8. The Seven Degrees of the Ladder of Love (_De Septem Gradibus Amoris_).—This book, which was written before 1372, is believed by the Benedictines of Wisques, the latest and most learned of Ruysbroeck’s editors, to complete the trilogy of works addressed to Dame Margaret van Meerbeke. It traces the soul’s ascent to the height of Divine love by way of the characteristic virtues of asceticism, under the well-known mediæval image of the ‘ladder of perfection’ or ‘stairway of love’—a metaphor, originating in Jacob’s Dream, which had already served St. Benedict, Richard of St. Victor, St. Bonaventura and many others as a useful diagram of the mystic way. Originality of form, however, is the last thing we should look for in Ruysbroeck’s works. He pours his strange wine into any vessel that comes to hand. As often his most sublime or amazing utterances originate in commentaries upon some familiar text, or the deepest truths are hidden under the most grotesque similitudes; so this well-worn metaphor gives him the opportunity for some of his finest descriptions of the soul’s movement to that transmutation in which all ardent spirits ‘become as live coals in the fire of Infinite Love.’ This book, in which the influence of St. Bernard is strongly marked, contains some beautiful passages on the mystic life considered as a ‘heavenly song’ of faithfulness and love, which “Christ our Cantor and our Choragus has sung from the beginning of things,” and which every Christian soul must learn.