, deeper than the sea, higher than the clouds,
more beautiful than the sun, more manifold than the stars, and which
outweighs all the earth." Then asks the voice of God: "How is this thy
treasure called, oh Image of my Divinity?"

"Lord, it is called my heart's desire. I have withdrawn it from the
world, kept it to myself, and denied it to all creatures. Now no
longer would I carry it. Lord, where shall I lay it?"

"Nowhere shalt thou lay thy heart's desire save in My own Divine
heart. There only wilt thou find comfort."

Love and knowledge, the two aspirations of the soul after ultimate
truth, are her frequent theme. Sometimes she contrasts Love with the
knowledge of the understanding: "Those who would know much, and love
little, will ever remain at but the beginning of a godly life. So we
must have a constant care how we may please God therein. Simple love,
with but little knowledge, can do great things"; sometimes with the
knowledge of the heart--"To the wise soul, love without knowledge
seems darkness, knowledge without fruition, the very pain of Hell.
Fruition can be reached only through Death." In one of her visions
she, in an exquisite simile, describes how love flows from the Godhead
to mankind, penetrating both body and soul. "It goes without effort,"
she says, "as does a bird in the air when it does not move its wings."
In the same vision she sees the Holy Mother, with uncovered breasts,
standing on God's left hand, and Christ on the right, showing his
still-open wounds, both pleading for sinful humanity, and she adds
that as long as sin endures on earth, so long will Christ's wounds
remain open and bleeding, though painless, but that after the Day of
Judgment they will heal, and it will be as though there was a
rose-leaf instead of the wounds.[24]

[24] The first of these subjects--the Holy Mother and Christ
pleading for sinners--is to be found in a miniature in King
Henry VI.'s Psalter (Brit. Mus. Cotton MS. Domitian. A. xvii.
_circ._ 1430, fol. 205), and the two intercessions separately
form two of the subjects in the _Speculum Humanae
Salvationis_ (fourteenth century). Though the _S.H.S._ is of
later date than the time of Mechthild the literary source of
the subject appears to be a passage in the _De laudibus
B.M.V._ of Arnaud of Chartres, abbot of Bonneval 1138-1156
(J. Lutz and P. Perdrizet, _Spec. Hum. Sal._ vol. i.,
Mulhouse, 1907), which might quite wel