The active and fertile aspect of the Divine Nature is manifested in differentiation: for Ruysbroeck the Catholic, in the Trinity of Persons, as defined by Christian theology. The static and absolute aspect is the ‘calm and glorious Unity of the Godhead’ which he finds beyond and within the Trinity, “the fathomless Abyss that _is_ the Being of God,”—an idea, familiar to Indian mysticism and implicit in Christian Neoplatonism, which governed all Meister Eckhart’s speculations upon the Divine Nature. There is, says Ruysbroeck in one of his most Eckhartian passages, “a distinction and differentiation, according to our reason, between God and the Godhead, between action and rest. The fruitful nature of the Persons, of whom is the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity, ever worketh in a living differentiation. But the Simple Being of God, according to the nature thereof, is an Eternal Rest of God and of all created things.”[7] In differentiating the three great aspects of the Divine Life, as known by the love and thought of man, Ruysbroeck keeps close to formal theology; though investing its academic language with new and deep significance, and constantly reminding us that such language, even at its best, can never get beyond the region of image and similitude or provide more than an imperfect reflection of the One who is ‘neither This nor That.’ On his lips, credal definitions are perpetually passing over from the arid region of theological argument to the fruitful one of spiritual experience. There they become songs, as ‘new’ as the song heard by the Apocalyptist; real channels of light, which show the mind things that it never guessed before. For the ‘re-born’ man they have a fresh and immortal meaning; because that ‘river of grace,’ of which he perpetually speaks as pouring into the heart opened towards the Infinite, transfigures and irradiates them. Thus the illuminated mind knows in the Father, not a confusingly anthropomorphic metaphor, but the uniquely vital Source and unconditioned Origin of all things “in whom our life and being is begun.” He is the “Strength and Power, Creator, Mover, Keeper, Beginning and End, Cause and Existence of all creatures.”[8] Further, the intuition of the mystic discerns in the Son the Eternal Word and fathomless Wisdom and Truth perpetually generated of the Father, shining forth in the world of conditions: the Pattern or Archetype of creation and of life, the image of God which the universe reflects back before the face of the Absolute, the Eternal Rule incarnate in Christ. And this same ‘light wherein we see God’ also shows to the enlightened mind the veritable character of the Holy Spirit; the Incomprehensible Love and Generosity of the Divine Nature, which emanates in an eternal procession from the mutual contemplation of Father and Son, “for these two Persons are always hungry for love.” The Holy Spirit is the source of the Divine vitality immanent in the universe. It is an outflowing torrent of Good