The Fourth Degree of Love

HAPPY is he who can rise to the fourth degree of love, and loves himself only for God's sake. “ Thy justice, O Lord, is as the high mountains.” It is even so of this fourth degree of love, “a great mountain in which God is well pleased to dwell.” “Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord ? “ “ Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly thither and be at rest ?” “ His place is in peace, and his abode in Zion.” “ Woe is me that my sojourning is prolonged.” When shall this flesh and blood, this dust and mire of which I am made, be able to go up there? When shall this soul of mine, entranced with love for God, look on herself as broken sherds, yearn after God, and lose herself in Him, for “ He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit “? When shall she cry out : “ My flesh and my heart have fainted away ; Thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion for ever”? Holy and happy is he who but once, for but one moment, has felt something like this in his mortal life ; for this is no human happiness, it is life eternal so to lose oneself, as if one were empty of self, as if one were not. If some poor mortal attains to this, for one moment and as it were unawares, this evil time seems begrudgingly to delay and embitter his joy. This body of death drags him down, the cares and anxieties of life pull him back, the corruption of the flesh refuses its support, and his duty to his neighbour calls on him loudly to come down, and cry out : “ Lord, I suffer violence, answer Thou for me ; “ or thus : “ Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

We read in Holy Scripture that God hath made all things for Himself. His creatures are therefore bound to conform themselves, at least in some measure, to the mind of their Maker. We ought to offer ourselves entirely to Him, studying only His good pleasure, not our own. We shall find happiness, much less in seeking our own advan tage, than in the accomplishment of His will in us, according as we daily pray : “ Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” O pure and holy love ! most sweet and blessed affection ! O com plete submission of a disinterested soul ; most per fect in that there is no thought of self ; most sweet and tender in that the'soul's whole feeling is divine !

To attain to this, is for the soul to be deified ; as a small drop of water appears lost if mixed with wine, taking its taste and colour ; and as, when plunged into a furnace, a bar of iron seems to lose its nature and assume that of fire ; or as the air filled with the sun's beams seems rather to become light than to be illuminated. So it is with the natural life of the Saints ; they seem to melt and pass away into the will of God. For if anything merely human remained in man, how then should God be all in all? It is not that human nature will be destroyed, but that it will attain another beauty, a higher power and glory. When shall that be? To whom shall it be given to see and know it ? When shall I come and appear before the face of God ? O God, my Lord, my heart hath said to Thee : “ My face hath sought Thee ; Thy face, O Lord, will I seek.” Will it be given. to such as I to see Thy holy temple ?

In this life, the heart is obliged to take some thought of the body, the mind to see that its health and powers are kept unimpaired ; and I think that it is impossible, so long as our energies are thus divided, to rest wholly in God and in the con templation of Him, impossible perfectly to obey the precept, “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength.” We may not hope to possess the fourth degree of love, or rather to be possessed by it, until we have put on a body spiritual and immortal, pure and calm, obedient and subject in all to the spirit, which cannot be our doing, but only the work of the power of God in favour of such as please Him. Our soul will easily attain to this perfect love when neither the burden nor the temptations of this body oppress her ; then she will spring untrammelled to her joy in the Lord. But are we to doubt that the souls of the holy martyrs before quitting their triumphant bodies tasted, at least in some small measure, of this happiness? This we know for certain, that immense love filled and enraptured their souls, to give them strength to lay down their lives and to endure the torments which they suffered. Still the joy of their triumph must have been thereby abated.