no note
of the Persons _separately_; for it is not the Divine Persons taken
singly that confer bliss, but the Three in One." Suso here gives a
really valuable turn to one of Eckhart's rashest theses. "_Where_ is
heaven?" asks his pupil next. "The intellectual _where_" is the
reply, "is the essentially-existing unnameable nothingness. So we
must call it, because we can discover no mode of being, under which to
conceive of it. But though it seems to us to be no-thing, it deserves
to be called something rather than nothing." Suso, we see, follows
Dionysius, but with this proviso. The maiden now asks him to give her
a figure or image of the self-evolution of the Trinity, and he gives
her the figure of concentric circles, such as appear when we throw a
stone into a pond. "But," he adds, "this is as unlike the formless
truth as a black Moor is unlike the beautiful sun." Soon after, the
holy maiden died, and Suso saw her in a vision, radiant and full of
heavenly joy, showing him how, guided by his counsels, she had found
everlasting bliss. When he came to himself, he said, "Ah, God! blessed
is the man who strives after Thee alone! He may well be content to
suffer, whose pains Thou rewardest thus. God help us to rejoice in
this maiden, and in all His dear friends, and to enjoy His Divine
countenance eternally!" So ends Suso's autobiography. His other chief
work, a Dialogue between the eternal Wisdom and the Servitor, is a
prose poem of great beauty, the tenor of which may be inferred from
the above extracts from the Life. Suso believed that the Divine Wisdom
had indeed spoken through his pen; and few, I think, will accuse him
of arrogance for the words which conclude the Dialogue. "Whosoever
will read these writings of mine in a right spirit, can hardly fail to
be stirred in his heart's depths, either to fervent love, or to new
light, or to longing and thirsting for God, or to detestation and
loathing of his sins, or to that spiritual aspiration by which the
soul is renewed in grace."

John Tauler was born at Strassburg about 1300, and entered a Dominican
convent in 1315. After studying at Cologne and Paris, he returned to
Strassburg, where, as a Dominican, he was allowed to officiate as a
priest, although the town was involved in the great interdict of 1324.
In 1339, however, he had to fly to Basel, which was the headquarters
of the revivalist society who called themselves "the Friends of God."
About 1346 he returned to Stra