days were too short, for no one could speak to him or see him without being the better for it.” By this we may put the description of Pomerius, founded upon the reminiscences of Ruysbroeck’s surviving friends. “The grace of God shone in his face; and also in his modest speech, his kindly deeds, his humble manners, and in the way that every action of his life exhibited uprightness and radiant purity. He lived soberly, neglected his dress, and was patient in all things and with all people.” Plainly the great contemplative who had seemed in Brussels a ‘negligible man,’ kept to the end a great simplicity of aspect; closely approximating to his own ideal of the ‘really humble man, without any pose or pretence,’ as described in _The Spiritual Marriage_. That profound self-immersion in God which was the source of his power, manifested itself in daily life under the least impressive forms; ever seeking embodiment in little concrete acts of love and service, “ministering, in the world without, to all who need, in love and mercy.”[3] We see him in his Franciscan love of living things, his deep sense of kinship with all the little children of God, ‘going to the help of the animals in all their needs’; thrown into a torment of distress by the brothers who suggested to him that during a hard winter the little birds of the forest might die, and at once making generous and successful arrangements for their entertainment. We see him ‘giving Mary and Martha _rendez-vous_ in his heart’; working in the garden of the community, trying hard to be useful, wheeling barrow-loads of manure, and emerging from profound meditation on the Infinite to pull up young vegetables under the impression that they were weeds. He made, in fact, valiant efforts to achieve that perfect synthesis of action and contemplation ‘ever abiding in the simplicity of the Spirit, and perpetually flowing forth in abundant acts of love towards heaven and earth,’ which he regarded as the proper goal of human growth—efforts constantly thwarted by his own growing concentration on the Transcendent, the ease and frequency with which his consciousness now withdrew from the world of the senses to immerse itself in Spiritual Reality. In theory there was for him no cleavage between the two: Being and Becoming, the Temporal and the Eternal, were but two moods within the mind of God, and in the superessential life of perfect union these completing opposites should merge in one.