburg Mechthild

“ Did Dante know it as the Béguine knew it? Was it in his case but a vague sense of a place of joy and beauty which the soul might find on this side of heaven? Did he know that the river was a river of death—the death which is the death of deaths, “in the land of the Jews” so long ago?
[104]
We cannot know. It needs the simple faith of those who have become fools that they may be wise. Then does the garden of the Lord become a blessed reality, no dreamland, but an eternal inheritance. ”

“ But the heavenly things of Dante are far more clouded with the evil teaching of his age than the heavenly experiences of Matilda of Magdeburg. The glory of the Catholic Church, rather than the glory of Christ, is the light that lightens his heavenly Paradise. It was the Lamb who was the light of Matilda’s heaven. In the bewildering medley of Catholic and heathen mythologies in Dante’s poem, it is only here and there that a gleam of the true light can make its way. But Matilda the Béguine rose above the clouds and mists of man’s imagination, and she saw Jesus. ”

“ She does not flow forth in tears, but burns in the great fire of heavenly glory. And thus she spreads to the farthest distances, and yet remains in herself steadfast and still. She rises up into the nearest converse with God, and remains in herself in the lowest measure. She grasps the most, and retains the least.
O blessed Love, who are they who know thee? They are those through whom the light of God glows and burns. They dwell not in themselves. The more they are tried, the stronger they grow. ”

“ Then Matilda, as is her wont, runs on into rhyme—
“The love of God has moved my pen,
My book is not from the mind of men.”
And afterwards, she says, “I was warned by some that my book might give much offence, and that it would be burnt as evil teaching. And I turned to my Beloved, as was my wont, and said to Him that if it were so, He had Himself misled me, for it was He who commanded me to write it. Then did He reveal Himself to my sorrowful heart, as if He held the book in His right hand, and said, ‘My beloved one, do not be sorrowful. The truth can be burnt by no man. ”

“ Jesus Christ opened heaven with the key of His cross, there was no man so holy that he could, or that he might, ascend up into the Eternal heavens—not with labour or with the soaring of the imagination, not with longing or the stretching forth of imploring arms, not with the utmost yearning of his love. For Adam had fastened the bolt so firmly, that no man could open it. ”

“ The “best books” of which the Abbess Gertrude formed her convent library contained grains of truth in masses of error, and some true facts smothered beneath piles of legendary rubbish. To find the pearls at the bottom of the sea of superstition and senseless [15] legend, is at times a despairing endeavour. Yet the pearls are there, and must have been there; for the gates of the grave have never prevailed against the true Church of God. Some there always were taught by the Holy Spirit of God, and believing in the midst of their errors and wanderings the great eternal truths of the Gospel. ”

“ For when I think of death, my soul rejoices so mightily in the thought of going forth from earthly life, that my body is lulled, as it were, in an inexpressible supernatural quietness, soft and sweet, and my mind is awakened to see the unspeakable wonders that attend the going forth of the soul. ”

“ If we are to find true faith, if we are to find truth at all in the Middle Ages, we must find it amongst innumerable human inventions, and shining like a gem in the dark caverns of human folly. Can we say that in the nineteenth century it is otherwise? ”

“ And my heart longs oftentimes to live in the days of the martyrs, that I might shed my sinful blood in true Christian faith for Jesus my Beloved.
“That I dare to say I love God, is a gift of His pure grace. For it is when my sins and sufferings are before my eyes that my soul begins to burn in the fire of the true love of God, and the sweetness is so surpassing, that even my body shares in the Divine blessedness. ”

“ Now, from the holy women of Hellfde have the clouds passed away which at times hid from them the brightness of the glory, but the words of love spoken to their hearts by the mouth of their Beloved remain to them as an everlasting possession. ”

“ The distinction between a Christian and a heathen was acknowledged as one which told upon the eternal destiny of men. By means of Christ the Saviour could the Christian man pass on, washed and sanctified, into the land beyond the river. A “land beyond,” was that Paradise to men of the world of sense and of earthly knowledge, but without the knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. And singing the song of the forgiven, whilst she made garlands of the flowers, Matelda appeared to Dante, separated from him at first by the river of forgetfulness. ”

“ Because the greater the love, the greater is holy fear; and the fuller the comfort, the stronger the dread of sin. The loving soul does not fear with terror, but she fears nobly. There are two things over which I cannot mourn enough—one is, that God is so forgotten in the world ”

“ To most of us the Matelda of Dante has been scarcely more than a shape existing in the mind of a poet. It may be that she now stands before us not only as a woman of flesh and blood, but as one who has for us in these days a marvellous message. One of the great cloud of witnesses to the love and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, speaks to us in a German Béguine, who is now recognised by many as the original of her who conducted Dante into “the terrestrial Paradise.” ”

“ Therefore I turn at times to pray for others more than for myself, and withdraw myself, as it were, from the fulness of the joy, through love to Thee and Christian faithfulness. For I fear the rising up within my heart of the pride which cast down the most glorious of the angels of heaven, and the voice of the serpent who deceived Eve with the promise of vainglory. ”

“ She would have rejoiced at the moments when she realised His great love, and have feared and trembled when the sense of it was overclouded by sin and infirmity. The Christian taught of God looks back to see how Christ once bore his sins in His own body on the cross, and looks up to see Christ in glory as the proof that those sins are for ever put away. He rests upon these unchangeable facts—all the more, therefore, realising the marvellous love of the Divine Saviour who died for him, and rose again for his justification. ”

“ For, led by him, they would fain be so holy as to enter into the depths of the eternal Godhead, and to sound the secret abyss of the eternal sacred Manhood of the Lord. If thus they became blinded with pride, they bring themselves under the eternal curse. They would attain to a holiness which is reached by mocking at the written Word of God, which speaks to us of the Manhood of our Lord. ”

“ Lord, Thou art full of grace, and therewith Thou fillest us. But Thou art great, and we are small, how then can we receive that which Thou givest? Lord, whilst Thou givest to us, it is for us to give to others. Truly our vessel that Thou hast filled is a small one, but a small one can be emptied and filled anew, till it has filled a large one.
The great vessel is full sufficiency of grace, but we, alas! are so small, that one little word from God, one little verse of the Holy Scriptures, so fills us, that we can contain no more. ”

“ May some to whom the future is dark and fearful, and who carry as a heavy burden the sin of past years, be led on across the river into the light, the sweetness, and the rest of the green pastures of Christ—the sin and sorrow left behind, remembered no more, for the Lord remembers them not. ”

“ The difficulty is to realise that in these imaginary histories we are reading the writings of some who, like Matilda of Hackeborn, had, in spite of their visions, real intercourse with God.
That Matilda of Magdeburg had this true intercourse, based upon the written Word of God, that she was one of those of whom the Lord Jesus said, “I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him,” there can be no doubt in any Christian mind. It was the time of the conflict of light with darkness, of the prejudices of early education with the experiences of communion with the living God. ”

“ Is it not true that the revelation to the soul of that which is in the Father’s house, the joy and the love, and the unspeakable riches of Christ, needs nothing less than Divine grace and power to keep us from misusing the treasure entrusted to us, and making it an occasion for feeding and exalting the fleshly mind? ”

“ That we believe in Christ as God, loving God from the heart, truly confessing Jesus Christ, and faithfully following His teaching even unto death. I think that in these four things we find eternal life.
But our faith must be a Christian faith, not the faith of Jews, or of unbelieving Christians, who also profess to believe in one God, but who believe not in the holy works which He has wrought. His work they despise, as we grieve to know. But for us, our belief is that God sent His only-begotten Son into the world, and that it was His Will to do so. ”

“ If we would describe religious life, as shown in Matilda, by its distinctive features, we should remark, in the first place, that she is seeking after a consciousness, or is, in fact, conscious of being in immediate intercourse with God. Whilst the majority of her contemporaries knew of no relation with God, except through culture or learning, or the medium of saints, or the ordinances of the Church, and were satisfied to know no more, Matilda looked upon all these things merely as helps to personal and immediate communion with God. ”

“ There are many wise in the Scriptures, who are but fools and unlearned in other learning.’”
Further on Matilda says that in the German tongue she found it hard to speak of that which God had shown her, and “of Latin I know nothing. For that which the eye can see, and the ear can hear, and the mouth can speak, is as unlike the truth which is revealed to the soul who loves, as a candle is to the glorious sun. Of the heavenly things which God has shown me I can speak but, as it were, a little word, not more than the honey which a little bee could carry away on his foot from an overflowing vessel. ”

“ The heavenly Paradise is in the heights above, and shields the earthly from all harm. But of the heavenly Paradise Matilda only says that it is for a time, and that it is the place wherein the souls who have had no purgatory await the Kingdom of the Lord, “they move in sweet delight, as the air moves in the sunshine,” and will one day have their crowns of glory, and will reign with Christ. ”

“ For the heavenly gift which God loves to give to His elect, His beloved children, is of a fine and noble sort, and it flows freely to the soul that draws near to Him, and to whom He bends down in His infinite love. ”

“ It is well to look at the matter of visions and revelations in the light of Holy Scripture. That the servants of God have seen visions divinely shown to them, no one can doubt who believes the Bible; nor that they have from time to time received direct revelations from God. Also, we read as a promise made to Christian people, that “your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; and on My servants and on My hand-maidens I will pour out in those days of My Spirit, and they shall prophesy.” ”

“ This Abbess Gertrude was chosen unanimously, as being of a wholly spiritual and devout manner of life. She was nineteen years old at the time of her election, and she filled her office for forty years and eleven days; and during her time the nuns of the cloister lived holy and God-fearing lives, and God bestowed upon them marvellous gifts. And when she had lived fifty-nine years, she was taken away from this world, joyfully and piously, and entered into the gladness and the glory of the everlasting kingdom in the year of our Lord 1291. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ And truly this is the message and mission of the Béguine, not as Matelda’s, to Dante only, but to us also, who can receive the message without the bewildering counter teaching of the corrupted Church. It is true the message, more clearly given, is in the Bible we have known so long; and it was through the blessed teaching of that Bible that Matilda the Béguine learnt it. But it is well for us not only to read the glorious promises of God, but to meet with those to whom they have been fulfilled, the sharers of the like precious faith with us, who now believe in Jesus. ”

“ To reach it the river had to be crossed, wherein the old things pass away, and all things become new; where the things that are behind are forgotten, and the things that are before become the possession, by faith, of the redeemed soul. ”

“ See Purgatoria, Canto xxxi. 129.
“My soul was tasting of the food that while
It satisfies us, makes us hunger for it.”
[8] See Isaiah lx. 19, 20, as explaining this thought: “The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.” ”

“ It is true she speaks of human merit, and alludes to the intercession of Mary, but in so doing was rather expressing the ruling thoughts of her age than her own innermost convictions. For it is only in speaking of others that she admits the merit of human works; she has another law for herself, finding, as she says, no peace in the good works of the saints, ‘and as for me, unhappily I have no good works to find peace in.’
“That which is the important matter with regard to Matilda’s faith is this—she grounds her peace not on imparted, but on imputed righteousness. ”

“ It may truly be said that if there is anything distinctive in the writing of Matilda the Béguine, it is that she wrote from her own experience of the gladness of the heavenly place, revealed to her whilst yet in the body on the earth. She had learnt that there is an “earthly Paradise,” earthly not because it is of the earth, but because it is a foretaste and earnest of the heavenly, given to those who are still pilgrims upon the earth. ”

“ Apart from the error taught by “the Church” in those past ages—saint-worship, purgatory, the merit of human works, and many more—a bewildering element of confusion presents itself in the atmosphere of visions and revelations in which the “pious” perpetually lived, or desired to live. For to live what has been called in our times “the higher Christian life,” meant at that time to be a seer of visions, and a dreamer of dreams. The seeing of visions [16] was an attainment as much to be desired as to live in temperance, or godliness, or honesty. ”

“ Those who have known the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, the Fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, will gladly own that this is the true Christian experience of the saints of God—the land of Canaan beyond the river, reached and entered before the warfare and the trial of faith are over; the Father’s house become a familiar place before the murmuring of the self-righteous is for ever silenced. ”

“ Thou poorest of the poor! didst thou indeed know and confess truly the eternal God, then wouldst thou also confess of necessity the eternal Manhood that dwelleth in the Godhead, and thou wouldst of necessity confess the Holy Ghost, who enlightens the heart of the Christian, who is the source of all his blessedness and joy, and who teaches the mind of man far better than all other teachers, and leads us to confess in humility that which He has taught us to know of the perfection of God. ”