Centuries of Meditations

84

That God should love in the Soul is most easy to believe, because it is most easy to conceive, But it is a greater mystery that the Soul should love in itself. If God loveth in the Soul it is the more precious, if the Soul loveth it is the more marvellous. If you ask how a Soul that was made of nothing can return so many flames of Love? Where it should have them, or out of what ocean it should communicate them? it is impossible to declare–(For it can return those flames upon all Eternity, and upon all the creatures and objects in it)–unless we say, as a mirror returneth the very self-same beams it receiveth from the Sun, so the Soul returneth those beams of love that shine upon it from God. For as a looking-glass is nothing in comparison of the world, yet containeth all the world in it, and seems a real fountain of those beams which flow from it, so the Soul is nothing in respect of God, yet all Eternity is contained in it, and it is the real fountain of that Love that proceedeth from it. They are the sun-beams which the glass returneth: yet they flow from the glass and from the Sun within it. The mirror is the well-spring of them, because they shine from the Sun within the mirror, which is as deep within the glass as it is high within the Heavens. And this showeth the exceeding richness and preciousness of love, it is the love of God shining upon, and dwelling in the Soul. For the beams that shine, upon it reflect upon others and shine from it.