ction itself bring with
it unspeakable comfort? How could we be aware of that infinite
distance, if there were not something within us which can span the
infinite? How could we feel that God and man are incommensurable, if
we had not the witness of a higher self immeasurably above our lower
selves? And how blessed is the assurance that this higher self gives
us access to a region where we may leave behind not only external
troubles and "the provoking of all men," but "the strife of tongues"
in our own hearts, the chattering and growling of the "ape and tiger"
within us, the recurring smart of old sins repented of, and the
dragging weight of innate propensities! In this state the will,
desiring nothing save to be conformed to the will of God, and
separating itself entirely from all lower aims and wishes, claims the
right of an immortal spirit to attach itself to eternal truth alone,
having nothing in itself, and yet possessing all things in God. So
Tauler says, "Let a man lovingly cast all his thoughts and cares, and
his sins too, as it were, on that unknown Will. O dear child! in the
midst of all these enmities and dangers, sink thou into thy ground and
nothingness. Let the tower with all its bells fall on thee; yea, let
all the devils in hell storm out upon thee; let heaven and earth and
all the creatures assail thee, all shall but marvellously serve thee;
sink thou into thy nothingness, and the better part shall be thine."
This hope of a real transformation of our nature by the free gift of
God's grace is the _only_ message of comfort for those who are tied
and bound by the chain of their sins.

The error comes in, as I have said before, when we set before
ourselves the idea of God the Father, or of the Absolute, instead of
Christ, as the object of imitation. Whenever we find such language as
that quoted from Ruysbroek, about "rising above all distinctions," we
may be sure that this error has been committed. Mystics of all times
would have done well to keep in their minds a very happy phrase which
Irenaeus quotes from some unknown author, "He spoke well who said that
the infinite (_immensum_) Father is _measured_ (_mensuratum_) in the
Son: _mensura enim Patris Filius_.[276]" It is to this "measure," not
to the immeasureable, that we are bidden to aspire.

Eternity is, for Tauler, "the everlasting Now"; but in his popular
discourses he uses the ordinary expressions about future reward and
punishment, even about hell