bolder phrases in Eckhart, and says, “But there are some who say that, in order to attain to perfect union, we must divest ourselves of God, and turn only to the inwardly-shining light.”  “That is false,” replies Suso, “if the words are taken in their ordinary sense.  But the common belief about God, that He is a great Taskmaster, whose function is to reward and punish, is cast out by perfect love; and in this sense the spiritual man does divest himself of God, as conceived of by the vulgar.  Again, in the highest state of union, the soul takes 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.”