"Gott ist ein lauter Nichts, ihn ruhrt kein Nun noch Hier;
Je mehr du nach ihm greiffst, je mehr entwind er dir."[268]

[266] J. Royce: Studies in Good and Evil, p. 282.

[267] Jacob Bellmen's Dialogues on the Supersensual Life, translated by
Bernard Holland, London, 1901, p. 48.

[268] Cherubinischer Wandersmann, Strophe 25.

To this dialectical use, by the intellect, of negation as a mode of
passage towards a higher kind of affirmation, there is correlated the
subtlest of moral counterparts in the sphere of the personal will.
Since denial of the finite self and its wants, since asceticism of some
sort, is found in religious experience to be the only doorway to the
larger and more blessed life, this moral mystery intertwines and
combines with the intellectual mystery in all mystical writings.

"Love," continues Behmen, is Nothing, for "when thou art gone forth
wholly from the Creature and from that which is visible, and art become
Nothing to all that is Nature and Creature, then thou art in that
eternal One, which is God himself, and then thou shalt feel within thee
the highest virtue of Love.... The treasure of treasures for the soul
is where she goeth out of the Somewhat into that Nothing out of which
all things may be made. The soul here saith, I HAVE NOTHING, for I am
utterly stripped and naked; I CAN DO NOTHING, for I have no manner of
power, but am as water poured out; I AM NOTHING, for all that I am is
no more than an image of Being, and only God is to me I AM; and so,
sitting down in my own Nothingness, I give glory to the eternal Being,
and WILL NOTHING of myself, that so God may will all in me, being unto
me my God and all things."[269]

[269] Op. cit., pp. 42, 74, abridged.

In Paul's language, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Only
when I become as nothing can God enter in and no difference between his
life and mine remain outstanding.[270]

[270] From a French book I take this mystical expression of happiness
in God's indwelling presence:--

"Jesus has come to take up his abode in my heart. It is not so much a
habitation, an association, as a sort of fusion. Oh, new and blessed
life! life which becomes each day more luminous.... The wall before
me, dark a few moments since, is splendid at this hour because the sun
shines on it. Wherever its rays fall they light up a conflagration of
glory; the smallest speck of glass sparkles, each grain of sand emits
fire; even so th