hat
"of the length and breadth of Paradise there is no end." Then she
continues--and this is especially interesting because it is in this
opening that some commentators have seen the connecting link with
Dante[23]--that between this world and it, she came to a spot--the
Earthly Paradise--where she saw trees and fresh grass and no weeds.
Some of the trees bore apples, but most of them sweetly scented
leaves. Swift streams flowed through it, and warm winds were wafted
from the north. The air was sweeter than words can tell. Here, she
adds, there were no animals or birds, for God has reserved it for
mankind alone, so that he may dwell there undisturbed. This seems to
strike a strange note coming from the poetess Mechthild. How different
is her sentiment from that of her brother-mystic, St. Francis, to whom
the birds were his "little sisters," and who "loved above all other
birds a certain little bird which is called the lark." But though,
with apparent satisfaction, Mechthild saw no birds, she did see Enoch
and Elias, and greeted the former by questioning him as to how he came
there. Holy Writ has supplied the only answer, "He walked with God,
and he was not, for God took him." Having spoken thus of the Earthly
Paradise, Mechthild goes on to tell of the Heavenly, where she sees,
"floating in rapture, as the air floats in the sunshine," the souls
which, though not deserving of Purgatory, are not yet come into God's
kingdom, and to whom rewards and crowns come not until they enter that
kingdom. She then concludes by saying that "all the kingdoms of this
world shall perish, and the earthly and the heavenly Paradise shall
pass away, and all shall dwell together in God"--the Empyrean of
Dante, where he "saw ingathered, bound by love in one volume, the
scattered leaves of all the universe; substance and accidents and
their relations, as though together fused, after such fashion that
what I tell of is one simple flame."

[23] The tendency of present-day Italian scholarship seems in
favour of identifying Mechthild of Hackeborn, rather than
Mechthild of Magdeburg, with Dante's Matelda.

In her very varied writings many beautiful and suggestive thoughts are
to be found, as, for instance, when "Understanding" converses with
"Conscience," and accuses Conscience of being at the same time both
proud and humble, and Conscience explains that she is proud because
she is in touch with God, and humble because she has done so fe