they rest in you!”
“Noverim me, noverim te.” “I would know myself, I would know you!” “Know then thyself,” says the poet, “presume not God to scan.” That is what we are told. And we are further informed, “The proper knowledge of mankind is man.” But that isn’t true. Or it’s only partly true. Before we presume to scan divinity, we have to scan humanity – where “to scan” means a merely rational knowledge. In knowing ourselves we find so much to criticize. So how can we presume to criticize God? He is so high above all merely human knowledge, let alone human criticism. He is above, and we are below.
“Thou mastering me.” Let us therefore bestow our searching gaze on the things and the persons around us, on the same level as ourselves. Let us begin by knowing ourselves. Such self-knowledge is the beginning of human wisdom. It is the knowledge of ourselves as we are, not in pride but in humility. It is what Shakespeare was taught in the homily “Of the Misery of All Mankind”. We have so much reason to be humble, even before the things and persons around us. We have so much reason to be humble, as Peter reminds us, before the mighty hand of God who is revealed to us above them.
“Thou mastering me.” Then from ourselves and through ourselves, from the things and persons around us and through them, we may hope to come before the throne of the Most High. Then we may hope to rise, as in a mystical elevator, from below to above, from ourselves to God. Then we may address God, who is so high above us, not impersonally as him, but personally as you. No longer “Who am I?” but “Who are you?” Now we may forget about ourselves, our all too little selves. Now we may come before you.
“Thou mastering me.” Now let us begin by asking, “Who are you?” Let us begin by praying with the Psalmist, “Show us your face, O Lord!” Now it is no longer, “Noverim me,” but only “Noverim te!” Now once again let us ask, “Who are you?” Only, this isn’t a movement from below to above, from our little selves to the great God. Such may be a Hellenic way of proceeding, a yearning for the Infinite. But such is not the Hebraic way. Such is not the way we are taught in the Psalms. We may find in ourselves a yearning for the Infinite. But what is that yearning, and how is it originally within us?
“Thou mastering me.” It is a mysterious fire, the fire of the lesser gravity within us, seeking the greater gravity above us. It is not just the material fire that makes the Earth rotate around the Sun. Rather, we are aware of another, spiritual fire, which makes our poor earthly Earth rotate around the heavenly Sun. It is the greater Energy that bends down, stoops down, condescends to our weaker energy. It is even a yearning in God himself, the great Creator, to enter into and embrace his little creature. “Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest!” he whispers in our ear, “I am he whom thou seekest.”
“Thou mastering me.” Who is he, we wonder, who whispers thus in our ear? Or rather, as I have been saying again and again, “Who are you?” He answers us, as once he answered Moses in the desert, at the foot of Mount Sinai, in the vision of a burning bush, “I am,” or more solemnly, “I am who I am”. That is the name of God, the Lord God, YHWH, the name he has chosen from and for many generations. Or rather, we should say, “Who are you, that you should say, I am?”
“Thou mastering me.” And who are we that we should respond, “Here I am!” That is what Abraham said, what Moses said, what the boy Samuel was told to say, “Here I am!” That is what the Word himself says in the Psalm on his coming into the world. It is what the Son says in response to the Father, “Here I am!” It is also what Mary says in her turn to the Angel who brings her the tidings of great joy that she is to be Mother of the Word, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord! Be it done to me according to your word!” And so she becomes Mother of God.
“Thou mastering me.” Again let me repeat, in the more personal form of address, “Who are you?” Who are you, coming down in this way to our poor, lowly selves? How can you tell us your name as simply “I am”, impelling us to respond in like manner, “Here I am!” Here are two forms of the present tense of the simplest verb “To be”, both in the first person singular. Yet we are obliged to draw a distinction between them as “I am” in the upper case and “I am” in the lower case. How can we compare ourselves to God? You are so high above us, and we are so low beneath you.
“Thou mastering me.” But it is you who come down to us, who condescend from on high to our lowly human level. It is you who stoop to us, swoop down on us, like a divine falcon diving on your helpless, hopeless, human prey. For that is what we are, mere human prey. It isn’t so much we who feebly search for you, as it is you who come in search of us. And when you find us, even in spite of ourselves, even when “frantic to avoid thee and flee,” then it is you who master us. Then we recognize you as Master and ourselves as servants, or rather you as Father and ourselves as sons.
“Over again I feel Thy finger and find Thee.” In search of us it is you who reach down to us, who find us. Then it is we who feel your finger and find you. It is your Holy Spirit, finger of your right hand, who fly down upon us, who come and overshadow us, who breathe upon us as in a new creation. We are like Adam in the painting, reaching out our limp finger as best we can, so as to touch your outstretched finger.
“Over again I feel Thy finger and find Thee.” Then we hear your Word uttered in blessing over us, “Let there be light!” And suddenly, unexpectedly, overwhelmingly, there is light! Before, all in us and around us was darkness, mere darkness over the face of the deep. Now, all is light. Now we see! “Before, behind, and on every hand” it is light that enwheels us round, enfolds us, encompasses us, surrounds us!
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God”
“The world is charged.” What is the world? What are the things around us? Who are the persons surrounding us? Who are we in the midst of these things and persons? What is anything? Who is anyone? Here we are, with these things and these persons around us, “placed on this isthmus of a middle state”. All we know are a few things, a few persons. Our knowledge of them is hemmed in with ignorance, uncertainty, mere circumscription. The same is no less true of our self-knowledge.
“The world is charged.” Yet on this narrow world the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening. So we are not entirely deprived of light, to see at least the outward circumference of things and persons. We are not entirely enveloped in darkness. At night, when it is dark, we go to sleep, losing ourselves in our ignorance. All the time we are alive, and our life is a kind of light, which is not extinguished till we die. And then, when we die, what will become of us? Is death no more than darkness? Is it true, what the Roman poet dared to say, “Nox est nobis una perpetua dormienda”? “For us it is a night in which we must sleep forever.”
“The world is charged.” Yet at least till we die we are alive. At least till darkness falls it is daytime. At least we have the present advantage of light and life. Then, we ask ourselves, what is this light, and what is this life? Is it just limited to the daytime, to our lifetime? “In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum, et lux in tenebris lucet”. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in darkness.”
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” So there are two eyes, two ways of seeing given to men, the way of eyesight in the physical sense and the way of inner sight in the spiritual sense. It is the latter way of inner sight that we call the way of faith, which enables us to see what our eyes cannot see. This is the way of God, which leads us from our lowly, earthly “I am” to the ideal, heavenly “I am”. It is the way which directs our mind in and above the world we see to the intangible, unknowable, inapprehensible world which is “charged with the grandeur of God.”
This is the “brave new world” celebrated
