O Lorp my Gop, the longer I look upon Thy face the more keenly dost Thou seem to turn the glance of Thine eyes upon me! Thy gaze causeth me to consider how this image of Thy face is thus perceptibly painted, since a face cannot be painted without colour, nor can colour exist without quantity. But I perceive, not with my fleshly eyes, which look on this icon of Thee, but with the eyes of my mind and understanding, the invisible truth of Thy face, which therein is signified, under a shadow and limitation. Thy true face is freed from any limitation, it hath neither quantity nor quality, nor is it of time or /lace, for it is the Absolute Form, the Face of faces.
When, therefore, I meditate on how that face is truth, and the most adequate measure of all faces, I am brought into a state of great wonder. For that face which is the true type of all faces hath not quantity. Wherefore, it is neither greater nor less than others, and yet *tis not equal to any other; since it hath not.
quantity, but ’tis absolute, and exalted above all. It is, therefore, the Truth, which is equality, freed from all quantity. Thus, then, Lord, I comprehend Thy face to precede every face that may be formed, and to be the pattern and true type of all faces, and all faces to be images of Thy face, which may not be limited or shared. Each face, then, that can look upon Thy face beholdeth naught other or differing from itself, because it beholdeth its own true type. And the pattern truth cannot be other or differing, but those attributes are found in the image just by reason that it is not the very pattern.
Thus, then, while I look on this pictured face, whether from the east or from the west or south, it seemeth in like manner itself to look on me, and, after the same fashion, according as I move my face, that face seemeth turned toward me. Even so is Thy face turned © toward all faces that look upon Thee. Thy glance, Lord, is Thy face. He, then, who looketh on Thee with loving face will find Thy face looking on himself with love, and the more he shall study to look on Thee with greater love, by so much shall he find Thy face more loving. He who looketh on Thee in wrath shall in like manner find Thy face wrathful. He who
looketh on Thee with joy shall find Thy face joyful, after the same sort as is his own who looketh on Thee. ’Tis as when the eye of flesh, looking through a red glass, thinketh that it seeth all things red, or, looking through a green glass, all things green. Even so the eye of the mind, muffled up} in limitation and passivity, judgeth Thee, the mind’s object, according unto the nature of its limitation and passivity.
Man can only judge with human judgment. — When a man attributeth a face unto Thee, he doth not seek it beyond the human species, because his judgment, bound up with human nature, in judging transcendeth not its limitation and passivity. In like manner, if a lion _ were to attribute a face unto Thee, he would think of it as a lion’s; an ox, as an ox’s, and an eagle, as an eagle’s.
OQ Lord, how marvellous is Thy face, which a young man, if he strove to imagine it, would conceive as a youth’s; a full-grown man, as manly; an aged man, as an aged man’s! Who could imagine this sole pattern, most true and most adequate, of all faces—of all even as of each—this pattern so very perfectly of each as if it were of none other? He
1 Randall’s happy rendering of obvolutus.
- would need to go beyond all forms of faces that may be formed, and all figures. And how could he imagine a face when he must go beyond all faces, and all likenesses and figures of all faces, and all concepts which can be formed of a face, and all colour, adornment, and beauty of all faces? Wherefore he that goeth forward to behold Thy face, so long as he formeth any concept thereof, is far from Thy face. For all concept of a face falleth short, Lord, of Thy face, and all beauty which can be conceived is less than the beauty of Thy face; every face hath beauty yet none is beauty’s self, but Thy face, Lord, hath beauty and this having is being. *Tis therefore Absolute Beauty itself, which is the form that giveth being to every beautiful form. O face exceeding comely, whose beauty all things to whom it is granted to behold it, suffice not to admire! In all faces is seen the Face of faces, veiled, and in a riddle!; howbeit unveiled it is not seen, until above all faces a man enter into a certain secret and mystic silence where there is no knowledge or concept of a face. This mist, cloud, darkness or ignorance into which he that seeketh Thy face entereth when he goeth beyond all knowledge or concept, is the state 1 Cf. p. 17, note 1.
below which Thy face cannot be found except veiled; but that very darkness revealeth Thy face to be there, beyond all veils. “Tis as when our eye seeketh to look on the light of the sun which is its face; first it beholdeth it veiled in the stars, and in colours and in all things that share its light. But when it striveth to behold the light unveiled, it goeth beyond all visible light, because all this is less than that which it seeketh. A man seeking to see a light beyond his seeing knoweth that, so long as he seeth aught, it is not that which he seeketh. Wherefore it behoveth him to go beyond all visible light. For him, then, who must go beyond all light, the place he entereth must needs lack visible light, and is thus, so to speak, darkness to the eye. And while he is in that darkness which is a mist, if he then know himself to be in a mist, he knoweth that he hath drawn nigh the face of the sun; for that mist in his eye proceedeth from the exceeding bright shining of the sun. Wherefore, the denser he knoweth the mist to be, by so much the more truly doth he attain in the mist unto the light invisible. I perceive that *tis thus and not otherwise, Lord, that the light inaccessible, the beauty and radiance of Thy face, may, unveiled, be approached.
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