CHAPTER I.

Introductory.

THERE was a Friar Preacher in Germany, by birth a Swabian,—may his name be written in the Book of the Living!—whose desire was to become and to be called a Servitor of the Eternal Wisdom. Now it happened that he became acquainted with a holy and illuminated person, who was in poverty and suffering as regards this world. This poor sufferer was a woman; and she used to beseech the Servitor to tell her something about suffering from his own experience, that her suffering heart might gather strength from it. And she acted thus towards him for a long time. When he came to see her, she drew from him by confidential questionings the manner of his beginning and progress 6 in the interior life, as well as certain exercises and sufferings which he had passed through: all which he told her in spiritual confidence. As she found comfort and direction in these things, she wrote them down, to be a help for herself and others; and she did this by stealth, so that he knew not of it. Later on, when he found out this ghostly theft, he reproved her for it, and, forcing her to give up to him the writing, he burnt all of it that was there. When, however, the rest of it was given to him, and he was going to treat it in like manner, he was stopped by a heavenly message from God forbidding it. Thus what follows remained unburnt, for the most part just as she had written it with her own hand. Many good instructions were also added to it by him, after her death, in her name.

The first beginning of the Servitor’s perfect conversion to God took place when he was in his eighteenth year. And though he had worn the religious habit for the five previous years, his soul was still dissipated within him; and it seemed to him, that if God only preserved him from weightier sins, which might tarnish his good name, there was no need to be over-careful about ordinary faults. Nevertheless, he was so 7kept by God the while, that he had always an unsatisfied feeling within him, whenever he turned himself to the objects of his desires, and it seemed to him that it must be something quite different which could bring peace to his wild heart, and he was ill at ease amid his restless ways. He felt at all times a gnawing reproach within, and yet he could not help himself, until the kind God set him free from it, by turning him. His companions marvelled at the speedy change, wondering how it had come over him; and one said this, and another that, but as to how it was, no one either guessed or came near to guessing it; for it was a secret illumination and drawing sent by God, and it wrought in him with speed a turning away from creatures.