Revelations of Divine Love · 94 of 127 · tr. Grace Warrack
Chapter LXIa
"By the assay of this falling we shall have an high marvellous knowing of Love in God, without end.
For strong and marvellous is that love which may not, nor will not, be broken for trespass" And in our spiritual forthbringing He useth more tenderness of keeping, without any likeness: by as much as our soul is of more price in His sight.
He kindleth our understanding, He directeth our ways, He easeth our conscience, He comforteth our soul, He lighteneth our heart, and giveth us, in part, knowing and believing in His blissful Godhead, with gracious mind in His sweet Manhood and His blessed Passion, with reverent marvelling in His high, overpassing Goodness; and maketh us to love all that He loveth, for His love, and to be well-pleased with Him and all His works.
And when we fall, hastily He raiseth us by His lovely calling and gracious touching.
And when we be thus strengthened by His sweet working, then we with all our will choose Him, by His sweet grace, to be His servants and His lovers lastingly without end.
And after this He suffereth some of us to fall more hard and more grievously than ever we did afore, as us thinketh.
And then ween we (who be not all wise) that all were nought that we have begun.
But this is not so.
For it needeth us to fall, and it needeth us to see it.
For if we never fell, we should not know how feeble and how wretched we are of our self, and also we should not fully know that marvellous love of our Maker.
For we shall see verily in heaven, without end, that we have grievously sinned in this life, and notwithstanding this, we shall see that we were never hurt in His love, we were never the less of price in His sight.
And by the assay of this falling we shall have an high, marvellous knowing of love in God, without end.
For strong and marvellous is that love which may not, nor will not, be broken for trespass.
And this is one understanding of [our] profit.
Another is the lowness and meekness that we shall get by the sight of our falling: for thereby we shall highly be raised in heaven; to which raising we might never have come without that meekness.
And therefore it needeth us to see it; and if we see it not, though we fell it should not profit us.
And commonly, first we fall and later we see it: and both of the Mercy of God.
The mother may suffer the child to fall sometimes, and to be hurt in diverse manners for its own profit, but she may never suffer that any manner of peril come to the child, for love.
And though our earthly mother may suffer her child to perish, our heavenly Mother, Jesus, may not suffer us that are His children to perish: for He is All-mighty, All-wisdom, and All-love; and so is none but He,—blessed may He be!
But oftentimes when our falling and our wretchedness is shewed us, we are so sore adread, and so greatly ashamed of our self, that scarcely we find where we may hold us.
But then willeth not our courteous Mother that we flee away, for Him were nothing lother.
But He willeth then that we use the condition of a child: for when it is hurt, or adread, it runneth hastily to the mother for help, with all its might.
The path of loving devotion and self-surrender to a personal deity as itself sufficient means of liberation — the Gita's 'to those constantly devoted, I come forward as their deliverer,' Kabir's and the Sant poets' love-religion, the devotional stream that parallels Sufi love-mysticism. Distinct from mystical_union (the resulting state), fana_annihilation (the ego's unmaking at the path's end), ladder_of_love (eros staged toward Beauty), and prayer (the practice of address): bhakti names devotion as the soteriological road itself.
The entire passage is framed as a relationship of loving devotion, where the soul chooses to be God's 'servants and His lovers' through grace, emphasizing love as the soteriological path.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The text argues that even the soul's fall and subsequent realization are orchestrated by God ('both of the Mercy of God') for the specific purpose of spiritual profit and deeper knowledge.
The doctrine that emotions constitute a valid and necessary mode of knowing reality, complementing or surpassing intellectual cognition.
The text explicitly links 'marvelling', 'comfort', and 'love' to the acquisition of knowledge, stating that through these emotional states one gains a 'high marvellous knowing' of God.
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
The passage repeatedly emphasizes 'knowing' and 'understanding' God's love through the direct experience of falling and being raised, presenting this experiential knowledge as the primary profit of the soul.
The divine conceived as active, present, and dynamic—not an abstract principle but a personal responsive reality.
God is depicted as dynamically active in the soul's life, 'kindling', 'directing', 'easing', 'comforting', and 'raising' the believer with personal tenderness.