Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/429

CHAP. XXXVIII from all the preceding the summa cointimitas, by which each is in the other, and one works with the other through every conceivable indivisibility (indivisionem) of the substance, virtue, and operation of the same most blessed Trinity. ..." "And when thou contemplatest this," adds Bonaventura, "do not think to comprehend the incomprehensible."

From age to age the religious soul finds traces of its God in nature and in its inmost self. Its ways of finding change, varying with the prevailing currents of knowledge; yet still it ever finds these vestigia, which represent the widest deductions of its reasoning, the ultimate resultants of its thought, and its own brooding peace. Therefore may we not follow sympathetically the Itinerarium of Bonaventura's mind as it traces the footprints of its God? Thus far the way has advanced by reason, uplifted by grace, and yet still reason. This reason has comprehended what it might comprehend of the traces and evidences of God in the visible creation and the soul of man; it has sought to apprehend the being of God, but has humbly recognized its inability to penetrate the marvels of his goodness in the mystery of the most blessed Trinity. There it stops at the sixth grade of contemplation; yet not baffled, or rendered vain, for it has performed its function and brought the soul on to where she may fling forth from reason's steeps, and find herself again, buoyant and blissful, in a medium of super-rational contemplation. This makes the last chapter of the mind's Itinerarium; it is the apex mentis, the summit of all contemplations in which the mind has rest. Henceforth

"Christ is the way and door, the ladder and the vehicle, as the propitiation placed on the Ark of God, and the sacrament hidden from the world. He who looks on this propitiation, with his look full fixed on him who hangs upon the cross, through faith, hope, and charity, and all devotion, he makes his Passover, and through the rod of the cross shall pass through the Red Sea, out of Egypt entering the desert, and there taste the hidden manna, and rest with Christ in the tomb, dead to all without; and shall realize, though as one still on the way, the word of Christ to the believing thief: 'To-day thou shall be with me in Paradise.' Which was also revealed to the blessed Francis when in ecstasy of contemplation on the high mountain, the Seraph with six wings, nailed on a cross, appeared to him. There, as we have heard from his com-