§ 29. MEISTEK ECKART. 247
_As_A_PpT^Ar!WF,R. — His sermons were delivered in churches and at conferences within cloistral walls. His style is grajjhic and attractive, to fascination. The reader is carried on by the progress of thought. The element of surprise is prominent. Eckart's extant sermons are in German, and the preacher avoids dragging in Latin phrases to explain his meaning, though, if necessary, he invents new German terms. He quotes the Scriptures frequently, and the New Testament more often than the Old, the passages most dwelt upon being those which describe the new birth, the sonship of Christ and believers, and love. Eckart is_ajnaster_in the use. of illustrations, which he drew chiefly from the sphere of daily observation, — the world of nature, the domestic circle and the shop. Although he deals with some of the most abstruse truths, he betrays no ambition to make a show of speculative subtlety. On the contrary, he again and again expresses a desire to be understood by his hearers, who are frequently represented as in dialogue with himself and asking for explanations of difficult questions. Into the dialogue are thrown such expressions as " in order that you may understand, " and in using certain illustrations he on occasion announces that he uses them to make himself understood.^
The following is a resume of a sermon on John 6 : 44, " No man can come unto me except the Father draw him."^ In drawing the sinner that He may convert him, God draws with more power than he would use if He were to make a thousand heavens and earths. Sin is an offence against nature, for it breaks God's image in us. For the soul, sin is death, for God is the soul's true life. For the heart, it is restlessness, for a thing is at rest only when it is in its natural state. Sin is a disease and blindness, for it blinds men to the brief duration of time, the evils of fleshly lust and the long duration of the pains of hell. It is bluntness to all grace. Sin is the prison-house of hell. People say they intend to turn away from their sins. But how can one who is dead make himself alive again? And by one's own powers to turn from sin unto God is much less possible than it would be for the
1 Biittner, p. 14 ; Pfeiffer, p. 192, etc. ^ pfeiffer, 216.
248 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
dead to make themselves alive. God himself must draw. Grace flows from the Father's heart coutiriually, as wlien He says, " I have loved thee with an everlasting love."
There are three things in nature which draw, and these three Christ had on the cross. The first was his fellow-likeness to us. As the bird draws to itself the bird of the same nature, so Christ drew the heavenly Father to himself, so that the Father forgot His wrath in contemplating the sufferings of the cross. Again Christ draws by his self-emptiness. As the empty tube draws water into itself, so the Son, by emptying himself and letting his blood flow, drew to himself all the grace from the Father's heart. The third thing by which he draws is the glowing heat of his love, even as the sun with its heat draws up the mists from the earth.
The historian of the German mediaeval pulpit, Cruel, has said,i " Eckart's sermons hold the reader by the novelty and greatness of their contents, by their vigor of expression and by the genial frankness of the preacher himself, who is felt to be putting his whole soul into his effort and to be giving the most precious things he is able to give." He had his faults, but in spite of them "he is the boldest and most profound thinker the German pulpit has ever hacL, — a preacher of such original stamp of mind that the Church in Germany has not another like him to offer in all the centuries."
EcKART AS A THEOLOGICAL Thinker. — Eckart was still bound in paH~5yjEHe"scTiolastic method. His temper, however, differed widely from the temper of the Schoolmen. Anselm, Hugo of St. Victor, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura, who united the mystical with the scholastic element, were predominantly Schoolmen, seeking to exhaust every supposable speculative problem. No purpose of this kind appears in Eckart's writings. He is dominated by a desire not_so much to reach the intellect as to reach the soul and^ lead it into immediate fellowship with CxQd. Witli him the weapons of metaphysical dexterity are not on show; and in liis writings, so far as they are known, he betrays no inclination to bring into the area of his treatment those remoter
1 p. 384.