ew art and
transcended them in a work which has never been surpassed. The
profoundly symbolical words, "The new life is beginning," are written at
the commencement of his _Vita Nuova_, and with his _Divine Comedy_ the
art of Europe had attained perfection.

It is necessary to give a more detailed account of Eckhart. He had been
almost forgotten in favour of his pupils, Tauler and Suso, and the
unknown author of the _Theologica Germanica_ (to which Luther wrote a
preface), but to-day a faint idea of the great importance of this man is
beginning to dawn upon the world. Eckhart was the greatest creative
religious genius since Jesus, and I believe that in time his writings
will be considered equal to the Gospel of St. John. He grasped the
spirit of religion with unparalleled depth; everything produced by the
highly religious later mediaeval era pales before his illumination.
Compared to him, St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and even St. Francis
dwindle into insignificance; all the later reformers are small beside
the greatness of his soul. Every one of his sermons contains profound
passages, such as "God must become I and I must become God." "The soul
as a separate entity must be so completely annihilated that nothing
remains except God, yea, that it becomes more glorious than God, as the
sun is more glorious than the moon." "The Scriptures were written and
God created the world solely that He may be born in the soul and the
soul again in Him." "The essence of all grain is wheat, of all metal
gold, and of all creatures man. Thus spoke a great man: 'There is no
beast, but it is in some way a semblance of man.'" "The least faculty of
my soul is more infinite than the boundless heavens." "Again we
understand by the kingdom of God the soul; for the soul and the Deity
are one." "The soul is the universe and the kingdom of God." "God dwells
so much within the soul that all His divinity depends on it." "Man shall
be free and master of all his deeds, undestroyed and unsubdued."

Eckhart was the first man who thought consecutively in the German
vernacular, and who made this philosophically still virginal language a
medium for expressing profound thought. In addition he wrote Latin
treatises which were discovered a short time ago; I have not read them,
but I have no doubt that his profoundest convictions were expressed in
the German tongue. The Latin language has at all times fettered the
spirit far more successfully than the still untai